In the U.S., people with disabilities experience a much higher unemployment rate than the general population. In 2019 only 19.3 percent of those with disabilities were employed, compared to 66.3 percent without disabilities.1 Skookum, a national leader in hiring veterans and people with disabilities, focuses on reversing that trend.
Workday helps us do a really good job of matching the disability to the job function, so our employees shine, and we surpass the customer’s expectations.
Chief Information Officer and Vice President of Business Systems
A need for hard and soft data.
Based in Bremerton, Washington, Skookum uses hard data and real-world experience to create meaningful opportunities for its employees by delivering quality products and services for its commercial and government customers. Its services include everything from fleet management, warehousing, groundskeeping, food handling, and facilities maintenance to managing active military runways.
Each employee is carefully matched to the job opportunity to optimize their skillset and maximize the value provided to each customer. In the past, it was difficult for Skookum site managers to access data about employees’ challenges, which made it more challenging to align employees to job functions safely and efficiently.
Skookum wanted a unified, real-time view of all aspects of its organization to manage employees and projects better and to maintain transparency with customers.
Empowering employees and managers.
Workday helps provide an integrated, detailed, and unified view across Finance and HR, allowing Skookum to manage its business better. One example is a balanced metric project scorecard that produces a comprehensive view of projects, people, and processes that changes over time as Skookum continues to evolve.
Workday provides the necessary data to ensure the best match between employees’ skills and abilities, and the available jobs. “A majority of our employees have a disability of some kind, and Workday helps us do a really good job of matching the disability to the job function, so our employees shine as we surpass the customer’s expectations,” says Rob Potter, chief information officer and vice president of Business Systems.
Skookum site managers also use Workday to address challenges that individuals may face in specific situations. Many times, before a problem arises, Skookum is able to recognize the opportunity and quickly engage a vocational staff team member to help individuals manage the situation and safely continue their work.
Increased support of total headcount without increasing support staff
Saved hundreds of thousands of dollars in time-tracking costs
Letting data tell the story.
Skookum operations and finance staff use Workday to gain insight into expenses and revenue. Workday integrates with Skookum’s existing enterprise asset management system, so every transaction is reportable, and necessary supporting documents are retrievable, allowing full transparency. Workday’s real-time data allows Skookum to analyze efficiencies and actual costs to create more competitive bids and gain an edge on its competition.
Managers can see down to the hour what they are spending on labor for each project and share the results with customers. “Proper accounting for time is huge for us,” says Potter. “The visibility into our sites and projects, from top to bottom, was the primary reason we chose to go to the Workday Financial Management module and tie it in with the Human Capital Management (HCM) side.”
Expanding opportunities.
The ability to track both internal and external promotions within Workday, along with skills and disabilities, makes it much easier for Skookum to match employees to open positions. This helps it determine where to promote from within, identify skills gaps, and suggest additional training to help employees move to the next level.
A unified view of the business.
Skookum uses customized dashboard views across multiple Workday applications to better manage its business. “Part of our secret sauce is our balanced metric scorecard that measures several unique parameters across our contracts and ties them together so we can see them in context,” says Potter. “We’ve seen tremendous efficiencies through technology, which we have passed on to our customers as savings. The customer can see that our true costs are indeed very true because we can go down to the receipt level within Workday.”
Getting a handle on costs.
Using Workday has allowed Skookum to scale and support more contract employees with the same support staff. “We use Workday to drive efficiencies into our business and give our employees every tool possible to successfully deliver a great, cost-effective product,” says Potter.
Time-tracking in Workday has also significantly reduced labor costs. “Roughly 80 to 85% of project-related expenses are labor, so getting a tight handle on that is a big win,” says Potter. “Now with Workday we have visibility down to the hour of what we’re spending on labor at each of our sites.”
All of that contributes to reducing the ratio of sales, general, and administration (SG&A) spends to revenue by deploying Workday.
Meaningful work.
Over 75 percent of Skookum employees have a disability, and 33 percent are veterans. By matching employees to jobs that demonstrate their ability to succeed, Skookum provides them with financial and emotional paychecks. “Our goal is to make each employee more hirable or promotable, so they can compete for better-paying opportunities.” says Potter. “But we also want them to feel they are contributing something meaningful.”