Number 1 on Gartner’s Top Ten Technologies of 2012 list is Cloud Computing.  This is because of the Cloud’s scalability and flexibility.  Using Internet technologies a client gains a flexible IT infrastructure, meaning, a client company no longer has to maintain their own IT resources to help maintain any particular software product – that is now built into the Cloud computing offering purchased.

This Cloud-based Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model allows the client company access to the software they need to help their business run better without the burden of having to maintain the software from an IT perspective.  There is no CD to install the software.  It’s simply accessed through an Internet connection, and often sold on a per-user- per-month basis. 

Workforce management systems are similar in that a SaaS deployment (how it’s delivered or accessed – via the Internet) to the client is paid for on a per-employee-per-month (PEPM) subscription basis.  This is what a client company pays to access the workforce management software via the Internet for each employee who will use it per month.

The barriers to entry are a lot lower when the cost of Could-based solutions do not require expert IT resources to maintain them.  Plus, as a client company’s business grows with more employees, new users can quickly and easily be added – no extra licenses to purchase, just users who can often be up and running in minutes.

Cloud computing is one way companies are getting back to the human side of human resources.  By not being bogged down with the technology itself, companies can truly use the technology as a tool to enhance their own offerings, rather than a necessary evil of doing business.

Posted By: Nick Venturella Insperity Time and Attendance

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In the long term care industry labor costs associated with overtime are the proverbial thorn in the side of administrators as they get pressure to quantify bottom line labor cost savings from the CFO or Director of Operations.

We tend to categorize overtime into two main buckets:

• Planned Overtime
  • Planned overtime essentially consists of overtime that has been built into the week’s schedule.  This sometimes happens on the planning end because maybe there has been turnover in staff and for that particular week you’re shorthanded and know the position won’t be filled right away, so based on the staff available you plan overtime to ensure all shifts are covered.
  • An unfortunately common occurrence is promised overtime.  Often as a bargaining tactic, promises of a fixed amount of overtime for a staff member may have been agreed to in the hiring process.  This is dangerous for a few reasons:  For one, it ensures you’re going to have larger labor expenses than needed because they’ve been built into the schedule and promised to an employee.  Second, this can tank staff morale if others, who were not promised such an overtime guarantee, learn of this and feel slighted.  That leads to turnover and more call-outs causing additional unplanned overtime – growing your total overtime costs exponentially

• Unplanned Overtime
  • Time theft, is a contributor to unplanned overtime.  When someone punches in slightly earlier than their shift is assigned to start, or decides to punch out of their shift 5 to 10 minutes later than they’re supposed to – these small increments of time add up and can cause overtime to occur.  With a known time and attendance policy, for punching in and out of shifts as well as appropriate data collection devices that can meet the needs of your staff, however they need to punch in and out of their shifts (via a mobile smartphone or tablet device, a desktop computer terminal, or a biometric hand reader punch clock), can contribute to reducing or eliminating such time theft.  Plus, your automated time and attendance software can alert you when early or late punches occur.
  • Finally, there are call-outs, when a staff member calls in sick or doesn’t show for their shift.  These open slots in the schedule need to be filled immediately.  In these situations you may not be able to completely avoid overtime costs, but with your automated scheduling software you can have insight into making a wise timely decision about who should fill the open slot.  For example, if a call-out occurs for a CNA position, you likely want to fill that position with another CNA, rather than a nurse (who is on a higher pay scale and may already be close to overtime hours for that pay period), even though the nurse is readily available and willing to take the shift.

With the appropriate workforce management system, that includes time and attendance and scheduling, your facility can reduce, and in some cases, eliminate both planned and unplanned overtime costs.  

In conclusion, you can reduce overtime by scheduling more efficiently, staying alerted to time and attendance infractions, and as a result reduce bottom line labor costs that can positively affect margins allowing all to get back to offering quality care.

Posted By: Nick Venturella Insperity Time and Attendance

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Non-profit organizations are pretty use to stretching their resources beyond their current means.  Given the state of the current economy, even their for-profit counterparts are scrambling for innovative ways to extend their resources.

For non-profits, it may seem like the price of doing non-profit work.  Regardless, of your opinion on that statement it’s safe to say that non-profits as well as other for-profit businesses could benefit from reduced labor expenses to effectively save on their bottom line.

Something that is often unique to non-profits is their reliance on various grants.  In fact, applying for and winning grants, for many non-profits, is a strategy to maintain operating revenue, or continue specific programs.  Like any organization with employees, a non-profit’s workforce is typically their largest expense.

