By the Numbers
- Onboarded on avg. 30 new hires per month in 2024
- Experienced 126% growth in 5 years
- Roughly $70k a year in time-savings on reporting alone
The Challenge
29 YEARS OF SPREADSHEETS AND PAPER FILES: “I’ve been with Rycon for six years and started out as a complete one-woman show. There was no HRIS. Everything was paper and spreadsheets and all the things I despise. I wanted to evaluate how we were doing things and get to know Rycon as a company—what was driving the culture and the values—before I looked for an HRIS that would fit well and be able to grow and scale with us over time. I now have an HR team of five, and I don’t think we would have come as far as we have had I not found BambooHR.”
ARCHAIC ONBOARDING PROCESSES AND PAPERWORK: “When I started at Rycon, I came into a beautiful, modern-looking building and then got handed a stack of papers—photocopies of photocopies of paperwork, and I had to write my name a million times. It was worse than closing on a mortgage. That was the one thing that I wanted to change immediately. Plus, having offices all over the place, and being the size we are, it’s necessary to do everything electronically.”
STRUGGLE FINDING SKILLED WORKERS: “It’s very competitive. You don’t want to overpay, but you want quality applicants. It’s a balancing act. We want to hire people for careers not just for a job, but some of our competitors aren’t like that. That’s definitely been the biggest struggle. On top of that, it’s finding competent field staff—not only superintendents to run jobs, but there’s such a shortage of skilled craftsmen and laborers. We have to have that, and give them good jobs with solid benefits and solid pay. Hopefully, we’re starting to have a more positive impact in that arena.”
ADDRESSING THE PERFORMANCE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM: “BambooHR has helped tremendously just from a performance management standpoint. Before, nobody was addressing the elephant in the room—the lack of performance from some people. It was a struggle knowing how to document that and show it over time, so we can make appropriate choices and have the best people who are all focused on the same end goal. BambooHR has definitely been helping move that needle in the right direction.”
AN INDUSTRY SET IN ITS WAYS: “A fear of change runs rampant in this industry. You get a lot of pushback and a lot of ‘This is the way we’ve always done it.’ I hate those words. I’m not about change just for the sake of change—it needs to make sense and it needs to be strategic—but I also believe you can’t get to the next level unless you adapt. Some people really appreciate it, some people don’t, but I’m a ‘We’re gonna adapt or we’re gonna cease to exist’ kind of person.”
The Solution
OVER $70K A YEAR IN SAVINGS: “I don’t even know if I can estimate how much time BambooHR has saved by allowing us to track and easily access not only pre-built reports, but also create custom reports. If I had to throw a rough number out there, it would be equivalent to a full-time employee costing Rycon $70k/year in salary and benefits. I’m sure if I actually did an in-depth analysis, it would be higher.”
SCALING AT PACE WITH COMPANY GROWTH: “When we started with BambooHR in the Fall of 2019, we had about 420 employees. We’re now sitting at 953 in 2024. We also only had four office locations at that time and now we have nine total. I can say without hesitation that I would not have been able to successfully help Rycon scale to that size without the tools I have at my fingertips in BambooHR.”
STREAMLINED MULTILOCATION ONBOARDING: “We have onboarding set up specific to location. Obviously, the forms that are required in Pennsylvania are different than the forms required in Ohio and Georgia, for example. So I have the packets divided out by job location as to what forms we need completed before their first day.”
CONVENIENT PRE-BOARDING AND E-SIGNATURES: “In the spring into the summer, there’s times we have 9 or 10 people starting on a Monday, and I want them coming in on their first day not to fill out all the forms, but to jump right in and get going. We do a little crash course of all the important things in BambooHR—how to submit a time off request, view their own info, etc. Then the rest of their time is scheduled for trainings. We do check-ins with new hires after they onboard and the one consistent piece of feedback is they love taking care of paperwork ahead of time. I have people that can do it entirely from their phone. They love being able to walk in on their first day and everything is just very easy. It makes a good first impression.”
ABILITY TO BE PROACTIVE IN LANDING TOP TALENT: “The thing I love the most is in the ATS—the fact I can see if somebody has opened an email that was sent, including the offer letter. If they never open it, it may mean it went to spam and they haven’t seen it, but I can also see when they last looked at it and how many times they’ve looked at it. It’s so telling if they’ve looked at it and it’s been two days but they still haven’t accepted. That suggests there’s some doubts there. My team, or the hiring manager, can be proactive and reach out, and in a lot of cases, it has made the difference in us landing a candidate we really want.”
INSTRUMENTAL VISIBILITY INTO EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT: “My second favorite thing is the double-blind assessments and reporting in Performance Management. I just shared the reporting with all my managers so they could see who all the high-value, highly engaged employees are, and that’s been eye-opening for them. It’s becoming very apparent who communicates well with their staff and who doesn't, and who are able to stay on the same page. It’s been very helpful for them to do some of their own self-reflection on where there’s a communication breakdown happening. And it’s been helpful for myself and other executive management to have that visibility, as well. I think it’s going to be instrumental in us moving forward into the next phase of our growth.”
THE EASE OF CUSTOMIZATION AND ACCESS LEVELS: “BambooHR makes my life easier by allowing the level of customization that’s needed for our various business departments. The fact that I have so many different ways to customize what managers, supervisors, or team leads can see or have access to has really been impactful here—being able to keep everybody happy and moving forward and not just trying to pigeonhole everybody and their needs into a one-size-fits-all kind of scenario.”
LIFE-CHANGING DATA, REPORTING, AND COMPLIANCE EFFICIENCY: “It was life-changing for me early on just having everybody’s data housed in one place, and being able to spit out reports. For example, we can send out a summary annual report for our 401(k) or our ESOP, and we can have people initial it digitally and see who’s still outstanding, and have documented proof that we did provide this information. I can’t even imagine not having that, and going back to what we were doing before. So many companies struggle with that.”
