Customer Story: Metropolitan Hospitality Management – “Working towards a common goal” with Managed Payroll Services

As MHM has grown over the years, so has the complexity of their accounting and payroll needs, as each property within their portfolio is a distinct legal entity with a unique ownership and operational structure. Given that many of their properties are within the hospitality sector, MHM also manages a tremendous amount of seasonal employee onboarding – which means that every payroll run is likely to reflect a slightly different crew than the one before it!

As they continued scaling up their business, it became clear to MHM that they needed a real workforce management partner: someone who would support them in paying their many teams accurately and on time, handling and securely storing their always-changing employee records, and providing clear reporting to their General Managers.

Controller Jenny Susko explained the challenge: "With a team our size, there's always something to keep an eye on when it comes to payroll. I'm looking for vacation payouts, employee reimbursements, and cell phone allowances. I'm making sure that vacation accrual is being handled properly for someone who's on leave, and that if we do a manual payout, that it doesn't accidentally get paid out a second time… and on and on!"

MHM connected with Payworks to explore the idea of transitioning to Managed Payroll Services, which allows clients to offload payroll administration (in varying degrees) to Payworks' in-house experts. In this team, Jenny found just what she was looking for: a partner she could count on.

The solution included:
- Managed Payroll Services (since 2024 – started with Payroll in 2018)
- Employee Self Service (since 2018)
- Time Management (since 2018)
- Absence Management (since 2023)
- Human Resources (since 2023)

Jenny's contact is one of Payworks' Service Support Leads, and it feels like she and I have a common goal that we're working together to achieve. "Our brains really work the same way: 'let's get this cleaned up, let's make it better, let's find the efficiencies.' We're a good pair because we lean on both of our skillsets."

MHM now refers to Payworks as their "workforce management provider" in their employee Welcome Email. In response to post-pandemic legislation in British Columbia, they're also now using Absence Management to track and report on sick time. Because all of Payworks' applications share a single database, all of this information flows directly to payroll – which means Jenny saves further time (and potential errors!) because she doesn't need to worry about double entry.

The accuracy of MHM's multiple payrolls has significantly improved now that she's leveraging Managed Payroll Services – which not only saves her from spending hours each pay period making manual corrections, but also aids in boosting employee engagement.

With the time she's gained by engaging a partner, Jenny's now putting her accounting background to good use in identifying additional strategic opportunities, and is better-positioned to respond to MHM's continued rapid growth.

Jenny is also breathing easier knowing that she's not alone. "A member of my team needed to take some time off during month-end. Before Managed Payroll Services, I would have been pulling my hair out from stress. Now – no problem! I let the Payworks team know what's going on, we put a plan in place, and I know everything will be fine."

The workflow has become seamless and simplified everything for the organization managing 17 employees at MHM plus 200+ across nine restaurants, hotels and retail outlets across Western Canada.