The Inns of Aurora in Aurora, New York, include five distinctive properties in the Finger Lakes region of the state as well as restaurants with award-winning cuisine and the Village Market with locally sourced foods and gifts.
Challenges
The Inns of Aurora's workforce swells from 120 to 200-plus during peak season, with employees often cross-trained for various roles across the business. Timekeeping methods varied by location, making time tracking of staff working at multiple locations and positions particularly challenging.
During weekly payroll processing, the HR director spent eight or more hours tabulating and re-entering employee time and manually calculating overtime for employees working multiple positions. Complex New York hospitality labor laws and pay rules also had to be followed.
Solutions
To overcome these challenges, the Inns of Aurora wanted an automated human capital management (HCM) solution that could be customized to perform a wide variety of functions to handle the organization's unique operations, including rehiring seasonal employees.
The solution would need to enable employees working multiple positions to seamlessly change labor levels, so each position's pay rate is accurately applied. Managers would need real-time visibility into workforce information to improve their management of employees and budgets.
The organization also wanted a solution that could handle multiple accrual policy rules for exempt and nonexempt employees — and evolve and scale as the organization added new properties and more employees.
After a review, the Inns of Aurora selected the configurable UKG Ready® solution to more easily manage its full-time and seasonal workforce — including streamlining payroll processing, better managing labor costs, enabling informed business decisions, and reducing compliance risk.
“Before, it was organized chaos. UKG has empowered our managers to take responsibility for their payroll. They wanted this information — how many hours were worked in their department and how many hours each person worked — but never had access to reports until now. UKG has equipped us to enable them to become much better managers.”
Kelley Zabriskie
Director of Rooms
Results
Now, new hires are each assigned an employee number in the solution, making them feel confident that their time working at one position or multiple positions at any of the Inns of Aurora properties will be accurately captured. They, and their managers, also feel confident that correct position pay rates and overtime will be applied.
Managers have visibility into their employees' information and access to robust reporting, enabling them to better manage their employees and budgets.
"Before, it was organized chaos. UKG has empowered our managers to take responsibility for their payroll," said Kelley Zabriskie, Director of Rooms at the Inns of Aurora. "They wanted this information — how many hours were worked in their department and how many hours each person worked — but never had access to reports until now. UKG has equipped us to enable them to become much better managers."
The configurable UKG® solution helps the Inns of Aurora easily comply with complex New York state and federal labor laws and scales to meet seasonal employee numbers and anticipated growth. When seasonal employees return, HR quickly reactivates them in the solution.
With the review of employees' time and payroll processing now reduced to just three hours weekly, the HR director can devote more time to developing strategic initiatives to continue to attract, engage, and retain the outstanding talent necessary to deliver the attentive experience that guests expect at the Inns of Aurora.
