How Equans replaced paper timesheets with accurate, real-time workforce data across 1,200 staff at Queen Alexandra Hospital

The challenge

The workforce management challenge at Equans

Equans delivers total facilities management at Queen Alexandra Hospital in Portsmouth, one of the largest acute hospitals in the country. Its team of around 1,200 staff covers everything from maintenance and cleaning to catering and portering, running 24 hours a day, every day of the week.

Before Crown, every part of this ran on paper. Managers relied on staff to complete timesheets honestly and accurately, with no way to confirm who was actually on site. Some employees filled in a full week in advance and then did not appear, which meant the team could pay for shifts that were never worked and only spotted the gap once someone failed to sign in.

That lack of visibility created two problems. Managers could not say with confidence where their people were, which matters across a site with roughly 640 patient service assistants and housekeepers and a duty to account for staff in an emergency. Payroll was slow, governed by tight monthly deadlines, and exposed to the human error that comes with adding up hours by hand.

The solution

Crown's integrated approach to time, attendance and accountability

Crown implemented a time and attendance system built around the RFID chips already in the hospital's ID badges. That gave every employee a single point of identification with no changes to existing cards. Staff were registered through the system and ready to clock in straight away.

With Crown's guidance, the Equans team installed the card readers themselves and later moved the solution from an on-premise data warehouse to the cloud. The newer swipe stations confirm every clocking three ways, with an on-screen tick, an audible tone and a message on the display, so there is no doubt about whether a clock-in registered. Within the same system, the team can now:

• Track time automatically and feed it straight into payroll
• Manage absence, annual leave and shift patterns in one place
• Let staff view their own annual leave balance and request time off
• Pull reports for trends, long-term absence and fire roll calls

Training ran from one-to-one sessions through to detailed group training at Crown's central hub, and the system has continued to grow around the team's needs since go-live. Crown takes new requirements on board and builds the functions customers ask for.

The results

The results, accuracy and empowered teams 

Payroll accuracy now sits at around 99 per cent. The errors that remain tend to come from staff forgetting an overtime shift or an appointment rather than from miscalculation, a clear change from the paper era. The summary view gives managers a single place to see an employee's address, start date, leaving date, contracted hours and shift pattern, which speeds up everything from referencing to absence reviews.

The data has also reshaped how managers support their people. Weekly tracker reports surface long-term sickness and seasonal patterns in absence and annual leave, and the team uses them to step in early, for example with an occupational health referral, rather than to penalise staff. Sickness in patient services has fallen well below its previous level, down from around 18 per cent under the old paper process.

Accurate clockings have changed how staff feel about the system too. Initial reluctance gave way to buy-in once employees saw that clocking in meant correct pay and correct annual leave, with their balance visible online whenever they want it. Ownership now sits with the individual, which gives office staff time back for final checks and lets managers challenge the few exceptions that arise.

The value of that single source of data showed most clearly in 2018. When the site's previous contractor collapsed, the team used Crown to pull a full workforce dataset in around four hours, with the report itself running in about ten minutes, and rebuilt every record in time. Equans has mobilised the site twice on Crown's software, supported throughout by the Crown team.