A workforce management system is a helpful way for a non-profit organization to track and proactively control the hours their employees work toward a specific grant-funded project.  By tracking such information in an automated system the organization can track the pay of an employee’s work on the project as that work is funded by the grant funds that were awarded to the non-profit organization.

By being able to track work on specific grant-funded projects a non-profit organization can budget their grant funds and allocate employees appropriately.  They can also maintain an audit of the hours put into a project, which may help the grant application writer understand how much work/time will likely be involved with similar future projects for which s/he may be applying.

Posted By: Nick Venturella Insperity Time and Attendance

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How are you currently controlling your staff’s overtime expense?  Is your scheduling process efficient?  Do you have the ability to change and create schedules on the fly when call-outs happen?  Does your time and attendance system alert you when your staff is approaching overtime so you can make an informed change to the staff schedule to reduce your overtime labor cost?

If you couldn’t answer the above questions, or you answered ‘no’ to several of them then you could be missing an opportunity to schedule your staff more efficiently, reduce overtime costs and limit the amount of time you spend behind the computer – with the ultimate goal of getting everyone back to offering the quality care your residents and their families expect.

With a workforce management system, including time and attendance and scheduling, you can potentially reduce your staff’s overtime and total labor expense across all of your long term care facilities between 30% and 80%.  In fact, based on a 2011 Workforce Scheduling Aberdeen report, an organization can increase its accuracy in staff scheduling 21% by implementing an automated scheduling system alone – that’s a big bottom line savings on your overall labor costs.  This doesn’t take into account the additional 1-3% savings on your total payroll cost from the time and attendance portion of your workforce management system.

Being able to proactively make staff scheduling decisions to reduce and/or prevent overtime from occurring can be best managed in the following ways:

• Begin by addressing consistently open shifts and staff call-outs.  If you’re using an automating scheduling tool as part of your workforce management system you can likely address open shifts a few weeks into the future.  Fill the open shifts with staff who pose the least potential for overtime.  For call-outs, again if you’re using an automated scheduling program, you can contact qualified, available shift replacements via email and phone through the system.  However, if you’re not using an automated scheduling system you may want to review that week’s time and attendance data (if using an automated system you can quickly build a short list of qualified shift replacements prioritized by their already accrued work hours to ensure you don’t choose someone who may reach overtime by taking the shift).  Also, be sure you don’t always shoulder tap the same people to fill call-outs.  Using the same folks over and over to fill call-outs can drive the staff’s morale down in a hurry – there are likely other staffers who would like to pick up an extra shift or two to earn a little more money.
• Try to avoid building overtime into your schedule.  Exhaust all other options before considering this practice.  Building overtime into your schedule is a slippery slope of labor expense.  When the CFO comes to you as the Administrator handling the staff schedules Mr. or Ms. CFO is not going to be happy to hear your excuses about how building in overtime each week saves you time in your role – that small potential cost savings on your time is completely overshadowed by the comparatively immense overtime labor cost.
•  Set policies for management and staff to be on the same page about how overtime is managed and granted.  If staff knows that management has to approve all overtime, and management has a fair and equitable way to rotate who gets the overtime when it occurs, that can bring morale up quicker than you think – happier workers translates to happier residents.

Posted By: Nick Venturella Insperity Time and Attendance

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So you have a time and attendance software that your enterprise has been using for quite a while.  The software has worked well enough for your needs – a few annoyances you’ve had to deal with, but nothing too terrible that would make you consider going through the process of completely changing to a new system.

Until, one day when your time and attendance software provider gets bought by another, larger, company and you’re forced to upgrade or take your chances on the current system not breaking (since support will no longer be offered).

You consider upgrading, as your current provider suggests, but then you see the price tag and are just not prepared for that expense right now.  You know a good time and attendance system will pay for itself in a short while, but ROI on this particular proposed system won’t be quick enough to justify the listed price.

So what do you do at this point?  Start shopping.

You begin to look into other time and attendance solution providers – ones that can potentially continue to use some of your existing hardware.  Your biggest concern is that you want to make sure you can still maintain the use of your current payroll provider.  You think by being able to leverage some of the existing infrastructure of your soon-to-be-outdated workforce management system you can save a bit on the cost of updating by only updating the time and attendance portion of your solution with another provider to gain a supported system while leaving the now, larger, previous (or at this point, possibly still current) time and attendance company.

That makes sense.  You’re not alone.  There are several companies in this boat all the time.  Or, maybe you had purchased an out-of-the-box time and attendance software while your company was smaller and had fewer time and attendance needs, but now that you’ve grown, you’ve essentially outgrown your current time and attendance software.

