HR Spectacles embraces Smartsheet, enhancing efficiency and customer satisfaction

Building an employee-centric, inclusive culture and empowering team members takes work, expertise, and methodical execution. In the Philippines and beyond, HR Spectacles fulfils this task for countless organisations from all industries. Since 2018, the company has served as a one-stop shop for all potential human resources (HR) needs, providing services like outsourced payroll solutions, employee lifecycle management, and executive headhunting. “Our vision is to elevate the value of HR in all organizations, primarily in the Philippines, where HR is still predominantly seen as an administrative function rather than a strategic one. We have recently gained traction with bigger organisations as well as businesses abroad,” shares Chris Matsumoto, Chief Executive Officer of HR Spectacles.

Dipping the toes in Smartsheet

Matsumoto learned about Smartsheet from a client. “I was very intrigued and I started playing around with it myself,” he looks back. “Initially, HR Spectacles was using other spreadsheet solutions that our team was not content with. The files were separated from the data, and I wanted to establish a centralized platform to bring everything together.

Initially, the company was using Smartsheet for simple tasks like automated notifications for deadlines and managing employee databases. Once the COVID-19 pandemic hit, the team was ready to quickly adjust to the new reality.

“It took us seven days to shift to remote work. The only reason we were able to do that was because we were already using Smartsheet and other apps,” explains Matsumoto. “We were also able to give confidence to our clients by digitizing their processes like onboarding, performance evaluation, and surveys, to name a few. Job security was a major worry for some of our client's employees, and they were grateful for our readiness and proactive approach. We empowered 800 employees across different organizations to thrive during the pandemic.”

Such resilience also earned HR Spectacles a title in the Productivity Olympics, a competition by the Department of Labor and Employment of the Philippines, for outstanding business continuity.

Diving deeper for greater impact

In 2022, HR Spectacles decided to take a closer look at what Smartsheet could do for the business. “We had up to a dozen training sessions with the Smartsheet team to brainstorm new ideas and processes. This was when I realized that our business would be based on Smartsheet for the next three to five years, so I had to equip my team with this knowledge.”

Matsumoto created a dedicated Smartsheet team of four individuals. “Around 50-60 percent of their responsibilities involve developing solutions in Smartsheet,” he elucidates. “They approach each department, find their pain points and try to find solutions that can be built in Smartsheet. For example, our current agenda is to build a dashboard for each department so that they can easily pull up a link and present their findings during reporting.” The process of building solutions from scratch has attracted many curious minds. “I have a lot of younger people on this team, and they are enjoying themselves tremendously,” adds Matsumoto. “They love watching videos from the Smartsheet Academy and figuring out what to build.” 

Educated, faster team

The second task of the dedicated Smartsheet user team within HR Spectacles is to educate the entire company. “Every week, we have a 30- or 45-minute session where they teach us something about Smartsheet,” says Matsumoto. “This is crucial because if everyone is skilled in Smartsheet, our progression is a lot faster.”

And faster the team became.

“My team has become more efficient in every function and each process flow takes a fraction of the time,” shares Matsumoto.

“By leveraging Smartsheet's automation tools, we've reduced manual administrative tasks by more than 95%, which allows us to generate client reports more rapidly and keep our team agile and efficient."

The learning initiatives have fostered a culture of continuous improvement. Team members proactively share insights and findings, tapping into Smartsheet's full potential. This collaborative learning has fortified HR Spectacles' ability to implement "kaizen" principles, driving consistent growth and refining operational processes.

Becoming ready for scale

One process that has been completely transformed is onboarding their customers’ employees. “We used to go to the clients office with paper forms and it took most of our day,” recalls Matsumoto. “Now it takes us a few hours and we can do everything online with forms and dashboards. This has saved close to 54% of our time. And our team can use that freed-up time to cater to our clients or innovate with new solutions.”

HR Spectacles has even simplified highly complex procedures like a 360-degree performance evaluation where each person rates multiple individuals. “It gets messy with many evaluators, so my team set up the necessary calculations with a number of sheets, reports, and dashboards in Smartsheet,” adds Matsumoto. “I was really impressed by my team’s pro-active approach. After having done automated evaluations on Smartsheet for over a year, we can confidently say that we now take only half the time we needed at the start.”

Glowing feedback from clients

But the biggest winners are the clients themselves. “We create a variety of HR workflows for our clients, depending on the specific HR scope we are handling for them,” illustrates Matsumoto.

“Our clients have been very impressed by how personalised our work has been, and this has added real value to our service.”

With a dedicated team of Smartsheet innovators, HR Spectacles continues to raise the bar. “I appreciate the positive feedback we receive from our clients, and this keeps us motivated to continue innovating in this space,” concludes Matsumoto.