Healthcare Leader Cures its HR Headaches and Boosts Retention

University Clinical Health is on hand to provide medical care when people need it most. Affiliated with the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, the independent not-for-profit organization delivers health services to communities in the Midsouth region via a network of 190 physicians. Patients heading to University Clinical Health get the latest treatments and expert care in many fields, including nephrology, dermatology, and psychiatry. But maintaining high standards of care is tough in a sector facing skills shortages and employee turnover rates above the national average.

Jasmyne Peters, Senior HRIS & Payroll Manager at University Clinical Health, explains: “In today’s market, two years on a job is equivalent to ten years of service a decade ago. People are far more inclined to come in, pick up skills and experience for their résumé, then look for a new opportunity. That makes our role in HR more demanding and more important than ever."

One cure for these HR headaches is developing a great working environment, as Jasmyne notes: “We try to create a special place to work. Our executive leadership rolls up their sleeves and helps everyone out, and we dedicate time each month to grab food together and play games.”

Alongside this, University Clinical Health is continuously improving its HR operations, from optimizing processes to embracing data-driven analysis to lift retention. A key enabler of these efforts is Paylocity, the healthcare provider’s HR platform for more than eight years.

The Challenge: Offering High-Quality Care to Every Patient

To succeed in a challenging labor market, University Clinical Health looked for a best-in-class HR platform that would help attract and retain talent, drive efficiencies, and accelerate workflows.

Pinpointing the Causes of Employee Turnover

With record numbers of employees leaving the healthcare sector in recent years, staffing is a constant challenge for providers. “What makes things more difficult for us is that we don’t have the same resources as a corporation or for-profit healthcare provider, which can simply offer higher pay,” adds Jasmyne. “While we look to offer compelling compensation plans, we also aim to take a more strategic approach to attract and retain our talent, such as pinpointing and eliminating the things that cause frustration in people’s day-to-day work,” explains Jasmyne.

Manual Workflows Lead to Errors and Inefficiencies

Legacy systems and time-consuming, error-prone manual processes created problems, too. For example, the HR team managed compensation using complex, cumbersome spreadsheets, with countless tabs in each workbook. Updating payroll meant keying in new details for each employee individually, while information was shared with seven different benefits plan providers by painstakingly entering data into their websites. During recruitment, University Clinical Health stored information on applicants across multiple systems; as a result, the HR team could easily overlook strong candidates.  

Complex Timecard Approvals Hinder Productivity

For managers at University Clinical Health, approving timecards was a heavy lift. Managers must aim to approve timecards no later than 11 a.m. each Monday, so HR can proceed with payroll. In the past, the process involved going through each employee’s timesheet to check for missed punches and other errors, which inevitably took up a lot of time and often led managers to work longer hours.

“Managers are busy travelling between clinics and have limited time for administrative tasks. We wanted to create a quicker and more user-friendly process,” adds Jasmyne.

The Solution: Finding the Right Treatment

After implementing Paylocity in 2015, University Clinical Health recently rolled out more modules to enhance its capabilities around payroll processing, talent acquisition, compensation, and more.

Integrated Workflows Sharpen Talent Acquisition

Using Paylocity’s Recruiting module, University Clinical Health can post opportunities to major job boards, run background checks, and coordinate interviews. “The Recruiting module is amazing,” notes Jasmyne. “It makes it much easier for us to identify the best candidates, then we can communicate with them via text message. When we hire a candidate, their information flows straight into the Onboarding module, so there is less paperwork for them to tackle on their first day.”

Automation Simplifies Essential Payroll Tasks

The Performance and Compensation modules have proved hugely valuable, allowing University Clinical Health to replace spreadsheets with streamlined digital processes for planning competitive pay. Using the Payroll module, they have automated key administrative workflows. In particular, the HR team can now complete multiple changes to deduction, tax, and earning codes in one step, rather than updating details for each employee individually.

Enhanced Reporting Highlights HR Trends

With the Insights & Recommendations module, University Clinical Health builds customized reports for HR leaders, executives, and finance teams. Within minutes, the HR team can uncover insights into turnover and retention trends or pull payroll information to support more effective planning and budgeting. The organization also uses Surveys to pick up feedback from new hires on the onboarding process, and long-standing employees on why they choose to stay in position.

Intuitive Dashboards Make Life Easier for Managers

Paylocity is also helping University Clinical Health enhance the employee experience. The organization uses Community to highlight birthdays and work anniversaries, while the Paylocity Mobile App offers a convenient way for employees to check their timesheets.

For managers, the Time & Attendance module has been a gamechanger, providing dashboards that show all timecard errors in a single view. “Managers can approve timecards via the mobile app when they’re on the move. We’re now receiving close to 100 percent of timecard approvals by our deadline, and the whole process runs at least 18 percent faster,” adds Jasmyne.

The Results: Keeping HR in Fine Health

With Paylocity, University Clinical Health has an effective remedy for its HR pains. The platform helps the organization solve staffing issues, automate key tasks, and improve the employee experience.

Data-Driven Insights Help Reduce Turnover 

With enhanced data analytics in Paylocity, University Clinical Health can now identify departments and roles with high turnover, uncover root causes, and plan effective solutions, such as offering more training. This targeted approach has helped the organization raise retention rates by four percent.

Jasmyne notes: “The data in Paylocity is very useful for decision making. During a recent office move, we pulled information for our facilities management team on employee addresses that allowed them to identify a new site that would minimize travel times and costs for our staff.”

Reducing Administrative Work Lifts HR Productivity

Streamlined processes are saving valuable time for University Clinical Health. Jasmyne estimates that using Paylocity to plan compensation frees executives from several weeks of meetings. Similarly, the organization now automatically shares information with its seven benefits providers via Paylocity’s Integrations, reducing daily administrative workloads for the HR team by 22 percent. “Having more time available helps us to work productively and keep our headcount low. Our team has more opportunities to sharpen their skills and become better HR professionals,” adds Jasmyne.

Extra Safeguards Ensure Accurate Pay

Replacing complex manual tasks with smarter digital processes also helps reduce the risk of errors. For example, during payroll the HR team can now pull a pre-pay report that makes errors easy to spot and correct. As a result, University Clinical Health has increased payroll accuracy to almost 99 percent, and payroll processing takes half the time as before.

Jasmyne concludes: “One of the best things about Paylocity is the platform keeps improving. The enhancement request feature is one of our favorite elements, letting us give feedback and influence the roadmap. It’s been a valuable partnership, and we’re looking forward to what comes next.”