Sunrise Growers Easily Manages Seasonal Employee Influx, Controls Labor Costs with Kronos

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Sunrise Growers, Inc., based in Orange County, California, is one of the largest grower-shippers of fresh strawberries in the U.S. and has a growing line of high-quality, fresh vegetables. The company has its own farming operation, contracts with other growers, sells berries directly, and cools and ships them to distribution centers and grocery store chains. In addition, its sister company, Frozsun Foods, Inc., is the leading processor of frozen strawberries in the country.

When harvest season arrives, employee numbers at Sunrise Growers swell by 2,000 seasonal production workers within two weeks. After using contract labor agencies for years to hire and manage its seasonal workforce, Sunrise Growers decided to hire production workers directly. But it had no timekeeping system. A rudimentary HR system. And a payroll system that could not handle the surge of seasonal workers. So, Sunrise Growers sought an integrated solution that could be quickly implemented and operational. And "quickly" really did mean quickly: Sunrise Growers had just seven weeks to get the new system up and running before the next processing season.

The easy-to-use Kronos^® Workforce Central^® suite turned out to be exactly what the company was searching for. "We were looking for a one-source solution," says Tom Weber, HR director at Sunrise Growers. "In my experience, having multiple vendors often results in a lot of finger pointing. We wanted one company that could fix any problems so we could focus on our work."

Automation, high-quality information means detailed labor costs

In addition to an integrated time and attendance, HR, and payroll solution, Sunrise Growers also wanted to capture more detailed labor cost information on the processing of products. "The systems we had in place before weren’t detailed enough to identify the labor cost for each plant or each line and each product being run on a different line," Weber explains. "We wanted to be able to really drill down to determine the cost per day and per shift for our production."

With a very compressed processing season, Sunrise Growers’ plants must shift quickly from almost no production to full production that runs nearly 24/7. Prior to implementing Workforce Central, the company relied on paper record keeping to track the many products processed on the production line, which can include three or four products during an 8-hour or 10-hour shift.

This made it difficult to gather accurate information on which employees were working and how many were working each shift and on which product lines. And at the end of the season, when the company tallied costs, it had only very general data to work with. It was not a productive way to identify the most efficient products and how products should be priced for the marketplace.

Now, automation and ready access to high-quality information has made a major difference. "Since we implemented Kronos, we can much more closely identify where our efficiencies and inefficiencies are for our product lines and the different plants. Now we can make better decisions about which products to run in which plants," says Weber.

"Most importantly, we have been able to identify the profitable and unprofitable products, and adjust consumer pricing so we can stay competitive and profitable," Weber adds. And by implementing Kronos and bringing the hiring process for seasonal workers in house, the Kronos system paid for itself in just seven months.

Controlling labor costs through accurate reports

Sunrise Growers is also now able to more accurately track workers’ compensation costs. Using Kronos standard report information on the costs of worker injuries by location, plant, and division, Weber says managers are now focused on both the dollar cost and human cost of injuries. Now, with access to this new information, the company can both identify and better control these labor costs and reduce the number of incidences.

Efficiencies maintain payroll staffing level

Before taking on the hiring, timekeeping, and payroll processing needs of 2,000 seasonal workers, Sunrise Growers wondered if it would have to expand its two-person payroll staff. But the company has been pleased to discover that its current staff can easily handle the increased payroll numbers. "This is one of the real benefits of the Kronos system," says Weber. "We had two people in payroll before we added 2,000 employees — and we still have two people in payroll."

Real-time availability of information

Stores now benefit from the immediate availability of Kronos data. Kronos will alert a supervisor within minutes of an employee failing to start a shift. In larger stores, where absent staff may not be spotted for some time, this is a valuable tool which enables a team leader to, perhaps call in another staff member immediately to cover the shift.

Eliminating buddy punching saves money

As part of the new system, Sunrise Growers installed Kronos 4500 Touch ID™ terminals at its production facilities, where buddy punching had been a suspected problem. The company has been reaping the benefits ever since: The new biometrics solution has eliminated costly buddy punching. It provides an accurate accounting of the actual hours worked by each employee at each facility. And employees have quickly adjusted to using the new biometrics system.

Kronos solution is easy to learn and use

Not only is Sunrise Growers’ production staff seasonal, but much of the HR staff is seasonal as well, doubling in size during the processing season. This meant the company needed a system that was easy to train on and intuitive to use. Even with this new HR staff hiring and training 2,000 production workers in only two weeks, Weber says the Kronos system is easy to use for everyone involved.

Sunrise Growers also finds it easy to customize its Kronos system when necessary. Following the initial processing season, the company realized it wanted a slightly different view of labor costs. "It was not at all complicated to make the adjustments in the structure of the data ourselves to get more focused cost information," notes Weber. "This was one of the things that we looked for in a system. We didn’t want to depend on consultants to make adjustments in our data. The Kronos system is easily customized to what we’re looking for."