Logistics Company Delivers a Single Platform for Connected HR

Logistics is a fast-moving business, in every sense of the word. Delivering freight and parcels quickly requires experienced drivers, and in a tight labor market, the right people can be hard to find. In an industry where employee turnover regularly exceeds 90%, rapid recruiting, onboarding and training are vital — so businesses need their HR teams to be fast and agile too.

At GLS, a premier full-network carrier that serves more than 5,000 ZIP codes across the US, a focus on rapid, responsive HR is a key part of the company’s strategy. Stephanie Montanez, VP of HR and Compliance, explains: “What I like about this company is that we’re in growth mode. We’ve grown through a lot of mergers and acquisitions to be where we are today, and we now have an opportunity to build new processes, procedures, and policies for the whole group. It’s an exciting time for HR.”

That opportunity is also a challenge because the team needs to be extremely dynamic. Stephanie gives an example: “We're a 24/7 company. If a new employee walks in the door at 11 o'clock at night, I’m on call. Our goal is to make onboarding so streamlined that within an hour, that employee can actually start work.”

The Challenge: Inheriting a Fragmented HR Landscape

With multiple legacy HR systems, it was difficult for GLS to provide responsive, efficient HR services.

Following a series of mergers, GLS found itself in a position familiar to any company that has grown rapidly through acquisition. Three of its acquired companies had their own separate HR systems, all from different vendors — and establishing consistent processes across the whole group was going to be a complex challenge.

Missing Functionality

Each of the systems had its own shortcomings. One had problems with labor law compliance, potentially creating legal risks. Another lacked position control functionality, which was a key requirement for managing the workforce effectively. And the third was tied into an outsourcing arrangement with a Professional Employer Organization (PEO), while GLS wanted to keep control of HR and payroll in-house.

Complex Processes

Meanwhile, the need to manage processes across all three systems was a headache for the HR team. Stephanie recalls: “It took a week just to do a simple payroll process for our freight business. And then on the parcel side, they had five or six different pay dates, so they were constantly running payroll. Moreover, we had one login for timekeeping and another for payroll, so we had to switch systems and do a lot of manual auditing to account for missing punches and so on.”

Drowning in Paper

The lack of standardization also meant that the HR team had to fall back on paper-based processing. “Onboarding was all on paper. We had no electronic solution at all,” says Stephanie. “When we had a new employee starting, we had to mail their onboarding packet out to the site so that they’d be able to fill out all the forms on their first day.” This created additional challenges as the team had to get the packet back, manually enter the employee data, and then get the employee set up in the time-keeping system. This pushed hiring dates out for some potential employees as the information wouldn’t be in the system in time for the first paycheck.

Similarly, when the team wanted to send out communications to the entire workforce, they had to rely on supervisors to print out documents and post them in the break room or by the time clock. “Again, paper everywhere. We were drowning in it!” says Stephanie.

The Solution: Complete Modern HR in a Single Package

Replacing all three existing HR and payroll systems with Paylocity has enabled GLS to standardize processes and dramatically increase efficiency.

GLS decided to cut ties with its three existing vendors and start from scratch with a single, centralized HR platform from Paylocity.

Rapid Implementation

Switching 1,500 employees across three companies and 50 locations over to a new platform sounds challenging, but GLS and Paylocity made it work. “We were able to get our first company running live payroll within the time frame we needed,” says Stephanie. “I've never implemented something so fast. Our second and third companies followed that, and we've been able to work it all to align with our timelines.”

Rapid Recruiting and Onboarding

“The feature that really sold me on Paylocity was position control,” says Stephanie. “The ability to create positions with job descriptions and all the relevant data is so important for rapid recruiting in our industry.”

She adds: “Paylocity’s ease of use and Integrations are huge for us. I can post a job ad in two minutes, and it automatically appears on our website and our other job sites. I can push one button to send an offer letter, and another to start a background check with Checkr. When I mark a candidate as hired, it launches Onboarding, and in 15 minutes, we have a new employee ready to complete the new hire process.”

Faster, More Accurate Payroll

GLS is also using Paylocity’s Payroll and Time & Attendance modules to streamline its payroll cycles dramatically. The company is an early adopter of new features such as the Payroll Readiness Dashboard, which helps identify issues before the pay run begins. The partnership with Paylocity gives Tiffany and Stephanie opportunities to provide direct feedback to the product they use daily.

Empowering and Connecting Employees

Employees can now use the Paylocity Mobile App to request time off, view their timecards, and correct errors such as missed punches instantly. And because employees now regularly log into one centralized app, the HR team can use Community to push out important announcements such as job postings, compliance updates and holiday notifications. "Community is a great way for us to reach out to the team, since they are spread across 50 locations or out on the road,” says Stephanie.

The Results: Delivering Agile HR for a Dynamic Business

With Paylocity, GLS has rationalized and simplified almost every aspect of HR, unlocking significant value for the HR team, the workforce, and the company.

Moving to Paylocity has enabled GLS to replace its three separate HR systems with a single platform — saving costs and reducing the complexity of its systems landscape. With a single point of control for managing all core HR functions, the company is also saving time, reducing errors, and boosting productivity for its HR team.

Five-Times Faster Payroll

Stephanie comments: “Today, solutions, freight and parcel are all on the same payroll cycle. It takes us one day to process payroll for over 1,500 people across three companies at 50 locations.”

That’s at least five-times faster than before — and the time savings have enabled GLS to redeploy its HR team more efficiently. “Paylocity has allowed us to integrate two different payroll departments into one,” says Stephanie. “We’ve saved the equivalent of four full-time employees in headcount while also shifting some of our team members into new and exciting projects.”

Similarly, recruiting and onboarding are much more efficient. Posting a job is three to four times faster, and there’s no longer any need to print and mail out onboarding paperwork for new hires — saving up to two hours and 40 sheets of paper per employee.

Making Time for Strategic HR

These time savings free up the HR team to focus on higher-value work. Tiffany Lewis, Senior Payroll and Benefits Manager, recalls: “Before Paylocity, I had to dedicate a whole week to payroll every two weeks. Paylocity gives me so much time back that I’m able to work on special projects and provide new insights for our Executive Team.”

For example, the team can now use Insights & Recommendations to connect payroll data with information from GLS’s logistics systems to analyze daily productivity at each site, and publish the results in a dashboard for all the operations teams—inspiring healthy competition between the company’s 50 sites.

Stephanie concludes: “It’s amazing what we can do now with Paylocity. We can provide insight extremely fast — and that’s critical in a business where time is always of the essence.”