Faster, smarter, compliant: Healthcare Central London’s journey to a unified HRIS

Who Is Healthcare Central London?

Healthcare Central London is a federation of 30 general practices across Westminster, caring for more than 275,000 patients. The organization supports both clinical and administrative staff across multiple locations, working in partnership with the NHS to deliver essential community healthcare.

Having relied on Workable’s applicant tracking system for two years, HCL took the next step in its digital transformation by replacing its less advanced HRIS with Workable’s all-in-one HRIS. This move brought all people operations into one connected platform, allowing HCL to consolidate recruiting, onboarding, and employee management, improving visibility, compliance, and efficiency across the entire employee lifecycle.

Quick Results

• Time to implement HRIS (from previous system): Under one month
• Administrative time saved: Manual onboarding tasks completely replaced by automated document sending and storage
• Data accuracy: All employee records now centralized in one digital system, improving reliability and eliminating scattered spreadsheets
• Compliance readiness: Data audit requests can now be fulfilled instantly with digital access to certifications and records
• Performance management: First-time performance reviews conducted digitally; more structured and visible than previous Word or Excel-based approach
• Money saved: HRIS frees up significant admin time and ATS eliminates the need for any external recruiters or agencies

What Was HR and Hiring Like Before Workable?

Before implementing Workable, Healthcare Central London’s HR team operated within a highly manual, fragmented environment. With multiple systems and spreadsheets in play, every HR process, from recruitment to compliance, required significant administrative effort and manual oversight.

• Disjointed systems and duplicated effort: The HR team used another HRIS for employee records while separately posting jobs across platforms like NHS Jobs, Indeed, and LinkedIn. Without a centralized system, reconciling candidate and employee data across tools took hours each week.
• Manual onboarding and documentation: Each new hire required the HR team to send, collect, and store onboarding forms manually, a repetitive and error-prone process that delayed new employee start times.
• Inefficient reporting and limited visibility: Core HR reports, such as turnover, sickness, and leave summaries, had to be manually calculated and exported into spreadsheets. There was no automated way to generate insights or track trends over time.
• Data accuracy and compliance risks: With employee information scattered across spreadsheets, HR faced challenges in maintaining accurate records for CQC audits and compliance checks. Preparing for inspections was time-consuming, with a higher risk of missing or inconsistent data.
• Fragmented performance management: Reviews and feedback were tracked in Word documents or spreadsheets, often leading to duplicate files and incomplete data. Managers lacked a unified view of objectives and progress across teams.

In short, the HR department was burdened by manual work and disconnected tools, limiting visibility, accuracy, and efficiency across the entire employee lifecycle.

Why Did Healthcare Central London Choose Workable?

After two years of measurable success using Workable’s ATS, saving time, reducing admin overhead, and eliminating agency costs, Healthcare Central London decided to take the next step: unifying recruiting and HR management under one platform.

By consolidating into Workable’s combined ATS + HRIS solution, HCL created a single source of truth for both candidate and employee information, strengthening visibility, compliance, and collaboration across the organization.

• All-in-one system: Combines recruiting, onboarding, and employee management in one place for complete lifecycle oversight.
• Ease of use: Intuitive interface that HR and hiring managers could adopt quickly, without lengthy training.
• Ensured Compliance: Centralizes clinical, administrative, and compliance data, ensuring seamless CQC audit readiness.
• Scalable setup: Supports both permanent HQ employees and practice-based staff across London’s 30 GP practices.
• Exceptional value: Offers the most comprehensive feature set, rom recruitment marketing to HR reporting, at an accessible price point.

“We wanted one platform where recruitment, onboarding, and employee records all worked together. Workable gave us exactly that—an easy system to use and easy to trust.” 

— Femi Sami, HR Administrator, Healthcare Central London

How Workable’s HRIS Simplified Everyday HR

Workable’s HRIS has become the backbone of HCL’s people operations, unifying data, simplifying compliance, and giving HR a single, trustworthy system of record.

• Automated onboarding: What was once a repetitive, manual process now takes seconds. Employment contracts, right-to-work forms, and policy acknowledgments are sent and stored automatically, reducing administrative time and ensuring every new hire file is complete.
• Centralized employee records: All employee information, from start dates to certifications, lives securely in one place, giving HR and managers real-time access without digging through files or spreadsheets.
• Performance management: For the first time, managers are running reviews digitally instead of through Word or Excel. Reviews are centralized, structured, and visible across the team, eliminating duplicate files and improving accuracy.
• Sickness and turnover reporting: The team can instantly generate sickness or turnover reports, making it easy to spot workforce trends. HCL previously calculated these manually each month; now the process is faster and less error-prone.
• Audit-ready compliance: With staff working across 30 GP practices, regulatory checks from the Care Quality Commission are routine. Workable’s HRIS makes it simple to retrieve credentials like GMC numbers or training certifications instantly, a key change from the old paper-based system.
• Mobile accessibility: Employees can easily request time off and review updates through the mobile app, giving managers and HR real-time visibility and flexibility to manage approvals on the go.
• Future-proof setup: HCL plans to extend its use of Workable into time tracking and attendance, enabling flexible scheduling and accurate pay for salaried GPs with variable hours.

“Before, I had to manually send and save every document. Now it’s just a click…It’s given us accuracy, time savings, and peace of mind — we know every record is where it should be.” 

How Workable’s ATS Powered HCL’s Growth

While the HRIS transformed administration, the ATS revolutionized hiring at HCL.

• Multi-board posting: Connects to more than a dozen job boards, delivering faster candidate flow
• Real-time visibility: Hiring managers can see every stage of the pipeline, reducing back-and-forth communication
• Built-in approvals: Requisitions and offers are automatically routed for sign-off
• No external recruiters: With higher-quality applicants, roles are now filled directly

“The ATS is absolutely great. Everything from requisition approval to onboarding is clear and easy to manage. It saves so much time.” 

How Workable Supports Healthcare Central London’s Mission

Bringing Workable’s ATS and HRIS together has empowered Healthcare Central London to simplify hiring, strengthen compliance, and support staff with a more consistent and transparent experience. What once required hours of manual effort now happens in minutes. What used to be scattered across spreadsheets and documents now lives in one secure, centralized system. And what once felt burdensome for HR now feels manageable, structured, and scalable.

As HCL continues to grow and deliver high-quality community care, Workable is the partner helping them build a stronger, more sustainable foundation for their people, and ultimately, for the patients they serve.