Case Study | Hospitality
With 80,000 fans and 800 ushers to manage every game day, Notre Dame Stadium replaced manual spreadsheet tracking with GT Clocks timeclocks.
About the Customer
Opened in 1930, Notre Dame Stadium in Indiana is the home field for the Notre Dame Fighting Irish Football Team and is considered one of the most famous college football venues in the United States. It boasts a capacity of c.80,000 fans on a typical game day, where over 800 ushers are employed to assist patrons and ensure a well-run event.
The Challenge
Heightened security along with payroll process revisions resulting from the Affordable Healthcare Act (ACA) required the University to review how they were managing labor on game days.
Traditionally, it was common for stadium ushers to be paid a lump sum per event, tracked on a spreadsheet and paid out throughout the season. One of the requirements of the Affordable Healthcare Act was the University was required to start tracking the hours worked by ushers, rather than just pay a lump sum. Upon review, it became obvious that the tracking and payment of ushers in a university payroll cycle would be nearly impossible without an automated process.
Additionally, from a security perspective, ushers required little more than their uniform to gain access to the stadium, so increased security measures and a better employee validation method were also required.
The Solution
Notre Dame turned to longtime vendor Tracy, Inc. to integrate their UltraTime Enterprise time and attendance and event labor management software with GT Clocks’ timeclocks. The solution offered increased data accuracy and a streamlined check-in security process, plus automation that reduces the amount of time spent tracking staff hours.
Employees are now onboarded and pre-screened ahead of the season and permission to enter the stadium is granted or denied in a matter of seconds. With a swipe of the employee’s ID credential, Timeclock performs an online lookup to the UltraTime database and displays the Accept or Denied message on the display.
Notre Dame relies upon the robust UltraTime Enterprise database and robust timeclock to highlight security risks to supervisors as employees swipe in on shift, helping to safeguard c.80,000 football fans, staff and vendors on game day.
Notre Dame knew that with games being played at weekends, it simply was not feasible to process manual timesheets in the limited time available during each pay period.
In addition, it would have been extremely difficult to perform manual security checks for all employees on game day and get them to their assigned work area within the stadium on time.
So, they turned to Tracy to provide an accurate, reliable and cost-effective solution. We relied on GT Clocks’ hardware to help us deliver a solution that improves accuracy and cuts administrative time substantially every game day.
– Curtis Gano, President, Tracy Inc.
