How Moncrief Construction Reduced Payroll Overhead With Criterion HCM

For more than 50 years, Moncrief Construction Limited has been a driving force in Northwestern Ontario’s construction industry. Founded in 1967 as a family-owned business, Moncrief has since grown into one of the region’s most diversified construction companies, taking on complex projects across powerline construction, aggregate production, heavy civil work, electrical services, and more.

Whatever they’re working on, Moncrief embraces new challenges — even when it means venturing into unfamiliar territory.

With a workforce that swells from 100 year-round employees to over 200 additional seasonal workers, Moncrief is always adapting to industry demands. But as the company expanded, their payroll and HR processes struggled to keep up with their large, fluctuating workforce.

By 2020, it was clear that Moncrief needed a more flexible HCM solution to support their continued growth. Criterion HCM provided the answer.

We spoke with Miranda Moncrief, Payroll/Human Resource Administrator at Moncrief Construction to learn how Criterion helped them increase efficiency in payroll and reporting, and gain better visibility into labor.

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Challenges

By 2021, Moncrief’s payroll system could no longer keep up with the demands of their growing workforce. At the time, Moncrief relied on physical timesheets — employees would fill them out by hand and mail them to a designated mailbox in Kenora. However, with job sites scattered across Northwestern Ontario, many employees were located far from the main office. To compensate, administrators had to manually enter timesheets into their payroll system.

This process worked when the company was smaller (before 2016), when Moncrief had around 100 employees at peak season. But as the company expanded, their workforce more than doubled. By 2021, Moncrief had 210 to 220 employees, which made the manual payroll process unmanageable.

“It was just taking up a lot of time, and there was a lot of room for timesheets to get missed and not entered correctly — a lot of manual error.”

With only one person processing timesheets, delays, missed records, and data entry mistakes were a regular occurrence.

Moncrief needed a better way to track hours, reduce manual work, and ensure payroll accuracy. They also wanted to shift more responsibility to employees, allowing them to enter their own time directly. To sustain their continued growth, they needed a modern solution with self-service features that could keep pace with their operations.

Solution

Moncrief Construction needed a faster, more accurate payroll solution — one that eliminated manual errors and made the process easier for both employees and administrators.

“We just outgrew that system, and we needed something a little more user-friendly with the capability of employees actually entering their own time.”

Criterion provided the solution. By implementing Criterion’s HR and Payroll modules, Moncrief gained a more efficient, automated system that eliminated the delays and errors caused by manual timesheets. Employees could now enter their own hours digitally — with Criterion’s desktop or mobile app.

With new processes in place, Moncrief’s payroll operations became more stable and scalable, positioning the company for continued growth.

Results

Since implementing Criterion, Moncrief has noted several improvements:

Faster Payroll – Less Processing Time

By switching to Criterion’s automated payroll system, Moncrief eliminated the need for physical timesheets altogether. As a result, they were able to reduce their workforce by an entire administrative position which was dedicated to entering timesheets by hand.

With employees entering their own time, supervisors could focus more energy on other tasks. Likewise, the payroll team no longer had to chase down missing data, saving time and significantly reducing payroll errors.

“It’s nice when the employees can enter their own time, and then it also prompts the supervisors to whoever's in charge of the project to either approve or reject the time sheets. From there, it’s pretty easy to carry everything over into the payroll and for me to process.”

Criterion also makes sure payroll data is more accurate from the start by holding managers and supervisors accountable for approving timesheets. This way, the team can fix errors before payroll processing begins, which reduces delays and corrections.

“I’m sure that’s saving the company a lot of money just by having that extra step that we didn't have before.”

With Criterion, Moncrief was able to scale their workforce without overwhelming their payroll team. Their payroll is now faster, smoother, and more cost-effective than ever before.

Easy Custom Reports

One of the biggest advantages Moncrief gained with Criterion was the ability to generate custom reports from any field in the database. Given the complexity of Canadian payroll regulations and Moncrief’s diverse workforce, this is a crucial feature.

“It's super easy to run all the reports. I’ve got really familiar with all the reports that it’s capable of producing.”

So far, they’ve used Criterion to generate reports related to:

• Vacation time banks
• Time-off tracking
• Overtime reports
• Labor cost allocation reports
• Expense reports
• And more

Moncrief also uses Criterion to generate easy-to-understand time and attendance reports for stakeholders who may not be as tech-savvy.

“The timesheet export is probably something that I use daily.”

Thanks to Criterion’s fast, customizable reporting, Moncrief can now access the data they need to manage labor, compliance, costs, and more.

Position History and Other HR Features

Moncrief also has access to an array of other core HR features that make it easier than ever to manage and engage their workforce.

“I use all the features, I think, in the HR module.”

One of the most valuable features in the HR module is Position History. For construction companies like Moncrief, wage adjustments for seasonal workers and contractors are common. Pay rates often shift based on market trends, project budgets, and experience levels. But keeping track of those changes manually can be a challenge — especially when rehiring employees for future projects.

“It’s nice being able to view the position history — we didn’t have that capability with the other program that we used.”

With Criterion’s Position History feature, Moncrief can now view previous employee pay rates. This makes it easier to determine appropriate compensation over time. Instead of relying on separate spreadsheets or outdated records, all the data is stored in one place — eliminating guesswork and data silos.

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Continued Support From Criterion

In times of change, Criterion has become more than just a software provider — we’ve become a long-term partner with Moncrief Construction. Even today, we are continually adapting the system to meet their needs.

Since they’ve started using Criterion, Moncrief’s feedback has played a key role in refining the software. When challenges arose, Criterion’s support team worked closely with Miranda and her team to find solutions and improve workflows.

“With the workflows … every little bump that we came across — there's been a good solution to probably 99 percent of the things that have come up.”

Whenever Moncrief contacts Criterion, they receive the support they need to make the software work for them.

Discover an HCM Optimized for Construction

With Criterion HCM, Moncrief Construction was able to streamline its payroll and reporting workflows to stay efficient during a major season of growth.

But this is just one story — many construction companies face the same growing pains with payroll and employee management.

Having worked with numerous construction firms, we understand how hard it can be to find HR software to handle:

• Collective bargaining agreements
• Variable wage rates for union workers
• Automated multi-location payroll processing
• Complex labor cost reporting
• Integrations with construction software like Procore
• Employee self-service
• Recruiting and retaining qualified talent

Criterion HCM is designed to meet all those needs and more, with a single unified system and user-friendly interface.

Discover how Criterion HCM can streamline payroll, HR, and talent engagement workflows for your construction team. Book a demo today.