Customer Story: Westrock
10X more candidates and better insights lead to 82% retention
STAFFING NEEDS
50,000+ team members spread out across 320 locations
Retention focus on new hires in production positions
Focus roles include Machine Operators & General Labor
THE WORKSTEP IMPACT
82% retention on placements made
3 actions taken from workforce feedback in first month
10+ direct hires placed per month in each pilot facility
“These [new initiatives] just weren’t happening before we had this type of employee engagement.”
Daniel Pugh, Talent Acquisition Manager
A paper & packaging leader
WestRock manufactures and sells paper and packaging solutions for the consumer and corrugated markets. The company is now the nation’s second-largest packaging company, with sales of $16.3 billion and 300+ facilities in America, Europe and the Asia-Pacific region.
Engaging with WorkStep
Historically, WestRock’s HR team had been reliant on temp staffing for a majority of their production positions. Not only was this expensive, but it also made it harder to keep a finger on the pulse of workforce sentiment, which led to high turnover and a staffing deficit that seemed impossible to close.
WorkStep engaged with Westrock’s talent leadership team to understand current staffing shortages, workforce engagement tactics, and hiring and retention processes. Together, a strategy was initially created to hire dozens of new high-retention employees per month, as well as generate actionable insights via new hire feedback.
WorkStep was able to provide qualified candidates daily that had previous production experience with stable work history, resulting in a continual reduction in WestRock’s need for temp agencies. The automation of intelligent applicant screening and self-scheduled interviews led to less time investment and overhead than any of their previous solutions.
Additionally, within a month of starting the partnership, the WorkStep Retain platform had unlocked a few crucial insights for the WestRock HR team. The first of which quickly led a facility team to expand the employee parking lot, as a result of collective feedback over parking challenges. Additionally, there were actions generated regarding bathroom improvements and break time scheduling. These had an immediate improvement in worker sentiment and reduced the attrition risk.
Future plans
Now that the partnership between the two companies has proven scalable success in multiple markets, there is a joint effort cross-functionally amongst Talent Acquisition and Human Resources to deploy WorkStep nationwide to challenged facilities.
