How the County of Renfrew Streamlined People Management for 900 Employees
Ontario's largest county replaced paper forms, email chains, and manual workflows with a fully digital platform, onboarding 32 new hires in three months with zero paper.
Ontario's largest county, modernizing HR for 900 employees
The County of Renfrew, Ontario's largest county and a public sector innovation leader, employs over 900 people. In early 2023, the county partnered with Workzoom to transform HR processes from the ground up.
The transition moved from paper forms, emails, spreadsheets, and manual workflows to a fully digital platform. The implementation included HR, Talent, Time Off, Safety, Onboarding, and Recruiting modules, delivering faster and more seamless employee experiences across the entire organization.
The county's iterative approach ensured quick wins while laying the groundwork for long-term transformation, making Renfrew a model for public sector innovation in people management.
The Challenge At Hand
The County of Renfrew faced significant challenges with outdated, paper-based HR processes. Recruitment bottlenecks from manual resume handling slowed hiring, while time-intensive, inconsistent onboarding drained resources. Decentralized systems for managing employee records, time off, and safety training complicated operations and made accuracy and compliance difficult to maintain.
Time-Intensive Onboarding
Paper-heavy processes drained HR resources and led to inconsistent new hire experiences across the organization.
Recruitment Bottlenecks
Processing hundreds of resumes manually through email caused delays and inefficiencies, slowing down hiring timelines significantly.
Decentralized Data
Managing employee records, time off requests, and safety training across multiple systems made operations difficult and accuracy hard to maintain.
The Solution
The County of Renfrew partnered with Workzoom and adopted an iterative implementation strategy. This phased approach prioritized high-impact solutions, ensuring quick wins while laying groundwork for long-term transformation. Solutions addressed recruitment, onboarding, time-off management, safety training, and HR operations.
Workzoom brought every HR function into a single connected system, giving the County of Renfrew real-time visibility across recruitment, onboarding, time off, safety training, and employee records.
Centralized HR Management
All employee data consolidated into one accessible platform. Improved visibility, reduced administrative workloads, and ensured accurate, real-time records.
Talent Management
Transformed performance tracking and training management. HR teams focused on employee development and organizational goals rather than administrative overhead.
Safety Training and Tracking
Health and safety training embedded into onboarding. New hires complete mandatory requirements before starting on-site, ensuring compliance from day one.
Simplified Recruitment
Automated job postings and tracked applications efficiently. A resume parser sped up candidate screening, eliminating the bottlenecks of manual email-based hiring.
Efficient Time Off Management
Centralized time-off requests made it simple for employees to submit and for managers to approve, replacing disconnected spreadsheets with a single workflow.
Smoother Onboarding
Employees upload documents and complete safety training online before their first day. New hires arrive prepared, and HR teams spend less time on administrative setup.
Key Results at a Glance
The hybrid onboarding process efficiently managed a high volume of new hires, bringing on 32 employees in three months without increasing HR headcount.
Automated recruiting and onboarding workflows freed HR staff from manual tasks, allowing the team to focus on strategic initiatives and employee development.
Built-in training modules ensured employees were properly trained before starting work, embedding compliance into the onboarding process from day one.
We wouldn't be able to hire the people that we do anymore with the same resources we already had. It's allowed us to keep our headcount consistent without needing to increase, saving us time and money.
Common questions
By moving from paper-based processes to a fully digital HRIS. Recruiting, onboarding, time off, safety training, and employee records are now handled end-to-end in Workzoom — with zero paper.
The County of Renfrew uses Workzoom as their HRIS for 900+ employees. Other Canadian municipalities including Northern Sunrise County also use Workzoom for payroll and HR management.
32 employees were successfully onboarded using the new hybrid digital process — faster, more consistent, and with no paper forms.
HR, Talent, Time Off, Safety, Onboarding, and Recruiting — covering the full employee lifecycle from hiring through training and compliance.
Yes. The County of Renfrew, Ontario's largest county with 900+ employees, selected Workzoom to replace paper and spreadsheet-based workflows. The platform scales well for government organizations that need HR, payroll, and talent management in one place.
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