Flowers for Dreams, a mission-driven full-service florist that donates 25% of their profits to local nonprofits in their community, was focused on growth, but their payroll and benefits system couldn’t keep up. With their former HRIS, their systems were siloed because of acquisitions, and they also lacked basic automations, causing mountains of admin work. Payroll was taking hours to complete, and PTO and 401(k) contributions were tracked manually across spreadsheets. Meanwhile, employees were having to jump from system to system to complete even simple tasks. 

Alex Wasserman, Flowers for Dreams’ CFO, knew that these issues were not only holding back their growth but also hurting their employee experience and retention. Something had to change, and it had to change fast.

We have too many employees to do this wrong. We can do better. We need to become as lean and efficient as we can get.

Alex Wasserman

Flowers for Dreams CFO

With Rippling, Alex and the team were able to automate a lot of the onboarding processes that were previously done manually and immediately started seeing improvements. Flowers for Dreams recently hired 93 people. Alex estimates creating offer letters alone would have taken a day and a half with their former HRIS. With Rippling, it took 12 minutes.

Rippling also freed up the team’s time in regard to benefits and payroll. Using Rippling, 401(k) contributions and benefit deductions now automatically sync with payroll, removing manual work for the HR and finance teams and empowering employees to change their contributions when needed.

Additionally, Rippling helped them cut down the time they spent on weekly payroll. Prior to Rippling, it would take a full day for the team to approve, run, review, and sync their payroll into Quickbooks. This process now takes them just 30 minutes.

Because Flowers for Dreams is a seasonal business, they frequently have employees who work sporadically throughout the year. Having a centralized, intuitive system like Rippling means that employees can easily onboard and offboard. When employees leave, they can still access relevant documents like W-2s, and if they want to come back, they already know the Rippling system and need less training and onboarding paperwork. This not only created a better employee experience but also made Alex’s job easier. With Rippling, employees can now do more on their own and ask for help less.

Because Flowers for Dreams operates in several states and each state has different regulations, it was incredibly time consuming for the team to keep track of frequently changing compliance regulations. Rippling helped Flowers for Dreams proactively stay in compliance and saved them time since they no longer needed to research each state’s requirements.

Rippling reduces the things I have to remember to keep us compliant. I don’t have to worry about our compliance with every state’s PTO and minimum wage policy. It’s all kept in Rippling. That kind of stuff helps me sleep at night.

Alex Wasserman

Flowers for Dreams CFO

• Hired 93 employees and created offer letters in 12 minutes rather than the 1.5 days it took with their former HRIS
• Increased employee participation in the 401(k) plan by integrating Rippling with Human Interest, Flowers for Dreams’ 401k provider
• Cut payroll processing from one day per month to 30 minutes by integrating directly with Quickbooks
• Reduced turnover and increased retention by improving payroll accuracy and reducing payroll errors