Specializing in milk processing, Agropur is a Quebec-based agricultural cooperative that processes more than six billion liters of milk per year. As the largest dairy producer in Canada, Agropur has 39 plants in North America, over 8,800 employees, and annual sales approaching $6.7 billion.

With such a large workforce spanning across North America, maintaining an exceptional employee experience is no easy feat. Despite the challenges, Philippe de Villers, Agropur's Director of Employee Experience, is committed to not just supporting his talent throughout their career, but also nurturing them.

Knowing that the employee experience starts with the work environment, Philippe is conscious that utilizing tools that are effective, delightful, and user-friendly are key to ensuring Agropur's employees are supported and nurtured every day.

Challenges

Agropur faced a few challenges to achieve its ambitious goals. In order to ensure the success of this employee experience project, the solution had to meet the following criteria:

• Standardize and harmonize the different versions of payroll management solutions,
• Automate tasks to avoid manual errors,
• Measure costs by linking real-time labor data to its management and production system,
• Streamline time management processes to reduce payroll errors and save time,
• Discover presence problems and better manage the inflow and outflow of resources paid per hour.

Solutions 

Given Agropur's needs, there was one solution that could rise up to the challenge: Workforce Timekeeper from Workforce Central.

Workforce Timekeeper allowed Agropur to:    

• Create a more accurate and efficient time clock for a better follow-up in accounting and employee payroll,
  
  
• Adjust staffing to ensure a balance between the number of resources required and the machines in operation,
  
  
• Reduce payroll processing times and increase productivity within the payroll processing team.
  
  

Kronosis a complex calculator that includes all collective agreements. Its management proves beneficial for managers who need to monitor the clocking in and out of resources and calculate payroll.

Philippe de Villers, Employee Experience Director

While Workforce Timekeeper provided the solution, Agropur still needed the expertise of IN-RGY's consultants, who intervened to optimize the integration of Advance Scheduling and Time Keeper modules provided by Kronos Central Workforce.

Without the intervention of IN-RGY's specialists, it would have been very difficult for Agropur to optimize its integration given the extremely complex time banks, as well as the large number of unique tasks that needed to be executed.

All employees with an hourly wage now use Kronos.

IN-RGY operated in all the most technical Kronos requirements that required a high level of expertise.

Results 

Real-time visibility on resource-related hours and costs allowed Agropur's payroll team to improve productivity and reduce operating costs throughout the organization.

The time that payroll managers used to spend managing payroll processes (including sources of errors) is now devoted to managing resource inputs and outputs and to payroll calculations.

The team intervened in all humility on the project. We enjoyed working with consultants who asked us: What are your prerequisites? These same consultants subsequently demonstrated an outstanding level of competence and quality of work by integrating modules in our plants and providing technical support on complex projects.

For Agropur, the IN-RGY collaboration was a great success. The project was completed in only nine months, on budget and on schedule, and met expectations. This allowed Agropur to generate productivity gains and reduce costs.

For IN-RGY and Agropur, it's a mission accomplished.