Weir ESCO, a division of Scotland-based The Weir Group, is a leading manufacturer of ground-engaging tools used in the mining, construction, and industrial industries. Weir ESCO's manufacturing footprint spans the globe, with the majority of the workforce in China, the U.S., Canada, Brazil, Peru, and Belgium.
Challenges
Across its global manufacturing locations, Weir ESCO used a wide variety of timekeeping solutions, limiting the company in easily gaining a worldwide view of its manufacturing division's time and labor costs. Tracking the time of more than 2,000 employees, nearly 80% of whom are hourly, required difficult and time-consuming effort, from manual entry in China to complex local requirements in the U.S. and Brazil.
Consistent application of each location's work rules was a concern, as was having accurate vacation accrual information for employees in North America.
Solutions
Weir ESCO implemented a UKG® workforce management solution at many of its global locations to gather accurate time, streamline processes, better manage labor costs, and mitigate potential compliance issues. The UKG solution interfaces with the company's Oracle solution.
“[With UKG,] we feel confident that we have accurate hours and we're in compliance with regulations. By recording start and stop times, we can provide accurate timekeeping records for employees. As we got more sites on UKG, we have had better accuracy in our total incident rate reporting and financial hours reporting.”
Nancy Schmugge
Principal HRIS Analyst
Results
By automating workforce management processes, Weir ESCO has eliminated hard copy timecards and manual tracking of hourly employee regular time, overtime, and accrued time. With automated processes in place, errors created by the manual double entry of workforce data are no longer an issue.
"[With UKG,] we feel confident that we have accurate hours and we're in compliance with regulations," said Nancy Schmugge, Principal HRIS Analyst. "By recording start and stop times, we can provide accurate timekeeping records for employees."
Accurate workforce information gathered from the company's major manufacturing locations is providing peace of mind as well as actionable data for decision makers.
"As we got more sites on UKG," said Schmugge, "we have had better accuracy in our total incident rate reporting and financial hours reporting."
Plant managers and the finance department have real-time visibility into this reporting information. With timely workforce data from global locations available to managers and the leadership team, they can make informed decisions more quickly.
Automated tracking of employee accrued time at company sites in North America has increased both employees' and management's confidence in the accuracy of vacation accrual totals. Before, employee accrued time and its value were estimated, creating unclear payout liability for the company.
Using its UKG solution, Weir ESCO consistently applies the work rules established for each location, now that these decisions are no longer left to team leaders. Alerts are automatically sent when violations occur. Automating work rule application and violation alerts has reduced compliance concerns.
Employees at the company's Belgium site use the UKG solution's mobile functionality to view their accrued time and make time-off requests. Hourly shop employees in the U.S. and Canada use the mobile app to view their timecards, schedules, and accruals, and office staff can see this information and also request time off and edit their timecards on their mobile devices. Having anytime access to their information is increasing employees' engagement.
Automating workforce management processes and having access to companywide real-time labor data is improving management of Weir ESCO's global workforce.
