Momentum Ventures Is Creating a More Human HR Experience

If you walk up to any human resource department desk you are guaranteed to see at least one thing: stacks of resumes. In addition, you may see vacation requests, insurance documents, and many other ink-stained pieces of paper destined for a filing cabinet, paper shredder, or mailbox.

One Montreal, Quebec company, called Momentum Ventures, is taking on this long-held convention, and has moved their human resources department into the cloud in an attempt to save waste and increase efficiency across its unique organization.

Momentum Ventures is a Montreal-based tech company founded in 2007 that specializes in building winning businesses. Unlike traditional venture capitalist firms, Momentum Ventures’ businesses and their respective employees all work in-house. Momentum Ventures’ three active businesses operate with a high level of autonomy when it comes to staffing, but, as the parent company, this information still flows to Momentum Ventures’ central human resources hub. This obviously creates an opportunity for general disarray and bottlenecking when it comes to managing not just the needs of workers, but the specifics of each individual brand and their specific policies.

Enter BambooHR, a web-based solution that has Momentum Ventures managing their human resources department efficiently online. Bamboo allows employees at each individual company to request time off, make purchase requests, and retrieve important information independently, all while drastically cutting down paper waste and reducing the amount of time Momentum Ventures’ human resources team spends managing paper flow, finding documentation, and training employees on how to properly complete requests.

Momentum Ventures CEO Matthew Keezer is particularly happy about the change saying “it’s a win-win situation, we are really streamlining the entire human resources department, while at the same time cutting down office waste,” adding “it’s also taking a huge burden off of our human resources department, allowing them to spend more time on other tasks like managing the office, interviewing potential employees, and managing company events and policies. This is especially important considering the unique organization of our company”

Momentum Ventures Media Manager Mark Novak, a recent addition to the team, arrived at Momentum Ventures after the switch to BambooHR. Novak, who most recently had worked for a major technology company in Montreal, believes using a web-based human resources tool would be beneficial for companies of all sizes saying “the effect it has had in our office is already quite positive, assuming you can get every employee to adopt and learn a web-based human resources tool the effect could be multiplied for larger offices, especially ones operating globally.”

As of right now, Momentum Ventures is implementing this new human resources management system at its home office in Montreal, Quebec. The system unifies three of Momentum Ventures’ active businesses. This includes Summit Services, FlightHub, and, Momentum Ventures’ latest property, Alio. Momentum Ventures currently has four global offices and employs over 400 people worldwide, meaning this change could soon be coming to its other offices assuming the experiment continues to go so smoothly for its home base.

The benefits of moving to a paperless human resources department are numerous. For environmentally conscience businesses there is an obvious gain in managing paper usage. On the business side, the move has the potential to free up your human resources department to focus fully on improving the work environment and conducting more, and more thorough, interviews. Likewise, non-human resources staff could have the ability to track down their own forms, make their own requests, and track valuable information like vacation and sick days independently.