The Institute for Human Resource Professionals (IHRP) is Singapore's dedicated HR professional body, setting standards and elevating the HR profession nationwide. With a mission to strengthen the HR community through certification, continuous professional development, and active engagement, IHRP needed an HR system that reflected the innovation they champion in the industry.
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“Omni is very innovative, enterprising, and has an excellent response rate from the team. They listen to feedback and keep evolving and improving, which is important for any organization.”
As Singapore's HR professional body, IHRP champions innovation and excellence in Human Resource Management across the nation. Through their comprehensive certification programs, thought leadership initiatives, and vibrant professional community, IHRP sets the standard for what modern HR practices should look like. When Wenna joined as HR manager, she recognized an opportunity to ensure IHRP's internal operations reflected the same forward-thinking approach they advocated for throughout the industry.
Despite their leadership position in advancing HR practices, IHRP's internal systems hadn't kept pace with their vision. Four separate HR platforms operated in isolation, creating data silos that prevented the strategic workforce insights IHRP needed to model best practices. Determined to practice what they preached, IHRP launched a comprehensive tender process to find a technology partner that could support their vision for integrated, innovative HR operations. Through this evaluation, they discovered Omni as the ideal solution to demonstrate the data-driven HR management they promoted across Singapore's business community.
How Omni Adds Value to IHRP
1. Data Integration and Visibility
The Challenge
Before Omni, IHRP's HR data was scattered across four disconnected systems – one for payroll, another for performance management, a third for employee engagement surveys, and various other platforms for additional HR functions. This fragmentation created significant challenges for data analysis and reporting.
"All this data was sitting separately across different systems. Every time I had to collate it, that really took up a lot of my time," explains Wenna. "I couldn't see the overall picture of the employee life cycle."
This lack of integration made it challenging to track an employee's career trajectory or map performance trends over time. When IHRP leadership requested people analytics and metrics to understand workforce demographics, the team discovered their existing system was too rigid to extract even basic data.
"When we first wanted to pull out the data, we realized that the previous system could not allow us to do it," shares Wenna. "It was very rigid. Every time we had to make a change request, there would be a fee involved."
Omni's Solution
Omni provided IHRP with a unified platform that integrated all essential HR functions into a single system. From employee profiles and performance management to leave tracking and payroll, all IHRP employee data now lives in one centralized and easily accessible location with Omni.
Omni's flexible reporting capabilities empowers IHRP to create custom analytics dashboards, pull employee demographic breakdowns, and generate performance trend analyses with just a few clicks. Unlike their previous vendor that charged fees for every data modification or custom report request, Omni's flexible system allows unlimited reporting configurations without additional costs. As Wenna explains, "Every time we had to make a change request with our old system, there would be a fee involved. If we wanted to add a field, or maybe I changed something in my employee benefits, or I wanted to add in another component - I wasn’t able to do that. I had to go back to the vendor and they would start charging us for each modification." With Omni, IHRP can now analyze employee information across different dimensions, including gender distribution, department allocation, and performance progression.
Beyond basic reporting, Omni's system enables IHRP to map an employee's entire journey within their organization – from onboarding through performance reviews, training completion, and career advancement. This comprehensive view supports more informed personnel decisions and strategic workforce planning.
The Results
"We did a calculation in terms of cost saving – it's 48% compared to our previous system," Wenna reveals, “Omni is very reasonably priced and it has very good flexibility." Beyond the direct financial impact, the integrated system has transformed how IHRP manages employee data.
With all information in one place, HR can now instantly access an employee's complete profile with a single click rather than navigating multiple systems. "If I want to find out about Employee A, I just click their name, and I can see everything from the different tabs," explains Wenna.
Omni’s reporting modules—like headcount trend and attrition rate or DEI metrics— have enabled IHRP to implement more streamlined people analytics, supporting the data-driven approach to HR that they advocate for in the profession. The system's flexibility also allows IHRP to adapt their data collection and reporting as organizational needs evolve.
