Ryman case study: Tracking pay on the highstreet

For over a century Ryman stores have been a familiar High Street destination for stationery and office supplies. Founded in 1893 by Henry J Ryman with a single shop in Great Portland Street, London, today the business runs nearly 200 stores across the UK and an e-commerce website. Ryman uses HR DataHub to help retain its workforce of over 1500 people.

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Slow Processes Don’t Pay

With no dedicated pay or reward specialist inhouse, Ryman’s HR Team relied on department heads from across the business to advise on suitable pay rates for new vacancies, merit increases, and annual pay reviews for existing colleagues.

Ryman needed an easier way to grade rewards fairly for individual roles based upon the going market rates. Benchmarking was a time-intensive manual process of trawling job boards and scraping data from recruitment websites. Multiplying the process across more than 200 office based roles ate  up valuable resources for lengthy periods of time, with results often out of date before the benchmarking was completed.  

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“The pay review I’ve just finished took me 3-4 days. When it was done manually it would take weeks and the data would be outdated by the time it was finished.” *Laura Nicklin, Recruitment Coordinator, Ryman Limited

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Live Data, Level Playing Field

Ryman started using HR DataHub in December 2023, and found the software transformative almost immediately. Salary benchmarking could be done in a fraction of the time, shrinking weeks of painstaking work to as little as 3 or 4 days. HR DataHub soon highlighted quick-win areas of improvement by pinpointing the departments and individuals where pay disparities needed priority attention, and the HR Team was able to start to build a level playing field for future pay reviews. HR DataHub went on to enable informed conversations between HR and department heads to ensure that each individual's pay rise is fair, proportionate, and adjusted to match market rates for the role, taking into account geographic location, skills and experience.  

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“Of all the years I’ve been working in HR and recruitment, I’ve never seen anything that enables you to get the information you need for benchmarking that quickly.” Mark Fallon, Senior HR Business Partner, Ryman Limited

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Supporting Internal Teams

With responsibility for salary-setting sitting with department heads, Ryman HR team are now well prepared to give expert advice on the market-rates for individual roles. If a pay review results in a challenge from an employee, HR DataHub can quickly call up the data that informed the salary calculation and provide the manager and employee with an explanation of how the new salary was decided fairly and in-line with market averages. 

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*“It gives you the ability to quickly provide the information that’s going to help make a better, more fair decision in regards to pay reviews.”

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Live Support When You Need It

Ryman’s HR Team find HR DataHub to be easy to learn and use. But when help is needed, it comes quickly. The fast-response chat box provides live support to answer any queries and guarantee users are getting the most from the software. 

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*“When it comes to support, nine times out of ten, it’s been instant.”

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