Farm System

Think you have staffing issues? Hickory Farms practically launches a new nationwide business each fall.

In a matter of weeks, some 600 stores open in malls across the United States and Canada. Staff is hired, managers are trained and shelves are stocked. In the past, those managers would spend three days in training, half of which was focused on human resources issues like recruiting workers and filling out pertinent paperwork.

Last year, however, Hickory Farms rolled out Headway Corporate Resources' Adaptive Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) to impressive results. Employees arrived pre-screened, managers could concentrate on sales of sausage, sweets and cheese and corporate executives could shift their focus to margin growth, rather than filling 5,000 seasonal positions. And, while the 2008 holiday season was anything but jolly for most retailers, Hickory Farms was able to rack up impressive numbers in some areas.

"The most measurable result was that we were cost-neutral on a full company rollout," says Jim O'Neill, Hickory Farms' vice president of retail kiosk and wholesale operations. "We saw our workers' comp premiums almost evaporate in year one [and] our administrative costs virtually disappear."

This disappearing act was due to Headway's on-boarding new hires to its own payroll, which meant Hickory Farms no longer had to provide for workers' compensation, something that had hit the retailer hard because premiums are set based on the number of hires, not the length of employment. Additional savings accrued through reducing or eliminating the need to print job applications and ship checks to 600 locations, and the fact that Hickory Farms didn't need to ramp up its own payroll department to manage new hires.

The changes had a bonus for workers, too: weekly paychecks. "We were running our own human resources juggernaut to hire 5,000 people," O'Neill says. "When you do that many transactions a week with new paperwork, we couldn't pull off weekly payroll. When you talk to the seasonal employee, there are not a lot of benefits you can offer, but weekly pay seems to hit the right buttons."

Adaptive RPO is one element of Headway's Business Process Outsourcing suite of services. RPO handles all facets of sourcing and screening, including recruiting active and passive candidates, background checks and on-boarding. Hickory Farms added payroll services, as well.

Transferring payroll functions to Raleigh, N.C.-based Headway was "seamless for me," O'Neill says. "I would say we had a 97 to 98 percent effective rate; the 2 percent was probably stuff we caused by not getting paperwork in on time or having the wrong kiosk number on the paperwork."

Outsourcing payroll functions was a nice add-on, but the real power came in the form of the recruiting process. Previously, Hickory Farms had relied on its full-time retail field management staff to recruit employees on a year-round basis using tools like websites, local newspapers, mall scouting and job fairs.

"Paying to advertise on job boards is an incredible cost if you're not guaranteed results," says Headway executive vice president Debbie Brown. "Many companies are paying upwards of $350 for each job listing they advertise. With Adaptive RPO, the [client's] costs associated with advertising open positions on job boards and newspapers is eliminated and absorbed by us."