How Liquid Death upgraded HR: The system switch playbook

If you're running HR with recruiting scattered across inboxes and reports pulled from multiple spreadsheets, you're not running HR — you're running in circles.

That’s the system we relied on when I joined Liquid Death and we had around 60 employees. Our payroll worked, but we had zero visibility into our workforce and onboarding that felt like it was stuck in 2010.

The wake-up call came when our PEO renewal came with a price hike despite the same limited services. We were paying more for a system that wasn’t scalable — or maintainable. Meanwhile, we'd grown to 200+ people across 30 states, and every new hire exposed how badly we needed real infrastructure.

So we pulled the trigger on switching to Rippling. The business case was simple: lower total cost than the PEO, actual multi-state support, and a system our non-technical team could actually run without calling support every week.

If you're staring at a PEO renewal or realizing your "good enough" system isn't anymore, here's exactly how to make the switch (and what I’d do differently if we had to do it again). 

Steps to make an HR system switch that compounds value

Switching your HR system can be complicated and time-consuming, so it’s important to choose the right platform, know when it’s time to make the change, and have a system in place to ensure a smooth transition. 

1. Know your trigger — and bring Finance with you

Our trigger to look for a new HR system was simple. Liquid Death’s rapid growth made our existing PEO’s per-employee fees untenable.

At 60 employees, we had been paying a premium but the system worked. At our projected 200+ headcount and an increased pricing, we’d be spending too much on a platform that wasn’t delivering key HR functions we needed.

I knew it was time to change, but I also knew that I needed to prove that there was a financial justification to making the switch.  

 I didn't walk into the CFO's office complaining about our HR tech stack. I walked in with a spreadsheet showing exactly much our current system (or lack thereof) was costing us. 

Here’s what worked:

I lead with unit economics and risk. We discussed the recurrent savings of a new platform compared to the existing PEO. Systems like Rippling have a unit economics advantage even as your organization scales. 

I also broke down the cost of errors we were at risk for, including the costs of potential audits, correcting W-2s or tax statements, and non-compliance penalties that could easily be tens of thousands of dollars for a single mistake. 

Finally, we aligned on scale. We were a multi-state organization, but the company has ambitious plans to grow internationally. We needed to choose a solution that would accommodate that expansion with global functionality and compliance.

2. Define must‑haves by user

A clear distinction between must-haves and nice-to-haves from each user's perspective drives successful implementation. We needed a system that was simple for employees to use and easy for us to maintain, freeing us to focus on strategic work rather than system administration.

To accommodate all stakeholders and end users, I mapped requirements across three key stakeholder groups: admins, hiring managers, and employees.

Admin requirements:

• Multi-state payroll and benefits administration across all 30 states

• Clean data migration from our existing systems

• Audit-friendly reporting that Finance could actually use

Manager requirements:

• Fast approvals without going through HR

• Hiring and onboarding in one place

• Basic analytics to understand their teams

Employee requirements:

• One login instead of multiple systems

• Mobile-friendly onboarding

• Self-serve document access

Rippling checked each individual box and provided room for future expansion.

3. Time your cutover  (Push for Jan 1)

The timing of your HR system switchover matters more than you might think. We switched mid-year, and I strongly recommend against this unless absolutely necessary. 

The mid-year switch created W-2 confusion, duplicate histories, and a year of cleanup requests. Employees received tax documents from two different systems, generating constant questions about which forms to use and where to find them. Our team was drowning in requests and corrective actions. 

If possible, push to go live on January 1 of the coming year. It avoids split tax years and simplifies everything from tax reporting to employee communications for both your HR team and your employees. 

A January 1 go-live avoids split tax years and simplifies everything from tax reporting to employee communications.

Here’s what to lock down for your cutover:

• Run final payroll in the legacy system by year-end

• Execute a parallel run (one cycle) in your new system as a confidence check

• Prepare clear employee communications about where to find paystubs and W-2s

• Document which system houses which records for the inevitable questions

The parallel run provides a safety net to catch discrepancies before full commitment. Clear employee communications are critical — people need certainty about anything affecting their paycheck or tax documents.

4. Make onboarding the hero and automate reporting on day one

Onboarding sets the tone for employees' first experience with your system, so we made it the centerpiece with pre-digital onboarding, automated reminders, and manager checklists to make sure the transition was smooth as possible. 

Automating the process freed HR capacity for strategic work. Before, we were spending hours per hire on paperwork administration. After the transition, we could focus on culture integration and manager enablement. 

We also prioritized reporting on day one, and the results were transformative. We could answer basic workforce questions without manually counting heads or pulling data from multiple sources. Finance got their headcount forecasting. We finally had visibility.

