Case Study: Landscaping Business

Today's case study focuses on a landscaping business with 18 full-time employees, 6 part-time workers, and 15-20 seasonal contractors during peak months. The business provides landscaping and lawn maintenance services to businesses and residential customers in a large suburban area.

During the six months prior to adopting WorkforceHub, the owner had been setting up an automated system to schedule jobs, bill clients, and send email service reminders. Once that process was operational, he noticed a stark contrast between streamlined client management operations and employee timekeeping operations, which were outdated and inefficient.

Manual Timekeeping Was Inaccurate and Poorly Managed

Time and attendance tracking was inconsistent due to pen and paper time cards and the mobile nature of the business. Employees were rarely at the office where the time cards and punch machine were kept. They spent their days traveling to job sites around the city. When it came time to turn in time cards for payroll twice a month, staff members often had to guess shift start and end times after the fact.

The owner also realized that using Excel to create crew schedules was inefficient and looked forward to streamlining that process as well.

Solution — WorkforceHub

WorkforceHub consists of:

• ​TimeWorksPlus for employee timekeeping
• ​TimeSimplicity for scheduling
• ​TimeWorks Mobile, the mobile app that allows for anytime, anywhere access

Employees Carry The HR Department in Their Pockets

TimeWorks Mobile brought order and oversight to offsite employee time and attendance immediately. Employees can clock in/out, check their schedule, monitor PTO accruals, submit shift change requests, and communicate with everyone in the company—all from their smartphones.

TimeWorksPlus With TimeWorksTouch

• ​Cloud-based time and attendance
• ​Employee state awareness to prevent punch errors
• ​Clock lock-out and schedule enforcement
• ​Overtime alerts
• ​Ideal for landscaping companies with offsite workers and contractors
• ​Customizable pay rules, overtime calculations, compliance requirements, and accrual tracking
• ​Employee portal for time-off requests, time card approvals, and PTO balance monitoring

Labor Savings

The owner observed that payroll costs decreased after the crew started using TimeWorks Mobile. Previously, payroll had been unnecessarily inflated due to missed and duplicate punches that were not accurately corrected when time cards were submitted at the end of the pay period.

Convenience and Oversight

Now, employees show up to work, open TimeWorksTouch on their phone, and clock in. They check their phone app first thing to see their job schedule for the day. With Pinpoint GPS location snapshots, the owner knows that his offsite staff is where they should be. He can also add notes to timecards, view time off requests, and monitor time and attendance from anywhere.

With TimeSimplicity, scheduling also received a much-needed update. The owner appreciates the built-in schedule templates that can be customized by dragging-and-dropping and replicated in seconds as needed.

Quick and Easy Implementation

The organization was able to install and implement the system rapidly. Staff members learned to use WorkforceHub in less time than it takes to reload line in a weed trimmer.

More Time to Grow the Business

Two months after the transition, the owner had reduced administrative time so significantly that he was able to start working on a marketing campaign targeted to commercial clients. This effort paid off, resulting in dozens of new high-paying contracts since transforming employee management with WorkforceHub.

WorkforceHub easily handles the involved time and attendance logistics of companies with mobile workers.