Ash Grove Cement Lays Foundation for Streamlined HR with UKG Pro

The Ash Grove Cement Company has a distinguished centuries-old history in the cement industry with a strong tradition of service, reliability, and quality. As the largest U.S.-owned cement company, Ash Grove has the capacity to produce more than 8 million tons of cement annually from eight cement plants across the U.S. and provide distribution through more than 20 cement terminals, ready-mixed concrete, aggregates, packaged products, and paving operations.

“One of our goals with UKG Pro was to make our field HR staff stronger by giving them more responsibility and accountability over their own employees. With so many locations and separate entities, we found that it makes business sense to let them handle as many of their own HR tasks as possible using UKG Pro.”

Rhonda Bromley

Business Systems Manager

Challenges

Before switching to the UKG Pro® solution, Ash Grove Cement had been using a “homegrown” solution on an AS400 platform. After completing an extensive investigation and speaking with numerous happy UKG Pro users, Ash Grove selected Pro to help reduce manual efforts and streamline its HR/payroll processes.

Solutions

After an on-time, on-budget rollout of UKG Pro, Ash Grove reduced the day-to-day workload of its central HR team with the solution’s manager self-service tools.

Administrative staff in dispersed locations for Ash Grove’s subsidiaries can log on to the manager portal to input new hires, process terminations, attach employee photos to the company directory, and generate payroll or workforce reports — without calls, emails, or faxes to company headquarters.

“One of our goals with Pro was to make our field HR staff stronger by giving them more responsibility and accountability over their own employees,” said Rhonda Bromley, Business Systems Manager for Ash Grove Cement. “With so many locations and separate entities, we found that it makes business sense to let them handle as many of their own HR tasks as possible using UKG Pro.”

Results

The company’s HR staff now has time to accomplish other more value-added activities, such as improving the salary review process.

To enable its HR team to become more strategic and more productive, Ash Grove decided to make Pro its focal point for all employee-related information.

Since centralizing workforce information with Pro, Ash Grove has dramatically improved communication, heightened efficiencies, and reduced the quantity of paper that is channeled throughout the company.

The manufacturer extended the value of Pro by tying in numerous custom applications, like expense reporting and manufacturing-specific scheduling systems, that the company’s 1,800 employees can access with a single sign-on.

These solutions easily integrate with Pro, automatically transmitting data back and forth without any manual data entry or export processes.

With Pro’s workflow, Ash Grove’s employees can do more than simply view individual payroll, HR, and benefits information. They can update a range of personal data, such as addresses and direct deposit information, as well as submit requests for paid time off.

Workflow automatically routes these requests to the appropriate approvers, streamlining the process. Designated approvers then accept, deny, or let the request remain pending, attaching comments or questions if needed. Workflow ensures that no changes take effect without electronic approvals by the right people.

Managers also use Pro to handle requests for salary upgrades or changes to job status, and then send these modifications to the appropriate managers or HR staff for review and approval — while simultaneously notifying other people who might be affected. These notifications ensure that everyone who needs to be in the loop is continually informed.

“Companies that use paper forms sometimes find that the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing," said Bromley. “For instance, a job-change form can be stuck in someone’s in-box, so accounting may think an employee is clerical while HR has the employee classified as a manager.

“Pro has solved this problem for us,” added Bromley. “Now everyone touched by the change remains informed because they are included in workflow notifications.”