December 2022 - 8

PickTrace labor management expands services
By Chris Koger
Managing Editor
A labor management company that
offers fresh produce industry growers a
digital solution for time, attendance and
productivity tracking of employees has
expanded services to ease hiring and
payment processes.
PickTrace, Glendale, California, first
offered its services to fruit and vegetable
grower-shippers eight years ago, focusing
on labor
management
workflow in
fields and
orchards. CEO
Joel Zemer said
the company
has remained
true to that
High-Tech Tools
2022
mission, but constant updates have
added functionality to allow PickTrace
customers to analyze the productivity
of a workforce at a deeper level, to allow
employers to understand more about
their largest expense: labor.
" We've always kind of remained
focused on this notion of time,
attendance and productivity tracking
of the workforce, " Zemer said. " When
we zoom out and really look at what the
growers are doing across their broader
labor management workflow, at the
very start of it, they're doing a lot of
recruiting and sourcing efforts to acquire
that workforce - whether that's through
an H-2A program, whether that's
through leveraging domestic field labor,
and building out networks to acquire
that labor. "
The PickTrace digital labor management system has expanded beyond time, attendance and productivity tracking to include hiring and
payment activities. Photo: PickTrace
" We've introduced a system that's
moving us earlier in the management
workflow, that digitizes the whole
onboarding experience, " Zemer said.
" We can capture the information in
Spanish, in all the data fields we need to
gather, including tax information, EEOC
information, government ID ... and then
populate that onto an I-9 and W-4, and
they can electronically sign it. "
He said PickTrace can cut the
onboarding process from 20-30
minutes down to a few minutes for
each employee.
" Once we have that information, we're
also natively integrating that into their
payroll systems, so there's no duplicative
data entry, " Zemer said. " We're also
taking that information and automatically
populating it into our time, attendance
and productivity platform, " he said.
PickTrace PayCard
Another new service being trialed now
with full implementation planned by the
end of the year is the PickTrace PayCard,
which replaces paper checks. Zemer
said the majority of growers use printed
checks, requiring paper and printing, and
often a trip to the fields and orchards to
distribute the checks.
Now the funds are automatically loaded
onto the cards. Zemer said about 80%
of the workforce does not have credit or
debit cards, and rely on check cashing
services that charge 2-3%. That's often
followed by a trip to Western Union
or similar cash wiring service, to send
money to family in other countries.
" Through our mobile app, that
The traditional steps in the hiring
process are cumbersome, he said,
from getting the proper documents
- including Forms W-4 and I-9 - to
disseminating paper packets full of
company information, in many cases
requiring employees to fill out the same
information multiple times. Employers
have told Zemer that inefficiency in the
hiring process is a major deterrent to
potential field workers, who get frustrated
by long lines on hiring days.
8 | VegetableGrowersNews.com
employee will have the ability to send
money from the card to Mexico as a cash
pick-up or directly into an account, at a
far reduced fee structure than Western
Union or MoneyGram, as well as at a far
superior foreign exchange rate. "
The PickTrace model
Zemer said the company's roster of
clients are all fresh produce companies,
of which there are " hundreds, " with
tens of thousands of employees in the
PickTrace system. Half of the Washington
apple, pear and cherry industries are
clients, he said, and some of the largest
citrus, stonefruit, table grape and mixed
vegetable growers on the West Coast use
the service.
The core function of PickTrace, the
ability to track time, attendance and
productivity, enables growers to use realtime
data gathering via the cloud to make
decisions to optimize efficiency during
harvest, thinning or a number of different
field tasks.
While the ability to track labor to
that degree is an advantage during
normal harvests, Zemer said PickTrace
was instrumental in 2020, as daily
work rosters were wildly changing
with employees entering or completing
lockdown because of the COVID-19
pandemic.
" It became much more important to
understand in real time the pace at which
the workforce that you do have is moving,
and how you allocate those resources in
a way that's going to put the business in
the best position to maximize the amount
of fruit you can harvest, " Zemer said.
" Instead of having a crew running in a
block that doesn't have the urgency to be
harvested now, how do you pivot those
people to a block that actually does need
to be harvested now?
" Or do you have the people in the
block that are moving fast enough that
are going to get it off the trees in the next
two to three days? " he said " We saw a
lot of growers deeply analyze the pace of
their workforce, but also the projected
man hours needed to complete a block
and looking at those projections and
then allocating resources appropriately to
deliver to meet those projections. "
Crew leaders are also finding their day
isn't prolonged in the field as they wrap
up paperwork and other administrative
tasks, or don't spend time on Sundays
consolidating time cards and sending
reports to accounting or human
resources, he said.
The system eliminates the need
for banks of filing cabinets to hold
paperwork , and improves the ability
to prove compliance during audits and
inspections, Zemer said, with all reports
and paperwork digitized and searchable.
" One of the recurring themes with
PickTrace is it is driving paperless
processes and removing paper from the
operation, " he said.
Ag-tech award recognition
PickTrace was named a recipient of a
2022 AgTech Breakthrough Award, in the
Labor Management Solution of the Year
category. The awards program recognizes
the achievements of ag-tech companies
and solutions in categories including farm
management, indoor farming, automation,
robotics, analytics and more.
" As growers experience a continued
rise in labor cost, the industry has been
challenged to understand how they can
effectively manage their rising labor
cost, remain compliant and drive a
profitable growing operation, " said Bryan
Vaughn, managing director of AgTech
Breakthrough, in a news release. VGN

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December 2022

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