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Media companies and entertainment businesses run on a mix of full-time staff, freelancers, contractors, and union talent — often across multiple projects, locations, and jurisdictions simultaneously. thePeopleStack helps you implement Rippling so your people ops keeps pace with your productions.
Media and entertainment companies pay staff across wildly different compensation structures — hourly crew, salaried employees, day rates, residuals, and union scale — often varying project to project. Managing this without errors is a significant operational challenge.
Productions and agencies rely heavily on freelancers and independent contractors. Keeping track of contracts, tax forms, payments, and compliance across dozens or hundreds of short-term engagements creates real administrative burden.
Working with SAG-AFTRA, IATSE, WGA, DGA, and other unions means navigating complex collective bargaining agreements, residual calculations, benefit fund contributions, and reporting obligations that vary by project and jurisdiction.
Productions spin up and wind down quickly. Getting crew members fully onboarded — paperwork, system access, equipment — and cleanly offboarded at wrap is critical, and delays cost time and money.
Shooting across states, provinces, or countries means navigating different tax codes, labor laws, and compliance requirements simultaneously. Managing a distributed workforce compliantly without a large HR team is a constant challenge.
Rippling's Payroll handles the full spectrum of media compensation — day rates, hourly crew, salaried staff, residuals, and variable pay — across multiple projects simultaneously. Automated tax filings and multi-jurisdiction compliance mean your payroll team spends less time on manual calculations and more time on what matters.
Rippling's Global Contractors module centralizes the entire freelancer lifecycle — contracts, tax forms (W-9, 1099, W-8BEN), payments, and compliance — in one place. Whether you're paying 5 contractors or 500, every engagement is tracked, documented, and compliant.
Rippling's onboarding workflows automate the entire process of bringing crew on and wrapping them off. New hires complete paperwork digitally, get system access provisioned automatically, and are payroll-ready in minutes — not days. Offboarding is equally seamless, with instant access revocation and final pay automation.
With Rippling's IT and Identity & Access Management, production companies can automatically provision and deprovision access to editing software, cloud storage, collaboration tools, and corporate systems as crew join and leave productions — eliminating manual IT overhead and protecting sensitive creative assets.
Rippling's Learning Management System lets you deploy and track required training across your workforce — safety certifications, harassment prevention, software onboarding, and compliance requirements — with automated reminders and completion reporting across every production.
Managing benefits across full-time staff, part-time employees, and union members with varying eligibility rules is complex. Rippling's Benefits Administration automates eligibility tracking, open enrollment, and carrier connections — ensuring every worker gets what they're entitled to without manual HR intervention.
Rippling's Expense Management gives producers and finance teams granular, policy-based control over production spending — from location costs and travel to equipment rentals and vendor payments. Expenses sync directly to payroll, eliminating out-of-cycle reimbursements.
While much of the media workforce is project-based, retaining and developing your core permanent team is critical. Rippling's Performance Management module helps you set goals, run structured reviews, and recognize top performers — building a stable foundation for your business even as project rosters constantly change.
"The partnership felt genuinely collaborative, not transactional."
Jeff So, Director of People and Culture
Modules
HRIS + Payroll
INDUSTRY
Media & Entertainment
LOCATION
Canada
Kickstart your next Rippling project with an award-winning Rippling partner. Complete this form and one of our colleagues will get back to you. No matter what your size, industry or requirements are, we have the skills and experience to help you achieve your goals.