Building the Twin Cities With Best HR Practices

A Twin Cities federal contractor, Metropolitan Mechanical Contractors wanted a better way to recruit and track performance for its steadily growing workforce. They chose Arcoro. Here’s their story.

When Metropolitan Mechanical Contractors (MMC) was founded in 1963, the Twin Cities-based federal contractor could only dream about completing major projects like the Mall of America and Target Field—but that’s exactly what they did. MMC’s passion for designing, building and servicing complex mechanical systems has led them to work on a collective 300,000 projects to date.

With MMC’s prestigious accolades and ever-growing project load, Manager of Talent Management Jim Lee knew there had to be a better way to set his workforce up for success for years to come. Lee joined MMC in 2016. At the time, vital functions like recruiting and performance management were conducted via paper documents and Excel spreadsheets.

Sick of spreadsheets

“There was no good way to pull data together without a lot of wasted time spent,” said Lee. While many of their 350 employees come from the local union hall, MMC hires ten to 15 full-time employees per year. Their steady growth inspired Lee to find a recruiting solution to attract employees and a performance management system to develop and retain them.

Goals

• Ease OFCCP compliance
• Track employee performance year-to-year
• Reduce manual processes
• Simplify collection of audit documents

Results

• Centralized hiring activities and data
• More, better qualified candidates
• Performance trends identified
• Responsive training programs
• Quick production of audit reports

Modules Used

Applicant Tracking System

Succession Planning

Learning Management System

“We evaluated three to four companies and Arcoro was most easily configured to meet our needs. It isn’t an enterprise system trying to serve small companies. It allows smaller companies to scale up so that it fits our needs as we grow,” said Lee.

In an effort to increase efficiency, Lee and his team knew whatever system they decided on needed to be straightforward. Rather than spinning their wheels trying to learn it, he wanted his employees putting good, accurate data into an easy-to-use system.

OFCCP requirements fulfilled at last

As a federal contractor, MMC needs to check every box when it comes to Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) regulations.
Previously MMC’s controller would begin collecting year-end audit documents about a month before the new year. There was excessive back-and-forth to gather the correct information, and many times hiring managers couldn’t remember details about hiring decisions from months back. The process took about 20 hours over a month’s time to pull all the data together.

“It slowed down our audit process and took a lot more time than it needed to,” said Lee. After implementing Arcoro, MMC’s controller now spends 30 minutes collecting audit-related materials each year and can devote more time to improving strategic processes.

“Arcoro has been a great system for us. It’s done everything
we wanted it to do and it’s easy for our entire staff to learn and use.”

- Jim Lee, MMC Contractors

Perfecting performance management

Conducting performance evaluations on Excel spreadsheets didn’t allow Lee to track improvement from previous evaluations or review overall trends.

“Arcoro’s Performance Management has helped us identify high-level trends. This is extremely important for developing strategic training programs in the areas our employees may fall a little short on.”

Another win for Lee is the ease of use within the performance management system. After three years of using Arcoro Performance Management, employees now teach each other to use the system. He’s only had to reset a handful of passwords and beyond that, hasn’t had questions or problems with his staff using Arcoro.

Responsive support

Lee and his team are impressed with the support they receive from Arcoro.

“Everyone on the Arcoro team has been great to work with and fast at resolving issues if they arise,” said Lee. “Support is a definite plus, but to me it’s an even bigger plus that we don’t need to use the support team often. We rarely have questions that can’t be solved intuitively or in the Customer Community.”

You're In Good Company with Arcoro