Case Study: Danone North America achieves operational continuity and frontline employee support during COVID-19 with Dayforce

Danone North America focuses on bringing health through food during a global health crisis

Danone North America, a Certified B Corporation and leader in consumer-packaged goods with about 6,000 employees in the U.S. and Canada, faced the urgent challenge of keeping food supply chains running during the COVID-19 pandemic while protecting and supporting its largely on-site frontline workforce. The company needed to ensure job continuity and pay, rapidly track absenteeism across plants, adapt complex union and time-away rules, and provide financial support to employees facing new hardships.

Danone leveraged Ceridian Dayforce to respond quickly and at scale: they automated a 15% frontline pay premium in under 12 hours, built an on-demand absenteeism dashboard using Dayforce OData to enable proactive production shifts, implemented safety-net time-off codes by repurposing existing leave logic to honor union rules, and accelerated rollout of Dayforce Wallet for earned-pay access. The result was payroll continuity, real-time operational visibility to reallocate production as needed, concrete support for vulnerable employees, and a strengthened partnership aligned with Danone’s values.

Danone North America

Gavin Flynn

Director of HR Technology and Efficiency