Logistics Company Gets into High Gear with Paylocity in the Driver's Seat

The Challenge

In the trucking world, recruiting, hiring, and retaining top talent is an ever-growing obstacle. Over the past few years, mandated licensing qualifications have changed - narrowing the scope of qualified candidates. Many legacy truck drivers now struggle with new and advanced technology requirements while newer drivers may not meet experience requirements. With the new regulations also came new rules related to hours of service. Documenting hours on the road to maintain compliance was a whole new set of administrative challenges for the team at High Road.

Being a small company means Sharon and her staff all wear multiple hats. With fewer than 50 employees, Sharon is not only the owner, she also handles things from HR to management to accounting and more. “Right now, Mike Camuso, my business partner based in Boston, oversees HR responsibilities for that location and his team. However, neither of us are HR experts. We needed a HR and payroll software that could support all aspects of payroll and human resources.” Working with other payroll systems and professional employer organizations (PEOs) in the past, Sharon knew exactly what she wanted - and didn’t want - for the payroll provider of her own company. She initially chose a nationally recognized payroll solution (not Paylocity) and quickly realized it was a bad fit for their needs. “We had so many issues before with our previous provider and just kept getting passed from person to person. I dreaded having to deal with them.” So, she made the switch to Paylocity in 2017 based on a referral from a friend and hasn’t looked back.

The Approach

With competition for talent being so challenging in logistics, it was important for Sharon to increase engagement and make her team feel appreciated. She rolled out Paylocity’s Impressions, a peer-to-peer recognition platform, as way to make her employees feel noticed and heard. Within the module, she was able to customize awards to suit her unique and fun company culture. Employees could award each other ‘F bombs’ which represented the five core values: family, fun, faith, fairness and friendliness. In years past, it was a physical trophy on people’s desks but as the company spread across two locations and many drivers were on the road constantly, it became more challenging. “Now with Paylocity, they can award and receive ‘F bombs’ right from their phone. It was a way to maintain our culture even when we aren’t all in the same place.” 

As a COO, Sharon’s primary focus is growing her business. However, Sharon and Mike have to both manage the employee journey which can take up precious time. They were able to simplify the process of recruiting, hiring, and onboarding new employees with Paylocity’s Recruiting and Onboarding solutions. “With some positions - drivers especially - there are incredibly strict requirements, and we cannot insure people if they don’t meet these requirements,” says High Road Managing Partner Mike Camuso. “Before we would have to read every single cover letter and application carefully. Now, with the screener questions, we can close the loop on the unqualified candidates immediately. That alone has saved us so much time.” But it isn’t just finding top talent that can be a drain on time during the hiring process. Once an applicant becomes an employee, the paperwork can feel endless. “Previously I had to manually enter everyone’s data, then double and triple-check it to make sure everything was accurate,” says Sharon. “That was just the way you had to do it, there were no other options. Gone are the days of scanning in a voided check. I love that Paylocity puts some of that ownership on the employees. Employees can fill out their documents from home, freeing us all up to focus their first day of employment on more productive endeavors.”

With a blended workforce of hourly, salary, bonus-eligible employees, and contract positions - payroll isn’t simple. Sharon explains, “we have a rotation of a couple of contract drivers, and I love that we can pay them directly through Paylocity and reimburse their expenses when on the road all through the same tool.” Sharon and Mike leverage Time and Labor that allows employees to clock in and out from their mobile devices. The mobile app empowers the team and gives them autonomy. “We have a driver who works nights. He comes to the office, gets the truck, and goes. No one is there to let him in the building, he can clock in from his phone through the mobile app - and if we need to – we leverage the geofencing technology to assist with any concerns the employee may have regarding hours of service.”

Since the technology in the industry is changing at a break-neck speed, Sharon wanted to be mindful of how much of a learning curve a new system would present. However, she was pleasantly surprised at Paylocity’s ease of use. “The staff see the platform as a huge advantage. It’s so much easier to use than what we had before, and so many people are driven by their smartphones and devices. While it’s a modern platform, it wasn’t a huge learning curve. Even for people who don’t use computers at work, everything they need is on the app.”

Submitting and approving expenses can be a nightmare for any accounting team. With Paylocity’s Expense Management, employees can snap a quick photo of a receipt and load into the app for reimbursement. Once approved, it automatically feeds into Payroll, saving both sides the time and energy of scanning and filing torn or faded receipts. “Approving expenses is a huge time saver for me,” says Sharon. “I also love that there are automatically generated reports that I can easily pull for monthly expense data. Our controller can log in to the site herself and see where to allocate funds, pull payroll reports and more.”

The Payoff

Everyone wants more hours in their day, and Sharon happily explains how Paylocity provides that. “The biggest return on investment (ROI) I’ve seen with the switch to Paylocity is my time. I don’t have to spend hours processing payroll or running reports or approving expenses. Payroll and expenses can be done in 20 minutes – which is incredible.” Sharing responsibility and allowing team members to get what they need has also freed up Sharon’s time. “My controller and partner can get into the platform and approve timecards or expenses or pull their own reports, and that frees me up to focus on other things.”

Being a lean team for a small business means often needing help in certain areas. Sharon says, “Paylocity acts as my HR team. And now the team can check the app themselves, they can fix their direct deposit or download their tax form. HR used to be a huge portion of my work but now employees have access to the app and are empowered.”