Huuskes, based in Enschede, Netherlands, is a total supplier, producer, and knowledge partner in food and drinks for healthcare and company catering. The company, which operates from multiple locations, offers an extensive range of freshly prepared meals from its own kitchen, fresh unprocessed products, dry groceries, frozen products, and nonfood products.
Challenges
The 1,000 people employed by Huuskes punch in and out eight times daily, to start and end the day and for multiple breaks. Missed punches were common, and managers needed to email timesheet change requests to HR for updating. With this large number of employees and daily punches, HR staff spent significant time inputting timesheet change requests each week. Employees could see their timesheets and punches in the company's legacy timekeeping system but not how their time was calculated for payroll.
Effectively managing employee time was challenging too, as managers had to wait until the following week to see the number of hours their employees had worked the prior week to ensure orders were completed. Schedules were created in spreadsheets, making timely scheduling adjustments to avoid overtime nearly impossible.
The company has numerous on-call employees, but managers had no visibility into their availability. Typically, a manager sent employees a message via WhatsApp to inquire about their availability to work. This process was time-consuming and inefficient in getting right-skilled staff on the job.
At the beginning of each year and when someone was hired, HR staff manually assigned accrued time to employees, who had limited access to their accrual balances.
Solutions
Wanting a solution with greater functionality and flexibility — and to move its time and attendance system to the cloud — Huuskes implemented the UKG Ready® solution, including the timekeeping module and Access Control, which provides cloud-based anytime, anywhere access to the solution from a mobile device, laptop, and PC. Recently, the company added the scheduling solution.
"The solution is really flexible, very modern, and cool," said Martin Bakker, HR Advisor at Huuskes. "It has all the functionality that we needed."
UKG Ready is integrated with the Huuskes' cloud-based HR system, AFAS Profit.
“We will have direct insight into employee schedules via the [Ready] app. That will have the most impact for our employees and for us.”
Martin Bakker
HR Advisor
Results
UKG Ready is so easy to use, Bakker said they trained managers and employees on the solution by recording and posting videos on the company's intranet about how to complete a timesheet, submit a timesheet change request, and view a timesheet and accruals. "We haven't had a lot of questions from our managers or employees," he said. "Almost everyone was immediately able to use the solution."
The timesheet change request process is streamlined now. Employees submit their missing punches, managers review the submissions in the timesheet, and the process is clearly visible in the solution.
"We're saving about 20 hours a week with UKG Ready," said Bakker. "If you need to change punches for 1,000 employees, it takes a lot of time. With all our breaks — employees punch eight times a day — it's very likely they missed a punch during the day."
The process has increased employee accountability for their time. "Employees feel more responsible for their timesheets," Bakker explained. "In the past, the manager was checking timesheets and submitting changes to us. Now it's the employee that's checking their timesheet and submitting any changes."
With employees having access to their information — timesheets, accruals, and pay — at any time using solution self-service tools on their mobile devices, their engagement is increasing. "Employees have way more insight into their information now, and they are very positive about that," said Bakker.
Managers having visibility into employee time worked by department and cost center is improving management of the workforce and management of labor costs. With access to custom reports, managers can quickly see how many hours their employees have worked in the previous few days, enabling them to calculate if they have used too many hours and then to make adjustments.
UKG Ready is delivering time savings and improvements in other areas as well. "The solution does accruals for us, so we have less work in setting up the employee and when terminating them, and we're getting the data right," said Bakker. He adds that the solution's configurability ensures they can accurately apply sick time pay rules that are specific to employers in the Netherlands. Previously, these complicated calculations were done by hand. His time is now freed up for other HR-related tasks.
Huuskes recently added UKG Ready Scheduler to improve the scheduling process. Fifty employees in one department are currently using the solution. This number will grow to 800 employees in other departments over a few months. Bakker expects the solution will deliver greater visibility into the availability of on-call employees as they mark themselves as available or unavailable in UKG Ready.
"We can see at a glance who's available and who isn't and who has the right skills or doesn't have the right skills," he said.
This visibility will have a significant impact on Huuskes. "Scheduler will be a major, major change for the organisation, with managers no longer needing to ask about availability via WhatsApp or sending spreadsheets via email to employees," he explained. "We will have direct insight into employee schedules via the [Ready] app. That will have the most impact for our employees and for us."
