Bakery Brand Creates the Perfect Recipe for People-First Culture with Paylocity

Paris Baguette is a neighborhood bakery café brand with a difference. Inspired by the classic French boulangerie (bakery), where irresistible, indulgent baked goods are always available, the company aims to spread joy and bring local communities together by serving up a mouthwatering selection of savories, sumptuous cakes and cake slices, delicious sandwiches, perfect pastries, and fresh coffee.

Paris Baguette launched its first location in the United States in 2005. CEO Darren Tipton joined the organization in 2018, tapping Michelle Jagroop to lead the HR and Training functions to support the next phase in the company’s development, including fostering a high growth, people-forward culture.

Since then, Paris Baguette has been full steam ahead, growing their franchise organization to currently more than 225 cafes in North America, on a path to 1,000 locations by 2030. Today, the company owns nine corporate locations across North America. 

Central to this success has been a strong people-first philosophy, where team members are always supported, encouraged and helped to develop their skills and experiences. Within the corporate owned bakeries and offices, a key enabler of this collaborative culture has been Paylocity.

Michelle, now Chief People Officer, explains: “Soon after I joined, we reviewed our vendor partnerships to ensure we had the right platforms to support our growth journey. We often faced issues with ADP, our HR and payroll provider at that time, so we started to look elsewhere. Paylocity offered a much better fit and has been a phenomenal partner for more than six years.”

The Challenge: Cooking Up a Treat

With its previous HR platform failing to deliver, Paris Baguette looked for a solution to support its internal cultural objectives and streamline compensation and performance management.

Investing in People to Drive Corporate Success

From the start of her time at Paris Baguette, Michelle has prioritized building a positive working environment that helps to drive employee engagement and productivity. One key goal has been creating supportive relationships between managers and employees. “I am passionate about creating a culture of coaching, where our executive leadership and managers can offer regular feedback to employees to help them to develop their professional skills,” explains Michelle.

Another key objective has been ensuring employees always feel valued for their hard work—but announcing individual success and milestones isn’t easy, especially when many employees don’t use corporate email. “We wanted to find innovative ways to communicate with all of our people, listen to their feedback, and take steps to enhance their daily work experience.”

Reshaping Inefficient Paper-Based Processes

When Michelle joined Paris Baguette, she also found that some key HR processes were outdated and inefficient. For example, managing employee performance and compensation was still handled on paper, creating additional complexity and taking up large amounts of time. “Merit increases were difficult to plan and align with our departmental budgets,” says Michelle. 

Moving Beyond a Platform with Limited Support

On the platform side, Paris Baguette’s partnership with ADP had not gone to plan. The quality of service from the vendor was not at the level that Paris Baguette expected, while the overall costs of the HR and payroll platform were high. “We were paying too much, and receiving too little,” notes Michelle. “We decided to find a new platform that could offer more value to our business.”

The Solution: Mixing the Ingredients

After evaluating potential vendors, Paris Baguette selected Paylocity to redesign and optimize its HR processes and enhance the employee experience at its corporate locations.

Digitizing Compensation and Performance Management

Using Paylocity’s Compensation and Performance modules, Paris Baguette has replaced paper-based processes with more nimble digital workflows. With Compensation, Michelle and her team can quickly pull the salary history for each employee, compare against performance metrics, and plan appropriate merit increases. Similarly, the company uses Performance to run annual reviews and provide regular feedback to employees. “The Journals feature is so useful,” adds Michelle. “Our managers use Journals to create an ongoing record of recommendations, achievements and goals that they can share with each employee to support their personal development.”

Building Engagement Through Clear Communications

Paris Baguette also uses the Community social collaboration hub to connect with employees across its offices, warehouses and corporate-owned bakery cafés. In the hub, the HR team announces employee birthdays and work anniversaries, and highlights great work. “We love Community,” continues Michelle. “People are always checking posts and giving each other shoutouts. It’s great that they can access it via the Paylocity Mobile App. We can reach everyone, without worrying about whether they are checking their email.”

Streamlining Critical HR Administration

In addition, Paris Baguette is using an API integration in Paylocity to simplify open enrollment by sending data to its benefits administration system, Selerix. To support talent acquisition and management, the company is also adding the Recruiting, Onboarding, and Time & Labor modules. “In hospitality, candidates often don’t want to complete paper applications,” notes Michelle. “With Paylocity, we can offer a frictionless digital experience.”

The Results: Serving Up Something Fresh 

By forging a strong partnership with Paylocity, Paris Baguette has built a stronger organizational culture, improved its internal communications, and increased the efficiency of its HR processes.

Creating a Great Place to Work

Helped by Paylocity, Paris Baguette is successfully fostering a positive culture based on employee growth and development. “We love being able to see the whole story of an employee’s progress in one place in Journals,” explains Michelle. “On one level, that enables our managers to pull the records and have more meaningful conversations with employees during annual reviews. But more than that, the platform allows us to offer continuous support, guidance and coaching.”

And with Community, Paris Baguette is building a stronger sense of togetherness within its corporate-owned operations. “We send out a monthly newsletter, Baguette Buzz, but Community gives us something more immediate that lets employees connect with each another in real time,” adds Michelle. “It has taken our internal communications to the next level.”

Saving Valuable Time with Streamlined Processes

With Paylocity, Paris Baguette has also increased operational efficiency, saving valuable time on compensation and performance management tasks. “The Compensation module is one of the highlights of Paylocity for us,” explains Michelle. “What used to be complex, demanding processes are now much simpler, and it’s easy for us to plan competitive salaries aligned with our budgets.

Making Data-Driven Decisions to Boost Engagement

With consistent feedback gathered through Paylocity, Paris Baguette will be able to make ongoing enhancements to the employee experience—contributing to higher engagement and retention. “The analytics tools will allow us to identify trends in sentiment and remodel our processes quickly to ensure our employee experience is as seamless and satisfying as possible,” adds Michelle.

Using the Insights and Recommendations module, Paris Baguette is also staying informed about broader HR metrics and performance. “We pull weekly, monthly, and quarterly turnover reports, compare the data with industry benchmarks, and share the findings with our executives. It helps us to track our progress and make decisions on long-term strategy,” concludes Michelle