Bnei Brak is currently the tenth-largest city in Israel and a global center for Torah education and charitable activities.
The city has a population of around 190,000, with approximately 50% being children and youth up to the age of 18. The average household size is 4.3, the highest among large and medium-sized cities. The city’s jurisdictional area covers 7,088 dunams, resulting in a high population density of approximately 25,000 people per square kilometer.
Bnei Brak has maintained economic stability for the seventh consecutive year, thanks to sound financial management, the implementation of controls, and other key management practices. Bnei Brak has received an AA+ credit rating for the third consecutive year. This high rating reflects the Bnei Brak Municipality’s excellence in work processes, financial management, liquidity, and various other professional parameters.
Bnei Brak’s regular budget is approximately 900 million NIS, while its 120 million NIS development budget is allocated to infrastructure projects, educational institutions, parks, and more.
A thriving business complex is also emerging in the city’s north. Office and employment towers are being built, occupied, or planned, with over 500,000 square meters of office space in development. This highlights a strong economic foundation, positioning Bnei Brak for dynamic growth in the near future. Employee Status: Bnei Brak has around 1,200 municipal employees, 2,000 teaching staff, and 1,100 retirees.
The municipal sector includes a diverse workforce, including: social workers, administrative staff, educators, maintenance personnel, and more. Each group follows different regulations regarding workdays, hours, conditions, and collective agreements.
These complexities resulted in 700 different types of agreements, many with only minor differences. This made navigation, management, and control challenging.
Additionally, processes like updating incorrect or unusual attendance reports and supervisor approvals used to take up a significant amount of time for both employees and supervisors. The processes involved extensive administration, paperwork, and supporting references.
Manually entering additions, corrections, and approvals into the system by the Human Resources Department led to human errors and created bottlenecks in salary preparation.
Furthermore, employees had no real-time access to information like overtime hours, vacation balances, and sick leave usage, requiring them to contact the Human Resources department for inquiries.
The process began with the reorganization of attendance agreements. To achieve this, work templates were implemented and defined in each employee’s personal file within the attendance system. These templates enable the creation of all required master agreements based on uniform rules, in line with the Local Government Center’s Terms of Service Division, for various types of employees. As a result, the number of agreements was reduced to just 11 templates, covering all types of employees in the municipality.
“Formulating and implementing clear rules regarding unapproved lateness and incorporating them into agreements immediately led to a significant reduction in this issue.
Now, employees arrive on time and are available to provide services to residents and engage in public actions for their benefit and well-being.”
Sheri Davidovich, Department Manager, Human Resources Division, Bnei Brak Municipality.
The varying conditions between employees of the same type, such as part-time work, workdays and hours, and rules regarding early and late arrivals, were defined in a personal work plan managed within the employee’s file. This approach maintains a history of changes throughout their employment without altering the master agreement.
Regarding lateness, clear rules were established by the mayor’s order to reduce the occurrence of this issue. It was determined that an employee who was late without permission for more than half an hour past the defined start time of their workday would not be allowed to complete hours or perform overtime on that day.
The Result Reducing the number of agreements simplifies management, enhances monitoring and control capabilities, and allows assignment to a work plan, even by entities not authorized to modify master agreements.
The agreements, defined in detail along with each employee’s specific conditions, enable the automatic and highly accurate calculation of salaries.
With the introduction of the online attendance reporting system, Synerion Direct, both employees and managers can access attendance, absences, working hours, and more. This enables employees to complete missing attendance reports, submit vacation requests, upload references such as scanned sick notes, and more. Managers can approve or reject attendance reports, vacation requests, and more, all automatically, without paperwork or the need for the Human Resources department’s involvement in the process.
Moreover, the Synerion Direct system provides employees and managers with real-time access to data such as vacation and sick leave balances, overtime, and more. This is achieved through clear summaries, structured graphic metrics, and detailed reports.
Full data transparency enables employees and managers to effectively monitor and manage these aspects. Managers can approve or reject absence requests based on employees’ entitlement balances. Managers approve employees’ overtime within the allowed quota and can monitor overtime, attendance, and absences in real time.
“The workload before salary calculations has been reduced by approximately 50%, in my estimation. The work is now completed without pressure and no longer requires additional overtime. The transition to the Synerion Direct system has provided employees and managers with a real-time control and monitoring tool. It provides full data transparency, eliminating the need to contact the Human Resources department and wait for a response.
At the same time, responsibility has been shifted to the employees. They must comply with the rules, ensure their attendance reports are complete, submit absence references, etc., to ensure accurate salary calculations based on their entitlements. The system implementation among employees was straightforward, thanks to Synerion Direct’s intuitive, user-friendly interface. Everyone received email instructions for installing and using the system. The attendance manager in the HR department provided personalized guidance to those who needed assistance. Within a month, everyone was fully using the system.
I cannot fully express my appreciation for the Synerionteam’s professionalism and the excellent service we received.
The system implementation and reduction of agreements were complex processes.
The team, especially Ziv Dreyfus, made every effort to find a solution for each requirement we raised, no matter how complex.
Ziv carefully reviewed each request, conducted in-depth research, and provided a thorough, professional response.
The word “impossible” simply does not exist in his vocabulary. A true pleasure to work with. The service exceeded expectations, and productivity was at 120%.
The system now delivers quick and immediate responses to all our needs.”
Sheri Davidovich – Department Manager, Human Resources Division, Bnei Brak Municipality
