Hammer Down Customer Story

Having a workforce scattered across five shops and countless field locations, it’s easy to see the need for an HR department that functions like a well-oiled machine.

We spoke with Hammer Down to see how they’re using GoCo to unify their hiring and onboarding process, improve payroll and benefits administration, and continue their impressive growth.

Hammer Down: A Brief Overview

Established in 2016, Hammer Down is powering Texas’s energy industry by providing production and completion services to oil fields. The Lone Star State ranks highest in the country for energy, both in terms of production and employment, and Hammer Down has experienced this demand for labor first-hand.

Life Before GoCo

Before implementing GoCo, Hammer Down’s hiring and onboarding process were highly dependent on paperwork, scanning, and email. Because the company had multiple locations, district managers needed to scan and email the new hire’s paperwork to the home office. This process could take days.

“Scanning and sending it wasn't always done correctly,” recalls Melissa Chadd, Controller for Hammer Down. “We didn't always get all the pages. Sometimes it was filled out incorrectly, and then there was a lot of back and forth.”

How Hammer Down Is Reshaping the HR Experience with GoCo

Hammer Down partnered with GoCo at the end of 2018 after having explored several solutions to streamline their HR processes. Because the company doesn’t see most of its employees face to face on a daily basis, it was critical to have a smooth, user-friendly solution for new hire paperwork, payroll, and benefits enrollment.

“After we rolled it out, it was pretty straightforward,” says Chadd. “I created some step by step instructions on how our staff would be using it and emailed it out to district managers and employees.”

Hammer Down’s one-woman HR department hired and onboarded more than 100 employees in a matter of months, a feat that Chadd says wouldn’t have been possible without GoCo.

“We are definitely more scalable now because of GoCo,” Chadd says. “We send new hires an email with the link to onboard. They go in, they complete all their stuff, and they can electronically sign their offer letter, which is awesome. So there's no email going back and forth, no paper—it’s all right there.”

GoCo’s Impact from an Employee’s Perspective

At the time, Hammer Down was in the midst of their open enrollment when they decided to pull the trigger on GoCo. Deadlines were approaching, and switching over employee benefits information to a new system would be a telling first experience.

“GoCo got us up and running in record time,” recounts Chadd. “I provided the employee information to GoCo, and they imported it into the system to get it set up. They worked with our insurance company to make sure benefits got put in correctly. The whole conversion took place in about two weeks.”

Aside from the customer service that Hammer Down has experienced, the company is also pleased with how quick hiring and onboarding has become. “I can onboard an employee probably in 10 minutes or less,” says Chadd. Before, it took days to chase down paperwork and load everything into the system.

Hammer Down’s HR Coordinator Jennifer Matura noted that compared to other Benefits Administration systems she’s used in the past, GoCo offers more functionality and a better experience to the end-user. “GoCo is about a thousand times better,” says Matura, “even though the other system is kind of the same thing, it just pales in comparison to what GoCo can do.”

Final Word: Hammer Down Takes Hiring to a New Level with GoCo

Because of their distributed workforce, Hammer Down’s HR department faces many challenges in consistently hiring and onboarding employees, administering benefits, and ensuring a seamless payroll process. GoCo’s comprehensive solution has enabled the company to make of these issues a thing of the past.