Whitaker Construction Reduced Turnover by 54% with BambooHR

Facing outdated, paper-based HR processes and high attrition, this 500+ employee construction company used BambooHR to improve retention and scale its workforce.

“Our turnover was 68% and this year we’re going to be at about 31%. Technology such as BambooHR has aided in this significant reduction.”

- Ryan Vaughn, VP of Human Resources at Whitaker Construction

By the Numbers

  • 54% reduction in overall turnover
  • 58% reduction in early-stage turnover
  • 50% net employee growth in 3 years

Challenges

THIRTY YEARS BEHIND: “Most construction companies are heavily paper-based, and we were no exception. We had boxes and boxes of files. My first reaction after auditing the state of our processes was, ‘What have we done? We’re 30 years behind where we should be.’ We didn’t just need an HR system, but a platform that could help us build a real human capital strategy.”

DATA BOTTLENECKS EVERYWHERE: “When employees wanted to make an address change, they had to come into the office or hand a piece of paper to their foreman to bring to us, which meant it usually ended up sitting on their dashboard for two months. Or we would text back and forth, but even that wasn’t very efficient.”

HR-LESS TECH STACK: “ERP systems will try to tell you that they’re HR systems, but they’re just not. We used an ERP that tried to sell us on customization, but over 20 years, you can imagine what happens in customization—you create this little monster, and nothing talks to it. Because of that, I knew we needed an actual HRIS.”
Compliance gaps with real consequences
“We were losing EEO and unemployment claims because we just didn’t have any documentation when I first started.”

DISCONNECTED BY DISTANCE: “We're a remote company and 80% of our employees are spread out. We have people spread from Washington, Oregon, Nevada, and multiple locations across Utah. We were just losing that human connectivity. We needed some technology, something to connect humans to the business. One of my very first initiatives was to figure out what kind of HR system would make sense for our company to connect.”

The Solution

THE PLATFORM THAT ANCHORS EVERYTHING: “We use BambooHR as our true north on the human capital side. We still have an ERP, but it handles only the essentials, like payroll, org structure, and rates. We narrow it down as much as we possibly can so that we can keep BambooHR as our mainstay. All the data integrity relative to employee files, any kind of performance management, benefits, and more is going through BambooHR. It’s cleaner, easier to use, and aesthetically better.”

FROM GUT FEELINGS TO REAL FACTS: “Reporting is used pretty heavily now in the business, especially over the last year and a half as it has been adopted by and become a mainstay for our Accounting department, HR, and all the executives. Prior to BambooHR, finding data was so much more difficult, but BambooHR makes it so simple.”

EARLY ATTRITION, CRUSHED: “The visibility of the data has definitely assisted us in our endeavors to decrease turnover rates. We were losing a lot of people in the zero to six month range. We started making that very visible. I put it on our company scorecards and we reviewed it in our weekly executive meetings. That turnover went from 2% to 0.84%. And that’s a direct correlation to the visibility of the metrics in front of us.”

A TURNOVER BREAKTHROUGH: “Four years ago, our overall turnover was 68%, which sounds like a lot, but the industry standard is probably around 55–60%. This year, we’re going to be at about 31%.”

PERFORMANCE FEEDBACK THAT FUELS GROWTH: “We do quarterly performance assessments and give feedback through BambooHR and it’s very well received. It gets utilized quite a bit in our business. It’s pieces like this, in addition to data and reporting, that really help contribute to our growing headcount and decreasing turnover rates.”

TECH THAT BRINGS PEOPLE TOGETHER: “BambooHR made a big difference in our internal connection. Employees are empowered by using self-service tools, and overall it helps with our connectivity to managers and supervisors.”

DATA-POWERED PAY DECISIONS: “We’re loving BambooHR® Compensation Management right now. We’re creating wage grades and salary bands—things we should’ve been doing all this time. It’s so easy to access and use the data.”

About Whitaker Construction

Whitaker Construction Company is a heavy civil contractor specializing in underground utility infrastructure. Founded in 1953 and based in Brigham City, Utah, Whitaker delivers essential water, sewer, and natural gas projects across the Intermountain West with a focus on safety, quality, and long-standing community partnerships.

Industry

Construction

Location

United States

Number of Employees

501–1,000

Solutions

Data and Reporting, Performance Management, Compensation, Compliance

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