Human Resources: Lennox & Addington County General Hospital achieves 24-month payback with new Payroll

ORGANIZATION
Lennox & Addington County General Hospital is a 32-bed facility offering 24 hour ER, in-patient care including acute, chronic care and a special care unit. Lennox is currently undergoing an expansion that will increase bed capacity to 52 by fall 2008.

BUSINESS CHALLENGE
“Prior to Quadrant HR, we used a service bureau that wasn’t meeting our needs,” says Cheryl Baker, Human Resources, Payroll and Scheduling Officer. “Turnaround time was slow, it wasn’t user friendly and there was a lot of paper waste.”

Lennox found the time entry process problematic and time consuming.

“We had to key time into the system, which wasn’t fully accepting of timecard information, so we had to enter details manually, every week and submit via a modem,” says Cheryl. “We probably spent one day a week doing just imports and exports.”

“Once time entry was complete, we waited another day for our service bureau to process payroll and then send our reports without the flexibility of making corrections beforehand,” says Cheryl. “These reports would get lost in transit which would delay the process for days.”

“We also had to submit our bi-weekly pay weekly which caused some problems in utilizing our scheduling program to its full potential.”

Payroll corrections - a tedious process:
“If I discovered errors in the payroll reports, it was already too late to fix since payroll had been processed. So we had to back date changes constantly, which had to be manually keyed in, as the system did not like our file import for adjustments,” says Cheryl “I probably spent about two days a week preparing and reviewing payroll with a lot of manual paper updates, faxing and mailing.”

Reporting capability was limited and produced excessive paper waste:
“The reporting tool for designing our own reports was Dos-based which made it very complicated and time consuming. I was the only person who could create reports and we couldn’t get the level of detail we wanted,” says Cheryl “and, you had to use disks to pull historical information.”

“Plus, we got all reports in hard copy, whether I needed them or not, which amounted to a lot of paper waste.”

Retro pay - a manual process:
“In the past, retro took at least one day of effort manually handwriting new rates and then sending to the service bureau to key into the system. I also had to calculate lieu benefits on those retro amounts for all part-time and casual staff. Then they would return a report for validation. Once I was comfortable with the changes, I would request multiple retro reports as we had to have the totals broken down by periods, contract year and payroll year end and then double-check information. We could go back and forth 2-3 times before the report was finalized. Often taking 2-3 days just to get the report accurate,” says Cheryl.

Producing manual cheques and correcting cost allocations - a time consuming and cumbersome process:
“If an employee missed a days pay, I had to manually calculate an estimate of what was owing and create an advance, produce a manual cheque and then ask our service bureau to adjust deductions for the next pay run. I probably spent 5 hours just to run one manual cheque,” says Cheryl. “I followed the same process to correct cost allocations too which was cumbersome. As a result, I generated about 1-2 manual cheques per month which wasn't a huge amount but a big deal whenever you needed to do it.”

Service bureau fees kept adding up:
“Before Quadrant HR, we paid extra for an interface to our scheduling system,” says Cheryl “and it wouldn’t pull adjustments over, only initial entries. Any upgrades to the scheduling system could cost more money if our service bureau vendor had to adjust the file.”

Finally, Lennox had no control over when the pay would run - forced to work with the payroll service bureau’s schedule:
“If there was a stat holiday, to process payroll in time meant we had to complete our work earlier. So, we had to estimate weekend work schedules and send it off to the service bureau and do adjustments after the fact.”

QHR SOLUTION
Since implementing Quadrant HR Payroll, Lennox has experienced a significant shift in how they process payroll while achieving better accuracy and control.

“I probably still spend two days a week on payroll functions but I get a lot more accomplished. I make adjustments and balance reports before processing payroll. Now it’s proactive work rather than reactive fixing of errors,” says Cheryl.

Eliminating paper waste:
“With Quadrant HR, we get more detail in our reports and can generate them when we need to rather than wasting paper on unnecessary reports.”

Saving time with a streamlined retro pay process:
“Retro pay is so much easier now than in our other system. Now, it takes about an hour to key in new rates vs. one day, and the system filters the information down to the employee screens. I run a report to validate and can even drill down to the day. Then, I run retro pay and the system does the rest.”

The time to generate a manual cheque has also decreased significantly.
“Now I can run a manual cheque in about a half-hour vs. five hours,” says Cheryl.

Lennox also likes Quadrant HR’s reporting tool:
“Now I get the details I want down to a specific date and the Director, Finance and Administration can view reports instantly,” says Cheryl.

Quadrant HR’s interface to their third-party scheduling system is more efficient and cost effective.
“We have an excellent interface with our scheduling system for no additional cost as it’s included in our Annual Support. Plus, the cost of our Quadrant HR implementation was paid for in the first two years,” says Cheryl.
With payroll in-house, Lennox has full control over the process.

“Now, on pay week, payroll processing takes one day, including inputting final changes, processing and approving timecards and submitting. Once timecards are imported into the system, payroll processing takes less than a day. This includes running the pay, checking for errors online, balancing, sending it to the bank, and running the reports,” says Cheryl. “Now I have accuracy and confidence in payroll processing and can do it on our own schedule.”
Lennox also appreciates ongoing QHR Support and Quadrant HR’s flexibility:

“We are more satisfied with QHR Support and Quadrant HR can usually be changed to accommodate improvements, which is great. We also had a really good implementation experience,” says Cheryl.

Lennox is also adding more HR functionality. Currently, Quadrant HR is used to monitor workplace incidents. However, the plan is to begin tracking performance management, service awards and various other functions that are currently tracked manually.