These things happen.  The good news is that there is usually an alternative available in the industry. 

My advice would be to find a solution that can offer free version upgrades with Support, so something like this becomes an issue of the past, and get’s you back to what you do best – running your business.

Posted By: Nick Venturella Insperity Time and Attendance

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Workforce Management is such a necessary, yet often a more-complex-than-one-thinks set of business processes.

On this blog I’ve often referred to workforce management solutions as ‘infrastructure solutions.’  By this I mean, if your workforce management solution/processes are in place and they’re optimized appropriately for your business’ needs, you don’t think about it much on a day-to-day basis.  You rely on it, just like you rely on the lights being on if you pay your monthly electric bill – you don’t realize how much more efficiently you work with the lights on unless for some reason they go out.

Not only does this ‘infrastructure solution’ help you and your workforce become more efficient, it has bottom line savings attached to it as well, and that improves your profit margins.  It also has an interesting residual effect – with more workforce process efficiencies and increased profit margins, due to bottom line savings, your staff can concentrate on what they do best – offering quality service.

Okay, so you may be asking, “what’s the point of all of this rambling?”  Here at Insperity, we understand workforce management.  We’ve been involved with the workforce management industry for more than 20 years providing software solutions to automate and ease the process of collecting and analyzing labor data, scheduling, HR and payroll, helping businesses make key workforce decisions to realize bottom line savings.

And, while we’ve had clients for years in the long term care and assisted living industry we’re sharing with you, our continued commitment to providing the long term care industry with a more focused solution, engineered to better meet your unique workforce management needs.

In light of recent and upcoming Medicare and Medicaid cuts, now more than ever long term care, assisted living and senior living facilities need to find ways to save real dollars on their bottom line to maintain the quality care they provide and in some cases to simply keep their doors open.

Our workforce management system can help you dramatically improve your scheduling efficiency and processes to better control unplanned/frictional overtime.  This allows you and your staff to concentrate on what’s truly important – offering quality care to your residents.  (we’re seeing overtime costs reduced between 30% and 80%, which is truly significant)

Our goal is to help you better manage your staff, and with the time and attendance portion of such a solution you can keep your pulse on the actual labor dollars that are being spent and saved.  This can be used in part like an actual dollars accounting/payroll tool providing the right information to help you make key, proactive scheduling decisions that arm you for call-outs and census changes.

That said, in the coming months we’ll be sharing some time and attendance, scheduling and overall workforce management best practices on this blog.  We sincerely hope you find the information insightful and beneficial not only for yourself, but also for your staff.  Learn more about how Insperity can help your long term care facility.

We invite you to sign up on this blog site to receive our weekly blog posts directly in your email inbox, we invite you to return often, comment on posts, and we invite you to tell us what challenges you’re facing so we may write about them and do our best to shed some light on your workforce management questions.

Sincerely,

Nick Venturella
Insperity Time and Attendance (a workforce management software division of Insperity)

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Recently, I read a Corporate Report Wisconsin article by Teri Bruns, Technology Perception Yields Business Enlightenment.  Bruns talks about her 2012 transformative predictions brought on by technology.

What stood out to me were her thoughts on technology in 2012.  Specifically, Bruns spoke of technology moving to more of a “strategic offensive weapon” vs. being an “organizational cost center,” as in 2011 and prior.

Bruns talked about businesses integrating human and technology solutions with the Cloud as an example of such integrated flexibility.  The Cloud allows for the off-loading of burdensome data storage, yet can increase a company’s ability to access data easily and potentially from anywhere given better mobile devices (tablets and smartphones).  This can help to increase productivity and save time.

What does this all mean for Time and Attendance?  It’s no secret that Cloud-based, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications and mobile solutions are going to be big players in 2012.  Not so much because they’re new and fancy, but because I think this year we [collectively] have a better understanding of how to apply these tools to our organizations to increase bottom line savings.

For example, with time and attendance software, using a SaaS application can free up your IT person or department to focus on other responsibilities that have been neglected due to IT’s time spent on maintenance of licensed applications on your organization’s network.

For those in health-related industries, including Long Term Care, where employees are often on the go needing all kinds of information quickly, mobile devices can allow workers access to what they need, where and when they need it.  Mobile solutions not only allow such workers to be more productive in their roles, but can actually let the employee clock in and out of their work day as well as review and swap scheduled shifts right from a hand-held device.  Use of such mobile devices encourages workers to offer better quality patient care (with little room for excuses) by offering access to records and the ability to update records on the fly with minimal hardware/software or down time away from patients holed up in a back office behind a computer screen.