Here’s what we set up in Rippling. 

• Pre-start digital onboarding: I-9s, tax forms, direct deposit, and policy acknowledgments all went digital and triggered automatically when offers were accepted. The system automatically routed state-specific tax documents, triggered IT equipment requests, enrolled employees in benefits, and scheduled required training based on role and location.

• Manager enablement: Built-in checklists and automated reminders at key milestones (offer accepted, onboarding started, Day 1 approaching) removed guesswork and last-minute scrambling.

• Core reports from Day 1: Immediately established reporting for headcount by department/location, location mix across 30 states, compensation reviews, time-to-hire metrics, and turnover trends. Leadership could finally self-serve data instead of waiting for manual spreadsheets.

Tips for a successful HR system migration 

A successful HR system change is a massive process, and having the right strategies in place can be crucial to streamline implementation. Based on my experience, there are six best practices that I’d strongly recommend teams follow for a smoother transition and less chaos. 

1. Lock a hard switch date and work backward

Specificity drives accountability; vague timelines lead to missed deadlines. A hard date forces decisions and prevents endless deliberation. Without it, you'll still be "planning to switch" six months from now.

Create a day-by-day cutover plan (T-30/T-14/T-7/T-1) with explicit owners across HR, Finance, IT, and Legal. 

Include a freeze window on new job changes during migration — no promotions, transfers, or compensation adjustments during cutover week.

2. Co-design change with Finance and IT

Each team has unique priorities, so you want to co-design change with Finance and IT teams. Get everyone aligned before implementation starts, not during. Their early involvement transforms them from blockers to advocates when you need sign-offs.

Finance needs clean journal entries and cost centers, IT needs security protocols and API documentation, HR needs data accuracy. Map every data source, including payroll, benefits, equity, time, devices, and have the appropriate teams validate their data:

• IT stakeholders should validate identity and access provisioning flows.

• HR needs to validate compensation and organizational data. 

• Finance teams need to validate journal entry mappings, cost center allocations, and general ledger codes. 

3. Train managers like they're new hires

Managers will be new to the system, and they’ll be your first line of defense against employee questions. They’ll also have their own questions, as they may have new tasks like approving hours or making schedules in your system. 

We wanted to make sure our managers could:

• Approve an offer.

• Start onboarding.

• Find their team’s compensation bands in three clicks. 

Train managers on the new system as if they’re new hires. Our winning combination for adoption was was:

• Short live training sessions.

• Two-minute looms.

• One-pager cheat sheets. 

Multiple trainings and easily accessible instruction were essential to ensuring management was able to complete key tasks without calling HR, so create resources they’ll actually use. 

4. Run one parallel cycle, then ship

One clean parallel cycle run beats three messy ones. Reconcile variances, publish what changed, and go live.

Document every variance and its resolution for your go-live troubleshooting guide. This single test run will catch 90% of your issues — tax calculations, deduction mismatches, PTO accruals — before they affect real paychecks.

5. Clean data once, then lock and audit

Messy data compounds over time. Clean it now or spend the next year explaining why reports don't match and why three people have the same title but different permissions.

Standardize job titles, departments, pay types, and location codes before migration. After go-live, enforce policies so the taxonomy stays clean, and establish who can create new titles and who approves changes.

We had three different versions of “Software Engineer” and four was to spell “San Francisco." Implement data hygiene practices before the migration, or you’ll be cleaning up the data forever. 

6. Use automation to buy back HR time

Every click you remove is time you reinvest. We automated onboarding, approvals, and must-have reports so our team could focus on road-mapping L&D and strategic org design.

The math is simple: reducing onboarding from 45 to 5 minutes per hire means 67 hours saved annually at 100 hires. That's nearly two work weeks you can redirect from administration to strategy.

Final thoughts + resources

Switching your HR system is never "no effort," but it doesn't have to be chaos. Anchor on why you're switching, time it right (January 1 if possible), centralize on a platform that scales, and invest the reclaimed hours into programs that build culture and performance.

The mid-year switch taught us valuable lessons — mostly about what not to do. But even with the bumps, moving from a limited PEO to a proper HRIS transformed how we operate. We went from reactive administration to proactive people strategy. Finance got their data. Managers got self-service. Employees got a modern experience.

And remember: The perfect time to switch never comes; the right time is before your next hiring surge breaks what's left of your current system.

Get the assets we used (and wish we had on day one)

If you’re weighing the move, my advice: align on must‑haves, pick a date, and go. The sooner you’re out of “keeping the lights on,” the sooner you’re building the kind of HR function your business deserves.