SunOpta delivers better-for-you beverages, broths, and snacks with an engaged workforce

Living a healthy life filled with delicious food and drink is on everyone’s mind these days. But how often do we think about where our favorite products come from? Enter SunOpta. Delivering customized supply chain solutions that fuel and sustain our customers' success is SunOpta’s mission as a leading manufacturer of beverages, broths and better-for-you snacks, employing over 1,200 employees across 8 locations in the U.S. and Canada. 

At SunOpta, employees are empowered to bring well-being to life by providing the world with better nutrition. The dedicated team is committed to creating top-quality products while upholding industry-leading food safety, quality and manufacturing standards. Together, they’re making a positive impact on the food and beverage industry. This aligns with SunOpta’s commitment to providing a world-class employee experience. 

Making a healthy choice with a single system 

Historically, SunOpta’s people processes were manual and time-consuming, often leading to mistakes and taking time away from focusing on what matters.  

“Before Dayforce, we had four timekeeping systems due to acquisitions. We utilized a separate HRIS system for recruiting and HR, and we were on the legacy Dayforce payroll platform. So, multiple systems were partially integrated via interfaces and imports, and what did not come over via an interface was manually entered in these multiple systems, by multiple people,” says Lisa Wirth, Payroll and HRIS Director at SunOpta.  

SunOpta fully migrated to Dayforce^TM in 2019. Wirth’s team is responsible for implementing and overseeing SunOpta’s Dayforce use and managing payroll in the U.S. and Canada. 

“We already had a great relationship with Dayforce, and we felt confident they could carry over our historical data with simplicity and accuracy,” reflects Wirth.   

Now, Dayforce is SunOpta’s single source of truth for its people operations. SunOpta uses Dayforce Payroll, HR, Benefits, Workforce Management, Recruiting, Onboarding, Performance, Compensation, People Analytics, Dayforce Wallet, Experience Hub, and the Dayforce mobile app. 

Wirth notes the benefit of having all capabilities in a single system with Dayforce — they no longer need to use any other platforms, ultimately streamlining their people processes. “We can tailor Dayforce to meet SunOpta’s specific needs. Since all modules are housed on the same platform, the modules interact seamlessly, which allows us to utilize real-time efficiencies.” 

The benefits of streamlining pay and time  

SunOpta’s payroll is run biweekly for the U.S. and Canada, and before Dayforce, time approval and payroll processing were very manual, time-consuming, and complex. Wirth’s team was also responsible for entering and auditing all data entry into multiple systems. 

“Before Dayforce, we had a team enter all those hires and terminations manually in the legacy system. It was a ton of work,” shares Wirth. “Automation with Dayforce streamlined our processes. I was able to reduce head count in my department from seven full-time and two part-time employees to four employees total.” 

She also shares that while payroll processing still takes two days, her staff can now focus on auditing and balancing accurately instead of the more manual data entry tasks, which are now automated. “Dayforce pay policies help us ensure we're adhering to complex labor laws such as FLSA and California FLSA overtime. The recalculation process goes quickly. It takes a couple of minutes vs. waiting 15 to 20 minutes,” says Wirth. 

Within SunOpta’s expanded use of Dayforce, Wirth and team were able to customize most of their new hire, termination, change forms, and route approvals through a defined workflow. Given that SunOpta is a public company, this replaced the manual controls the organization had in place to help maintain SOX compliance. Before, when it came to processing things such as new hires, terminations, and rate changes, HR initiated the change form on paper, got physical signatures from managers, scanned it, and emailed it to the payroll team, ultimately being a very time-consuming method. With Dayforce, it is now a simplified, streamlined process. 

Dayforce Wallet has also been a major perk for SunOpta from a recruiting and retention perspective.  Wirth says, “Dayforce Wallet has been a game changer for our organization for multiple reasons. We eliminated printing paper checks in the office, being more sustainable. Employees have access to their wages daily. We can issue final pay and other payments instantly. So, it's been very rewarding for us.” 

Managing and engaging a complex workforce 

Workforce complexity is quickly growing, and no organization is immune – SunOpta understands this better than most. As a multi-state, multi-country workforce with more than 1,200 employees, there are a variety of complicated compliance considerations.  

With several different types of manufacturing facilities, SunOpta has many departments and work assignments. Wirth also shares that several states are introducing their own personal time-off rules, including complex mandates around sick time, leaves of absence, long-term care insurance, and beyond. SunOpta must stay up to date on payroll regulations from state to state – including overtime, missed meal premiums, double time, holidays, and more.  

“Labor and state tax laws change constantly, and we must keep abreast to comply with these complex rules,” says Wirth. “Dayforce helps us stay on top of the growing and ever-changing complexities of running a multi-state and multi-country organization by keeping us informed and designing the system to help us adhere to the rules.” 

Wirth also emphasizes the importance of training and communication to stay one step ahead of workforce and compliance complexity. “Ultimately, it's costly if we don't adhere to these rules. Our main priority is making sure our employees are paid accurately, without delay,” says Wirth. “Employees are SunOpta's most valuable resource. Being on top of compliance complexities is not only important from a regulatory perspective, but also from a retention and an employee experience perspective.” 

Along with its always-on payroll calculations, Dayforce helps support compliance and enhances SunOpta’s people operations. 

Nourishing a growing partnership  

Wirth notes that SunOpta’s partnership with Dayforce continues to grow and evolve, which benefits both organizations: “I feel we have a great relationship with Dayforce – we have the ability to enhance our skills through the training in the education center, if we have issues, we can log cases in the customer support portal and they resolve our cases promptly, and we are active users within the Dayforce community.” 

Wirth shares that Dayforce has made an impact for employees, improving access to information through the platforms user-friendly functionality. For Wirth and team, Dayforce has automated almost every aspect of how SunOpta manages employees. With Dayforce, they have been able to control labor costs, deliver accurate and timely pay, improve recruiting, and standardize onboarding processes. And – Dayforce Wallet has been a useful tool for attracting and retaining employees by offering them financial flexibility with access to their wages on-demand.  

“Dayforce is a competitive platform that continues to be enhanced by constantly adding new, innovative features. We feel Dayforce listens to their customers’ voices and accommodates us by modifying the platform to meet our needs. Dayforce continues to grow and evolve, and each change allows us to streamline and automate more of our processes.”