Kansas Heart Hospital Leverages Kronos Solution to Improve HR/Payroll Functions and Efficiencies

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Rebuilding, repairing, and restoring hearts is the mission of Kansas Heart Hospital in Wichita, Kansas. The 54-bed subspecialty hospital provides comprehensive cardiovascular and thoracic care to patients throughout the state. Its cardiologists and cardiothoracic and vascular surgeons have performed more than 100,000 procedures, including open-heart surgeries, heart catheterizations and stent deployments, and defibrillator and pacemaker implantations. With a medical and support staff of 230, the hospital is keenly focused on providing specialized cardiovascular care in a compassionate, patient-centered environment.  

Integrated solution boosts productivity, provides timely ROI

Kansas Heart Hospital has a mix of salary and nonunion hourly employees and had been tracking time and attendance with a 10-year-old automated timekeeping solution that uploaded files to an outsourced payroll system. But that was the extent of their interface. Frustrated by the amount of manual data entry required, minimal reporting functionality, limited HR functions, and the payroll company’s use of hospital payroll funds for two days before payday, the HR/payroll team knew the hospital needed to update its workforce management solution.

In selecting an upgraded solution, Kansas Heart Hospital wanted systems that could “talk” to each other, provide robust reporting capabilities, and offer employee self-service features. “We wanted one system for timekeeping, payroll, and HR,” says Teresa Wolfe, HR manager. “And we wanted to have control over our payroll process and data. Therefore, all signs pointed to Kronos.”

During implementation of the Kronos® Workforce Central® suite, “Kronos Implementation Services was instrumental in getting us up and running quickly,” adds Wolfe. “A services person remotely logged into our system and extracted all the necessary data from our prior system, saving us from a manual process that would have taken forever.”

With all employee groups using the Kronos solution, the hospital is now enjoying much-improved HR and payroll services: streamlined onboarding of new hires, improved employee satisfaction through self-service, extensive on-demand reporting, use of its funds until payday, and reduced costs following the elimination of paper processing and reporting. In addition, by bringing payroll in house, the hospital estimates the solution will pay for itself within 2 1/2 years.

Self-service increases efficiencies and employee satisfaction

For HR staff at Kansas Heart Hospital, onboarding new hires used to involve entering payroll information in one place, adding emergency contact and beneficiary information in another, and remembering to enter benefit information at the start of the next month. With data in separate silos — and limited HR/payroll staff access to both timekeeping and payroll information — integrating employee data was next to impossible. Time reports were also printed each Monday for employee review, a time-intensive process that multiplied pressure on payroll staff during biweekly payroll processing.

Now, with employee self-service in place, employees can access all their information — time, accruals, benefits — online at any time and from anywhere. “We have put the responsibility for the accuracy of employee information back on employees,” notes Margaret Anderson, payroll coordinator. “They can look at it every day, and from home if they want to, and it’s their responsibility to let us know if it’s not right. Before, they couldn’t see their time and would call to ask if they had clocked out on a particular day because they couldn’t remember.”

Automated in-house HR/payroll solution saves time and money

Employees like this autonomy and anytime access to their information, and the HR/payroll staff enjoys the time savings. Onboarding of new employees is easier, with all information entered just once into a single system, and effective dating of benefits ensures an employee’s benefits automatically begin on the correct date. Payroll processing is streamlined, and with employee self-service and direct deposit of employee pay, Kansas Heart Hospital no longer mails pay stubs — saving time, paper, and mailing costs.

Bringing payroll in house has saved Kansas Heart Hospital money as well. Before, the payroll company drew funds out of the hospital’s account on Wednesday for payroll and payroll taxes and had use of the funds for two days before depositing the funds in employees’ direct deposit accounts. The hospital’s CFO is much happier now, says Anderson, with the funds earning interest in the hospital’s own account those two days.

Tracking retroactive pay is also easier with Kronos. Yearly reviews don’t always occur close to an employee’s anniversary date, and calculating and processing retroactive pay following a review was a time-consuming manual process before. “Now I can just say, ‘Give me the hours between this date and this date’ and I can automatically make the raise effective on the anniversary date, which is extremely helpful,” Anderson adds.

Reporting functionality delivers workforce data quickly

When Kansas Heart Hospital outsourced payroll, requests for yearly payroll reports and even employee mailing labels incurred extra fees. And when department managers requested overtime information for specific periods, payroll staff had to manually calculate this. With payroll and timekeeping information now integrated in Kronos, HR/payroll can quickly and easily generate a host of reports.

An example of the benefits of on-demand reporting is the ease of comparing monthly invoicing of all medical staff enrolled in the hospital’s system to actual billing, explains Wolfe. “Kronos generates a report every month and ties it back to the invoices, information that I use regularly. And when I need to terminate someone, I can print off the benefit statement for them, so I know exactly what they are enrolled in when I communicate with the employee.”

Taking advantage of solution scalability

To gain further efficiencies, Kansas Heart Hospital plans to add more self-service features. Medical staff will soon be able to see the expiration dates of their licenses and certifications, as well as those of their required yearly TB immunizations. Currently, one manager is solely responsible for alerting staff of these dates. When this information is added to the hospital’s Kronos solution, employees will automatically receive a Kmail alerting them that a certification or immunization expires in 30 days.

The hospital is looking at expanding automation of other manual tasks, including adding applicant tracking and performance management capabilities. “That is one of the things that we liked about Kronos when we first looked at it,” says Anderson. “If we wanted to add those components, we could easily add them later.”

Kansas Heart Hospital Summary

Industry: Healthcare

Employees: 230

Products:

Workforce Timekeeper™
Workforce Payroll™
Workforce HR™

PROJECT BENEFITS

• Integrated timekeeping, payroll, and HR solution streamlines payroll and HR activities and delivers a strong return on investment
• Self-service empowers employees, creating increased satisfaction and HR time savings
• Fast access to workforce data provides timely reporting, reduces paper usage, and lowers costs
• In-house payroll eliminates two-day float, allowing the hospital full use of its funds before payday

“We wanted one system for timekeeping, payroll, and HR. And we wanted to own our system. Therefore, all signs pointed to Kronos.” - Teresa Wolfe, HR manager

More information about Kronos customer success stories may be found at www.kronos.com/resources .

©2010, Kronos Incorporated. Kronos, the Kronos logo, and Workforce Central are registered trademarks and WorkforceTimekeeper, Workforce HR, and Workforce Payroll are trademarks of Kronos Incorporated or a related company. All other product and company names mentioned are used for identification purposes only and may be the trademarks of their respective owners. All specifications are subject to change. All rights reserved.

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