Welcome to the first instalment of the Quinyx Q&A! Each quarter we’ll be taking you behind the scenes as we talk to a different Quinyxer to get their insight into the wonderful world of workforce management.
First up is Ben Irwin-Brown, one of our project managers and Quinyx experts, who is part of the Customer Onboarding Team. Ben is based in our UK office in London and began working for Quinyx in the summer of 2016. When he’s not at work you’ll find him making his own furniture (his current project is trying to make a dining room table out of two doors he found on the street!), enjoying travelling and going for regular runs.
With a background as a systems consultant expert, Ben manages a range of projects and ensures Quinyx is configured to the needs of our customers and is optimised to help give them the results they’re looking for.
Below, Ben sheds some light on what it’s like working for Quinyx, the position of the workforce management industry and what he sees in the future…
Q: What brought you to Quinyx?
Ben: I decided I wanted to come into a company that was well established and in a growth phase rather in the incubation stage. I found Quinyx by accident through an old boss who introduced me to workforce management. After searching for more information about the industry, I discovered Quinyx online and, after reading up on lots of initiatives like the Quinyx Academy, it seemed like a great company and, being the first consultant in the UK, it was a really exciting opportunity for me to take it beyond early stage and to grow a team here with the support of the team in Stockholm.
Q: What excites you about working for Quinyx?
Ben: People always ask me if I enjoy my job and the answer is, yes, I do, but the fact of the matter is, the reason I enjoy my job, is because of all the people I work with. I genuinely do work with my friends. The culture we have here, and the ability to keep that culture even when we’re growing so rapidly, is an amazing thing to see and to be part of - especially when it spans all the different countries we operate in.
What excites me about this company is also the software. With a lot of software, once you reach a certain point, you get to the stage where you should know everything about it. With Quinyx, there’s always so much to learn, so much to keep on top of in terms of development and with every release there’s a whole new set of things to learn - it’s ever evolving. There’s always lots to do and we’re encouraged to get involved with the other departments whether that’s R&D or marketing.
Q: Where do you think the workforce management industry is heading?
Ben: We have a lot of powerful success stories at Quinyx and most of these come about because there’s been successful change management. Where there is a vision for people to find cost savings or different ways of working through implementing new software, it all comes down to how it’s managed internally. When we look at what’s going to happen in the industry, we’re going to see the widespread implementation of flexible working - where employers can harness technology to optimize their schedules and in turn offer their employees options for working varying hours in place of paying overtime. The impact of this will businesses being able to drastically reduced their payroll while their employees are able to enjoy more paid time off. This will help facilitate a move to a better mutual understanding between employer and employee, where the employee is less demanding of contracted hours because of the net gain for their personal life. A lot more people are now focussing on having a better work life balance, where they look after their health and wellbeing, rather than just caring about the pay cheque. This is definitely where we’re heading, it might just to take some companies longer than others to get there.
Q: What are the biggest challenges in your role?
Ben: We’ll step in and listen to the senior management teams about what they’re looking to achieve with Quinyx, whether that’s using the Budget & Forecast module to optimise schedules, providing a tool to empower local managers to make better decisions or bringing people away from WhatsApp groups and Excel schedules.
It takes a lot to make sure this touches every single level of the organisation, from middle management right down to the employees. For us, it’s key the employees understand why decisions have been made to make a change a what Quinyx is. The change management element is incredibly important and we see, time and again, disgruntled employees who haven’t been communicated with and told about the changes.
Q: And what’s the most rewarding part of what you do?
Ben: One of the most rewarding things is when you go back to visit companies where you’ve worked hard to help them make a change and achieve their goals. We get to see dreams come to life. Sometimes it’s the small things we do which have an impact on an hourly and daily basis which are then scaled up over a year to deliver the results the customer wanted to see. It’s also great when we step in with the customer and demo the app, then seeing their faces when they realise: “Wow, this is what we can do” and they then know it’s plausible that they can work with us to achieve their goals
Q: What makes Quinyx different to other WFM vendors?
Ben: We hire the right people and we all have a similar mentality which ties back to ‘enjoy work.’ As staff, we buy-in to each other, there’s a lot of trust and a lot of excitement about where we are and where we’re going. People see how happy we are to be working for the company and with the product. The product itself is ever evolving. We’ve pioneered cloud-based and mobile first workforce management software and, right now, we’re way ahead of the more traditional solutions.
Q: If you were to gaze into your crystal ball, what do you think the future holds for the workforce management?
Ben: For us, the biggest opportunity is growing with companies across the globe, like we’re currently doing with the project we have with Rituals. For the industry, the focus has to be on user-centric design, where it’s not a product built for management, but a product that is 100% built for the end user with the focus on apps, interfaces and convenience to deliver a great user experience. The main focus for the industry should be on keeping employees satisfied with the software they are using and the jobs they have. Anything we can do increase employees enjoyment at work is a big deal.
If you have any questions you’d like Ben or one of the Quinyx team to answer, let us know on LinkedIn or Facebook and we’ll do our best to answer them.
In the meantime, if you’d like more insight from the Customer Onboarding Team about how to successfully implement workforce management software, you can download our free guide below.
