BUSINESS OPERATIONS

The Business Operations vertical provided much needed stability for VisitPITTSBURGH during a time of tremendous rebuilding in 2022. The knowledge and skills of this experienced team allowed for change and growth throughout the organization over the course of the year.

The Human Resources team experienced incredible advancements in 2022. Numerous tools used to manage VisitPITTSBURGH’s human capital were consolidated into BambooHR to help streamline the hireto-retire process under one comprehensive tool. This product provides employees with one-step access to the information they need concerning their pay, time off, benefits, training, emergency contact and additional useful information about colleagues. The system also provides for better communication with the organization’s on-call staff.

Such streamlined functionality has been very important to VisitPITTSBURGH, particularly over the last two years, as the organization has grown the staffing from 25 full-time staff at the height of the pandemic to 32 by the end of 2022. Though the organization did say “farewell” to several tenured employees, VisitPITTSBURGH also welcomed 12 new professionals to the team.

Additionally, the Human Resources team reviewed and updated service providers, ensuring that VisitPITTSBURGH continues to provide the best possible options for health insurance, life insurance, COBRA and other employee benefits while also reducing the cost of these benefits. And to further ensure that the organization continues to offer competitive salaries, VisitPITTSBURGH conducted a comprehensive review of compensation and incentive pay based on freshly written job descriptions. The results of the study indicated that, overall, salaries remain competitive with the industry and peers.

The Finance and Accounting team worked closely with Human Resources while the team built out the organization’s new tools, ensuring a smooth transition from VisitPITTSBURGH’s legacy payroll system to the BambooHR/TRAX payroll system. The team also focused on maintaining the high-quality services that the organization’s stakeholders have grown to expect. Additionally, a another clean audit was delivered in February 2022 along with full forgiveness of the second Paycheck Protection Program loan and qualification of the full balance of the ARPA grant awarded to VisitPITTSBURGH by Allegheny County. And, the team worked with all verticals to understand some of the unique reporting needs of each of the cost centers and designed custom reports for their use. These efforts will factor into the Finance and Accounting team’s plans for 2023, with a goal of giving the verticals more direct access to accounting reports and data.

Additional staffing necessitates additional equipment, and in 2022, the IT team reviewed the cost of ownership versus the cost of leasing and concluded that leasing provides VisitPITTSBURGH with the best option to ensure that the organization can provide staff with the most updated laptops and communication devices. All VisitPITTSBURGH staff are currently assigned a laptop and cell phone to assist with office connectivity. An update of the organization’s five-year Information Technology plan was issued and will be used as a framework to build-out technology infrastructure. A critical part of the technology plan is the functionality of VisitPITTSBURGH’s database system, IDSS. An analysis of the data maintained in the system and was completed, and certain information was archived to improve the speed and functionality of the product.