Carlie C’s IGA has deep affection for its community and customers, beginning with its first grocery store in Johnston County, North Carolina, in the early 1960s. Its focus on serving the needs of the community and providing excellent customer service has enabled the organization to grow over the years to 25 locations in the state. Carlie C’s IGA offers a full range of services, including curbside pickup and delivery, and invests in creating a flexible and engaging workplace for employees.
“Having real-time access to data is one of the biggest benefits of our UKG Pro Workforce Management solution. It’s right there at your fingertips, and it’s live. You don’t need to wait until the end of the day.”
annah Boren
Labor Analyst
Challenges
As a longtime user of a Kronos workforce management solution, Carlie C’s IGA was interested in how the latest UKG™ technology ― UKG Pro Workforce Management™, formerly known as UKG Dimensions® ― could provide additional features and functionality to further increase efficiency and employee engagement.
Solutions
Store managers use the solution to create schedules for front-end associates, while produce, deli, and meat department managers use it to schedule their own staff. Corporate and district managers can easily see schedules across all stores. With a shift copy-and-paste feature and schedule templates, patterns, and transfers, the scheduling process is fast.
Many of the stores are located in the same areas, enabling stores to share associates, who can swap shifts or pick up extra shifts at a nearby store. When managers approve shift swaps in the solution, the schedule automatically updates. The solution also automatically charges the correct location for extra shifts that associates take at other stores.
New mobile functionality with geofencing lets all 1,500 associates clock in and out anywhere inside a store on their smartphones. Associates also can use solution self-service tools on their mobile devices to view their schedules, timecards, and accrual balances and to swap shifts and request time off. Managers can easily approve shift swaps and time-off requests on their mobile devices from anywhere.
Results
Extensive reporting has given managers more tools to efficiently manage their stores and better control labor costs. Data views provide real-time information on hours and wages by department and location. “It helps with day-to-day business because you can see that you’ve already used this many hours and you’ve been allotted only this many hours so you need to cut some hours,” says Hannah Boren, labor analyst. “I also can pull hours by location and compare that to sales and quickly see our wages for the week in each location.”
Correcting associates’ missed punches previously was a time-consuming task for managers, as they needed to get on a store computer to make corrections. Now they receive notifications on their smartphones if employees forget to punch out, and they can go directly to an employee’s timecard to correct a missed punch. Missed punches have decreased from 125 on average to 80 and sometimes 25 each week. Managers previously needed until 10 a.m. on payroll days to fix missed punches. Now this is done by 8 a.m., enabling payroll staff to begin their work two hours earlier.
“It’s just saved a lot of time and money with the many things in the system that we can do,” says Boren.
This ease of use was valuable during the coronavirus pandemic when Carlie C’s wanted to increase pay for associates on the frontlines serving customers. “It was the easiest thing to just go into the system and create a crisis pay code that automatically assigns it to each person so they get paid an extra $1.50 every hour they work,” explains Boren. Associates have enjoyed this extra appreciation of their work.
As Carlie C’s puts a new break policy into place to eliminate previous issues ― and costs ― with associates not taking lunch breaks, the new solution will enable the grocery store chain to consistency apply break rules across all stores to help ensure compliance. People don’t like change, but after we went live with UKG Pro Workforce Management, morale improved,“ shares Boren. “Now they’re excited for the next phase and want to know the different features it has.”
