How TeamSense catalyzed a culture shift at a wood pallet manufacturer

Company

The company supplies a broad selection of high-quality, sustainable, and heat-treated wooden pallets, skids, and crates. With origins tracing back to the late 1800s, the Ohio-based company is one of the oldest and largest wood pallet manufacturers based in the midwestern United States.

Challenge: Call-offs were getting out of hand

Emily Kockler, HR manager at the wood pallet manufacturer, recalled a very “chaotic” time for their organization in early 2020. Call-offs were reaching unsustainable levels, and the HR team lacked sufficient documentation to report the absences. To make matters worse, Emily even suspected some individuals were taking advantage of the lack of process and tracking capabilities and making up excuses to come in late or not show up for work. 

“Disciplining employees became impossible because we weren’t able to track absences and show proof. There was no accountability whatsoever on either end,” she said

As Emily began researching attendance management solutions, she came across TeamSense through a Google search. After weighing the options, she chose TeamSense for its simplicity and ease of use.

When she shared with key stakeholders how Teamsense reduces absenteeism and improves production, she got the buy-in to roll out text-based absence reporting across the company.

Solution: Providing a better, more inclusive employee experience

When it came time to implement TeamSense's call-off system in their organization, Emily wanted to ensure the transition was as smooth as possible. 

“TeamSense provided us with lots of great training and change management resources, like posters, flyers, and cards. We started plastering those everywhere and announcing the upcoming changes in our safety meetings so that we could get the info out to everyone early.”

The team launched the new call-off process with a highly-anticipated feature: language translations. 

“One of the biggest challenges for us is that the majority of our hourly employees are native Spanish speakers, but our salaried staff doesn’t speak much Spanish. Now, with TeamSense, we’re able to set up multiple languages to help bridge that communication barrier.”

The feedback was positive amongst the hourly team, who stated that a key benefit of TeamSense is not having to talk to a person and provide “some grandiose story” when they need to call off.

Results: Improving communication between supervisors and hourly teams and revitalizing the company culture

Before implementing TeamSense, the pallet manufacturer used to have “multiple people call out multiple days in a week.” Since TeamSense, Emily recalls they now receive “maybe one or two callouts every other week,” resulting in a substantial improvement.

“With data from TeamSense, we can see that most of our employees are showing up consistently and our corrective actions have decreased. It’s been extremely helpful for us because if one of our employees called out before, it was a big hole for our operations.”

Another major benefit of TeamSense was the improved communication between supervisors and the hourly teams they manage, especially since rolling out TeamSense’s attendance points integration feature. 

“Without TeamSense, when it came time to discipline absent employees, our supervisors felt a little helpless in those conversations because they had nothing—no data—to stand on. TeamSense opened up the line of communication between the supervisors and the employees. Now that everyone is aligned with the same data, we can approach our employees from a place of proactive support instead of corrective action.”

In one instance, data from TeamSense initiated a beneficial conversation between an employee who was having some medical issues, their supervisor, and HR, generating new solutions to better accommodate his needs.

When the pallet manufacturer first partnered with TeamSense, their aim was to streamline their call-off process and reduce absenteeism. However, what they actually achieved was far beyond what they had anticipated: a more inclusive, communicative, and engaged workplace culture.

Watch the full customer spotlight video here.