Land O’Lakes’ previous, on-premise payroll platform made payroll processing extremely difficult. All new hire and termination paperwork was manually entered. Compliance was a pain point, too.
For example, the payroll team used to do paper entry of all W4 and direct-deposit data, plus any bonus and garnishment information. Manual processing of compliance audits was time-consuming and error-prone.
Before Workday, we used manual paper entry for W4, direct-deposit information, and bonuses.
Payroll and Compliance Manager
A global payroll platform with strong support.
A global company doing business in 50 countries, Land O’Lakes found cloud-based Workday HCM and its Payroll Management module to be the ideal successor to its outdated, on-premise payroll system. It eliminated most manual operations, either by automating them, especially audits, or shifting them to an employee self-service portal. Examples of the latter include entry of W4 and direct-deposit information. Managers use the portal to make employee bonus payments.
The new Workday payroll platform provides consistent regulatory updates to help ensure the company’s compliance worldwide. Workday Community, an organization of other Workday users, strongly appealed to Land O’Lakes because it offers a potent network of experience and expertise as well as substantial training and support. As an active participant, Land O’Lakes can learn from others how to get the most from its new payroll platform.
Streamlines payroll processing.
Workday Payroll enabled Land O’Lakes’ payroll team to automate much of the payroll process, eliminating manual calculations and freeing the team’s time. “Year-end once was a nightmare. With Workday, we’ve turned it into a complete non-event,” Payroll and Compliance Manager John Gardner says.
In fact, his team boosted payroll accuracy to more than 99.9 percent, while decreasing off-cycle payments by 50 percent or more. The Workday platform also improved payroll data visibility with dashboards populated in real time, enhancing collaboration with other business units. In addition, the company dramatically reduced its use of paper with Workday, saving the environment, time, and errors.
Year-end once was a nightmare. With Workday, we’ve turned it into a complete non-event.
Payroll and Compliance Manager
Automates compliance audits.
Smart Audits reduces the number of audits that Land O’Lakes needs to run for review. Regulatory compliance is also better supported in Workday, helping the company proactively deal with the latest global payroll rules and regulations.
The Workday team of dedicated experts are continuously monitoring and researching legislative updates, which are pushed out to all customers at once since everyone is on the same version of Workday. For example, in one year of operation, Workday delivered 510 U.S. compliance and regulatory updates—averaging nearly two each working day.
These frequent updates help Land O’Lakes stay ahead of global compliance. This way, the company can avoid mistakes in payroll auditing and accounting that could otherwise lead to non-compliance with regulations such as the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), which governs minimum wage, overtime, and other payroll issues.
We’ve run 100% remotely during the pandemic via Workday and couldn’t have done so with an on-premise solution.
Payroll and Compliance Manager
Supports secure remote access.
From the start of pandemic-driven work-from-home mandates, the Land O’Lakes payroll team could run payroll remotely and without a hitch using its cloud-based Workday solutions. Workday gives team members highly secure and anytime, anywhere access to all the payroll data needed to ensure paychecks and auto-deposits happen on time. According to Gardner, this capability was impossible with the company’s previous on-premise system.