Eventide Streamlines WFM and HCM, Engages Employees with UKG Solutions

Eventide Senior Living Communities is a faith-based, nonprofit senior healthcare organization that provides a full range of lifestyle and service options, including independent and assisted living, memory care, skilled nursing care, and transitional care. Eventide has 1,200 employees and serves more than 1,200 residents daily at its locations in Moorhead, Minnesota, and Fargo, West Fargo, Jamestown, and Devils Lake, North Dakota.

Challenges

Eventide used separate systems to manage time and attendance, scheduling, HR, and payroll processes at its five locations. Wanting to bring everything together into a single system, the organization selected a human capital management (HCM) solution.

Within a year, Eventide found its solution disappointing, particularly its Payroll-Based Journal (PBJ) reporting capabilities. HR staff spent more than 16 hours manually manipulating the report to meet Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) reporting requirements. Wishing to streamline this process and improve other HCM functionality, Eventide sought a new solution.

Solutions

After a thorough review, the organization selected UKG as its vendor of choice and implemented the UKG Dimensions™ solution for scheduling and time management tasks and the UKG Pro® solution to handle HR and people management processes.

“The connection between UKG Dimensions and CMS, and UKG having built out the PBJ report closely with CMS to ensure it meets all of the requirements, was a huge seller for us,” said Kayla Linn, VP of People and Culture, about one of the many reasons Eventide moved to UKG.

Results

Eventide has not been disappointed with its latest solution choices. “Today, I go in and we run PBJ reports in less than two minutes, and it’s mostly just waiting for the big file to download,” said Linn. “This has been a really huge win for us, because it has had a big impact on our operations from a people perspective and how people see our facilities on CMS.”

The organization has seen other wins too. Initially, HR ran HPPD reports daily to track prior-day staffing to ensure it met budget as well as staffing levels required by the government. More recently, Eventide has been using the Overtime Analysis Smart Tile to give managers daily visibility into this information. Each morning, the solution also runs and then emails an overtime report to Linn and site leaders. With daily visibility into overtime hours for the week to date, they can proactively manage overtime relative to the budget and make strategic staffing adjustments as needed.

Timecard management has been simplified with Dimensions as well. Previously, site leaders had to review each employee’s timecard line by line, day by day, to check for alerts about missing punches. Now, they can see on a small tile on their UKG solution home screen all staff members whose timecard punches are up to date, and they can approve timecards for these employees with a single click. They then can focus on the few remaining timecards with missed meal breaks or punches.

“This has simplified the process, making it easy and efficient for our leaders to, with a quick glance, approve their payroll and see where the missing items are,” explained Linn. “That’s been a huge win, to be able to get through their payroll functionality very quickly.”

Having staff able to punch in and out using the solution’s mobile app has streamlined the timekeeping and payroll process too. Although each facility has timeclocks, many staff ― from dietary and housekeeping to resident care staff at all levels ― prefer to track their time using the app on their smartphones. With geofencing tied to an employee’s work location, employees can punch in and out and correct missed punches when they’re on site.

Employees also can see in the solution when open shifts are available. Linn anticipates that soon, when employees are able to swap shifts and pick up shifts using the mobile app, their engagement with the solution will increase even further.

During the pandemic, Eventide used UKG Pro’s community broadcast feature to communicate with employees about COVID-19 testing requirements and where and when they could be tested. Employees were paid for their testing time and easily clocked in and out for this time using the mobile app. The organization frequently uses the communication tool to send out employee notices about benefits or payroll.

UKG Pro also is playing a vital role in Eventide’s recruitment and retention efforts. The solution is directly linked to Indeed, so job openings are posted quickly and seamlessly. “The system’s really easy to use, and we’re able to move our candidates through pretty quickly,” said Linn. “Everyone knows where the candidate’s at within the workflow, from interview scheduled to offer extended to pending offer.”

As Eventide transitions from a totally paper-based onboarding process to electronic onboarding with UKG Pro Onboarding, Linn expects they will see an enhanced employee experience as new hires easily and quickly complete the onboarding process online ― and realize significant time savings. Eventide already has witnessed the benefits of online open enrollment, with direct feeds to benefit vendors streamlining this process for both employees and HR staff.

The organization will be using UKG Pro Employee Voice™ to conduct employee pulse surveys to gain feedback on work-related offerings and topics. “I think this will be huge, just in terms of understanding our data better,” said Linn. “It will help us make better actionable goals and plans, when we look at our retention efforts.”

Employee retention is an ongoing challenge in every industry and especially in healthcare. “All of these things play a role in the employee experience,” Linn added. “If an employee has a good experience, they’re happy, and they’re not only going to stay with us, but they’re also going to provide better resident care, which creates happy residents and happy families, which is what our model is all about.”

Linn plans to soon leverage additional solution functionality that will further streamline processes and help inform and engage staff. Using UKG Pro Document Manager, HR staff will manage all employee information electronically, eliminating the need for paper files and saving significant staff time. Managers will complete and track new hire check-ins and 60-day and annual reviews using UKG Pro Performance Reviews, creating additional efficiencies as well as greater transparency and accountability.

“My goal into the future is to really leverage the system, so we can be more efficient on the administrative side,” said Linn. “But most of all, we need to put our efforts into our people, and this system has allowed us to do that.”