How Ubuntu Sport manages 150 sports professionals with HoorayHR’s self-service app

Valentijn Zegwaart is HR, Recruitment & Operations Manager at Ubuntu Sport, which runs sports training programmes, organises events, and places sports professionals with schools, childcare centres and local authorities. Alongside 30 in-house staff, more than 150 external professionals work on location every day.

We talked to Valentijn about how Ubuntu Sport went live on HoorayHR within a week, and how approving expense claims went from half a day’s work to fifteen minutes.

About Ubuntu Sport

Ubuntu Sport runs sports training programmes, organises events, and places sports professionals with schools, childcare centres and local authorities. With 30 in-house staff and more than 150 external professionals on location every day, HR needs real structure to keep up. Running permanent teams alongside a large pool of external staff takes clarity, speed and centralised control.

The challenge: scattered data and manual work

Before HoorayHR, staff data lived in different places, and contracts and documents had no central home. HR drew up contracts by hand in Word, sent expense claims by email, and managed leave entirely on paper. HR had to track everything themselves, with no clear overview of staff or contracts. And since many staff don’t work with a laptop, that information wasn’t easy to reach on a phone either.

With Hooray, we’ve genuinely gone from spending an afternoon to just a quarter of an hour approving or rejecting travel expenses.

The switch to HoorayHR

The implementation had to be quick and simple, no long process. Valentijn spent two afternoons entering every contract, working hours, staff detail and salary into Excel himself, sent it over, and was live on HoorayHR within a week. The tool also had to work for both the 30 in-house staff and the 150+ external professionals, and suit HR, team leaders and operational staff alike.

Over two afternoons, I put every contract, working hours, staff detail and wage into Excel. I sent the file over, and within a week I was live on HoorayHR.

From an afternoon to 15 minutes: approving expense claims

Expense claims and travel costs used to run through email, which ate up a lot of time. With HoorayHR, approval follows one fixed, clear process. What used to take half a day now takes 15 minutes. Staff check their own details and claims through the app, even without a laptop.

Everything in one place, including for 150 external professionals

Staff data and contracts now live in one central place, no more separate files or spreadsheets. Contracts that took 30 minutes to draw up by hand now take 5 minutes, digitally. Ubuntu Sport also runs two entities from a single, organised system: automatic notifications give HR and team leaders real-time insight and cut down on errors.

In conclusion

For Ubuntu Sport, HoorayHR is all about clarity and speed, even with 150 external sports professionals on board. Contracts, expense claims and leave are no longer managed via separate files and emails, but from a single central location. Valentijn sums up the key benefits:

• Approve expense claims in 15 minutes instead of half a day
• Draft contracts in 5 minutes instead of 30 minutes of manual work
• Live within a week, no complex implementation
• Works for 30 in-house staff and 150+ external professionals alike
• Manage two entities from a single, user-friendly system
• Access via the app, even for staff without a laptop

Do you also work with a large group of external professionals alongside a permanent team? Find out what HoorayHR can do for your HR processes.