Washington-based PAC Worldwide implemented the Beekeeper communication and collaboration solution to improve internal communications with production floor employees.
When global manufacturer PAC Worldwide asked its employees what would help boost their on-the-job experience, improving company-wide communications surfaced as the most popular request.
Founded in 1975, Redmond, Washington-based PAC Worldwide is a leader and innovator in developing and manufacturing durable, premium packaging solutions. The company produces protective mailers and specialty packaging for the courier, e-commerce, fulfillment, and distribution markets.
PAC’s team members, totaling 1,200 employees, are split among seven locations across the United States, Mexico and Malaysia. “Eighty-five percent of the global workforce do their jobs on the manufacturing floor or are otherwise untethered from technology, so few have access to desktop computers at work,” explains Diane Toomey, PAC’s chief people officer. With that, the company sought out a “mobile-first” solution.
As an ADP Workforce Now® client for nine years, PAC Worldwide is no stranger to ADP Marketplace, leveraging it to find and purchase tools for applicant tracking, compliance and more.
According to Toomey, the team evaluated three solution providers. In the end, Beekeeper, a communications platform for frontline workers, emerged as the clear choice, with the implementation completed in March 2021.
Beekeeper offers a secure, cloud-based tool that can be used to deploy timely, group-specific communications to workers. The goal is to effectively reach employees while on a shift or job site through real-time messaging and targeted message streams.
Toomey can now push out content, like documents, messages and more, to workers’ mobile phones.
“Mobile technology is so ubiquitous when compared to laptops or desktop PCs,” she says.
According to Toomey, choosing Beekeeper was a perfect strategy for her team and easy to implement from ADP Marketplace. It’s not the first time she’s used the storefront to simplify HR processes.
“With ADP Marketplace, I do a lot of exploring on my own to find solutions that can help me improve our HR processes. I simply clicked on an icon from within the ADP dashboard to access ADP Marketplace and find what I need. I also consulted with my ADP sales rep for more information and moved forward from there,” she says.
So far, PAC has turned to ADP Marketplace to source apps including Beekeeper, ClearCompany for applicant tracking, ADP Time Kiosk, OrgChart Now, LifeMart and ADP SmartCompliance®.
“Judging by the ways we take advantage of its products and services, it’s clear that I love ADP Marketplace,” Toomey says. “I’m constantly looking for what’s new and potentially useful. ClearCompany was the first app we used, three years ago, and it took off from there. We now have six solutions, including Beekeeper, that we found and bought through ADP Marketplace that connects to my ADP platform.”
PAC Worldwide doesn’t rely on a single channel for communicating with its manufacturing workforce; it still holds regular onsite meetings and other forms of in-person communication. But adding Beekeeper has clearly bolstered overall communication, Toomey says, adding that 78 percent of the workforce has activated Beekeeper and 63 percent are active users.
Also, more employees are realizing that posting pictures at company events and having fun on Beekeeper is a possibility, “and they don’t want to miss out,” she says.
Toomey explains that from a strategic point of view, she also uses Beekeeper to disseminate mission-critical-type communications. For example, the company has had a few plant closures for weather-related events, and it used Beekeeper to update employees.
“Getting started was very simple,” Toomey says. “Beekeeper has been great from implementation to launch; there have been no issues with receiving high-level support.”
For her part, she finds it easy to use.
“In my role, I do a lot of postings around benefits enrollment and other HR-related programs,” Toomey says. “It’s also an effective option for employees who want to learn more.” They can get information via Beekeeper for optimizing their 401(k) investment strategies, for example.
In addition, Beekeeper’s flexibility allows the company to tailor messages via a single app. For example, while the company has communication streams that go out worldwide, it can segment information for a specific location, touching different employee groups in different ways.
Finally, when it comes to internal cost savings, having Beekeeper to push out news to employees via mobile keeps the workforce on the manufacturing floor without as many breaks for meetings or other interruptions — all they need to do is check the app on their phones.
From an end-user perspective, Beekeeper offers a familiar social-media-like interface, so Toomey says there have been no complaints from employees about usability. “I would recommend it, definitely,” she says.
“If we turned it off tomorrow, my guess is we’d hear about it,” she says, adding that, along those lines, she tries to keep the content as fresh and interesting as possible.
“In the end, choosing Beekeeper came down to a combination of service, cost and employee acceptance,” Toomey says. “It is the best value out there.”
Company: PAC Worldwide
- Headquarters: Redmond, Washington
- Industry: Manufacturing
- Employees: 1,200
- ADP Marketplace partner: Beekeeper
About Beekeeper
Beekeeper is a communication and collaboration solution designed for frontline employees, making internal communications more accessible, powerful, and engaging with a mobile-first platform. Drive productivity by digitizing manual workflows and paper processes. Transform the employee experience and help your workforce connect to each other, and to the information they need.
Learn more about Beekeeper’s integration with ADP.
About ADP Marketplace
ADP Marketplace is a digital HR storefront that enables you to connect and share data across all your HR solutions. Simplify your HR processes, reduce data errors and drive your business forward with easy-to-use apps that integrate with your core ADP platform.
Learn more at apps.adp.com.
This article originally appeared on SPARK powered by ADP.
