Manly Leagues Club Cut Their Rostering Time From Days to Minutes with Deputy

Manly Leagues Club offers a lively atmosphere, diverse culinary options, and versatile event spaces — not to mention they’re the home of the Manly Warringah Sea Eagles.

Nikki Pichon has been with Manly Leagues Club for 18 years, created rosters for many years, and now works as People & Culture Manager. She entered this role intending to support staff, build company culture, and improve customer experience. Instead, she found herself spending days scheduling and sorting out complicated payroll.

Manly Leagues Club had used Deputy for years, and staff and managers loved it. However, when they came across a different platform that claimed it could do everything, it seemed like a better solution - until it wasn’t.

While implementing the new all-in-one software, Nikki immediately noticed a stark difference in the level and quality of support. She was used to hopping on a phone call with Deputy’s support team to troubleshoot if something came up. With the new software, there were barriers to getting help.

Nikki recalls, “You can't just pick up the phone and speak to someone. You have to send through the bot to help you or send an email and wait for a response – and you could be waiting multiple days.”

After a seamless experience adopting Deputy’s user-friendly interface, Manly Leagues Club’s staff had difficulty adjusting to the new software’s layout.

“Going to another platform was quite overwhelming because Deputy is so straightforward.”

They found the new interface so “spread out” and unintuitive that it made building schedules and generating reports to be a cumbersome, error-prone, and time-consuming process. 

Where Deputy’s scheduling tool automatically filtered out staff on leave, the new software allowed you to schedule staff who weren’t available, resulting in even more time spent on correcting those errors.

Nikki found that the new “all in one” software was clunky and did not live up to its lofty promise. 

Nikki says, “It was a funny program to use because it sells itself as a ‘do-it-all’ program. But actually, you have your payroll platform, and then your HR platform, and it’s completely separate...you have to open a separate page, and it's separate login and separate everything. Then, you'd have to build all the information on the HR side and it would have to be exported to the payroll side. If things didn't match up, it would go into all sorts of errors.”

Despite the software calling itself a “do-it-all” platform,  Nikki had to do it all herself.

Managers and employees could not view and edit schedules from the new software’s mobile app like they could in Deputy. Not only did this make it harder for staff to plan their own lives, but they also didn’t know who they would be working with, which plays a big part in productivity.

Employees did not hesitate to question why Manly Leagues Club had left Deputy and were vocal about their dislike for the new software.

“Even staff that hadn’t used Deputy for long before we moved to the new software saw a huge difference in how user-friendly the apps were. A lot of our staff questioned why we were moving...and ‘‘When are we going to go back to Deputy?’”

Manly Leagues Club turned back to Deputy as a known and trusted software. To their delight, they found that we had just released our new HR feature. As they were also beginning to look into Xero for their payroll, they loved that Deputy already had an integration available, bringing their costs down even further.

Nikki notes that they had a great experience starting fresh with Deputy. Their account manager was available whenever they needed support, whether through a quick email or a Zoom call. If they did run into an issue, their support team “got in there right away” and was “proactive in helping.” 

There was an immediate improvement in staff productivity now that communications were streamlined through Deputy’s News Feed feature, and staff had increased visibility into their workday from the handy mobile app.

Deputy’s intuitive layout was welcomed back with open arms.

“My key stand out is how user-friendly [Deputy] is for everyone and anyone. If you've never used it before, it is so easy to navigate. Even if you're experienced in using it, it makes it easy for everyone.”

Nikki shares that Deputy’s schedule feature and automation cut her rostering time from days to minutes, freeing her to spend more time on tasks she hasn’t “had the chance to do until now” — like mentoring and liaising with staff and working on the club’s policies.

“When I was doing rostering through our previous software, it would take me consecutive days to get a roster finished. I can confidently say I can do a roster in Deputy within half an hour.”

Since switching back, Nikki has taken it upon herself to caution her peers against using the so-called “All In One” software they tried and strongly urges them to use Deputy instead.