2. Administrative Efficiency
The Challenge
Prior to Omni, IHRP's HR team was spending approximately 30-40% of their time on routine administrative tasks. These included answering basic employee queries about leave balances and benefits, processing reimbursement claims, and manually tracking employee milestones.
"Conveniently, employees would come to HR, and we would be burning our time to answer these kinds of questions, which I felt wasn’t very impactful," Wenna shares. Their previous HR system lacked a mobile app, forcing both employees and managers to log into a desktop platform for even the simplest tasks.
Another significant pain point was the manual tracking of probation periods and employee anniversaries. "If you do it manually, obviously you're going to lose track of time," Wenna explains. Without automated reminders for probation deadlines, critical milestones would slip through the cracks. "This happened previously when we were doing it manually – 'Hey, this person was supposed to be confirmed already, but we didn't set up a reminder,'" she recalls, referring to missed probation review processes.
Birthday and work anniversary celebrations, important for employee engagement, required HR to manually check records and create calendar reminders – a tedious process that often fell to the wayside against more pressing HR tasks.
Omni's Solution
Omni modernized IHRP's HR operations with a mobile-first approach and automated workflows. Omni's mobile app—available to both iOS and Android users—enables employees to access their information, submit requests, and check balances on their own, while managers can approve requests with a single click from their phones.
Omni implemented automated notifications and task management for critical processes such as probation reviews. "We have moved our probation task into Omni itself," explains Wenna. "Three weeks before a person is supposed to be confirmed, the notification will float up to the employee as well as the HOD (Head of Department) prompting them to complete their feedback session, and upload the form to HR."
Omni's dashboard highlights important employee milestones, including birthdays and work anniversaries, with visibility both in the system and through calendar integrations with favorite workplace tools like Google and Microsoft Teams, eliminating the need for manual tracking. Connecting with employees and fostering a strong company culture is a top priority for IHRP, an initiative championed directly by the CEO who believes in personal recognition and celebrating team milestones. "When we first joined IHRP, we wanted to connect with the employees," Wenna notes. "My business leader asked, 'Can HR pull out the data every day or every month to remind me whose birthday is on this day?' Now with Omni, he just goes in every morning, looks at who has a work anniversary and whose birthday it is, and straight away he sends that note of thanks."
The Results
The implementation of Omni has significantly reduced the time IHRP's HR team spends on administrative tasks. "In terms of time, it's about 30% time saving from all the administrative work," shares Wenna.
Approval processes that previously required logging into systems and navigating multiple screens now happen instantly. "It's just a one-second thing, and it's that fast," Wenna explains. "Once I get a notification, I can just approve from the app. I don't even have to log into the website – straight away I click approve, and it's done."
The automation of key processes like probation reviews has eliminated the risk of missed deadlines while ensuring consistent follow-up. "Once you have instituted it, it goes on autopilot. The next new hire that comes in gets added to the workflow, and that's it – everything is ready to run off auto pilot through Omni."
The birthday and work anniversary features have streamlined employee recognition, fostering stronger connections across the organization. "It has really improved relationships across all the departments," notes Wenna. "You don't want to just be in your own team alone – this helps build cross-functional relationships as well."
3. Performance and Learning Management
The Challenge
IHRP's previous approach to performance management and learning development lacked the necessary flexibility and tracking capabilities. Performance reviews were annual events with limited visibility into progress throughout the year, making it difficult to provide timely support or course corrections.
As champions of continuous professional development, IHRP prioritizes learning and development as a core employee benefit and strategic necessity for maintaining an agile, skilled workforce. The organization mandates 24 hours of annual training for all employees, recognizing that ongoing education keeps their team at the forefront of HR innovation. However, IHRP's vision of empowering employees to own their development journey was hampered by manual tracking processes that burdened HR rather than inspiring self-directed learning.
