Scrub Daddy Puts a New Shine on HR with Paylocity

Scrub Daddy is a household cleaning products company best known for its texture-changing sponge with a smiley face. Founded in 2012 by Aaron Krause, the company has expanded from a single-product startup into a multimillion-dollar global brand.

Scrub Daddy's growth trajectory has been nothing short of phenomenal, propelled by a memorable appearance on the TV show, "Shark Tank." The day after the episode aired, Scrub Daddy sold 42,000 sponges in less than seven minutes.

Since then, the company has expanded into every major retail store across the US and in multiple international markets. Its portfolio now comprises more than 20 cleaning products, bringing in more than $670 million in lifetime retail sales as of 2023.

As sales skyrocketed and Scrub Daddy grew into a household name, operations behind the scenes also needed to scale up. For years, the company had been getting by with manual payroll processing. But with its team expanding fast, Scrub Daddy recognized it needed a proper payroll platform, and found just that in Paylocity.

Soon after that decision, Scrub Daddy made another big call: creating a dedicated human resources (HR) department. The company brought on Christine Adair as its first-ever HR Director, tasking her with setting up the systems and processes needed to support the ever-expanding business.

The Challenge: Payroll and HR Get a Fresh Start

Scrub Daddy needed to build an HR function from the ground up and knew its choice of technology would be key to success.

Dusting Away Manual Processes

Paylocity Payroll brought an instant boost to payroll efficiency, helping Scrub Daddy leave behind manual processes. It also revealed that the company was missing key pieces of the HR puzzle — starting with time and attendance management.

As Christine explains: “Ideally, you’d have time and attendance data flowing automatically into payroll. But we were still on an old timeclock system, which left the accounting team manually keying in the data.”

At the time, Scrub Daddy employed just over 30 people, so the process wasn’t overly labor intensive. However, intuition told Christine Scrub Daddy would quickly outgrow this manual approach. Keen to get ahead of the curve, she proposed introducing Paylocity Time & Attendance, and the accounting team was all for it.

With a successful deployment of Time & Attendance under her belt, Christine set out a much bigger ambition: establishing a purpose-built platform for all aspects of human capital management (HCM).

Christine continues: “Time & Attendance was the first module that I helped to implement. The rollout couldn’t have been easier. The kiosks are very user-friendly, even for a very diverse workforce like ours. Once we got everything set up in multiple languages, there was zero barrier for getting started. Everyone has been able to understand and use the system pretty seamlessly.”

The Solution: All in on an All-in-One Platform

With Paylocity, Scrub Daddy has gained a single platform for harmonizing HR processes, from talent and benefits administration to employee experience and communication.

Building a Better Employee Experience

Paylocity has helped Scrub Daddy to shape HR into a function that truly reflects and reinforces the company’s values. Onboarding ensures a great employee experience begins from day one, with a fully digitized onboarding process.

“Onboarding really sets the tone for what new employees can expect from us as a company,” says Christine. “It’s a very modern, dynamic experience that gives a great first impression.”

Scrub Daddy uses Performance to maintain this momentum, supporting managers and employees with a range of tools, including talent assessment templates, goal tracking, and performance feedback.

Connecting to Community

With teams distributed across multiple locations and more than half of them working in warehousing and distribution settings, the Paylocity Mobile App keeps everyone connected to the information and tools they need — whether it’s submitting time cards, answering messages, or catching up on company news.

The app also provides access to another vital tool: Community, which has become the online hub for communication at Scrub Daddy. Community is where employees go to stay connected to what’s happening across the business: general news and events, HR updates, new hire welcome announcements, product development announcements, and more.

Enabling Seamless Integrations and Insights

Paylocity’s ability to integrate with multiple systems makes benefits management a breeze, connecting bswift — Scrub Daddy’s benefits enrollment and administration platform — with core HR systems. “Most of our employees have benefits,” notes Christine. “The automation Paylocity enables adds up to tremendous time savings for us in HR and a smoother experience for employees.”

As Scrub Daddy continues to grow, Insights & Recommendations ensures  decision-makers can keep track of vital engagement and performance factors. These include employee satisfaction, performance, and attrition, as well as wider company metrics.

The Results: Sweeping in a Bright Future

Paylocity saves time and effort for HR, shapes better experiences for employees, and sets up Scrub Daddy for a new era of international growth.

Fast Onboarding Sets Staff Up for Success

With Paylocity powering a digitized onboarding process, Scrub Daddy has sped up orientation time for new hires by 80 percent. From day one, employees have ready access to the resources they need to work effectively and feel connected to the company culture.

Christine recalls: “We used to run a five-hour HR onboarding session with every employee, going through the handbooks page by page. With Paylocity, we’ve cut that down to around an hour. Now, we just have to show people how to get started in Paylocity, instead of walking them through everything step by step. It’s really empowering our people to own their HR needs.”

Ready to Embrace New Opportunities

In the four years since Scrub Daddy started using Paylocity, the company has experienced significant growth, going from 33 to more than 150 employees. HR has been able to manage that increase in employee numbers with a team of just two people.

“Paylocity has definitely given us that foundation to grow,” says Christine. “It's a home base for our employees and a great resource for us in HR. I'm in Paylocity as soon as I log in in the morning because everything that I need to do my job is in there.”

Having cemented its position in the US, Scrub Daddy is already looking ahead to its next evolution: expanding into international markets in Europe, the UK and Australia. With Paylocity supporting streamlined, automated processes, HR is more than ready for what comes next.

Christine concludes: “Now that we have this well-established base with Paylocity, I’ve been able to turn my focus to more strategic work. For instance, as we have new international partners coming in, I’m looking at how we can take the approach we’ve used in the US and adapt that to be successful in other countries. I see Paylocity as an absolutely critical enabler of our continued success.”