What do motorcycles have in common with cutting edge HR software? For Driscoll’s, both were ingredients in their previous timesheet collection workflows. Today, after a successful, 5-star implementation of UKG by Align HCM, Driscoll’s is able to better focus on growing and delivering mouth-watering berries around the world—no heart-racing data-collection techniques (or motorcycles!) required.
About Driscoll’s
If you’re a fan of berries, you may already know Driscoll’s name from a clamshell container in your refrigerator. Driscoll’s grows and distributes organic and fresh strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, and blueberries, proudly creating some of the biggest, sweetest, and most appealing berries on the market.
And with operations extending from fields to nurseries to docks to offices, Driscoll’s HR team had (perhaps not surprisingly) found itself using siloed technologies for time and attendance, with 3 competing products in US offices, plus spreadsheets and manual processes—including literally sending people out into fields by motorcycle to collect timesheets at some Mexico locations.
By 2017, Driscoll’s had recognized the need to transform their time and attendance operations in order to capture significant cost savings and enable continued growth. They selected UKG as their new, centralized platform and immediately asked for recommendations on who could help successfully transform their HR operations.
UKG’s recommendation? Align HCM. Driscoll’s Payroll Manager, Pete Meza Lopez, began working with Mark Smiley, VP of HCM Value-Add Services, and his team at Align HCM on their digital transformation.
This is the story behind Driscoll’s 5-star review of Align HCM (and be sure to check out the full video interview with Pete and Mark at the end.)
Start Strong: Early Wins Build Trust
Align HCM started built trust early by focusing on those US-based operations already familiar with HCM software, where the scope of the change process would be less daunting.
The first leg of Driscoll’s digital transformation was to introduce UKG Pro to their US-based team in 2017. These facilities were already using a digital solution to track time, so the implementation team’s main focus was helping their workforce understand the new system, which they were able to do successfully and met their June 2018 deadline. This approach gave Align HCM a chance to start from a place of strength and learn Driscoll’s business at the same time.
Of course, Align HCM didn’t take anything for granted: from the start, they staffed the project with three senior HCM consultants who each had more than a decade of experience, as well as requisite product certifications. This was a team that could hit the ground running! Furthermore, Align HCM made sure the team included a member who spoke Spanish—language barriers can be challenging under any circumstances, but add in the HR jargon and technical lingo common with HCM implementations, and things can get tricky fast: Align HCM made sure their team not only knew what to anticipate, but could effectively communicate their observations, questions, and concerns.
Having proven they could work together successfully in the US, Driscoll’s and Align HCM than tackled the second leg of their digital transformation: introducing UKG’s products to Driscoll’s Mexico-based facilitates, many of which were moving to digital systems for the very first time.
This would quickly prove to be the more challenging and more rewarding part of their transformation.
Total Partnership
Driscoll’s Mexico-based locations had never used a digital solution for their time & attendance tracking, in some places still relying on pen-and-paper calculations—meaning a steep learning curve to move to a digital solution, and even more importantly, meaning significant risk to the business: Driscoll’s payroll swelled during harvesting and planting seasons by 2,000 people or more—people who got berries for a hungry world off their vines by hand; no workers, no berries, no business. In short, no margin for error.
And this was in addition to the expected challenges of standardizing localized workflows (and even before that, defining them!), addressing language barriers, and scheduling work across time zones. Both sides knew timing would be an issue because of the intense seasonality of Driscoll’s business, a concern that manifested spectacularly during the Covid-19 pandemic, but no one anticipated how the pandemic would also limit travel and curtail opportunities for Align HCM to provide in-person support.
No Assumptions!
Given the complexity of the transformation, Mark instituted an early rule for the Align HCM team: no assumptions. Despite their experience and know-how, he understood that his team would have to work hard to accommodate Driscoll’s unique operating demands, so they made sure to ask every question they had. On Driscoll’s side, Pete made sure to do his part, too, treating Align as a true partner—part of the family, so to speak.
“When you truly partner and you have trust, and you feel like you’re a family… it makes a difference, and that’s really the key driver of success,” said Mark. Working together meant pausing and pivoting at times, but ultimately ensured a common understanding, along with “consistency, commitment, trust, and continuity.”
Building trust required a focus on communication, including a frequent meeting cadence coordinated across time zones, transparent feedback from Driscoll’s internal project manager, and openness from both sides about their understanding of problems to be addressed. Before the pandemic and throughout, both sides prioritized successful outcomes over the clock, calling frequent time outs to raise concerns, shore up learning curves, and deal with the inevitable issues that popped up in real-time. This took a level of vulnerability by both sides, but also kept integrity and trust at the center of their relationship.
“We wanted to roll UKG Pro to our Mexico operations in 2019, but we had to adjust our timeline due to internal issues and the pandemic. Align was really flexible and able to serve as a resource to us during these changes,” said Pete Meza Lopez, Driscoll’s Payroll Manager.
Align HCM “pivoted our training plans to combat our travel restrictions,” said Mark. “We adopted a ‘train the trainer’ model and co-developed custom training processes that helped these ranches become more self-sufficient. This was a big win from a preparation standpoint.”
Driscoll’s Outcomes
In 2020, Driscoll’s and Align HCM achieved a successful implementation rollout for Driscoll’s Mexico-based locations, where they can now hire thousands of seasonal workers without pen and paper, and account for hours without having to collect timecards manually from the fields on dirt bikes.
As for benefits, “now that the UKG products are implemented, we have the ability to scale and hire much more efficiently. We’re able to add headcount or open new regions and have a hiring game plan,” said Pete. That’s no small claim for a company that can more than double in size several times a year, during planting and harvesting seasons!
Best of all, Driscoll’s can look forward to additional ROI from their system upgrade, knowing that they have a partner they can trust to deliver—which gives them the confidence they need to know that whatever benefits UKG promises, with Align HCM’s help, they’ll be able to capture.
Lessons Learned
The number one piece of knowledge that both Pete and Mark said they took away from this project is to never make assumptions, and don’t take anything for granted.
“You need to clarify, ask questions, and make an effort to understand what is being said, instead of just assuming you know what the end goal is,” Mark said when asked what the key things he learned were. “We also really had to learn about the internal culture at Driscoll’s in order to understand the best way to implement change management or digital transformation.”
“Assumptions are killer, especially in a new region or new country that has its own rules or policies,” Pete added. “What works in some countries won’t be the right method for others. We found lots of little holes that caused our project to pause or we needed a buffer zone to figure out our internal differences. With Align, our challenges were their challenges and their challenges were our challenges.”
