Construction Company Modernizes Payroll and People Programs to Support Sizeable Growth

Company growth is a major goal of most organizations. But when it happens rapidly, it can be challenging for internal processes to keep up with the scale.

Erickson Companies is a residential construction company helping home builders reduce construction time, material waste, labor inputs and carrying costs by manufacturing complete framing systems. The company services three primary locations in California, Arizona and Nevada. It is made up of four sister companies and 4,000 employees, with 95% being full-time, hourly employees and the other 5% salaried office staff and field administrators. With their human resources (HR) manager feeling the strain of being “stuck in 1975,” she knew they needed a change.

Updating Time-Consuming Processes

The tremendous growth experienced by Erickson Companies was a big challenge for its HR department. Processing the weekly payroll for all 4,000 employees took entirely too long.

“Everything was paper, from new hire to payroll. Something as simple as a direct deposit was handwritten and uploaded to the bank. We pay weekly and payroll took three and half to four days to complete, and the deadline is three days,” Jennifer Roberts, Erickson Companies HR Manager, said.

This situation is not unique to Erickson Companies. Over 53% of HR leaders say they spend one to three hours per day answering repetitive questions about things like payroll. From an employee perspective, 31% say their HR department makes frequent payroll and attendance errors.

After partnering with isolved, Roberts' team was able to decrease the amount of time it took to do payroll by more than 50%, noting that what took them three days or more, now takes them two hours.

Saving Time and Money, Improving EX

The change to isolved not only made payroll less time consuming and more accurate but also decreased the number of checks cut after the normal payroll run due to human error. This decreased their costs, employee frustration and compliance issues by giving them a way to track errors.

With multiple payroll processing tools like check and direct deposit payment options, real-time payroll preview, employee and manager self-service and more, Roberts and her team were able to utilize what worked best for them and boost experience for their employees.

“Those little things are huge successes to us because it directly affects the employee and it lets them know we are making improvements for them,” Roberts said.

As Erickson Companies continues to grow and reach goals, they plan to continue adding solutions to enhance experience for employees.

“I know that no matter what I need along the way, I can go to isolved and say, 'This is what we need to do, this is the timeline,’ and we'll work together to make it happen. I know that isolved will be there to support us with every platform that I add,” Roberts said.

Want to hear more about Erickson Companies’ experience? Watch the full webinar with HR Manager Jennifer Roberts.