McHugh Steel

Background:

Based in Bundaberg, Queensland, McHugh Steel is one of the state's largest steel manufacturers and providers that specialises in sheds, patio roofing, steel framing and roll-forming needs. Established in 1992, McHugh Steel is a family-owned business that has developed and thrived, with a diverse team of on-site and off-site workers.

With over 70 staff that include shed erectors, roofers, truck drivers as well as apprentices, McHugh Steel takes pride in providing clients with end-to-end construction services, from provisioning the materials to assigning the appropriate tradespeople to complete the building project.

Humanforce assisted McHugh Steel's successful transition to an automated workforce management platform that provided workers with the ability to clock in their hours in real-time, both on-site and in the office, while significantly reducing administration time and easing HR and payroll resources.

We spoke to: Demi Pressler-McHugh, Human Resources and Payroll Administrator, McHugh Steel

Challenge:

As the McHugh Steel team primarily consists of office workers and many working on sites or travelling with supplies and materials, traditional and manual payroll methods of tracking each worker's hours became obsolete. Also, calculating their pay, cross-checking and verifying hours was time-consuming.

For instance, salespeople would often attend a client's site first thing in the morning for a measure up. Also, truck drivers would need to immediately start their day on the road, unable to come into the office to clock in.

Human Resources and Payroll Administrator Demi Pressler-McHugh, explained that the organisation's cardboard time cards and clocking system meant workers had to record their hours physically. However, this was no longer conducive for a team with varied roles with some staff only at the office once a month.

Documenting workers' hours were often skewed. If left unrecorded for too long, actual start times would also be difficult to recall, creating enormous challenges to fulfil HR and payroll tasks appropriately.

"We weren't getting a realistic view of what time people started and finished work…if half of them don't clock in for the day, it wastes quite a bit of your day, but they also forgot what time they started," said Demi.

While clocking in hours was an unreliable and manual process, collecting and calculating timesheets was an even arduous and time-consuming task.

"I used to spend at least eight hours a week on entering timesheets into our payroll software because I had to work out what time they started and finished manually. And once you had the times on how many hours they worked that day, you then had to enter that into the payroll software manually," recalled Demi.

McHugh Steel required a solution that accurately measured staff's time and work performance as a thriving family-owned business. In addition, it needed to scale as the company grew without drastically increasing HR, administration or payroll workload.

Solution

In replacing their outdated clocking in system with Humanforce, McHugh Steel staff can now log the start and end of their working day from any location and also give them the ability to show their actual job locations.

From a back-office standpoint, Humanforce has dramatically reduced hours of manual timesheet data entry. With what would once be a full day's administration task for Demi, Humanforce has provided an automated system with seamless integration to McHugh Steel's existing payroll software system.

"Humanforce saves me a lot of time. Just the fact that I can use it while I'm not at work. I can just do it on my phone. It's pretty easy," said Demi.

For a family-owned business with diverse staff, Humanforce has enabled McHugh Steel to adopt workforce management into their company culture successfully. As the business grows and thrives, Humanforce will also scale to future requirements, supporting McHugh Steel's operations, workers, and back office.

Results

• Improving workforce management by enabling both on-site and off-site workers to clock in from any location.

• Replacing time-consuming manual data entry for timesheets with an automated process, avoiding error and oversights.

• Significantly reducing administration time and resources by integrating timesheets directly into McHugh Steel's existing payroll system.

• Ensuring accurate time and attendance records daily and improving efficiencies for McHugh Steel's payroll process.

• Providing managers with visibility and insight for jobs happening on-site, providing an in-depth understanding of each project and resources needed.