In 2018, Pride Restaurant Group Vice President and Owner Shane Hitzeman turned to isolved to decrease employment liability and improve compliance regardless of the ever-changing business environment – particularly with California's unique labor laws.
“After 30 years of managing payroll ourselves, we made the decision to outsource our California-based Panera payroll to isolved to reduce our exposure to paycheck compliance liability under California's complicated regulations,” said Hitzeman. “We gave it a year to evaluate the process and decide whether or not to expand isolved to our Burger King locations or go back to managing payroll in-house.
“Migrating to isolved for payroll was smooth, the pricing was fair, and we got access to some of the features we never had like online W2s and paystubs. We made the decision to bring our Burger Kings over to isolved as well. By running payroll on isolved, it freed up time for other tasks.”
With isolved not only did Pride Restaurant Group reduce its payroll processing time and rebalance employee workload, but it also freed up staff to take on new business.
“Thanks to isolved we now have the capacity to expand our bookkeeping services to more customers,” said Hitzeman.
Pride Restaurant Group primarily uses isolved for core HR like payroll and onboarding while the brands they work with manage the “softer” side of HR such as engagement.
Core HR functions have kept Pride Restaurant Group quite busy in the last year with the changes brought on by the pandemic but Hitzeman tells us that it wouldn't have been possible to adapt so quickly without isolved reporting.
“With the Paycheck Protection Program, the CARES Act and the Employee Retention Tax Credit, I don't know how I could have gotten the information needed without isolved,” said Hitzeman. “The level of detail in terms of compliance with the rules and the timeframes needing to be followed, I could not have done this manually without isolved's reporting tools.”
In addition to helping Pride Restaurant Group manage the new COVID-related regulations, isolved helped the company with changes to their workforce.
Staffing was more fluid for many fast-casual restaurants during the pandemic not only due to indoor dining restrictions but also team members' willingness to work.
isolved allowed Pride Restaurant Group to manage an employee's work status in the software without having to remove them from the platform. This meant re-onboarding was easier for both the employer and the employee.
A single system of record for payroll and onboarding has led Pride Restaurant Group to save 32 hours each month while reducing errors and increasing their payroll satisfaction.
“I wouldn't even know how to calculate the time isolved saved us on PPP, as I don't even think we could have done it without isolved,” said Hitzeman. “isolved gave us a highly sophisticated payroll tool that enterprises use – but for a company of my size.”