Kenco reduces absenteeism by 39% with TeamSense

COMPANY

Kenco is a multinational provider of supply chain solutions, including distribution, fulfillment, transportation, and material handling.

With over 90 distribution centers and over 5,000 employees across North America, Kenco is one of the largest 3PLs in the United States.

CHALLENGE

With over 300 employees staffed at one of Kenco’s warehouse facilities, unplanned absences were a regular occurrence.

Internal reporting showed that for most of the month, the facility failed to hit their absenteeism goals. It was also evident to the HR team that the existing absence management process was costing the company thousands of dollars.

Because unplanned absences were so prevalent, the site had to be overstaffed by three employees each day. Even if the facility had no absences that day, supervisors would still be required to pay the additional staff for the unnecessary shifts.

The process to call off was also manual and lacked transparency. To call off, employees would call and leave a voicemail that both HR and supervisors had to check on a regular basis.

Because there was no confirmation loop back to employees, they were often kept in the dark about how their absences translated into attendance points and termination status, making it difficult to enforce attendance policies and drive accountability.

To address these challenges, one HR team lead began to seek solutions to improve the process and proactively manage absenteeism.

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Discovering and implementing TeamSense

The HR team lead at Kenco discovered TeamSense while researching call out solutions on Google. The team lead knew that warehouse employees would appreciate TeamSense's text-based communication channel because it was familiar and wouldn't require any training to use. TeamSense was then rolled out to their 300-person facility in less than 24 hours.

SOLUTION

Using TeamSense to drive efficiency and accountability

Kenco used TeamSense’s automated call-off workflow to improve their manual process and proactive communications to increase transparency and encourage behavioral changes around absenteeism.

Automated call-off logging and real-time supervisor alerts

With TeamSense, warehouse employees sent a text message to call off instead of leaving a lengthy voicemail. By allowing employees to select the reason for their absence, HR did not have to interpret voicemails, avoiding misunderstandings. Supervisors were also notified in real-time, giving them a timely heads up. The entire workflow was automated in TeamSense and took seconds.

Proactive communications

Once the automated call-off workflow was implemented, the team set up proactive communications with TeamSense Communicate to increase transparency and promote employee accountability around absenteeism. With these messages, HR managers were able to remind employees how many attendance points they would accrue for their absence that day, and even send a warning if they approached termination.

RESULTS

Kenco reduces absenteeism by 39% and saves on staffing costs

As a result of implementing TeamSense, Kenco not only streamlined and automated the call-off process, increasing efficiency for HR team members, but also saw a significant improvement in absenteeism rates. Prior to implementation, unplanned absences accounted for 64.1 hours for a given month at the beginning of the year. 

With TeamSense, that number dropped to 39.4 hours, effectively reducing absenteeism by 39%.

HR teams appreciated the ability to enforce attendance policies with the help of accurate call-off data, and employees had better visibility on tracking their own attendance points. The process change allowed for a shift in behavior regarding how employees engage with the company’s attendance policies, ultimately driving more accountability. HR has also noticed improvement from an attrition standpoint as fewer employees had to be terminated due to accruing too many absences.

With reduced absentee rates, the facility no longer needed to staff the warehouse with three additional personnel each day, saving them thousands of dollars in shift payouts each month.

The HR team at Kenco is thrilled with the early success and is looking forward to exploring new capabilities, like integrations with their time and attendance system, and rolling TeamSense out on a larger scale to more of their warehouses.