Galactic Fed scales up a remote workforce with Zoho People
The company
Galactic Fed is a global digital marketing agency with team members across 17 countries. Filled with SEO, paid media, and growth marketing scientists, Galactic Fed works with top brands in their market. Galactic Fed is also at the forefront of the remote work and digital nomad revolution and was built on the principle that exceptional work can be done from anywhere in the world. With their core value of building a one-of-a-kind corporate culture, Galactic Fed has grown into a people-first organization.
The challenge
Galactic Fed was expanding rapidly but still using spreadsheets for their people operations. With a remote workforce spread across 17 countries, spreadsheets were no longer enough. They needed better, more agile software for their HR processes.
" We are scaling up, and our existing methods of HR operations were outdated. We needed a better system. We wanted to reduce costs, provide a better work experience, and improve the overall efficiency of our HR processes, " said Irina Papuc, Co-Founder & Managing Partner at Galactic Fed.
While spreadsheets serve the purpose of maintaining data, they don't scale for advanced processes. Continuous manual updates are required, which hinders efficiency. Meanwhile, the digital marketing industry has been growing massively in the last few years, especially with the rise of remote work and many companies going digital. With higher competition and being fully remote, the major issue arises with hiring, retaining, and enabling their workforce to perform their best.
The solution
After analyzing multiple solutions like Monday.com, Bridge, and HRM.com, the team at Galactic Fed found Zoho People matched their requirements and budget. Now, right from onboarding their members to conducting exit interviews, Galactic Fed runs its end-to-end HR operations on Zoho People.
One of the biggest advantages of adopting Zoho People was time off management. With members from different time zones, it was a hassle to keep the team updated on holidays and time off. Moreover, Galactic Fed had to comply with regional regulations for time off policies. With Zoho People, the company was able to customize the software to adhere to government regulations, and everyone found it easy to apply for time off with a simple approval process. The HR team also had clarity and was able to automatically calculate days worked, which was helpful for payroll processing.
A major challenge that comes with remote work is good performance management. Performance is a nuanced aspect of workforce engagement and, if done wrong, can have adverse effects on both members and the company. The ability of managers or mentors to guide teams, deliver timely feedback, and track performance are all important to an employee's success. With Zoho People, the team at Galactic Fed streamlined this process.
" We're a company that strongly believes in leaving a lasting impact and, to us, helping our teams do their best work is extremely important. As we grew, we understood that performance management needed a better system for better results. Zoho People has helped us achieve this by enabling managers and mentors to guide their teams in a better way and allowing everyone to perform their best ".
- Irina Papuc, Co-Founder & Managing Partner at Galactic Fed Managers under every service that Galactic Fed offers were able to assign specific goals and the expected key results for members, all while tracking their progress efficiently from a single application. They were now able to exchange feedback seamlessly, give shout-outs, discuss improvements, and have a record of it all for better management. They also customized the yearly performance appraisal process with self-appraisals that empowered their teams to take a step back and evaluate their own progress over a given period.
Benefits and ROI
After implementing Zoho People, the team at Galactic Fed began noticing some of these major changes. Being a fully remote company, their teams didn't have easy access to information and there was a high dependency on other departments as data was managed on spreadsheets. With Zoho People, everyone can apply for time off and check the information they need from any location they're working from. The upper management and HR departments have better clarity and understanding of their workforce with analytics and reports, and their efficiency started improving across their people operations.
"Zoho People has given us a streamlined approach toward people operations. With highly customizable features, Galactic Fed can manage its remote workforce with ease, improved efficiency, and better work experiences. We also believe that, as we grow, Zoho People can quickly adapt to our changing requirements," said Irina Papuc.
Looking forward
As Galactic Fed expands across the globe and continues to deliver quality services to their clients, Zoho People will allow them to provide their teams with a great work experience for many years to come.