With its immersive, cinematic auditoriums, Cinemark puts moviegoers right in the action. But it’s the actions of employees who provide exceptional customer service that keep moviegoers coming back. “We focus on employee engagement and invest a lot of time and effort to grow careers,” says Stacie Sheil, HRIS director at Cinemark, one of the world’s largest and most influential theatrical exhibition companies. “Not only is that the right thing to do, but it also ensures our guests enjoy the best moviegoing experience available.”
To retain and hire the best talent across the U.S., Sheil wanted to streamline how Cinemark managed its high-volume recruitment efforts and seasonal workforce. “During a [theatre site visit], a general manager asked, ‘How can we hire people faster?’” Sheil says.
In search of ideas, Sheil started a group that included Workday retail customers, such as fast-food restaurants and coffee shops, with similar high-volume workforce challenges. One member in the group shared their approach of refreshing job requisitions quarterly. Cinemark now uses EIBs to quickly create refreshed job requisitions, un-post the prior job reqs, and maintain a healthy applicant flow. The team combined this with another initiative to integrate the reqs directly with Indeed Apply. These two projects, combined, increased the applicant pool by 88%, saved thousands of dollars in promoting jobs, and reduced the number of requisitions to be managed by a third. They also allowed the managers to perform 100% of the tasks on the mobile app and eliminated the need to create individual requisitions for rehires. “We couldn’t have done this if we didn’t have our operations unified on Workday. It lets us manage the sheer number of candidates, reqs, and hires we handle,” Sheil says. “The time we saved is significant.”
Efficient onboarding and compliance process.
Cinemark seamlessly onboards the thousands of workers it hires or rehires every year. The company wanted to meet new hires where they were: on their mobile devices. It wanted to ensure a modern user experience and an easy and efficient onboarding process. Employees can now even complete I-9 forms, which verify their identity and worker eligibility, from their phones using the Workday app.
"We are the first job for a lot of our employees. They don’t always understand all the paperwork that’s necessary to get started, so the more they can do from their phones, the faster we can get them hired and productive,” Sheil says.
Cinemark also keeps pace with new regulations and industry changes with Workday. “We’re in 42 states, and a lot of them are very particular about PTO laws and pay laws,” Sheil says. “We have absence, payroll, and benefits all in the system, which helps us manage compliance needs more efficiently.”
It’s tough to onboard people fast and manage all the compliance requirements. Workday speeds up that process.
HRIS Director
Higher engagement and retention.
Under the old process, employees who forgot their password or needed their MFA reset had to ask a manager to submit a request for HR administrators to process. Scheduling conflicts made this even more difficult. “The employees in the theatres work a completely different schedule than my team,” Sheil says. “When they need it reset, we’re not always available to do it quickly.”
Sheil turned to Cinemark’s industry-leading guest services team, which is available 24/7 and now also supports Cinemark employees. “We designed a new process that enables more efficient resolution. Employees can directly call guest services, who then submit a request within Workday that initiates an integration to reset the password and/or MFA immediately,” Sheil says. “This keeps our data protected, saves time, and provides a better user experience for theatre team members.” In a year, Cinemark’s guest services team processed over 1,500 password resets. The team shared this approach with the Workday networking group, who were excited to hear about the unique solution.
Our creating an automated password reset process with Workday has been a life-changer.
HRIS Director
What’s next for Cinemark.
Cinemark is exploring new functionalities and enhancements within Workday, such as time tracking and advanced reporting capabilities via Prism. “I’m also excited about the direction AI is heading and how we can leverage those capabilities within Workday,” Sheil says.
Cinemark wants to increase mobile usage, too. “Our mobile usage rate is already high. Each feature Workday adds makes it more convenient for our managers, who can then spend more time on the theatre floor with our guests and less time sitting at a desk,” Sheil says.
The networking group Sheil started, which has grown from five companies to 15, will continue to play an important role. “It’s valuable for us to sustain and grow our relationship with companies that have a similar high-volume workforce so we can find mutually beneficial solutions.”.