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In build

CREWHR software for growing teams.

We built Crew to run our own company first. Past a handful of staff the people admin stops fitting into somebody’s head, and every tool we looked at assumed an HR department we did not have. So: one record per person, leave that follows your own rules, absence kept separate from it, and policies you can prove people have read.

Join the betaSee what's built

Crew is in build, and the beta list is the way in.

StatusIn buildForCompanies of 20 to a few hundred peopleCostFree through the beta

Three jobs it takes off your desk

None of these are hard problems. They are just the ones that quietly eat a morning a week and cost you properly when they go wrong.

Booking time off
Everybody guesses at their balance, two people book the same fortnight in August, and the notice rule gets applied only if whoever reads the request remembers it. Crew works out the entitlement, enforces your own rules at the point of asking, and routes the request to whoever should approve it.
Sickness nobody is tracking
Absence lives in a manager’s memory until it becomes a problem. Crew records each spell properly, chases the return-to-work conversation, and works out the Bradford factor without anyone reaching for a calculator.
The handbook nobody read
You can send a policy to everybody. Proving they read it, months later, is the hard part. Crew keeps every published version and records who acknowledged which one, and when.

Capabilities

What Crew does.

Six areas, and they are the six that generate the admin: who works here, when they are off, when they are ill, what they have signed, how they start and how they leave, and who is allowed to see any of it.

01

One employee record

One directory holding the whole employment picture: contract, reporting line, work pattern and history. The private parts of it stay private.

  • Job title, department, location, employment type and contracted hours
  • Start, probation end and leaving dates, with an active, inactive or archived status
  • Weekly work pattern, down to start and end times per weekday
  • Legal name, personal contact details and emergency contacts hidden unless you are allowed to see them
  • Search, department and status filters across the whole directory
02

Leave that follows your rules

Not one holiday allowance and a shared calendar. Leave types are configured to match how your company actually books time off, and the rules are enforced when the request is made.

  • Leave types with their own allowance, in days or hours, front-loaded or accrued
  • One or two stage approval, with delegation for when an approver is away
  • Balances with a full ledger: entitlement, carryover, adjustments and accrual
  • Notice periods, maximum advance, minimum and maximum duration, and backdating rules
  • Blackout periods and maximum-away caps, org-wide or per department
  • A team calendar in day, week, month and agenda views
03

Absence, kept separate from leave

Unplanned absence is a different thing from booked leave and is recorded as its own spell, so sickness never quietly comes out of somebody’s holiday allowance.

  • Open, closed and returned spells, categorised as sickness, injury, appointment, caring or other
  • Return-to-work tracking with a reminder that re-arms until it is done
  • Bradford factor calculated per employee from the spells themselves
  • Clashes between booked leave and recorded absence surfaced automatically
  • Absence reasons treated as medical data and access-controlled accordingly
04

Policies people have actually read

Write a policy, publish a version, assign it, and see who has acknowledged it. When you revise it, the acknowledgement is asked for again.

  • Draft, publish and revise, with every published version kept
  • Assign to individuals or to everyone active
  • Read-and-understood acknowledgement recorded per person, per version
  • A re-acknowledgement deadline you set per policy
  • An outstanding-acknowledgements report, so chasing is a list rather than a memory
05

Joiners and leavers, the same way every time

Onboarding and offboarding as templates with ordered tasks, so the twelfth person gets the same start as the first.

  • Onboarding and offboarding templates with ordered, assignable tasks
  • Tasks assigned to the employee or their manager, with a due date offset from the start date
  • Runs started against a person, with progress visible to whoever owns it
  • Reassign a task when the wrong person is holding it
  • A personal task list, and an org-wide view for whoever has to chase
06

Access, and a record of what happened

Three application roles, eleven capabilities, and manager rights that come from the reporting line rather than from a role somebody had to remember to grant.

  • Owner, People administrator and Member, with the capability matrix visible in the app
  • Manager access derived from the reporting line, not assigned separately
  • Departments and locations as real records, with a department hierarchy
  • Public holiday calendars per location, with automatic import and custom dates
  • An activity log of who changed what, with field-level before and after

Coming next

What we are building now.

Joining the beta is how you get a say in the order of this list. Crew does not do payroll, reviews, recruitment or timesheets. We will tell you if that changes.

  1. PlannedEmail delivery for reminders and approvals, which are in-app today
  2. PlannedReporting and data export
  3. PlannedA public API, and a link across to echoMike Operations
  4. PlannedSelf-serve signup and billing

In build

Join the Crew beta.

We are building Crew around the way companies actually run their HR admin, which is rarely the way the software assumes. Tell us what yours looks like. The leave rules with the awkward exception, the policy nobody can prove they read, the joiner who never gets the same start as the last one. We will build for that rather than guess.

  • Free for the whole beta
  • A direct say in what gets built next
  • Plenty of notice before anything changes

No card required. We'll be in touch as the beta opens up.

Questions people ask about Crew

Do I need to be an echoMike Operations customer?

No. Crew stands on its own, and most companies using it will never own a drone. If you run Operations as well, a link between the two is on the plan.

What size of company is it for?

Roughly twenty to a few hundred people, in any industry. The point where people admin is a real job but nobody has been hired to do it. Construction firms, agencies, professional services and field teams are all a good fit.

Can I use it now?

Not yet. Crew is in build. Join the beta and we will get in touch as it opens up.

What will it cost?

Pricing is not settled. There is nothing to pay during the beta, and we will give you plenty of notice before anything changes.

Does it send email reminders?

Not yet. Reminders and the daily digest land in the app today. Email delivery is the next thing we are building.

Does it do payroll?

No. Crew handles the people admin around payroll rather than running it, so you keep whatever you already use for pay.

Get in early and shape it.

We build against real companies rather than guessing. Tell us what your HR admin actually looks like and we will build for that.

Join the betaSee Operations