Prestigious School Scores Top Marks and Unlocks Six-Figure Savings with Paylocity

The Lawrenceville School ranks as one of the oldest and most prestigious educational institutions in the United States. Founded in 1810, the preparatory school’s alumni include distinguished diplomats and politicians, business leaders, celebrated athletes, and Pulitzer Prize-winning authors.

Based on a 700-acre campus in New Jersey, Lawrenceville strives to inspire its 810 students to follow a life of learning, integrity, and high purpose. As well as pursuing their academic interests in the classroom, students enjoy the opportunity to take part in a wide range of athletic and artistic programs, and can even explore sustainable agriculture at the school’s farm.

To manage everything from academic and pastoral matters to communications, finance, medical, and groundskeeping, Lawrenceville employs around 600 dedicated staff. This includes faculty and administrators in salaried positions, plus a facilities team of around 150 people, typically performing hourly roles.

In the HR department, Lawrenceville previously relied on seven different solutions to support this diverse workforce. When current Human Resources Director Kristen Oberlin arrived, she was determined to consolidate the legacy systems and clunky processes by using one unified, modern platform. And as a veteran of multiple Paylocity implementations, she knew there was only one solution for the job.

“We had a hard deadline for the deployment as we had a payroll and our annual benefits enrollment approaching,” explains Kristen. “Our Paylocity team was phenomenal, and really put in the hours to ensure we were ready on time. Another great experience with Paylocity!”

 

The Challenge: Historic School Turns to Modern HR Tech 

With Lawrenceville’s aging systems draining efficiency and productivity, Kristen and her team set out to streamline, simplify, and modernize the HR and payroll environment.

Using Point Solutions Increases Costs and Complexity 

Over time, Lawrenceville had built up a complex legacy setup, comprising separate payroll, recruitment, onboarding, training, performance management, time tracking, and general ledger systems. Inevitably, running so many solutions led to high costs, while a lack of integration between systems created heavy workloads for the HR team. “We were doing lots of duplicate work,” explains Kristen. “If we hired or terminated an employee, we had to update the details in all seven systems.”

Hiring Temporary Staff Takes Months of Extra Work 

The aging systems also negatively impacted specific processes. For example, Lawrenceville hires and onboards 150 temporary employees every summer to run various camps, completing many mandatory assessments such as tuberculosis testing to comply with state regulations. With the previous applicant tracking system (ATS), posting open roles online, coordinating interviews, and running the necessary checks on candidates was a lengthy process. 

“We used to have to start recruiting and onboarding in March, and request new hires to send their details as soon as possible to ensure we could pay them on time,” notes Kristen. “Following each recruitment period, we had to manually transfer each person's data into the system, and add their direct deposit information. We were way behind the times.”

Creating Reports Means Spreadsheets and Added Hassle 

Outside recruiting, the multiple systems had plenty of other drawbacks. There was no mobile app for employees to easily access, review, and update their information, while completing payroll took up to four days of painstaking preparation and checking. Furthermore, running employee benefits enrollments, managing shift schedules at the school medical center, and creating reports were largely manual, labor-intensive processes. “None of our systems offered especially accurate data, so we would compile a mass of spreadsheets, then combine specific information to build a report for our leaders,” adds Kristen

 

The Solution: Making the Grade

Following an RFP and a series of demos, the Lawrenceville team selected Paylocity for the first-class HR, finance and payroll tools, ease of use, and interactive employee engagement capabilities. 

Streamlining Employee Pay and Benefits Processes

Lawrenceville now runs bi-weekly and monthly payroll using Paylocity’s Payroll module, and recently completed open enrollment using Benefits Administration. “Everyone complimented the ease of use, especially the clear costs for each benefits plan,” notes Kristen.

Meanwhile, the Time & Labor module has been especially useful for the facilities team. “We love the geofencing feature,” adds Kristen. “We geofence the areas where people are scheduled to work that day, so they don’t have to head to the office to clock in then spend 20 minutes walking across campus before they start their tasks. It really drives productivity.”

Enhancing the Hiring and Onboarding Pipeline

Using the Recruiting and Onboarding modules, Lawrenceville has streamlined hiring, with an integration with E-Verify helping to accelerate mandatory checks. “The new tools to sync calendars and schedule interviews with candidates have been very useful, while AI Assistant lets us quickly draft job descriptions,” explains Kristen. “When we hire a candidate, their data flows seamlessly into Onboarding and Payroll, without manual input.” Next, the school plans to use the Video module to add welcome messages for new hires from the Head of School and Dean of Faculty.

Handling Short-Notice Staffing Changes Seamlessly

Managing shifts at the medical center has become easier with the Scheduling module. “If someone is ill, they simply swap shifts with a colleague,” says Kristen. “That ensures we have qualified medical staff on hand, and saves our Director of Nursing a lot of stress searching for replacements.”

Creating a More Caring, Collaborative Workplace

To build a supportive environment, Lawrenceville has wholeheartedly embraced the Community and Recognition & Rewards modules. Faculty, administrators, and facilities team members are offering one another shout-outs and high-fives to acknowledge great work, and the school is building affinity groups in Community to strengthen connections between departments. “My phone notifies me all the time that people are sending shout-outs,” continues Kristen. “People are loving the engagement and recognition tools.”

 

The Results: Graduating with Honors 

Within Lawrenceville, Paylocity has proved a big success, with praise for the platform coming from finance and faculty leaders, facilities managers and teams, HR, and school administrators. 

Consolidated Systems Unlock Massive Savings

With Paylocity, Lawrenceville has replaced its legacy systems with one single, fully featured HR platform. No longer paying for seven separate solutions has enabled the school to save more than $90,000, while streamlined, automated processes have saved the school $385,000 in overall costs immediately.

Faster Recruitment Saves Time and Cuts Stress

For Kristen and her team, Paylocity has enabled major time savings and productivity gains. For example, payroll now takes just a day to complete, while the platform reduces the time it takes to post open roles by 75%. “Scaling our workforce for the summer is so much simpler now,” notes Kristen. “What used to be stressful, error-prone, and time-consuming is now a breeze.”

Using the Workflows & Documents module, the school has also built more structured, efficient processes for helping new faculty members to acclimate to their new workplace.

In-Depth Reports Guide Board Decisions 

Where reporting was previously another long-winded task, Kristen can now access accurate data with just a few clicks in the Insights & Recommendations module. “We regularly pull reports on employee turnover, overtime, budgets, and diversity and inclusivity metrics,” adds Kristen. “When I present the information at board meetings, our leadership team are always impressed and even ask how long the reports take to create. I have to admit all I do is press a few buttons in Paylocity!”

Stronger Culture Boosts Employee Satisfaction

Kristen is also confident that the switch to Paylocity has had a positive impact on employee satisfaction. On the one hand, the Paylocity Mobile App and Employee Self-Service portal empowers faculty, administrators, and facilities teams to handle their own HR admin, while Community and Recognition & Rewards ensure people feel appreciated for their work. “We used to only have an annual Employee Appreciation, but it was a one-off event. With everyone offering shout-outs all the time in Paylocity, we’re creating a happier place to work,” concludes Kristen.