Care UK, one of the UK’s leading providers of residential care, has gone live with Zellis HCM AIR, creating a modern, intelligent HR and payroll foundation designed to eventually support over 260 care homes nationwide, while reducing manual effort, strengthening compliance and improving access to accurate, timely people data for HR, payroll, care home administrators and managers.
The first wave of the project is now live and is currently serving 150 Care UK homes.
By adopting HCM AIR, Care UK has taken a major step towards simplifying HR and payroll operations across the organisation, with a platform that supports secure communication with care homes through the Zellis Portal, provides real-time payroll capabilities and enables richer insight through embedded Power BI dashboards, while also integrating seamlessly into the Microsoft ecosystem through capabilities such as Single Sign-On and Power Automate connectors.
Designed around care sector realities
With Zellis HCM AIR now live, Care UK can support colleagues and managers with consumer-grade self-service, enabling people to access and manage their own information more easily, while reducing dependency on HR and payroll for routine updates, documentation handling and data queries.
At the same time, the solution has been implemented with a clear focus on strengthening governance and control, particularly across areas that can attract financial and reputational risk when processes rely heavily on manual workarounds or when controls are difficult to evidence at audit time.
“Our priority has been to give teams across Care UK a platform that supports consistent, compliant processes at scale, while also making day-to-day HR and payroll tasks easier for colleagues, managers and care home administrators; the implementation of Zellis is an important milestone in that journey.” – Peter Pender, Head of Business Systems and Information Security Management at Care UK
Key capabilities now available include:
- Real-time payroll processing, helping Care UK maintain up-to-date calculations while enabling validation and checks throughout the pay cycle rather than concentrating effort into narrow windows.
- Improved compliance and risk management, with built-in controls and automation supporting areas such as SOX responsibilities, National Minimum Wage checks and right-to-work requirements.
- Secure, consistent collaboration with care homes, supported through the Zellis Portal, which provides a dedicated channel for structured submissions and secure communication.
- Advanced analytics through embedded Power BI dashboards, giving HR, payroll and finance teams richer visibility, faster reporting and improved decision support using more current data.
- Intelligent automation including AI-enabled capabilities, helping reduce repetitive work across onboarding, changes, and leavers, while supporting workflow approvals and the streamlining of routine administration.
- Improved document management, ensuring colleague documentation continues to be managed consistently in line with GDPR requirements and organisational policy.
Care UK’s go-live with Zellis represents the establishment of a modern HR and payroll foundation designed to support consistent delivery across a distributed operating model, while also creating the conditions for continuous improvement as processes mature, adoption grows, and teams take advantage of deeper automation and insight.
“We’re delighted with the system, and with how well it has been implemented. I’ve been overseeing large system selection processes for many years and have a comprehensive method that looks beyond functionality and price to execution, flexibility and team. Zellis has been first rate across the board.” – Carl Stokes, CIO at Care UK
Zellis look forward to continuing our partnership with Care UK as the programme moves from implementation into sustained improvement, ensuring the platform evolves alongside organisational priorities and supports the people who deliver care every day.
