Texoma Healthcare System
The Workforce Central® Suite: A remedy for Texoma's workforce management pains
Texoma Healthcare System is a regional, community-based healthcare provider that serves northern Texas and southern Oklahoma. The organization has over 1,400 employees who work throughout nine locations in four different counties. Texoma's facilities include a 238-bed acute care hospital, an ambulatory surgery center, rehabilitation and behavioral health hospitals, an urgent care center, and several primary care clinics.
When Texoma learned that its outdated labor management systems were being phased out by their respective vendors, it decided the timing was ideal to make some drastic changes. The organization knew that it needed to ease its payroll processing burden, enforce payroll accountability, automate and streamline its human resources systems, and, most important, reduce labor costs.
"With annual overtime costs running over three percent of our total payroll costs, we knew there was a huge opportunity for savings," comments Texoma's Chief Information Officer and Vice President, Ty Sweeney. Texoma looked to Kronos® and its integrated system, the Workforce Central suite, to help it achieve its workforce management goals. As a result, Texoma realized a significant reduction in overtime in just one year — which translated into substantial savings.
Multiple outdated systems present major problems
Sweeney learned about the Workforce Central suite's HRMS components, Workforce Payroll™ and Workforce HR™, when they were debuted at a Kronos local customer conference in Dallas, Texas. Texoma had been using a time and attendance system that Kronos had acquired, and was looking forward to upgrading to the suite's Workforce Timekeeper™ solution. The idea of having a single-source vendor for its time and attendance, payroll, and HR needs made great sense to Texoma.
"Since I already knew Kronos was a leader in workforce management solutions, it seemed like a natural progression to move to Kronos' HRMS solution in addition to upgrading to Workforce Timekeeper," Sweeney explains. And Texoma knew it would reap many benefits from upgrading to an integrated, automated system.
Previously, the twice-monthly payroll was a long and involved process, and not just for the payroll department. Texoma's IT department had to dedicate a person to assist the accounting department with payroll for six days every month.
Payroll accountability was also very difficult to enforce. "Every month, the accounting department had to track down managers who hadn't submitted their employees' paper timesheets," Sweeney remembers. "The manual timekeeping process was inefficient and desperately needed to be fixed."
Another major challenge Texoma faced was corralling overtime costs. "Typically, fifty percent of a hospital's expenses are labor costs," says Sweeney. "So we wanted to implement an automated timekeeping system that would help us reduce these costs — especially overtime."
Texoma also wanted to implement a comprehensive HR system. The HR department had been working with two separate databases and heavy paper reports to locate and track employees' benefits information. Having two different systems also meant that information had to be entered twice, which increased the likelihood of errors. All these factors made managing employee leave, generating ad hoc reports, handling regulatory compliance, and manipulating employee data very difficult.
The appeal of a web-based, integrated suite
The decision to go with Kronos for its HR, payroll, and time and attendance needs was an easy one for Texoma. The promise of a web-based, integrated system was appealing, and Sweeney liked the idea of having one central place to go to with questions instead of having to call multiple vendors.
Once the decision was official and the implementation commenced, Texoma was thrilled with the assistance it received from Kronos' professional services and global support teams. "It was evident that the services team was as committed to our success as we were," comments Sweeney. "And no other software vendor gives us the level of support that Kronos' global support team does. They are the best."
Texoma realizes huge cost savings
The positive impact of the Workforce Central suite has been felt throughout Texoma. By minimizing overtime costs, the organization has met its goal of reducing labor expenses. "Managers can now access employees' time records in real time and stop unnecessary overtime before it occurs," says Sweeney. "More informed decisions about the use of overtime are made — and this translates into huge cost savings."
Texoma's payroll and accounting departments are thrilled that processing payroll is so much easier. "It is simple for managers to edit and approve their employees' time online, and accounting no longer has to make last-minute calls for paper timesheets," explains Sweeney. "Also, the IT department has been taken out of the payroll process completely; it can now dedicate its time to more relevant activities."
Benefits information centralized and compliance concerns eased
The HR department at Texoma is also enjoying the benefits of the Workforce Central suite. With all their current and historical benefit information housed in one central system, HR can now respond to employee and manager inquiries almost immediately. When Texoma rolls out self-service in a few months, employees and managers will be able to access and manage their personal data, request time off, and explore their benefits on their own — and HR will have time to focus on more strategic work.
Generating crucial reports has also become much easier. Texoma can now more accurately comply with the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations' (JCAHO) standards for ongoing licensure verification because HR can easily determine whose licenses are about to expire. "And HR practically jumped up and down when they realized how easy it was to create EEOC [Equal Employment Opportunity Commission] reports," Sweeney says. "It used to be a manual process that took several days, but now it takes just a few hours."
Compliance with the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) has also been improved as the leave administration process has been streamlined. "HR, employees, and managers are happy with the new sophistication of our leave process. And we have greater peace of mind knowing that we have more control over leaves of absence," Sweeney explains.
Considerable successes in just one year
More accurate compliance with government regulations, centralized benefits information, a simpler payroll process, and dramatic savings due to overtime reduction — the Workforce Central suite has helped Texoma achieve all these significant benefits in just one year. "We are very pleased with the Workforce Central suite, and considering how well the past year has gone, we're excited to see what the future holds," says Sweeney.
|