Building a Business Case to Purchase an HRIS, Part 4

Building a Business Case, Part 4

While attendance management may seem like the most basic and simple of HR tasks, it presents more problems than are initially obvious. Ask yourself, “Can I rely on all my managers to consistently log my employees’ sick or vacation days?” If the answer is “no,” you are unnecessarily accruing liabilities that affect your company’s bottom line.

The main areas that can benefit from automation are time clock management, and vacation, sick, and other time off policies. Many employees don’t keep track of how many vacation days and sick days they are entitled to or have taken. If you ask any HR manager for the most frequently asked question they receive, they’ll most likely repeat, “How much time do I have available for my vacation today and how much will I have in one month’s time?” It’s one of the most common inquiries an HR department has to deal with and one which frequently equates to time and effort wasted on a mundane tasks executed by highly-paid HR professionals.

What if an employee could log onto a secure HR system and simply look up the information they need? Easier still, what if that system could easily show the employee the amount of leave taken and allow the employee to make online leave requests? From a departmental manager’s standpoint, imagine theses processes:

An employee makes a request for vacation.

The employee’s manager receives an email from the employee requesting time off. If the manager happens to be out of the office or unable to acknowledge the request, the email will automatically be forwarded to another decision maker. Once the request is received, the manager can use a calendar view to check whether the request will clash with other department members’ absence. The manager can also verify at this time that the employee is titled to the time off.

Then the manager can simply accept/reject the time off request accordingly. If the vacation or medical leave request is approved, every system from HR, to payroll, to benefits, will automatically be updated. Calculation of vacation time is frequently a contentious issue. If it is sloppily managed, employees can frequently take more paid vacation time than they are entitled to, because no one can prove they haven’t taken it. Online leave request ensures that leave is taken and that leave requests are accounted for.

And take for example a terminated employee. You would typically pay a salary for leftover vacation. If proof of what has been taken is clearly available, it can make the whole termination process run much more smoothly.

If absenteeism is becoming a problem, automating the reporting, management and logging of sick days is a good way to track and control whether there is an issue. A good attendance management system should be largely self-managing. Once you have defined your unique business rules, the HR department should have to expend little or no effort in ensuring that it is running smoothly. Having a single, electronic access point, directly integrated to the payroll system offers a very easy solution to these issues.

This four part series covered four of some of the most important justifying factors to make your case for purchasing an HRIS. Cost savings and productivity gains occur through the automation of routine day-to-day tasks Compliance, integration to Payroll and benefits carriers, and easy to use interface and powerful reporting capabilities.

Want to know how much you can save by automating HR tasks, compliance, integration with HR, and implementation of benefits management tools? Try our savings calculator – a simple and easy to use web application. Just answer a few simple questions, enter your name and email address, and we’ll tell you how much your company can save annually by automating this task.

You can also read some of these case studies to hear how our customers have improved work flow, saved time and money, reduced labor costs within HR and Payroll departments, and increased employee satisfaction.

We’re happy to answer any questions you may have about purchasing an HRIS, or about any products within our integrated human capital management suite. It’s easy. Just fill out this this form or call Ascentis at 800.229.2713.

Building a Business Case to Purchase an HRIS, Part 3

Building a Business Case, Part 3

Integration saves both time and money.

One of the biggest reasons to push for an HRIS at any organization is the reduction or complete removal of double entry. Not only does double entry of data result in major errors (covered in Part 1 of this series) which costs companies money in payroll processing errors, but it can also create benefits and paycheck problems for employees, and can complicate compliance issues (covered in Part 2). In addition, it will also increase labor costs for the entry of data multiple times into multiple systems.

However, while an interface between an HRIS and a completely separate payroll vendor is works well, it doesn’t truly offer the same benefits as a FULLY integrated system. A FULLY integrated system offers the transfer of data in real time – meaning data is always up to date – for both the HR and Payroll departments.

Ascentis HR is fully integrated with Ascentis Payroll, offers integration to benefits carriers for enrollment data, as well as document management capabilities so that there is a single source of all HR data. This increases data accuracy and validity, while reducing the time spent on day-to-day data maintenance tasks. Accurate data can result in avoiding compliance lawsuits, overbilling from a benefits carrier, and better management of leave policies. In addition, accurate data enables managers and other staff to make more informed personnel decisions resulting in higher productivity from employees.

Want more information about integration with Ascentis HR? It’s easy. Just fill out this this form or call Ascentis at 800.229.2713.

Building a Business Case to Purchase an HRIS, Part 2

Building a Business Case, Part 2

In our last post, Building a Business Case to Purchase an HRIS (Part 1), we covered the first main reason to purchase an HRIS – elimination of costly errors.

In Part 2, we’ll be talking about Compliance.

Reduce risk by automating compliance

Compliance is a hot topic nowadays. It isn’t necessary to be willfully negligent to be confronted with serious and very expensive problems. Even the most compliance conscientious employer who meets the variant interpretations of specific regulations may encounter unexpected litigation and find their efforts fruitless. Many companies presume that they are adhering to strict regulation guidelines when in fact they’re at fault for violating a compliance specification located somewhere in the fine print.\

For instance, an average of 450 employment lawsuits are filed in the U.S. each day, and 57% of companies have been named as defendants in at least one employment related lawsuit in the past five years. A simple google search of the term “employment lawsuits” results in over 17 million results. Lawsuits by disgruntled employees are one problem. But nowadays, a company can face suits from candidates who were never hired, as well as from former employees months after termination.

