Check out your Company Bowl for anonymous work chats.
We've caught up with our Associate Quality Engineer, Zara Khan to find out how she's built her confidence and independence at IRIS. Click here to watch Zara's full video below.
We're delighted to share that our CEO Elona has been featured on BBC News, on their new mini-series called Paths to Success. In the short video, Elona highlights the importance of hiring a diverse workforce and how ultimately this leads to creating a great business. Diversity is what opens up fresh, unexplored avenues of thoughts and innovation. Watch the video via the link below.
We start the year with acquisition news, and we are delighted to announce we have acquired Staffology, a cloud payroll application. The business is in an early stage of its lifecycle and has already secured over 100 customers with 18,000 payslips per month managed on the application. Staffology is a cloud-based payroll application designed specifically for the UK. As well as being comprehensive in terms of the features provided, it has a powerful Application Programming Interface (API) so it can easily be integrated with other systems. We have also acquired Senta, a provider of cloud-based practice management software for accountants and bookkeepers. Senta joining the IRIS family allows us to make sure our customers are compliant while revolutionising the cloud practice management market, and delivering the functionality customers require today, regardless of location. Our shared strategy, investment in cloud technology and sector expertise, means we can accelerate our growth and deliver better services to our customers.
We’ve donated over £7,500 to Shelter! Unfortunately, last year we couldn’t meet up for our usual Christmas parties and festivities, so we decided to do things a little differently. In the UK, some of our wonderful colleagues selflessly donated the value of their hamper to Shelter, helping us raise a total of £7,562 for the charity that supports millions of people every year struggling with bad housing or homelessness by providing advice, support, and legal services. A £10 donation to the charity could fund two webchats giving expert advice to people facing homelessness. £50 could pay for five urgent calls to the Shelter helpline to support those under immediate threat of homelessness and £80 could pay for legal advice to help a family in crisis keep their home. So, the fantastic amount we’ve been able to donate will make a real difference. Well done team IRIS.
Great Place to Work Ltd has given us the fantastic privilege of being formally certified as a Great Place to Work™. This means we are now internationally recognised as an organisation that cares about its people, invests in their training and development, supports them as they grow in their careers, rewards and celebrates hard work and cultivates an inclusive and supportive culture where people can thrive.
Everyone continues to be impacted by unique and unprecedented challenges in the wake of COVID-19. Recently, our customers joined us for IRIS Live, a week of discussion, debate and knowledge-sharing to give professionals and industry leaders practical strategies to navigate the next normal and begin to look forward with confidence. The sessions were chaired by our very own IRIS specialists, who were joined by thought leaders and industry experts from across a variety of sectors. We delivered 39 different sessions to nearly 4,000 attendees over the space of five days. We were also joined by over 350 of our IRIS Live guests for a Zoom comedy night with a line-up of hilarious comedians, raising an incredible £3,736 (including gift aid) for our chosen four charities: NHS Charities Together, NSPCC, Mind for Better Mental Health and Shelter. We'd like to give a big thanks to everyone who helped #MakeItHappen.
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IRIS recently held a #MyStaycation prize draw. We invited our employees to send in some of their best pictures from their trips around the UK, and encouraged them to take some well-earned time off! We entered all names into a ‘spin the wheel’ and we are delighted to announce our four lucky winners: Manjinder Devgon (Marketing Director), Lauren Ramsden (Senior Finance Business Partner), James Marshall (Account Manager) and Andy Charlton (T3 Business Analyst). They won one of four prizes: a picnic hamper, a pamper package, a gardening hamper and a relaxation of mindfulness items to enjoy during the bank holiday weekend. From hiking up the highest peaks in the UK to visiting beaches all over the country; from building outdoor cinemas in your garden to flying kites in the country side – it’s been wonderful to celebrate our new ways of relaxing and having fun. Even though original holiday plans may have been cancelled, we encourage all of our employees to continue with taking annual leave and switching off from time to time.
We are committed to supporting the ongoing development of our employees. One of the ways we can provide additional professional development opportunities is to better leverage apprenticeships, and to offer graduate schemes, to encourage young people to better their skills. Apprenticeships are genuine jobs with an accompanying assessment and skills development programme. They are a fantastic way to earn while you learn, gaining valuable skills and knowledge in a specific job role and securing a professional qualification/degree at the end. Our graduate schemes are a fantastic way for bright young talent to begin their careers in a market-leading company, with exciting opportunities in various departments. These schemes are designed to ease new graduates into the world of work, and give them the experience and skills required to kickstart their careers.
IRIS is proud to be a Real Living Wage employer. Higher than the national minimum wage, the Real Living Wage establishes the hourly wage that meets the UK cost of living, not just the government minimums, ensuring fair pay for a hard day's work. For more than three years, IRIS has informally committed to paying all employees the Real Living Wage or higher, as we value our employees mental and financial wellbeing, and believe they should receive the financial recognition that they deserve. In February 2020, the Living Wage Foundation gave us full accreditation as a Real Living Wage Employer.
