How "We Edit Podcasts" manages remote teams

Interview with Jacques van Heerden

Our client We Edit Podcasts is a remote-first podcast service provider based in Canada founded in 2015 by Carli van Heerden. What started simply as a podcast editing company quickly became a hub for podcast creators around the world. Today, We Edit Podcasts enables podcasters to create high-quality podcasts by providing them with everything they need to succeed, from audio editing to studios, consulting, strategies, and much more. As We Edit Podcasts started growing their range of services, along with it came more hires and it got harder for them to manage remote staff schedules when staff needed time off, new equipment, document management, sensitive requests, etc. We asked COO Jacques van Heerden how they mastered this challenge.

How is your workforce structured and who manages human resources?

Our team currently consists of 65+ people in different sectors to make up what we call the We Edit Podcasts family. Whether it’s production, writing, transcription, design, marketing, or another avenue we service, we need to make sure we can adequately track different individuals and their requests as they arise. Whether time off related, technical or asset related etc. We have worked without an HR manager up until this point, but are looking into the possibility of bringing on someone full-time for that position as we scale hiring processes this year.

How was the decision process of choosing HR software?

Carli, the CEO was handling human resources through a different company, until she found KiwiHR. During the process of choosing HR software we came across good customer feedback, reviews, and also we knew another company we worked with that was using KiwiHR. It was a night and day difference compared to the previous software and it made a huge difference for her in the ease of managing people, documentation, employee information, asset tracking, etc.

What made you choose KiwiHR to help you with your HR management?

Customer support, the simple and quick onboarding process, and the simplicity of the interface was a game-changer for Carli and won her over to bring everyone on board. Also, we weren’t bound to say we need to pay 50 licenses, or 100 licenses. It’s a per license fee, whenever someone else gets added to the team then it’s an easy, addition to the license structure. We don’t have to buy in 50, 100 or 150 license increments. Those numbers change every year, right?... It’s easy for us to make the additional changes and run with them versus saying ‘Oh we already bought these licenses for the next 12 months, what do we do with them now?’

How has HR management changed after you introduced KiwiHR?

Being able to stipulate different time off allocations for people according to where they are in their journey inside of the company; whether they have been with us for 5 years, or whether they’ve been with us for 6 months, KiwiHR has been able to adjust and push itself to meet everyone’s needs by being flexible. It enabled us to adjust things on the fly and at a mass-scale for people versus individually going in and having to select adjustments for every single person.

How has KiwiHR helped you manage remote teams?

Being able to onboard employees with structured checklists, keep all the documentation, notes and reviews about them in the same place makes it easier for us to manage HR remotely. It’s important to keep track of people because being remote in a service orientated company has its own issues in a way and I think it’s important to be able to document and keep these documentation processes in place so when things do scale up, it’s already there.

How was the acceptance on KiwiHR in your company?

We always introduce KiwiHR as our HR system during the onboarding process and we haven’t had any issues. People are happy to manage, import the data and be able to provide attachments whether it’s flights, doctors’ notes, and anything related to time off bookings.

What would be your next HR management challenge?

We are looking for an HR specialist to join our team in the coming months as we prepare to hire another 50+ employees this year. We want to make things as smooth as possible for new hires so that there aren’t any gaps in the process when needing to deal with schedules, information packets, equipment needs, document processing, etc. We’re still a young company, being 6 years old and the industry is still young, so we’re looking forward to scaling with KiwiHR.

3 words to describe We Edit Podcasts and KiwiHR

WE EDIT PODCASTS: Fast podcast editing

KiwiHR: Can't live without