From autonomous vehicles to autonomous HR: How Forterra drives impact with Rippling

Meet Forterra

At autonomous vehicle company Forterra, success is literally a matter of life and death. The hardware and software systems that the company develops power both commercial logistics—think of trucks navigating treacherous terrain—and defense operations. In the case of the latter, Forterra’s vehicle systems support the military through infantry support, reconnaissance, and more.

“What excites me the most about Forterra is the impact we’re having on our end user, typically the lowest-ranking Marine or soldier,” says Josh Arajo, CEO at Forterra. “We’re making their operations safer and more effective.” 

To do that requires more than engineering. It’s about growing—and maintaining—the team that makes innovation possible. And Forterra knows a lot about growth. Back in 2019, when Head of People Taylor Baisey joined, the company had around 75 employees. That number has more than tripled.

Such explosive growth would pose a challenge for any HR team, but in Forterra’s industry, where skilled talent is scarce and compliance requirements are stringent, the stakes are even higher.

How Rippling empowers HR to do more with less

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"Prior to implementing Rippling, one of the most common problems we ran into was tool fatigue," Taylor recalls. “Our employees were across so many different systems. The systems weren't talking to each other. It was woefully inefficient."

Forterra’s HR stack was split between ADP, Lattice, and Lever. Their IT provisioning and spend management were with Dell Tech and Ramp respectively. For a team focused on developing autonomous systems to simplify complex operations, the irony wasn't lost on Taylor—their own internal systems were anything but autonomous or efficient.

“I realized that if I spent a little time setting things up in Rippling—whether that's employee levels or compensation bands—it would drastically increase our efficiency by offloading a lot of the administrative burden to Rippling itself,” Taylor says.

Beyond the custom automations Taylor’s able to build, Rippling is a force multiplier simply by being easy to use. “A hiring manager can go and navigate the ATS without coming to me. The ability to do that on their own is allowing my team to be a lot more strategic and focused on much more than just the administrative tasks.” 

How Rippling enables Engineering to focus on the mission

Forterra’s longtime Chief Technology Officer, Joseph Putney, was quick to notice how Rippling streamlined work—not just for HR, but his team as well. “For example, when I give notes on a candidate in Rippling’s ATS, it automatically notifies HR and recruiting,” he says. “I don’t have to send any correspondence.” 

In a deeply specialized industry where competition for talent is fierce, recruiting is top of mind for Joseph. But it’s just as important to develop his engineers once they’re in seat. Rippling enables that, too.

“We use Rippling’s Learning Management to train our employees on how to use vehicles effectively, how to manage and protect sensitive data, how to comply with different regulations, and, most importantly, safety,” Joseph says. 

Unlike other LMSes, Rippling has full context on every employee—their role, their level, which courses they’ve completed, which they haven’t—in real time. This gives Forterra the ability to assign courses, monitor their completion, and send reminders, automatically, across a library of highly specialized trainings.

“We’ve made the entire process considerably more efficient,” Taylor says, “and that’s led to an increase in our compliance.”

One of Forterra's powerful workflows in Rippling

How Rippling lets Forterra drive key business initiatives

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Perhaps the most significant change at Forterra hasn’t been the software itself, but how Rippling has enabled HR to evolve from an administrative function to a strategic partner.

From his vantage as CEO, Josh quickly recognized the shift. “Taylor is very much a business-oriented HR partner,” he says. “And Rippling really gave her the tools and platform to be able to adapt to the business as we've grown."

For Taylor, a crucial piece has been Rippling’s powerful, intuitive reporting capabilities: “Rippling helps me be a strategic partner and translate business objectives into action by giving me access to employee data in a way that I can very quickly get insights as to how a particular initiative might impact our employees or learning more about our employee population in an effort to shape business objectives, from ISO compliance to employee retention.” 

"We proactively look and analyze market data for what employees could be getting out in the market,” Taylor explains. “We'll make those adjustments internally before an employee is susceptible to getting poached by one of our competitors.” 

She remembers a time Josh approached her about a top performer. He’d just seen some of the projects an engineer had completed and wanted to ensure that this person wasn’t a flight risk. In Rippling, Taylor was quickly able to learn that the engineer was below-band and make the compensation adjustment there and then. 

“In another system, with enough time I might have been able to do that. What makes Rippling unique is the ease of access to data, the usability of the data, and how quickly I can pull these insights.”

What’s next for Forterra

The past five years have been an accelerated period of growth at Forterra. Internally, Rippling’s footprint has grown, too.  

"It's been a really interesting journey with Rippling, where we started out with just payroll, and then said, 'Wait a second, we can use this for IT provisioning, for spend management,’” Josh says. “We can tie it into a lot of different things that save costs in the business, but also streamlines how we operate and informs business decisions."

Rippling has been transformational for the business writ large—but also the people who run it. Taylor’s own perception of what HR can accomplish has shifted since implementing Rippling. Her colleagues feel the same way, too. 

“After transitioning to Rippling, we started to embody the values Forterra champions as a company,” Taylor says. “ We became high tech, we became efficient, we became faster in our responsiveness. We disrupted how people think about HR.”