Case Studies

HR Technology Enhancement + Automation Case Study for Metafora

Introduction

Metafora is a management consulting and technology delivery firm focused on the
transportation, logistics, and supply chain industry. They engaged with Work Friendly initially to cover the parental leave of their Director of HR, then extended our services for an additional 6 months. The greatest accomplishment Work Friendly had during the partnership was the creation of automation in HR processes like recruitment, onboarding, payroll + benefits, and more through the implementation of Rippling, an all-in-one HR + IT platform.

The Story of Metafora

Metafora was established initially as CarrierDirect in 2011, when they started solving problems as outsourced sales support connecting regional LTL (less than truckload) carriers and large 3PLs (third party logistics). Having worked at the intersection of trucking and logistics, customers began asking the CarrierDirect team how they could run their businesses better. As the company grew, CarrierDirect kept seeing incomplete business strategies without technology and vice versa. To better serve the needs of the transportation, supply chain and logistics industry, CarrierDirect also started building software for their customers in 2016.

In January 2022, CarrierDirect launched their rebrand and new name Metafora, which means “transport” in Greek.

The Opportunity for Automation and HR Technology Enhancement

Quickly after launching the engagement with Metafora, Work Friendly consultant, Kelly Fitzgerald, observed the lack of HR automation and efficiency in most processes related to the employment journey. Specific areas and opportunities for improvement included:

Recruitment

  • Lack of connectivity of BambooHR, Metafora’s Applicant Tracking System (ATS) to Google calendars, so scheduling of interviews with candidates was being done manually.
  • No way to share notes or feedback on candidates in the ATS.
  • No ability to create a talent community or pipeline for future interest.

Onboarding

  • New hires were onboarded into two separate systems, BambooHR and ADP. BambooHR would carry over candidates from the ATS, however it was a manual process to onboard new hires into ADP.
  • BambooHR was being used on an ongoing basis for time off requests only, while ADP was being used for payroll and 401(k).
  • There were two separate logins within ADP for payroll and 401(k).
  • Laptops were purchased at the Apple store down the street from the HQ office, then packaged up and taken to a local FedEx for shipping to new hires.

Payroll

  • Payroll preparation was time consuming, as there was no way to run any kind of change report, therefore the People team would fill out a spreadsheet and email it to the Controller each time before payroll for any new hires, terms, changes or special cases.
  • Mid-pay period hires had to have their salaries calculated manually as ADP was not able to do so.
  • Adding new states and associated payroll tax accounts was a nightmare, very manual process with little to no assistance or instructions from ADP.

Benefit Administration

  • Benefit enrollment happened through the People team sending a fillable PDF enrollment form electronically to new hires, who would then fill out and send it back to the People team. After that, the People team would have to login to each provider’s system separately to manually enter in new hire’s information, elections and dependents. As a final step, the People team would also have to  login to ADP and enter in the benefit deductions manually for payroll.
    • Open enrollment was completed similarly, on a larger scale depending on the amount of changes to plan structure and elections.
    • Qualifying life events were done manually in both the provider’s systems and ADP by the People team when they occurred.

Employee Records

  • Some employee documents were housed in BambooHR, and some in Google Drive. This was due to the fact that a lot of documents lived outside of the BambooHR, and there was really no way to create templates for things like salary increase letters, promotion letters, employment notifications, agreements, etc.
  • Overall, employee records were not as secure or complete as they should be.

 

How Work Friendly Responded

Kelly observed the above challenges and opportunities during the first month of the engagement, as well as heard first hand through interviewing the current People team members. Kelly ran a sample hours analysis for the total time it took to hire someone and onboard them appropriately at Metafora. Found that on average from offer letter to the new hire’s first paycheck, it was taking the team between 4-5 hours per hire due to all of the manual processes and lack of automation. Also noted that none of the current HRIS systems would “talk” to each other, as there was no integration.

The solution was to dive into a project alongside the Head of Technology at Metafora, who had also identified that there was a general lack of IT + HR automation and inefficient use of technology. The project team, led by Kelly, demoed 7 HRIS platforms together. They narrowed down to their top three and through comparing and contrasting must-haves and “nice-to-haves”, They landed on Rippling as the final choice as it solved the majority of the current HR + IT technology needs.