Training and development tracking was particularly cumbersome, relying entirely on manual record-keeping. "If Employee A attends a training session of eight hours, they will tell the HR director – 'I have attended this course, this is the trainer, this is the title, this is the date, this is how much it costs the company, and it was eight hours,'" explains Wenna.
This process placed the administrative burden on HR rather than empowering employees to take ownership of their development. "Manually, HR would have to type into the Excel spreadsheet, logging it in, and at the end of the year, we'd see if you filter and you have completed 24 hours," Wenna continues. "But if I don't tell you, you won't be able to record it or lock it in."
The lack of systematic tracking also meant that employees often didn't prioritize their training requirements until year-end, sometimes missing targets altogether.
Omni's Solution
Omni provided IHRP with a comprehensive performance management system that enables continuous tracking and feedback. Omni's goal setting and OKR module allows employees and managers to monitor progress throughout the year rather than waiting for annual reviews, with visualization trackers to easily monitor goal progression and identify road blocks.
"Because Omni has the progression visualization in OKRs, we can actually go in at a quarter or even a midpoint review before the final review to take a look at where help is needed," shares Wenna. "We’re able to easily track and notice when an employee is not hitting a KPI and check in to see if they’re facing some barriers. It’s a good tool for sense-checking with your team members."
For learning and development, Omni shifted accountability to employees while maintaining visibility for HR. IHRP decided to move their 24-hour training KPI tracking into Omni's system to leverage the progression tracking capabilities. "This year we decided to put it in Omni because you have this progression feature," Wenna explains. "The onus now is on the employee – you have to take accountability for your own training KPIs. If 100% is 24 hours, you key in your own progression along the way."
The Results
The implementation of Omni's performance and learning management has transformed how IHRP approaches employee development. "Performance management cannot be just a once-a-year check-in – it has to be a regular conversation," notes Wenna. "We want to drive IHRP to be a more performance-driven culture, and with a good system like Omni that is able to track and allow employees to see their progress, it's fantastic."
Omni has also empowered IHRP employees to take ownership of their development, particularly regarding the mandatory 24 training hours. "We want them to take ownership," Wenna explains. "Previously, training KPIs were just tracked through a logbook that HR oversaw, and it was not something viewed as important. Employees may not have had the urgency due to the lack of visibility."
Looking ahead, IHRP plans to expand their measurement beyond just training hours. "We want to measure not just the quantifiable training hours – one more step is we actually want them to come back to tell us what sort of satisfaction level they derived from these training sessions, how are they applying it, and are they also teaching it to their peers." By empowering employees to manage and track their KPI progression, Omni has freed up HR’s bandwidth to deepen their L&D efforts.
Setting the Standard: IHRP and Omni Leading HR Excellence in Singapore
With Omni's comprehensive HR solution, IHRP has transformed their internal operations to reflect the excellence in HR practices that they champion across Singapore. Omni's flexibility, mobile accessibility, and integrated approach have enabled IHRP to practice what they preach regarding innovative HR management.
"We want HR to be innovative. We don't want them to be stuck in the rut and think that this is the only way a function looks like," shares Wenna. "Omni has evolved to allow HR to play around in the ‘HR software sandbox,’ yet keeping that compliance and governance in the system itself that’s so essential."
The implementation of Omni has not only delivered significant cost and time savings but has also enabled IHRP to redirect resources toward strategic initiatives that advance their mission of elevating the HR profession. The unified platform supports better decision-making, enhanced employee experience, and a more data-driven approach to people management.
"One of the great things is Omni's ability to customize. Many other platforms are more rigid, Omni allows us a lot of flexibility to be innovative," concludes Wenna. "Small to medium enterprises definitely need this kind of scalability – and big enterprises as well, because sometimes they're so rigid they force everybody into one direction and they can't change anymore."
As IHRP continues to lead the charge in professionalizing and elevating HR practices across Singapore, Omni provides the technological foundation that enables them to model the forward-thinking approach they advocate throughout the industry.
