STV

• Industry: Media
• Employees: 350+
• Customer since 2010

About STV

Broadcasting to more than 3.5 million viewers every month, STV is Scotland’s leading media brand. Providing content on air, online and on demand, its production department is renowned for creating popular shows, such as Antiques Road Trip and Catchphrase. Its main office is located in Glasgow, but it also operates from other sites across Scotland and London.

STV’s Challenge

The exciting but fast-moving nature of television and entertainment means the number of employees working for STV fluctuates frequently. STV employs 550 permanent staff but, depending on the scale of the productions taking place, hundreds more freelance staff can be brought on board at any time.

This presented the HR and payroll team at STV with a huge set of challenges and complications. For example, STV pays a large number of its freelancers and permanent staff monthly, while ad-hoc artistes are paid weekly.

Given the unique nature of paying workers within the entertainment field, STV wanted to work with a flexible payroll solution that could handle this level of complexity. Most importantly, they wanted to collaborate with a partner to create a tailored, specific solution.

Jacqueline Gardner, systems analyst at STV, explains their thinking: “As our requirements are complex, we knew that an off-the-shelf solution wouldn’t be good enough. We needed a more sophisticated level of support.”

The Zellis solution

To tackle this, the payroll team chose ResourceLink from Zellis because of the level of sophistication they could see in the technology: “We asked for a demo and really liked what we saw – it seemed much more advanced than what others were offering”, Jacqueline says.

While improving payroll management was the aim, STV also wanted to take advantage of the extra HR functionality, including an analytics and reporting tool-set, and an employee self-service portal which allows staff to manage holiday requests and view payslips.

STV also became a member of the Zellis user group – of which Jacqueline is now treasurer. This group allows STV to talk regularly with other ResourceLink users, along with their Zellis team, to share information and discuss potential improvements to the software.

“It acts as a great sounding board and support network. Obviously, it helps Zellis to develop their products further, but for us as customers it’s fantastic to know that the right people are hearing what we have to say”, says Jacqueline.

The results

The additional functionality within ResourceLink has proven to be just as valuable as the payroll system itself. And the relationship between STV and Zellis has blossomed.

“As nice as it is to have a good system, if you don’t have the support to go alongside that, you can still encounter problems”, Jacqueline adds. “But we have that with Zellis. We’ve worked closely together to create something that really works for our business. And when changes have needed to be made, such as when new regulations are introduced – be that auto-enrollment, gender pay gap reporting or GDPR – they have been there to hold our hand and guide us every step of the way.”

The additional functionality within ResourceLink has made it possible to easily conduct analysis and produce reports and has made the team much more efficient.

“We’re covered by the regulator Ofcom and are required to produce lots of reports – covering such things as the ethnic origins of employees to ensure equal opportunities, etc. – so it’s great that ResourceLink allows us to do that.”

With many people returning time and again to work for STV and given the huge fluctuation in employee numbers the self-service portal has also proven to be a major advantage.

“Having a single point where everyone can sign back in makes it a lot simpler when employees come back to work with us. It allows them to keep their own bank details up-to-date, for example, which makes life easy for both us and them.”