The UK’s biggest independent life insurance broker, LifeSearch, has chosen to partner with Cezanne HR, the cloud HR software leader for mid-sized UK and international organisations. LifeSearch chose Cezanne HR’s platform to better engage with its employees and optimise onboarding and performance management processes. This has been undertaken as part of LifeSearch’s effort to continually evolve the culture and values of its business during a phase of continuous, rapid growth.
LifeSearch, which has over 500 employees across offices in London, Leeds, Milton Keynes and Cape Town, South Africa, is a leading life insurance broker specialising in providing protection insurance for families & businesses, with people very much at the heart of its business. With a mission to get more people than anyone ever thought possible to protect themselves and their families in the ways that are best for them, LifeSearch’s values have won the trust of more than 650,000 customers, and earned the company the third place position on the Sunday Times’ Top 100 Companies to Work For 2019.
Towards the end of a 3-year cultural implementation programme, LifeSearch’s key decision makers realised they needed an HR system which better integrated with their employee-centric processes. LifeSearch wanted to better involve its people and cultural values through the adoption of a modern, adaptable HR platform that could scale across the company, an important part of which was the onboarding process, as well as ongoing performance management.
Recognising that the incumbent HR system from Sage was in need of modernisation due to new modules being difficult to implement, the adoption of a modern and agile system became a priority to support LifeSearch as it scaled. The company chose Cezanne HR from four other providers to deliver all of the key HR support functions, as well as adding in onboarding and performance management modules.
Andrew Parker, Head of People & Culture at LifeSearch praised the flexibility of the Cezanne HR platform: “We knew how we needed to enhance our entire employee experience at LifeSearch, and the Cezanne HR platform has brought that vision to life. Many software suppliers promote an ‘easy’, off-the-shelf solution, but Cezanne HR worked with us to fully customise our platform to include the appropriate language and company branding that fully reflects our dynamic, flexible and inclusive workforce.
From the very start of the partnership, Cezanne HR’s technology has been well received to date. This outcome has been fortified by the inclusive adoption process, in which employees were consulted on the types of values, language and processes they felt best reflected LifeSearch’s cultural aims.
Andrew continued: “The Cezanne HR solution was different. We started with their classic HR system that allowed our people and leaders to seamlessly manage holidays, absences and personal information. The system was both highly praised and widely used by users, including our CEO, and could also be accessed on-the-go via a mobile application. From thereon, we investigated the other avenues by which the platform could unify our company values, culture and operations.”
Peter Hall, Head of UK Customer Services at Cezanne HR, said: “It has been a pleasure to work with the LifeSearch team and see their desire to fully utilise HR technology in support of their culture which is built on transparency, care and excellence. The company’s leadership identified that there was a disconnect between employees and the processes that were meant to be in place to help support people growth, happiness and progression at LifeSearch. We’re extremely pleased to be supporting LifeSearch with the right tools to support its culture-led ethos which is centred around the care and happiness of both employees and customers.”
Citing other key drivers in the decision to engage Cezanne HR, Andrew and his team reference the ability to easily add additional product modules. The onboarding module has unified the new joiner process by eliminating previous, time consuming methods that saw all paperwork being completed manually, improving the wider working environment of staff. In turn, the onboarding module has directly helped to incorporate the company’s new cultural transformation by enabling real-time notifications for key activities, ensuring that staff can work both quickly and efficiently without being hindered by long-winded processes.
In addition, the soon-to-be implemented performance management feature will better connect employees to their duties, line managers and wider teams by providing an overarching, integrated view of quality checking processes and collation of customer call data, as well as feedback and employee actions in a single, real-time platform. LifeSearch’s people can now easily view and respond to the praise and constructive feedback they receive in their work as an employee and partner.
About LifeSearch
You know it as life insurance, we call it protecting families. And since 1998, LifeSearch have protected hundreds of thousands of UK families from the financial fallout of catastrophe, critical illness and death.
Over 21 years, LifeSearch has grown into the UK's biggest life insurance broker, offering expert, independent advice to customers around life insurance, critical illness cover, income protection, family income benefit, serious illness cover and business insurance
In two decades, LifeSearch has picked up hundreds of awards for its culture, expertise and customer service. Boasting a TrustPilot score of 9.6, the company is ranked number #3 in the Sunday Times' 2019 list of Best Places to Work.
LifeSearch is an appointed representative of LifeSearch Partners Limited, who are authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.
About Cezanne HR
Cezanne HR is a UK HR Software leader for mid-sized UK & international organisations, providing a modern, secure Cloud HR system that lets companies quickly and effectively digitise, streamline and improve human resources management. Covering the full employee lifecycle, Cezanne HR’s online service includes integrated modules for core HR, recruitment, onboarding, absence and performance management, timesheets and career and succession planning, together with an open API and integrations with leading third-party solutions.
With customers ranging from large multi-nationals to UK-focused charities and not-for-profits, and reflecting decades of experience working with HR professionals worldwide, Cezanne HR is purposely designed to be exceptionally quick to deploy and easy to manage, taking out cost and complexity without sacrificing the flexibility or depth of features required to support complex and changing HR needs. The Cezanne HR service is GDPR compliant, ISO27001 certified and available in ten languages at no extra charge.
