Virgin Active chooses ShopWorks for their Workforce Management provider in the UK

Today, the world’s leading health club group Virgin Active has digitally transformed their UK workforce management processes with ShopWorks.

Virgin Active has 238 clubs in 8 countries including UK, Italy, Singapore, Australia, Thailand, South Africa, Botswana and Namibia. After a successful trial Virgin Active has rolled out ShopWorks Workforce Solutions in all 34 of their UK locations.

The requirement for flexible and accurate workforce management processes has now been highlighted more than ever before by the COVID pandemic. Response to COVID has speeded up the adoption of technologies by several years and for many organisations the focus has been on implementing flexible systems that provide one central view of their workforce across their entire estate.

With multiple locations, long trading hours and varied employment contracts, Virgin Active identified a clear need to implement a flexible and bespoke workforce management solution. ShopWorks, part of the Worktech Group, covers the scheduling and the time & attendance by using state of the art biometric readers in each location.

Furthermore a self-service portal will be used by the Virgin Active team members to check planned rotas and review confirmed hours. They will be able to request time off and be notified that the request has been approved. All of which will give their people greater confidence that their T&A and leave will be recorded accurately.

“Our intention with implementing the ShopWorks T&A system is to automate and streamline people processes, making for a more user friendly and accurate people experience, and delivering us improved reporting which allows us to make more informed people decisions. It is early days but we can see the benefits this will provide Virgin Active on a daily basis.” Caroline Simoes, People Director, Virgin Active.

ShopWorks will be used to save resources spent on administrative tasks carried out by Virgin Active managers such as manual scheduling, time monitoring, budgeting and ensuring compliance throughout the operation. The system improves many aspects of the business including accuracy of the payroll, provides visibility over team member availability in all their locations and optimising resources and ultimately cost.

WorkTech Group CRO Lee Bowden said, “There is no doubt that Virgin Active will quickly see the benefits. Our customers use our ShopWorks Workforce Solutions platform to improve operational efficiency and manage their staff planning more accurately. Virgin Active, approached the WorkTech Group to deliver a platform that could bring significant efficiency savings to the company. This has been a rewarding and enjoyable process and well received by the team members – Virgin Active have been a pleasure to work with.”