The Minnesota Timberwolves and Lynx bring their A-game

Crunch and Prowl are fitting mascots for the Minnesota Timberwolves and Lynx. Spirited and playful with a knack for athletic half-time dunks, they lead a pack that’s every bit as animated – be they players, staff, or fans. Energy, personality, and a healthy sense of competition drive these NBA and WNBA teams. They’ve just had their best season in 20 years – and the fan experience means everything to them.

Working for the Minnesota Timberwolves and Lynx isn’t a regular 9-5. The team has around 650 full-time and part-time staff, 40% of whom are office-based and salaried. Others are paid hourly – working evenings and weekends. They’re in the arena – bringing game nights to life, showing fans a good time, and whipping up an atmosphere to remember. Back-office or courtside, what all staff share is a unique energy, a team-player mindset, and pride in being part of the Pack. “We’re very lucky to be surrounded by 650 great team members who are excited to be a part of what basketball can do to bring people together,” says Sianneh Mulbah, Chief People Officer.

Bringing Dayforce into the Pack

The Timberwolves and Lynx know that a fantastic fan experience relies on an equally fantastic employee experience, from recruiting and onboarding to retention and career growth. That means keeping 650 staff happy and engaged, while accommodating varying schedules and managing multi-state tax compliance. It’s no wonder technology plays a crucial role in supporting that experience. “From the moment employees walk through the door, to enhancing what we do in the arena, we rely on technology every single day,” explains Kayla Bellows, Director of HR.

The teams’ legacy HR and payroll systems, however, were holding back the Pack. “We were running multi-state payroll through spreadsheets using a dated system, and we needed to be more efficient,” explains Mulbah.

For an organization whose top HR goal was enhancing the employee lifecycle, it simply wasn’t winning.

Here's where the partnership with Dayforce comes into play. “The Dayforce platform is an extension of our pack by providing a hub for all of us to get consistent information, to know where we stand within the organization, and as leaders to keep a pulse on how our staff are feeling, their performance, and really keeping us going day to day,” says Mulbah.

The Timberwolves and Lynx welcomed Dayforce into the Pack in 2019, and together have been working to help streamline people operations and empower employees. “The Dayforce platform helps us make work life better by providing a one-stop shop for all our employees,” says Mulbah.

Fostering a winning employee experience

For the Timberwolves and Lynx, keeping employees engaged is every bit as important as winning games. Using the Dayforce platform to check in with new hires at 30, 60, and 90-day intervals helps ensure they are being set up for success and feel like part of the Pack from the get-go.

The Dayforce Experience Hub also provides a more accessible and engaging way to communicate with employees. “The Dayforce Experience Hub has been great for all our internal postings, such as upcoming reviews or open enrolment,” says Bellows. “We can now put that front and center on the Hub – and employees can apply directly through it. It’s been impactful in maintaining engagement.”

The team uses annual engagement surveys, giving employees the opportunity to share feedback and provide insights that enable leadership to make informed decisions. “We’re always thinking about our employees,” says Bellows. “We want them engaged, happy, and motivated so they can fully focus on their role.” 

And these efforts are working. The Team’s retention is high, with turnover rates in the last 12 months much lower than the industry average. One engagement survey question asks about whether employees are proud to work for the Timberwolves and Lynx. “The response to this question has always been high, around 99%,” says Bellows. “People are proud to work here.”

The Team also received employee feedback around staff ambition and development opportunities, leading to the establishment of the Timberwolves and Lynx Leadership Academy where managers can attend training on communication, emotional intelligence, and many other areas. “Since establishing the Academy I’ve seen growth in our people leaders,” says Bellows. “The next phase will be to look at how we’re developing our individual contributors to be the next generation of people leaders.”

A play to help simplify complexity

Being a professional sports team does come with unique complexities from a payroll perspective. Different states have their own tax codes and regulations, and since the Timberwolves and Lynx travel extensively for games, they must be paid according not only to when they’re working, but where they’re working. “If they're working in New York City, we have to tax them in New York City,” explains Bellows. “Plus, we have to pay different staff on different days of the month. With the Dayforce platform, it’s been really easy to schedule and attune payment so that everyone gets paid accurately and on time.”

Access to analytics has also been a significant development for the team, enabling them to pull data, run reports, and inform leadership in a way that Excel spreadsheets couldn’t do. “Analytics is huge,” says Bellows. “We’ve been able to use Dayforce data and reporting for a lot of our strategic decision making.” Most recently, the team used Dayforce Compensation to help ensure staff are being paid equitably compared to the market. “I’m able to dive into what the Dayforce platform has in the data and very easily extract information to ensure we’re paying people accordingly,” adds Bellows.

And Dayforce technology also supports the team’s highly mobile workforce to help make sure they don’t miss a beat. “We have employees we never see in the office because their job is to report directly to the arena,” explains Mulbah. “So having a system that allows people to clock in before they go to the court – wherever that happens to be – is essential.”  

Scoring measurable results across the board

The benefits the Team has realized by partnering with Dayforce have been wide reaching.

Using the Dayforce platform to capture and manage the entire recruitment journey from job posting to hire has accelerated talent acquisition by nearly 40%, with the time to fill reduced from 68 days to 42. “Previously we were very manual with our job postings, our candidate review process, and our interviews and selection,” says Mulbah. “Partnering with Dayforce has really provided us a more efficient process when it comes to shortening that time to fill.”

And throughout the employee lifecycle, the Dayforce platform has helped transform performance reviews from an optional task into an important development benchmark. Whereas historically performance reviews tended to go unsubmitted, now the opposite is true. “Over the last two years our performance review completion rate has skyrocketed to about 99% within our identified timeline,” says Mulbah. 

Dayforce technology has also enabled the Team to be more innovative in using data to improve the employee experience in unexpected ways. Bellows explains that they previously tracked staff t-shirt sizes for promotional days and team swag via an often-inaccurate spreadsheet managed by HR. Now, employees can update their own sizes through a form in the Dayforce platform, helping ensure everyone receives the correct fit and can look and feel their best as part of the Pack. Though a small change, it significantly enhances employee satisfaction by addressing a simple but impactful detail.

Keeping pace in an ever-changing game

In the fast-paced world of professional basketball, change is the only constant. From players, to seasons, to competition – it’s a dynamic landscape.

“You never know how change is going to impact your role,” reflects Bellows. “So, it's been great to have the Dayforce platform; it’s a consistent solution, it’s super-efficient, and we know that whatever else might be beyond our control – Dayforce technology will work.”

When the Pack thrives, everybody wins – making sure employees have what they need to support the players, so that the players can go out and create a winning fan experience – that is the top priority for the Minnesota Timberwolves and Lynx.