M Culinary Concepts in Phoenix, Arizona, is the largest catering company in the Southwest, providing a complete food, beverage, and hospitality experience for parties large and small, weddings, events, and businesses. The company employs about 120 full-time staff and 150 gig workers, with a workforce that swells to 1,000-plus during the busy winter season.
Challenges
M Culinary Concepts' dedication to providing customers with an exceptional hospitality experience begins with its team members. The company encourages a culture that celebrates determination, achievement, and collaboration, but with most staff working at customer sites across the valley, fostering a unified company culture was sometimes difficult and created the potential for miscommunication.
Managing this large, variable team of hospitality professionals was challenging using separate timekeeping, payroll, and benefits systems, making integration of workforce data for reporting arduous. Tired of managing this large workforce across disparate systems, the company sought a single, comprehensive solution that could meet all its workforce management, HR, and payroll needs.
Solutions
M Culinary Concepts selected the UKG Ready® suite — cloud-based solutions that integrate all employee data in a single platform — to improve efficiencies in HR, timekeeping, and payroll processes, and to enhance connections with employees.
The solution's mobile functionality has played a key role in connecting M Culinary Concepts' off-site workforce, many of whom are young employees who prefer mobile communication. All new-hire onboarding is completed in the UKG® mobile app — which includes onboarding checklists for both new hires and HR staff — and rehiring seasonal employees is simple. With employees clocking in using the mobile app, timekeeping is paperless and streamlined.
"Everything now is on the UKG mobile app — onboarding, benefits, timekeeping, schedules, I-9s, W-2s," said Brandy Jo Guzman, Human Resources Director. "We like to empower people, and the app allows them to take control of their needs by finding pay stubs and changing their personal information. For a very decentralized company, we're centralized with the app."
“Everything now is on the UKG mobile app — onboarding, benefits, timekeeping, schedules, I-9s, W-2s. We like to empower people, and the app allows them to take control of their needs by finding pay stubs and changing their personal information. For a very decentralized company, we're centralized with the app.”
Brandy Jo Guzman
Human Resources Director
Results
When the pandemic hit and work shifted from events to providing meals for essential workers, employees started attesting to their health status each day in UKG Ready. If they answered positively to more than one health question, HR received an email and called them. "Getting employees to use the app to do attestation at a clock-in was fairly easy," noted Guzman. "It's been so helpful in keeping COVID-19 out of our business."
As restrictions have been lifted and customers are planning events, some are requesting that vaccinated staff be assigned to work their events. The company is not requiring vaccinations but is tracking employee vaccination cards through the UKG solution's functionality, as they do with other certifications.
With extensive real-time workforce data available at their fingertips, managers have the data visibility they need to make smart business decisions that deliver hospitality experiences that surpass customer expectations while managing costs.
Payroll processing has been simplified too. "It's great having confidence in payroll, and the built-in checklist makes it so effortless, including easily training people who've never done payroll before" said Guzman. The solution also is helping M Culinary Concepts track employee data for compliance with new payroll legislation.
"All the checklists help us stay compliant," she added. "I'm a cheerleader for the system and all the support we've gotten from UKG."
