2 Sisters Food Group Case Study

2 Sisters employees paid correctly and on time thanks to Kronos workforce management system

Download Printable Version

2 Sisters Food Group was established in 1993 and is a world-class food company serving the retail, food service and food manufacturing sectors. With 35 manufacturing sites in the UK, six in Holland and one in Poland, the group employs around 18,000 people and its annual sales are over £2.1 billion.

The company has grown through organic growth and acquisition, including the acquisition of Northern Foods in April 2011. This had resulted in a number of time and attendance solutions being in place across the sites. In 2010, the decision was made to standardise its time and attendance systems throughout the company, and following a review of its existing solutions, 2 Sisters Food Group selected Kronos for all its UK-based employees.

Alex McKechnie, Group Information Systems, 2 Sisters Food Group explains: “We selected Kronos as the system of choice at 2 Sisters and we are handling the implementation in-house. Initially we installed Kronos at four sites that had previously been using a range of different T&A solutions, and the benefits now that Kronos is up and running are massive. There are far fewer errors in payroll, and it takes much less time to check the data and run the payroll.”

Kronos is used to record working hours at the 2 Sisters Food Group sites, and to apply the appropriate pay rules and rates. McKechnie says: “With Kronos in place, the right information flows through to the payroll system and our employees are paid correctly and on time. That makes everyone happy.” Kronos is also used within the HR department to monitor absence and record leave entitlement.

2 Sisters has now implemented Kronos at nine sites and further implementations will take place over the coming months. McKechnie continues: “Kronos was installed at a couple of sites when I joined 2 Sisters, and I needed to get up to speed very quickly. To make sure I really understood the system, I attended a Kronos training course which gave me a good all round understanding of the system. I have supplemented this with Kronos consultancy days to address a specific topic or to work on complex pay rules when a new company is acquired. I have ensured that the team member that works with Kronos at each location has also attended the training course, and this has given them the knowledge they need. With the team trained up, we have been able to get the best out of Kronos.”

A key requirement at 2 Sisters Food Group was to standardise and consolidate the time and attendance reports available. The decision was made to write the reports required in-house, and to run them on a dashboard alongside Kronos. “This has been really successful and now it is a simple task to add new employees and the relevant pay rules. We also monitor absence quickly and simply through this reporting system,” says McKechnie.