BALTIMORE —Royal Farms, a mid-Atlantic convenience-store chain, is using UKG Pro from Ultimate Kronos Group (UKG) to train its team members and be responsive to the needs of its customer-facing employees.
Royal Farms has more than 230 locations throughout Maryland, Delaware, Virginia and Pennsylvania, and more than 5,400 employees. Baltimore-based Royal Farms is No. 35 on CSP’s 2020 Top 202 list of c-stores by store count.
“For us, well-trained employees are the foundation of our business and a key driver of customer loyalty,” said Brian Roche, chief people officer at Royal Farms. “UKG Pro Learning lets us create a powerful combination of in-store, hands-on learning, combined with easily accessible online training. Employee feedback related to UKG Pro Learning has been extremely positive, particularly its ease of use.”
According to Roche, the user experience (UX) employees associate with UKG Pro Learning extends to the entire experience with UKG Pro.
“In retail environments like ours, employee turnover means we need a solution that is easy to learn and use, at all levels of the organization. We have a highly seasonal workforce, ramping up our headcount by about 20% in the summer,” said Roche. “UKG uses single sign-on for all of its solutions, the system makes it easy for employees to find information and the solution’s training tools are at their fingertips if they need help. In addition, if an employee moves to a different store, their human capital management (HCM) experience remains the same.”
Roche said that UKG Pro’s UX includes mobile access. The majority of the company’s workforce is store employees, who access UKG Pro at both in-store kiosks as well as their phones on the go.
“Our business operates in a cyclical, fluid environment, and we needed an HCM solution that would allow us to make changes without cost, such as moving employees from one location to another,” said Roche. “Now, we can reassign employees with a few clicks, and the solution automatically moves all their direct reports as well. Everything works seamlessly.”
“Convenience-store retailers contend with unique logistical challenges such as 24-hour staffing, turnover, employee absence, and compliance with food safety, fuel safety, tobacco sales and other federal regulations. Multiply those challenges across a large, regional network of stores and it’s no wonder that many of these tasks that used to be managed by hand at the store-level are now automated across convenience chains,” said Greg Swick, chief revenue officer at UKG.
As a global provider of HCM, payroll, HR service delivery and workforce management solutions, UKG delivers products to help organizations across geographies and in every industry. UKG has dual headquarters in Lowell, Mass., and Weston, Fla., and more than 12,000 employees around the globe.
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