A food manufacturing and distribution company, Lipari Foods delivers items six days a week from its central distribution centre in Warren, Michigan, to 8,000 customers in 25 states along the East Coast and into the Midwest. Since the company’s inception in 1963, founder Jim Lipari built the business on one core belief: “Take Care of the Customer.”
Challenges
As Lipari Foods looked to expand its operations beyond 10 states, management realised the company had outgrown its on-premise workforce management solution and continuing its manual and redundant processes would make increasing its footprint difficult.
Fragmented recruiting, onboarding, and benefits systems required manual entry of new-hire information, a time-consuming and unsustainable process during expansion. The company had 50 hourly employees in the field submitting paper timesheets that were manually keyed into payroll. And managers entered employees’ time-off requests and attendance points on spreadsheets ― additional time-consuming tasks. Limited reporting capabilities hindered managers in effectively managing their employees.
The company also recognised that using its current solution to comply with labour regulations and tax withholding requirements as it expanded into additional states would be challenging.
Solutions
Lipari Foods implemented UKG Ready®, a human capital management (HCM) cloud solution, to better manage its growing workforce, control labour costs, and improve productivity. In addition, the configurable solution has helped the company comply with the labour laws and tax withholding requirements of each state it operates in, reducing potential compliance risk.
“The time that managers spent on time-off approvals, tracking time off, and attendance issues has probably gone down 75%. Before, all that time was wasted on unproductive tasks.”
brian zilo
SPHR, Senior Vice President of HR
Results
Using UKG Ready, Lipari Foods has been able to increase its operations to 25 states and more than double its workforce over a short period to 2,000 employees, enhancing employee engagement in the process. On-site employees can track their time, see their pay statements, and request time off at a time clock, while field employees can do these same activities using the solution’s mobile app when they’re on the road.
Managers have real-time visibility into employee time and labour analytics reporting to better manage labour and its costs, including comparing hours to payroll for budgeting. “They have a deeper and wider view of their data, especially on the time side,” said Brian Zilo, SPHR, Senior Vice President of HR. “And they have a higher level of visibility into payroll data.”
Managers also can see employee schedules and accruals to approve time-off requests in the solution ― which automatically tracks employees’ attendance points ― saving managers significant time and freeing them up for other tasks.
“The time that managers spent on time-off approvals, tracking time off, and attendance issues has probably gone down 75%,” said Zilo. “Before, all that time was wasted on unproductive tasks.”
Complying with tax withholding requirements in numerous states could be a significant challenge, especially for a company focused on growth. With accurate payroll information and support from UKG Ready Payroll Services, Lipari Foods maintains compliance with tax withholding requirements in each state it does business.
UKG Ready has supported Lipari Foods throughout its expansion efforts. As the company expands further, it has the HCM technology in place to continue this with ease.