The implementation of Rippling was broken down into 5 parts and took about 60 days total to fully complete. (Implementation averages about 2-4 weeks usually, but it took a bit longer due to the fact that Metafora was also migrating payroll over from ADP and wanted a clean break for tax reporting purposes). The implementation steps were as follows:

  1. First step was setting up all the back-end of Rippling: Departments, admins, teams, policies, document templates, etc.
  2. Second step was setting up Rippling’s internal applications Metafora had purchased such as their payroll app, insurance app, time off, device management, and applicant tracking system.
  3. Third step was uploading all current employee data, which was extremely easy and a quick process due to Rippling having a fully formatted upload CSV file ready to drop employee’s demographic information into.
  4. Fourth step was adding all third party apps, such as Google Workspace, Slack, Harvest, HubSpot, Microsoft Office, Zoom, GoodHire, etc.
  5. Fifth and final step was auditing all of the set up as well as data that had been entered or migrated over from other systems.

The rollout to the Metafora team was very easy, as Rippling provides a full library of rollout tools such as videos, guides, and sample communications that are ready to use.

The Results

Recruitment

  • Metafora’s Applicant Tracking System (ATS) now lives within Rippling, and is set up as single sign-on. Once you’re logged into the Rippling platform you can be in the ATS with one click.
  • The ATS is fully connected to Google calendar, so you can see availability of hiring managers and schedule all interviews within the ATS easily.
  • The ATS has a built-in talent community that it is set up to invite all applicants to join after they have been in the system for 30 days. This creates a future talent pipeline for the organization.

Onboarding

  • When hiring a new team member, Metafora can now pull the candidate directly from their ATS. There is an easy to use onboarding workflow set up in Rippling that takes you through a series of questions (i.e. title, salary, start date, reporting manager, department, etc.) before generating an offer letter. Offer letter is sent via email and the new hire can review and sign on electronically either a computer or mobile device.
  • Metafora chose to use the device management offering through Rippling, which manages their inventory of laptops and sends a device out to new hires automatically once they’ve signed their offer letter.
  • All new hire paperwork (i.e. W4, I-9, Emergency Contact) is able to be completed by the new hire within Rippling, and saves to their employee profile. This is launched automatically after a new hire signs their offer letter.
  • Rippling offers a feature called “Tasks”, where you can create check-lists for different scenarios, including onboarding. The tasks can be assigned to anyone in the organization, including the new hire, and will push notifications automatically with associated due dates.

Payroll

  • All employee information feeds directly to the Rippling payroll app.
  • An employee change report is generated prior to each payroll and sent to the Controller for review. This replaced the previously shared excel document.
  • Rippling’s payroll app automatically calculates mid pay period hires prorated salaries for the Controller, so he is no longer doing this manually.
  • Rippling has helpful step-by-step guides for every state in the US on how to create a new business account and obtain payroll tax account information, as well as how to add Rippling as a third party administrator to help file and pay taxes on Metafora’s behalf. Huge time saver for the People team!

Benefit Administration

  • Benefit enrollment now launches through Rippling automatically after a new hire signs their offer letter. There are step-by-step instructions and plan descriptions within the system, which saves a lot of the People team’s time from having to walk each new hire through the benefit plans and how to enroll.
  • Once enrollment is completed at hire, benefit deductions are automatically pushed over to the payroll app in Rippling.
  • A weekly file feed is set up between Rippling and each of Metafora’s benefit providers so the People team does not have to login to the provider systems to manually enroll or make changes to team member elections.
  • Open enrollment was completed in Rippling for the first time in November 2021 for a January 1, 2022 effective date. The process from start to finish went seamlessly, and all elections for the new plan year were shared via the file feed from Rippling to the providers. All the People team had to do was audit elections and ensure deductions were pushed to payroll for the first payroll of the new year.
  • Employees initiate their own QLEs now in Rippling, with a one click approval from the People team. Rippling handles obtaining any supporting documentation from employees and getting it over to the providers.
  • Metafora’s benefit broker partner has access to Rippling, and is able to help out directly with any issues or escalations.

Employee Records

  • All employee records are housed in Rippling, Work Friendly helped migrate anything that was previously in an employee’s file over to Rippling during implementation. New hires paperwork and offer letters are automatically sved in their Rippling employee profile.
  • Any ongoing documents can either be easily uploaded by the People team or the employee themselves.
  • Any items that need to be signed off upon or acknowledged by the employee can be created as notice templates in Rippling, and launched to each employee directly to be electronically signed.

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