Ceridian’s new UK flagship office officially opened in Glasgow

300 jobs planned over next five years

The new UK flagship location near Glasgow for Ceridian, one of the world’s leading providers of payroll and HR outsourcing services, was officially opened today by Fergus Ewing, Minister for Energy, Enterprise and Tourism at the Scottish Government. The HR Shared Service Centre is the largest facility of its type anywhere within the UK.

The brand new, purpose-built, hi-tech office in Braehead, near Glasgow, represents a total investment of over £16m, which was supported by a substantial contribution from the Scottish Government through Scottish Enterprise. The HR Shared Serviced Centre is currently occupied by over 300 Ceridian staff and has room to accommodate around 600. The company expects to create up to 300 new jobs over the next five years.

Doug Sawers, managing director, Ceridian UK, said: “Our new UK flagship location near Glasgow is a showcase for our entire payroll and HR outsourced services, which are all now under one roof. This allows our colleagues to work in a more customer-centric way. Previously, our colleagues worked from five, smaller linked sites just a mile away in Hillington.

“We have named the new state-of-the-art building Sonas. In Gaelic, Sonas means good fortune, prosperity, passion, success, enjoyment and happiness, truly embodying what every Ceridian colleague working there believes in.

“Sonas has already impressed our existing customers and will allow us to win more new business.   This will be good for us, and good for Glasgow.

“At Ceridian, we believe in being a good community member. We are an employer of choice in the local area and now our latest flagship location, Sonas, can be viewed as the place of choice to work and develop a career.

“Our reputation within Glasgow and the West of Scotland has risen steadily in recent years as we have expanded and invested in people’s skill sets.

“In order to enhance the calibre of potential job candidates and grow the talent pool, we have worked with local educational establishments to explore research opportunities and fulfil IT development and service roles. Indeed, one of the original reasons for choosing Glasgow as a base for growth and development was the high number of local educational establishments, particularly the universities. We have developed strong links with the University of West Scotland, sponsoring a computer course. More locally, we have also supported Clippens School.

“Sonas is not only a technological centre but a multi-lingual one too. Our International Payroll Services are based there, where over 20 languages are spoken as we process payrolls in over 50 countries around the world. Then we have all our HR outsourcing operations requiring different skill sets again. From Sonas alone, Ceridian services over 1.5 million employees in the UK every month. As a result, Sonas is a centre of excellence – a true showcase of talent and unique people capabilities, our know-how.

“As a service provider, our focus is on delivering value into customer organisations through our decades of global know-how and to deliver and grow our services alongside our customers, creating real, tangible value.

“We are enjoying significant growth and will be going live with three major implementation programmes later in the year on behalf of three major new customers which will set new benchmark standards in our industry.

“These are exciting times for Ceridian and the nature of our recent growth has led to a higher than originally planned ratio of highly skilled jobs. We anticipate creating up to 300 new jobs in the Glasgow area alone. The vacancies we expect to fill will comprise a mixture of IT development, client solutioning, business services and service innovation positions, coupled with operational service delivery roles including multi-lingual capability.”

Fergus Ewing, Minister for Energy, Enterprise and Tourism, said: “We are doing all we can to ensure the strongest possible economic recovery and to create and safeguard jobs across Scotland. That’s why it’s extremely pleasing to open the offices of an international company like Ceridian at Braehead.

"The decision to expand the Scottish operation, which is now its largest centre of excellence in the UK, is testament to the quality and skills of the local workforce and the reputation and strength of staff.

"The Scottish Government recently launched its International Trade and Investment Strategy and this sets out how our international trade and investment arm, Scottish Development International, will work with other public and private sector partners to deliver Scotland’s global economic goals and states that we have to continue to attract and support more sustainable inward investment opportunities. Ceridian is an excellent example of how this can be achieved.”

Anne MacColl, CEO, Scottish Development International, said: “The opening of Sonas marks a very positive step for Ceridian and is a strong demonstration of the confidence which the management team has in its Scottish operations.

“Ceridian’s ongoing commitment toScotlandshows that the country continues to be an attractive location for international investors, thanks to the skills of our people, a competitive cost base and a well-developed business infrastructure, and we look forward to working with the company as it continues to grow and prosper in Scotland.”

The official opening of Sonas was attended by nearly 500 Ceridian colleagues including President and CEO, Stuart C. Harvey Jr. and CFO Greg MacFarlane from the Ceridian Corporation in the USA, together with representatives from key customers.

Ceridian opened its first office in Glasgow in 2000. Since 2007, employee numbers have risen from around 80 people to the current headcount of 309. At Sonas, Ceridian offers its full range of national and international payroll services plus HR outsourcing to a growing customer base. This involves technological development; payroll processing; HR administration; HR consultancy services; employee benefits; workforce management; employee assistance programme support; absence, expense and finance management; and multilingual international services.

The full address of Ceridian’s new UK flagship location near Glasgow is: Ceridian UK, Sonas, 3 King’s Inch Place, Renfrew, PA4 8WF.

Sonas is located close to Junction 25A of the M8 motorway and benefits from excellent links to Glasgow city centre and Glasgow airport.

Jeremy Snook at JSPR on 01235 227572. Mobile: 07957 867139. E-mail: jeremy.snook@jspr.co.uk

Ceridian is one of the world’s leading HR outsourcing and payroll service providers. In the UK, it works with over 5,000 businesses, large and small, delivering quality, accurate payroll and value-added HR services.

Ceridian provides national and international payroll and HR transactional services including HR outsourcing, employee benefits, workforce management, expense management, absence management plus employee assistance programmes.

Innovative Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions are also offered to clients who need a technology solution but prefer to employ their own people. These leading-edge IT solutions can be purchased as a complete totally-integrated package, or in scalable modules, designed to flex with organisational needs.

Through decades of global experience, people capability and first class delivery of world class HR transactional solutions, Ceridian increases quality, reduces risk, boosts revenue, lowers cost and frees time for its customers to focus on their priorities.

From multinationals to small start-ups, Ceridian’s KnowHow enables their HR development journey.

For more information, visit www.ceridian.co.uk

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