The White Company Case Study

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 The White Company boosts operational efficiency in the warehouse with Kronos workforce management solution

Benefits
• Consistency and fairness for all staff
• Automated payroll
• 5% time saving for managers’ admin
• Automated system for identifying staff absence
• Improved staff morale

Founded in 1994, The White Company specialises in supplying a wide range of stylish home accessories and clothing, principally in white.  The company that began life as a 12 page mail order brochure has become one of the UK’s fastest growing multi-channel retailers.  With over 450,000 customers, The White Company produces six brochures a year, operates a highly successful website and has 27 retail stores. The White Company’s 100,000 square foot distribution centre is based in Northampton.  Staff work across a range of shift patterns to cover the distribution centre 24/7.

Looking for consistency and fairnessThe White Company had been working with a paper-based time & attendance system for many years but it had become very labour intensive and unwieldy.  The decision was made to move onto a solution that would ensure consistency and fairness for all at the distribution centre, and which would reduce the amount of administration that managers carried out as it was taking up too much of their time.
Prior to implementing Kronos, managers tracked staff attendance by recording hours worked on a spreadsheet.  This data was then sent to the HR department for re-keying into payroll.

The White Company had carried out a staff survey as part of an initiative to improve the warehouse operation.  The focus was on best practice and operational efficiencies in the warehouse and the issues that were highlighted confirmed the decision to implement Kronos.  Feedback from the survey showed that one of the key concerns for staff was that absenteeism and lateness should be dealt with in a consistent and fair way.  As absence was monitored by individual managers this had led to inconsistencies as to how it was recorded and managed. Managers were also responsible for preparing payroll data and checking through paper-based records to calculate how much annual leave allowance remained.  This was very time consuming and The White Company needed to free up its managers from these tasks so they could focus on their operational and managerial responsibilities. The White Company now uses Kronos to monitor the hours of all staff employed at Northampton. 

Seamless integration with payroll
Ian Rogers, Operations Director, The White Company had used Kronos in the past and was keen to implement the system again.  He explains his choice: “Kronos is the best known workforce system on the market.  I had carried out a thorough review of workforce management systems and knew that Kronos had the functionality we sought.  Kronos integrates with our outsourced payroll service from Moorepay and there is no longer any need for keying payroll data.  This has removed any input errors and resulted in a reduction of queries around payroll which were time consuming to sort out.”

Project aims identifiedThe team used Kronos Momentum® methodology to ensure the project was clearly defined from the start and that the key deliverables and timescales were in line with The White Company’s vision.  The methodology Kronos used ensured the team at The White Company knew exactly what was going to happen, when it would happen and who would be involved and where attention should be focussed to avoid any hold ups.
Kronos worked with key members of staff at The White Company to understand the particular issues they faced.  One of the initial tasks to carry out was to define the pay rules so that all situations would be dealt with in the same way.  Once the pay rules had been written and agreed, they could be applied to every member of staff in the same way and The White Company would achieve the consistency and fairness it sought. 

Significant payback
The White Company now has excellent visibility to staff attendance and is confident that all workers are treated fairly.  Prior to Kronos, it was very difficult for managers to address absence and lateness issues as it was time consuming to analyse data from the records held.  Now the system captures all the information as the staff swipe in and out, and managers can quickly retrieve this data to check on outstanding leave entitlement and unauthorised absence so absenteeism and lateness can be managed appropriately.  Ian Rogers says:  “The payback for having such good visibility to our staff is great.  We quickly reduced the admin role of our managers, saving at least 5% of their time immediately.  We can pull off accurate absence records very easily, and any issues are identified and resolved quickly. “

Morale boost for staffNot only has The White Company seen greater visibility to staff attendance and a reduction in the amount of admin carried out by managers since implementing Kronos, but it has also meant that staff are happier as everyone is treated the same.  Ian Rogers concludes:  “We are very proud of our distribution centre and the quality and commitment of the staff we employ here.  Now we have a system that ensures everyone is treated fairly, whatever their working pattern, and this has been a great morale booster for us all.”

“The payback for having such good visibility to our staff is great.  We quickly reduced the admin role of our managers, saving at least 5% of their time immediately.  We can pull off accurate absence records very easily, and any issues are identified and resolved quickly. “
Ian Rogers,
Operations Director, The White Company