Tire Kingdom Builds a Successful Business Case for Hiring Solution to Improve Workforce Productivity, Lower Costs
SUMMARY OF PROJECT BENEFITS
• Field managers increase productivity, able to focus on strategic issues
• Company saves money by not having to increase HR staff, even after adding 350 stores
• Company achieves 100 percent compliance on automated hiring procedures
• Hiring managers gain a large pool of prescreened, qualified applicants for open positions
• Projected hard-dollar ROI was achieved
“The system elevated average managers into great managers by giving them tools to take the right steps and ask the right questions.” Fred Cornman,Director of Field Human Resources
Tire Kingdom is the largest independent tire and automotive services retailer in the United States, operating almost 700 stores with more than 9,000 employees. The company began in 1972 with $150 and 50 consignment tires in a 200-square-foot stall at the West Palm Beach Farmer’s Market. While purchasing tires, many customers explained to the cashand-carry business that they preferred to have their tires installed where they purchased them. So with $500 in borrowed money, tire-changing equipment was purchased and Tire Kingdom was born.
Over the years Tire Kingdom has grown and acquired other companies. When the company expanded from 250 to 600 stores in eight months by means of acquisitions, the five-member corporate human resources department knew it needed a real hiring solution. It had little or no infrastructure to support this kind of rapid growth. HR was already bogged down in paperwork with just 250 stores. How would they manage 600?
“The simple fact was, the process was broken and extra staff wouldn’t solve the problem,” admits Director of Field Human Resources Fred Cornman. Tire Kingdom desperately needed an automated hiring solution, and the company turned to Kronos® Workforce Talent Acquisition™. As a result, the company drastically improved workforce productivity, achieved 100 percent compliance on hiring procedures, and reduced its overall hiring costs. But before Tire Kingdom accomplished all this, the HR team had to sell company leaders on the project.
Manual hiring process eats up time, productivity
Productivity-killing manual hiring processes were weighing down both store managers and corporate HR. Before Kronos, store managers faxed hiring paperwork to the corporate office. Data was manually entered into a system for processes such as background screening and drug testing. HR would then email the store when a candidate was cleared for hire. In turn, store managers collected new-hire paperwork and faxed it back to corporate for processing. Obviously, with the number of Tire Kingdom stores drastically increasing, the company needed an automated solution. The HR team also knew that field managers needed more hiring tools and more applicants to choose from.
Hard-dollar savings from automation drives the business case
As obvious as the need for automation was, the first step was to make a business case for the investment in an automated hiring solution. Tire Kingdom HR approached the challenge from a pragmatic standpoint. What types of dollar savings could it show from day one? Some were obvious: recruitment advertising, the cost of additional staff to support the new stores, savings from an integrated WOTC program. All this was put into the ROI proposal.
Benefits such as a prescreened applicant pool and reduced time to hire were offered as value-adds, not as part of the actual ROI calculation. “Soft costs” — those items that would not be immediately apparent from a financial standpoint — were held out as the icing on an already tempting cake.
Automated hiring benefits impress store managers
Once the HR team had a handle on the financial impact, it started looking at the benefits of hiring automation. With substantial feedback from the future end users (store and field management), the team put together the requirements that would best benefit the users. And it provided the end results of automation, visibility, and centralized control that were so desperately needed. The result? The store managers’ interest was piqued by these appealing benefits of automated hiring:
• Control over the hiring process in the field
• Instant access to hiring information, from start to finish
• A searchable database of prescreened applicants who can apply 24/7
• Ability to pool applicants across locations
• Reduced paperwork and administrative burden
• Ease of use for field-level managers, with little training necessary
• Elimination of the requisition-driven process
• New ability for managers to focus on strategic issues instead of tactical issues
Success: HR team sells the solution to company leaders
It can be tough to sell company leaders on any project that requires a financial investment. So this savvy HR team knew that it would have to clearly demonstrate the benefits and projected savings of the automated hiring solution it had selected: Kronos Workforce Talent Acquisition.
The HR team’s proposal focused on benefits instead of features: giving the store managers control over the hiring process. Reducing paperwork and administrative burden for both store managers and corporate HR. And having more qualified applicants from which to choose. Importantly, the team had the buy-in of its end users — the store managers — who would feel the benefits the most.
Workforce productivity up, hiring costs down
The HR team was successful with its convincing business case. The project was approved and Workforce Talent Acquisition was rolled out to 615 stores within 90 days. The system was simple and intuitive. And its impact was felt almost immediately.
Store managers saved time, since they no longer had to create requisitions for candidates to apply for open positions. Because applicants could now apply anytime and anywhere, Tire Kingdom’s applicant flow increased to five times the number of its open positions. And now that managers had a pool of prescreened applicants, they were able to fill those open positions quickly — and with better-qualified candidates.
The hiring process was initiated and monitored by the store managers, and Workforce Talent Acquisition helped ensure that all hires were compliant with Tire Kingdom’s standards. Store managers had more control over the process with tools that enabled them to hire qualified candidates in a fast, efficient, and cost-effective way.
Besides achieving the hard-dollar return on investment that the HR team had promised to company leaders, Tire Kingdom achieved the following additional benefits:
• Administrative tasks were reduced by 75 percent
• HR successfully supported more than 600 stores without increasing its staff
• The company achieved 100 percent compliance on hiring procedures
• Store managers gained complete visibility into the hiring process
• Managers gained time, which enabled them to focus on strategic issues versus tactical issues
“Automating field hiring is not an HR solution — it’s a business solution,” says Cornman. And as Tire Kingdom HR discovered, it’s important to build an effective case for this business solution in order to get buy-in from company leaders and field-level managers. As a result of its successful proposal, the HR team at Tire Kingdom has helped the company streamline its hiring process, reduce costs, and attain real-world bottom-line results.
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