Colarelli Construction Customer Story

The years after the COVID-19 pandemic provided booming business for Colorado builder Colarelli Construction. More projects meant more hiring, and more hiring meant it was time to form an HR department for the first time. Former executive assistant Kristen Coffin was up to the task, but the manual systems Colarelli had in place to manage their workers and paperwork? Well, that was a different story.

With over 70 employees and half of them working in the field, Kristen’s first job was to get organized. Her second job was to find a way to enable employees to interact with HR even while working at construction sites. Enter: GoCo.

A Double Learning Curve

Colarelli Construction has over 20 years in business working as a general contractor for ground-up commercial construction, but up until 2021, they had no dedicated HR person. When Kristen started, not only did she have to learn the ropes of her new HR position, she also had to familiarize herself with HR tech.

The construction industry is known for its hard labor and long hours, making it challenging for employees to take care of HR-related tasks during work time. Kristen knew that with the unique HR challenges of the construction business, it was crucial to have a system that could handle everything remotely—and, ideally, from a phone app. 

With the help of GoCo, Kristen was able to provide a solution that allowed Colarelli Construction employees to access HR services wherever they were that day, enabling them to handle everything from documentation to time-off requests from the palm of a hand. “Life before GoCo was a lot more paperwork. GoCo helped me to organize and put together a platform for HR. It’s a game-changing organizational tool that I love.” 

Kristen appreciated the ease of using GoCo, along with their stellar customer support, as she familiarized herself with their HR software. “Everyone that I have worked with has been really pleasant to deal with and helpful.” She explains that she frequently takes advantage of their on-demand webinars and that the GoCo team “goes out of their way so it doesn’t feel corporate; it feels like a small company that wants to have direct communication with clients.”

Getting Employee Buy-In

Of course, transitioning to GoCo on the HR end was only the first step in the process. Getting employees on board was the next.

Dealing with a workforce that is resistant to change and not tech-savvy meant that even though manual processes were cumbersome, they were comfortable. 

Breaking employees out of their comfort zone necessitated holding company-wide meetings with a QR code for downloading the GoCo app. Then, Kristen demonstrated the software in person to show off its capabilities. 

Late adopters took some consistent prodding and hand-holding, but eventually, the entire Colarelli team was won over by the ease of using GoCo. 

GoCo's user-friendly interface and on-the-go app made it simple for employees to navigate and complete HR tasks, reducing the learning curve for new employees and increasing the overall efficiency of existing ones. Employee traffic to GoCo increases year over year, and employees rave about the app and how easy it is to log in and ask for time off.

Life With GoCo

Kristen’s favorite GoCo features are the ability to pull quick reports and having a single place to go to access and send documentation. While benefits administration and compliance documentation are the tasks she most frequently performs, Kristen also shares some innovative ways Colarelli has been using GoCo.

“We utilize the custom field upload for our employees to upload their personal vehicle insurance cards if they’re driving their own vehicle,” she explains. “The new protocol was much easier with GoCo — go to your car, take a picture, and upload it to GoCo.”

Ultimately, GoCo “has given employees more confidence in their HR management.”

With the support of GoCo, Kristen was able to successfully launch an HR department at Colarelli Construction and create a more connected workforce. Clunky manual processes were replaced with seamless digital tasks and documentation, making everyone’s work life that much easier.