No more paper trails.

What did the day-to-day reality look like before you brought in a dedicated HR platform?

A lot of our HR processes were genuinely manual and very fragmented. We were managing everything — recruitment, contracts, onboarding, off-boarding, compliance — primarily through Excel and email. We were also posting our onboarding documents and contracts in the physical mail. The time involved was significant, the risk of errors was real, and it wasn’t just affecting us — it had a flow-on effect for candidates and for our hiring managers too.

If you had to name the top three pain points from that era, what were they?

Time was the first — manually acknowledging every application, manually sending rejections, and emailing candidate profiles around the organisation. The second was the candidate experience: there’s something that doesn’t look forward-thinking about asking someone to wait for post, fill out paperwork, and send it back. And the third was data accuracy — compliance managed in Excel carries real risk, and when compliance is your concern, that’s not a risk worth carrying.

You looked at several vendors. What made Martian Logic stand out?

We were looking for an end-to-end HRIS that was genuinely customisable — not customisable through the back end, where you’re working with developers and then missing out on updates because of what you’ve changed. I’d lived through that experience before. I wanted something we couldn’t break by customising, but that would still let us build workflows suited to our size and goals. That distinction was immediately apparent in the demo.

How has the day-to-day experience changed since implementation?

It’s transformed how we work. Our principal can approve a contract from a conference on her phone — we used to print it, leave it on her desk, and wait. For hiring managers, they can see applicants in real time, leave confidential notes, and rate candidates alongside the HR team. Once a reference check is complete, it’s in the file — no waiting for the HR team to PDF it and email it across.

You were an early adopter of the compliance module. What drew you to it, and what’s the standout feature?

When we first had the demo, we could see not only the core product but what was in the pipeline. Seeing a platform being actively built out gave us real confidence. And the compliance dashboard specifically has been outstanding. I can look at a screen and see in real time where every staff member sits against their requirements, rather than pulling manual reports from a spreadsheet.

The peace of mind that comes from that at-a-glance view is genuine. Knowing everyone is sitting where they should be — and not where they shouldn’t be — that’s my comfort.

There’s a view that a school information system should handle everything — payroll, HR, rostering. What’s your experience?

We’re in the process of moving from one school information system to another, and the pattern is consistent — they handle a lot of things, but they don’t do HR well. That’s precisely why I reached out and started looking for a dedicated platform when I joined.

I genuinely don’t think you’ll find a one-stop shop for everything — and I don’t think that matters. In most industries, your core platform needs to integrate with specialised systems. That way you get something tailored to your individual requirements, not whatever comes stock standard in the broader package. HR professionals who come from other industries have high expectations. A school administration system isn’t built to meet them.

What would you say to another HR leader in the independent schools sector considering a similar move?

It’s a strong platform if you’re looking to genuinely modernise and streamline your HR function. But the key is spending the time upfront to configure the system in alignment with your actual processes and goals — that groundwork sets you up for success. It’s scalable, flexible, and as your organisation grows it can genuinely manage your people and your people data in one place.

And beyond the product: the responsiveness of the team matters enormously. I’ve worked with systems where you log a problem and hear back in two to three weeks, and in the meantime you’re sitting with something that isn’t working. That’s not the experience here. When something on our wish list comes up in conversation, changes are made. It’s refreshing to feel heard.