National Football League Team Buffalo Bills Uses UKG Pro to Tackle Sports Industry Challenges

The Buffalo Bills are a professional football team and member of the National Football League. The team has been a UKG customer since 2015 and have approximately 1,200 employees in Pro, including players, staff, front-office employees, and part-time event workers.

Challenges

The biggest HR challenges for the organization include the very quick turnaround required for paying players, and the fast and accurate payment of hundreds of event staff following game days. In addition, the organization needs to recruit large numbers of employees and add them to Pro effortlessly.

Solutions

“There are many different variables in efficiently processing payroll each week for our players,” said Sondra Bridge, senior payroll manager at the Buffalo Bills. “Pro payroll is exceptionally user friendly, so I can run payroll myself, without the need to call into a service bureau or engage with a customer service rep. My control over the solution makes our fast payroll processing possible.”

Bridge noted, that during the season, an additional 800 part-time staff are paid for their work on game day and Pro can handle this additional workload without issue.

“Pro payroll is exceptionally user friendly, so I can run payroll myself, without the need to call into a service bureau or engage with a customer service rep. My control over the solution makes our fast payroll processing possible.”

Sondra Bridge

Senior Payroll Manager at the Buffalo Bills

Results

With Pro enabling the organization to easily adjust to its complex payroll, the Buffalo Bills can focus on other strategic priorities, such as recruiting and onboarding.

“We face an ongoing challenge related to the volume of our recruiting, and UKG Pro Recruiting is able to keep up with our needs,” said Barb Evans, director of HR at the Buffalo Bills. “The solution manages a large part of the candidate process for us, since we can quickly and easily post positions on job sites, electronically capture and house candidate data, and track interview status. When a hiring decision is made, UKG Pro Onboarding maintains a seamless process. With the click of a button, we can send offer letters and new-hire documents, and initiate background checks. All this data moves over to our core solution electronically, so payroll processing is automatic for the new employee.”