Better integration of human and technology solutions is what I predict, and hope for in 2012.  Time will tell (pun intended).

Posted By: Nick Venturella Insperity Time and Attendance

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With continued tough economic times many businesses are simply thankful that they’re managing in our current market conditions.

As a CFO you might be grateful that you’ve been able to maintain your staff this year and haven’t had to downsize or make any dramatic changes to your workforce.

If you’re like many businesses, you’re thankful for the clients you serve and the people who provide that excellent service – your employees.

Despite the economic weather, your employees are consistently doing more with less and truly making a positive go of it. While you may find you’re not in a position to offer monetary bonuses to show your gratitude you can certainly extend an encouraging word of appreciation to them.

We often talk about a company’s workforce as their largest expense and with our workforce management system you can tighten up the accuracy and efficiency of that payroll expense to experience bottom line benefits, but in reality your workforce is your greatest asset.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Posted By: Nick Venturella Insperity Time and Attendance
free business resources available on Insperity.com

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I recently read a couple of Aberdeen reports about time and attendance strategies and workforce scheduling.

The reports drew a strong conclusion that marrying time and attendance data with scheduling data can help improve a company’s bottom line by streamlining processes surrounding a company’s largest expense – its workforce. 

That makes sense – if you build better processes to schedule your staff more efficiently and effectively you’ll likely see less unplanned overtime payouts in your time and attendance data.

Where the impact of time and attendance + scheduling really gains some ground is when both processes are automated.  Then you get the benefits of a more efficient and effective process, but also the productivity time saved by the fact that the process is shorter to complete and/or less time intensive to maintain because of the automation.

According to the Aberdeen report on Workforce Scheduling 2011, automating scheduling reduces unplanned overtime by 21%.  That’s significant!

Now, if you’re in an industry like Long Term Care, where scheduling can often be a nightmare, and controlling overtime costs are crucial to already slim profit margins, then it makes sense to employ an automated time and attendance + scheduling solution.

What really helps the C-level executive is further insight into the time and attendance and scheduling data to proactively handle various issues and make key decisions to prevent unnecessary workforce expenses before they happen.  Operations or the Administrator can then be notified to actually make a necessary change and appropriate action can be taken.

A solid time and attendance system is going to provide alerts to help you make those key decisions in a timely manner.  For example, in the Long Term Care industry, you may see an alert in your time and attendance system about a staff member approaching overtime based on the hours they’ve already worked in that pay period.  By receiving that information before the employee actually hits overtime you can use your automated scheduling solution to make changes on the fly with email and text message requests going out to all qualified staff substitutes who are not near overtime themselves and can likely take the shift.  Thus, the shift gets filled, the overtime cost is avoided and everyone can get back to offering the kind of quality care they’re used to providing residents.

That’s just one instance.  Imagine that same scenario multiplied even twice a week throughout the year.  If there wasn’t an easy way to proactively control such challenges your bottom line expenses would be exponentially greater.

So, with the appropriate tools you can predict the future, take action and save on your bottom line.

Posted By: Nick Venturella Insperity Time and Attendance
free business resources available on Insperity.com

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Insperity Time and Attendance is at the 2011 HR Technology Conference in Las Vegas.  Most companies that attend are showcasing the technological advancements in their offerings. 

For Insperity, we too have some significant technological product/service enhancements including:  a PerformSmart SaaS offering, a smartphone app for ExpensAble, improved mobile capabilities with TimeStar’s Mac and iPad compatibility , OrgPlus – a comprehensive organizational charting software - as well as Recruiting Services new Facebook app.

While it’s fun to showcase the new features and benefits from improved products it’s also extremely important to make enhancements in your company’s culture and employee appreciation.  After reading, 7 Cool Ways to Inspire Your Staff, by Laura Mohammad it’s clear that there are several ways to increase the appreciation of your staff and let them know that you care about them, their work and what inspires them.  Read Laura’s post to find out a few tactics.  The impact for, what may seem like fairly small, acts can prove to be big – aiding improved employee satisfaction and retention.

How does this specifically relate to time and attendance?  Well, if your employees are feeling respected and valued they’re more likely to follow the rules (clocking in and out at appropriate times – not early or late – as well as less buddy punching).

Also, if you use your time and attendance solution to track the payment of employees by a specific unit of pay (like tasks completed) vs. hourly pay, you may notice an uptick in productivity. 

So I guess you could say that at HR Tech 2011 Insperity is also showcasing potential improvements to your largest technological asset – your company’s human technology.

Posted By: Nick Venturella Insperity Time and Attendance
free business resources available on Insperity.com

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