Major Houston-based Beverage Distributors Raise a Glass to Closer Collaboration

One of the largest beverage distributors in the United States, the company’s portfolio covers many domestic and import brands, such as Michelob ULTRA, Bud Light, Corona, and Modelo Especial, as well as craft beers, spirits, and non-alcoholic beverages.

Rising to the top of the distribution business takes a lot: strong relationships with suppliers, coordinating complex supply chains, and keeping tabs on consumer tastes and market shifts. Another key ingredient is a culture based on real passion and dedication.

The company’s Communications Manager explains, “When I started here, I kept hearing that it was the people that made us great. And it’s absolutely true. We have employees who have been with us for 45 years. Every year, we celebrate their contribution at our awards dinner.”

But fostering a cohesive culture can be challenging, especially when many employees spend most of their time on the road and in accounts than with colleagues. Take the merchandising team, for example, who spend their working day checking in with buyers and stocking shelves, rather than behind a desk in the office.

That’s just one of the big challenges facing the HR team at such a large operation. For years, the company used a competitor’s system for core payroll, HR, and workforce management tasks. But with the system struggling to deliver the basics, they decided to quench their thirst for HR efficiency with Paylocity.

The Challenge: Planning a More Potent Brew

With the competitor’s systems unable to meet the demands of a fast-moving mobile workforce, the search was on for a more agile, reliable, and feature-rich platform.

Distributed Operations Create Communication Challenges

Operations at scale are highly mobile and distributed. “Around 80% of our employees are in the market every day across the Houston area,” said their VP of Human Resources. Connecting with employees on the move is essential to build a sense of togetherness and shared purpose, but many of them don’t have a corporate email account, while the competitor’s system lacked a mobile app. “One of our biggest challenges is connectivity, and ensuring our communication efforts reach everyone with the same message in a timely manner,” added the company’s HR Director.

Inconsistent Reports Hinder Decision-Making

The competitor’s platform had plenty of other flaws, too. For example, providing insights to corporate leaders was difficult, as the system would often offer conflicting information. According to the VP of Human Resources, the reporting was “not great,” adding “When you’re trying to make decisions and your reports are coming out differently every time, that’s a really big problem.”

The customer service from the competitor also had major shortcomings. “We could put in a ticket, but sometimes you need more than that. You need to go into a little more depth, but it was difficult to get someone on the phone.”

Manual Steps Slow Recruitment and Onboarding

To continue to grow their operations, the company actively recruits and hires new employees every week. Previously, hiring a constant stream of new talent involved many error-prone manual steps, stacks of paper forms, and lots of back-and-forth between team members. According to their HR Director, “Our Recruiters and HR Business Partners would draft offer letters and send them via email with additional links and forms to new hires. We also had to ask them to come in 30 minutes early on their first day to complete more paperwork.”

The Solution: Finding the Perfect Blend

Following a rigorous evaluation of three potential HR and payroll platforms, users were almost unanimous in their choice of Paylocity.

Connecting Every Employee in Every Location

Today, the company uses the Paylocity Mobile App and Employee Self-Service to provide a central location where all employees can interact with colleagues and find HR information. “The Mobile App has been huge for us,” notes their VP of Human Resources. “It’s great for keeping in contact with employees out in the field who don’t have access to a computer.” The company is also using Employee Voice to gather employee feedback, and will soon roll out 30, 60, and 90-day new hire surveys.

Elevating the Employee Experience

Furthermore, the team harnesses social collaboration hub Community to engage with employees. In one engagement initiative, the company runs sweepstakes to win tickets to local events and professional sporting games. Their Communications Manager is leveraging this engagement in new ways, noting, “We run around 15 sweepstakes each quarter by creating a survey in Employee Voice, then posting in Community.” Employees are also using Recognition & Rewards to celebrate each other’s work anniversaries and birthdays, and to acknowledge great work — especially when it aligns with the company’s operating principles of passion, integrity, safety, accountability, and relationship building.

Streamlining HR with Digital Workflows

The entire organization has transformed core HR workflows with Paylocity. For example, the Payroll module supports an efficient, error-free pay process, while Recruiting has helped to streamline hiring. The team is recruiting 350 employees each year, and new hires join every week. The HR team is in the Recruiting module multiple times each day. Similarly, the Onboarding module has helped the company digitize HR paperwork and improve day-one processes. Everything from job offers to background checks and collecting data from new hires now flows seamlessly through Paylocity.

In addition, the organization is using the Learning module to support quarterly safety training. According to their VP of Human Resources, “We send out training and track completions in Paylocity. This is extremely efficient because we can ensure all employees are consistently aware of safety protocols, which protects our employees’ well-being and promotes a culture of safety.”

The Results: Toasting a Brighter Future

With the move to Paylocity, the beverage distributor has enhanced its internal communications strategy, accelerated workflows, gained access to more accurate data, and boosted HR productivity.

Strengthening a Unique Company Culture

The employee engagement modules in Paylocity are helping the company build a winning culture based on collaboration and mutual support. The HR team can send out consistent messages, confident that everyone can access them, while workers out in the field and at the company’s five branches can now connect with one another and recognize each other’s achievements. These tools are proving popular with new members of the workforce, with their Communications Manager noting, “Our employees are really engaging with Paylocity, especially the younger generation. They’re very active on the app and Community. Paylocity is a great way to connect everyone.”

Faster Onboarding Attracts the Best Talent

With Paylocity, onboarding is much faster. What previously took up to two weeks is now completed in four days — a 71 percent time reduction. Moving through the process quicker helps to ensure recruitment of the best talent, as an HR Director notes: “If you keep people waiting while you process everything, they will look elsewhere. We have more time for recruitment work, or analyzing onboarding trends, or planning process improvements.” The time savings enable the team to focus on other value-add tasks.

Deeper Insights Fuel Smarter Decisions

Finally, the team now has a trusted source of HR data to guide better operational and strategic decisions. The company regularly pulls reports from Paylocity on everything from payroll, employee hours, employee turnover, and demographics. “We love the dynamic reporting,” notes their HR Director. “We can easily create our own reports when we are exploring business decisions.”

Good data is mission-critical according to the company’s Vice President of Human Resources: “When I present information to our executives, I know I can trust the data in Paylocity. You can't tell the story to your leadership if you don't have accurate reporting and analytics. And Paylocity gives us what we need.”