CSA Q&A: Regional c-store chain engages employees across channels
Tennessee-based convenience store retailer Weigel’s is managing a variety of HR tasks using mobile and social tools.
Kurt Weigel, recruiting director at 68-store Weigel’s, recently discussed with Chain Store Age how the retailer has been streamlining critical HR processes via automation, as well as by delivering services over employee mobile devices and social media accounts.
What HR/payroll challenges were you facing?
It’s no secret that retail is a challenging industry as you’re constantly working days, nights and weekends. One of our biggest challenges we’ve faced is finding and retaining the right talent to serve our customers. This has been uniquely difficult for us because we found that much of our HR and payroll processes were out of date.
For example, one of us would have to go in on the weekends to manually process
and review payroll. As we continued to grow our business, we realized that we needed a more sophisticated HR system. We’ve seen how much things have changed over the past few decades, especially in regards to technology.
We felt bogged down with the amount of manual processes we had in place. Not offering direct deposit, for example, and having to personally write checks and mail them out simply wasn’t going to work anymore. We knew that in order to scale, we had to implement tech-enabled HR systems.
What technology solution did you select to resolve these HR issues?
We selected the Paylocity HR platform. Paylocity was able to help us realize just how much of an impact technology could have on our business. We know that people are always on their phones, especially our younger employees, and so we were looking to find a way to connect to them on that level. Having the ability to automate many of the tasks we used to do manually, such as contacting candidates during the hiring process and processing payroll, was a game changer for us when we were selecting HR tech tools.
How did you proceed with rollout?
When it came to rolling the solution out, we started with HR and payroll. More recently, we have been using the Paylocity Community social collaboration and communication tool to engage with employees across the store network.
What benefits have you received?
The shift to mobile access within our organization has been tremendously beneficial. When we’re hiring new employees, we can now reach out to them via text message within seconds of receiving their application. We’ve seen that immediate connections with prospective employees can be critical when working in an industry with such high demand.
The Community solution has also been a huge success across the organization. Employees feel more connected than ever before and are excited to have a place where they can share store updates, photos and more with other employees. It has also been extremely important given the pandemic. We use it for internal announcements, but it’s also an open forum for our employees to connect with each other.
We encourage all our employees to share positive, fun posts that help boost the morale across the organization. Recently, we hosted a contest in which employees shared photos of their masks. Keeping our culture fun and collaborative instead of top-down is one of the many ways we focus on retaining our employees.
How have employees responded?
Our employees have responded very well. They can now access everything such as their timecards, personal time-off requests, benefits information, and more on their mobile devices. This has helped us retain our employees, as they no longer feel disconnected from their own organization. Paylocity gives us the modern tools to connect with employees across the entire organization, regardless of whether they have an email address or computer.
We also find that employees are more likely to reach out regarding questions and concerns now that HR and payroll information is accessible and available to employees at any time, all within the Paylocity platform.