Kronos^® Workforce Management Solutions Provide Significant Improvements for Georgia-Pacific

 Download Printable Version

With more than 75,000 employees at nearly 600 locations throughout the United States, Canada, and 11 other countries, and annual sales of $25.1 billion, Atlanta-based Georgia-Pacific is one of the world's leading manufacturers and distributors of paper and building products. Its building products distribution segment is among the nation's leading wholesale suppliers of building products, and Georgia-Pacific is among the top manufacturers of lumber, engineered lumber, and gypsum wallboard.

Over the years, Georgia-Pacific's decentralized business model led to the development and implementation of HR and time collection processes that were obsolete, inefficient, or lacked sufficient technical support. To address these challenges, Georgia-Pacific purchased and installed a Kronos solution — including a suite of integrated workforce management applications and data collection terminals.

The Kronos system enabled Georgia-Pacific to successfully automate all of its workforce management procedures and eliminated the decentralized systems it once relied on. With such a comprehensive workforce management system in place, Georgia-Pacific realized immediate benefits, including improved management of labor costs; increased availability of accurate, timely information; elimination of redundant development and support efforts; and a reduction of overall payroll processing time by one-third.

Georgia-Pacific's results were so significant that the company received a Kronos Best Practices Award for aligning its workforce management systems with overall HR and strategic goals, and for consolidating management of a large workforce and multiple locations under one centralized database. These Best Practices Awards are presented annually to those organizations that have achieved excellence in the application of Kronos technology.

Before Kronos: the manual approach

Prior to implementing any Kronos solutions, Georgia-Pacific's entire workforce management process — including collecting time and attendance data, processing payroll, and various HR and IT initiatives — was handled manually. For example, Georgia-Pacific employees were required to complete and submit paper timesheets, and these timesheets were then collected, compiled, and reviewed by supervisors before being sent to payroll.

The downsides? "Our manual system just wasn't efficient," recalls Ted French, Georgia-Pacific's manager of information resources. "We had redundant systems, and we didn't have access to timely labor data." French and his team knew that if it they could reduce the overall payroll processing time, they would be able to realize significant cost savings. Georgia-Pacific decided to implement an automated workforce management solution and turned to Kronos for help.

Newfound benefits from Timekeeper Central

In 1993, Georgia-Pacific selected Kronos and its Timekeeper Central^® software, plus its data collection terminals. The combination proved to be just the solution Georgia-Pacific was looking for. Employees don't have to fill out paper timesheets anymore; they just swipe their ID badges through the terminal. Time and attendance data is collected right at the terminal. The process is fast, easy, and extremely effective.

"The installation of Timekeeper Central resulted in immediate benefits," says French. "Increased availability of accurate labor data, elimination of time-consuming, duplicate efforts, and a reduction of overall payroll processing time by one-third - all of which led to improved labor cost management."

"By 1998, over 100 Georgia-Pacific sites used Timekeeper Central and two years later, our installed base had grown to encompass over 200 locations, approximately 40,000 employees, and nearly 3,000 data collection terminals," says French. "We were growing very quickly."

Upgrading to Workforce Central

In 1999 and 2000, two major acquisitions brought more than 30,000 new employees into the Georgia-Pacific family. Suddenly faced with the challenge of rapidly incorporating these new employees into its payroll system — while continuing to meet its business needs — Georgia-Pacific decided it was time to upgrade. Georgia-Pacific selected Kronos' flagship product — the Workforce Central® suite. "We chose Workforce Central because of its ability to manage all employee data in one centralized database and its web-based architecture, which allows this data to be shared anywhere in the enterprise," says French.

French explains some of the benefits of the upgrade. "We recently completed our first site installation of Workforce Central. Workforce Timekeeper™ — an integral component within the Workforce Central suite — has given us the ability to manage salaried non-exempt employees in our Kronos system. As a result, we've been able to eliminate our homegrown time management applications and significantly reduce support costs."

Workforce Timekeeper software collects all labor data, and its powerful calculation engine then applies Georgia-Pacific's company pay rules to it, including overtime, late-to-work, department transfers, and more. This information is sent directly to Georgia-Pacific's payroll and other third-party applications. Workforce Timekeeper performs this function accurately and consistently across the entire organization, a significant improvement over the decentralized approach Georgia-Pacific used to employ.

Another reason that Workforce Central has been so effective is its true web-based application. "This meant a fast implementation, which really helped to minimize costs," says French. "The decrease in travel and other support costs will result in initial savings of more than $500,000, and more reductions are expected as we migrate additional facilities to Workforce Timekeeper." This web-based solution has paid off in other areas too. "Reduced hardware needs allowed us to implement Workforce Central at sites that did not meet the requirements for other vendors' applications, and shorter implementation times help us meet fast-approaching deadlines," he continues.

Georgia-Pacific is also using the Workforce Accruals^® module to automate the collection and calculation of employee vacation time, sick time, and other leave balances. "By implementing Workforce Accruals, we will be able to reduce labor costs by accurately tracking and managing employee time off," French explains. Workforce Accruals also helps ease the burden of FMLA and other regulatory compliance requirements.

Effective integration

Another benefit of the Kronos solution is its ability to integrate seamlessly with HR, payroll, and other applications with the Workforce Connect™ integration solution. "It's a perfect complement to the Kronos Workforce Central suite," says French. "The combination of Workforce Central and Workforce Connect has allowed us to build an interface that loads employee demographic and Kronos-specific data directly from our HR/payroll system. As a result, employee data appears in the Workforce Timekeeper application within 20 minutes from their actual time of hire. Using our previous process, data could take more than three business days to propagate."

The implementation of Kronos workforce management solutions has helped Georgia-Pacific realize its goal of improving payroll systems while achieving significant business benefits. These benefits, which include saving time and money, streamlining operations, and increasing efficiency and productivity, continue to show bottom-line results for the corporation.