The Township of Toms River has a population of approximately 95,000 people and lies in the heart of the New Jersey shore region.
Challenges
The Township of Toms River collected employee time on paper timesheets, a time-consuming process that took three payroll staffers two full days to process. With 12 union and other pay policies to follow, ensuring all pay rules — including shift differentials and varying overtime rules — were accurately followed was difficult.
Moving to a generic automated time management system was disappointing as it didn’t track or administer accruals. Payroll staff had to manually enter accruals in the system, which provided only a dropdown of information entered and had to be reset yearly.
With each contract having different rules for straight overtime, time and a half, and double time, accurately processing payroll was a challenge.
Solutions
The Township of Toms River moved to a UKG® workforce management solution with all employees —except in the police department — to increase productivity, better control labor costs, and mitigate compliance risk. The solution interfaces with the township’s payroll system.
“It [UKG] saves us a lot of time and hours because all of our rules are built into the system…. It also saves a lot of time and guesswork on whether we’re paying employees properly.”
Alex Gallo
Payroll Coordinator
Results
With all of its pay and work rules built into the UKG solution, the Township of Toms River can now easily comply with a wide range of union contract rules, labor laws — such as the Fair Labor Standards Act and the Affordable Care Act — and the New Jersey sick leave law, which allows employees to accrue one hour of earned sick leave for every 30 hours worked.
“It [UKG] saves us a lot of time and hours because all of our rules are built into the system,” said Alex Gallo, Payroll Coordinator at the Township of Toms River. “It also saves a lot of time and guesswork on whether we’re paying employees properly.”
Payroll processing time has been cut in half from two days to one, and Toms River is confident now that employees are paid properly. The solution automatically calculates shift differentials, straight overtime, time and a half, and double time.
Accurately tracking labor for grant-funded activities and snow events has been simplified, too.
Reporting functionality has delivered real-time visibility into labor costs and attendance issues, so action can be taken quickly. Audit trail information also is a valuable tool used frequently.