Compliance with federal and state regulations involves a mind-boggling array of topics, most of which fall within the purview of the HR department. OSHA, FLSA, COBRA, EEO, VETS, SOX, and EDA all have minutely detailed requirements, many of which are open to individual interpretation, and they all have severe penalties for infraction. It is a never-ending, full-time task to keep up with these requirements, ensure corporate compliance, and follow the required reporting procedures. Human error is seldom seen as an acceptable defense in cases of compliance infraction.

Compliance automation plays a critical role in both preventing violations by ensuring that requirements are automatically monitored and fulfilled, and in defending alleged compliance violations. The best defense against an alleged violation is a watertight reporting system and automatic documentation of everything related to a specific case.
For example, in a case of proving OSHA compliance, an updated, organized on-line injury reporting system in the factory is going to carry more weight than the standard illegible notebook. In addition, some compliance authorities, such as VETS-100 and COBRA will waive strict reporting requirements if it can be proved that appropriate data collection and tracking systems are being used.

Ascentis HR can reduce the likelihood of error as well as reduce the workload for HR staff in collecting such compliance information by providing compliance automation. The powerful report wizard can quickly generate reports such as EEO-1, VETS-100 and OSHA incidents reducing time spent on generating these reports as well as covering any liabilities in case of lawsuit.

Curious about how to make your company more compliant? Ask for more information by filling out this form or call Ascentis at 800.229.2713.

Building a Business Case to Purchase an HRIS, Part 1

Building a Business Case, Part 1

HR departments in mid-tier organizations are models of versatility. Their responsibilities include everything from answering employee questions about health benefits and vacation time and sorting out the process of employee reviews, to high level long term planning and organization of training, employee retention plans, management development and other important issues that fundamentally affect the productivity and success of the organization.

Most organizations of this size would agree that they would greatly benefit from their HR professionals having the opportunity to focus more of their energies on strategic issues, as is the case in larger organizations. It is no secret that the top-performing companies in the S&P 500 are the ones that have the strongest focus on employee development. However, in reality, the majority of their HR department’s time and resources is consistently taken up with day-to-day tactical issues—up to 5 hours of every eight hour day, some studies suggest.

This four part post will focus on the time and cost savings that can be achieved with the adoption of Ascentis HR. Ascentis HR can net these savings by providing the following benefits:

Productivity gains resulting through the ease of use of Ascentis HR.
Cost and time savings occur through the elimination of old or incorrect data and dual data entry.
Additional productivity gains and cost savings result from freeing up HR staff to focus on employee growth and satisfaction.

Eliminating costly errors.

There are two main culprits when it comes to mistakes in insurance carrier bills. Transcription errors in paperwork are certainly a problem, but a surprisingly large number of errors can be accounted for in the continued payment of premiums associated with terminated employees. This is a situation that could easily be resolved by automating the link between the insurance carrier and HR. It is also important that the payroll and HR systems are fully integrated so that the payroll process automatically highlights any changes. If the HR system is simply providing a data output file that then needs to be uploaded into the payroll system, it presents two problems.

First of all, this is yet another task that needs to be performed by an already busy HR person. Secondly, the payroll manager is going to want to print off and review any changes before adding them to the system, rather than uploading a data file full of unknown and potentially inaccurate information.

Below are examples of real customers (company names withheld) who discovered their insurance carriers’ databases to be seriously out-of-date. These error rates were discovered when the organization electronically transmitted their benefits enrollment data from their HRMS to their benefits carriers.

Situation 1: A company with 130 employees had nine employees with incorrect names/addresses listed on the eligibility roster of their health insurance provider. This is a 6.9% error rate.
Consequence: Significant time wasted on communication between the HR department and benefit insurance group to correct inaccurate information.
Consequence: Some employees were without medical benefits while the issue was being figured out and fixed.

Situation #2: An organization with 110 employees discovered three members were not on the register and nine members were on the register that shouldn’t have been. This is a 10.9% error rate.
Consequence: Overpayment to insurance carriers and a large unnecessary benefits expense.

Consequence: Significant time spent on calls between employees, HR, and insurance carrier to fix situation.
Consequence: Three employees assumed they had medical insurance when they did not.

Ascentis HR’s benefits management tools can greatly reduce these errors. Configurable eligibility rules, automated eligibility calculation, data transmissions directly to the carrier, alerts and reporting that provide at-a-glance changes to eligibility and enrollment situations, are just some of the ways Ascentis HR can reduce errors while decreasing staff workload.

Learn more about Ascentis Benefits Management Carrier Connect by viewing our archived February 2011 Webinar, “Sending Enrollment Data Electronically with Carrier Connect”.

Ascentis Blog

Information to help HR and payroll managers, recruiters, and compliance officers become more effective.

Tag Archives: hris