How Global Schools Group cut payroll prep from 4 days to half a day across its UAE campuses

A growing school network with a workforce unlike any other

Global Schools Group, formerly Global Schools Foundation, runs around 64 campuses across 11 countries, including four in the UAE (Abu Dhabi, two in Dubai and Sharjah) and two in Saudi Arabia. HR for the UAE campuses is led by Brutus Lewis, Deputy Manager HR, who has spent 11 years in school HR.

“Teachers tend to be mostly female, and many of them might be homemakers as well. So their requirements are a bit different. School working hours and working days are different from other sectors.” — Brutus Lewis

The challenge: attendance data lived in Excel

The previous HR system never connected properly to the campuses’ biometric devices. Every month, punch data was exported to Excel and checked line by line for late arrivals, early departures and missing punches, then followed up with line managers. That alone took 3 to 4 days before payroll could begin. Tailored reports for corporate and regulators meant more manual work, and leave balance questions were answered with a calculator.

“The system would just say that for that particular punch, it’s missing. That’s it. There were no alerts, no recommendations.” — Brutus Lewis

Why ZenHR

The group needed a cloud-based system with a proven track record in other countries and GOSI support for its Riyadh campus. After checking references, it chose ZenHR, at a price it found easily affordable.

ZenHR in action

• Attendance that flags problems before payroll does: biometric data is read directly and missing punches, late arrivals and early departures are surfaced as recommendations. Managers are notified in one click.
• Alerts built for the classroom: once a campus’s grace period passes, employees and supervisors are alerted so cover can be arranged in time.
• Self-service leave balances employees can project to any date, plus team visibility on who’s on leave.
• Reports ready at short notice from custom fields, for corporate MIS and regulators.

“Now, even before making any entries, I can go to the recommendations, select all, and notify the direct managers in just one click.” — Brutus Lewis

The results

• Payroll prep cut from about 4 days to around half a day.
• Cleaner handoff to finance for WPS uploads, with attendance right at the source.
• Fewer leave questions for HR thanks to self-service.
• Supervisors know about absences before the first lesson.

“For me, I would say an HR life changer.” — Brutus Lewis