UTEC, a nonprofit agency serving the Merrimack Valley in Massachusetts since 1999, provides transformative life coaching, education, job training, and child daycare services to young adults ages 17 to 25 who have serious legal issues or who have been incarcerated.
Challenges
While UTEC provided critical services, behind the scenes its payroll system wouldn't integrate with the organization's UKG® timekeeping solution, creating data-entry errors in payroll, sick time, and vacation time that required hours of reconciliation and that led to unreliable reporting. Employees — and their managers — also couldn't easily access their accrual balances.
Undefined workforce management workflows, processes, and documents hindered smooth management of UTEC's 80 staff members and 170 annual young adult participants who receive work stipends. As UTEC prepared to hire an HR director, the organization wanted tools to improve its human capital management (HCM).
Solutions
UTEC wanted a solution that could deliver an integrated set of tools for finance, payroll, HR, and frontline staff to easily access and use. It also wanted to create smooth HR workflows for recruiting, hiring, benefits open enrollment, and performance management — and generate HR forms and documents.
The organization needed seamless integration between timekeeping and payroll to improve data accuracy and staff productivity, and it wanted real-time data visibility and detailed reporting on all workforce information for improved management.
To free up HR staff time and enhance employee engagement, it also wanted to give employees self-service tools to view their time, pay, and accruals information and to change their personal information and benefits. UTEC decided to expand its tools to the UKG Ready® HCM solution to streamline HR workflows, improve payroll processing, enhance the engagement of its full-time employees, better manage labor costs, and support compliance.
“We switched to all UKG because I felt it's important to have an integrated set of tools. It's not just the software though. Between a well-thought-out policy for implementation, excellent support, and quality software, it's a high-quality package.”
Terri Steingrebe
CFO
Results
"We switched to all UKG because I felt it's important to have an integrated set of tools," said Terri Steingrebe, CFO. "It's not just the software though. Between a well-thought-out policy for implementation, excellent support, and quality software, it's a high-quality package."
With assistance from its UKG project manager, UTEC defined HR workflows for job postings, accessing résumés, hiring, benefits open enrollment, and performance reviews — which were then configured into the solution. Overall, HR processes are vastly improved.
A solution dashboard gives staff easy access to the employee handbook, policies, and key forms, such as a performance review template. Alerts are automatically emailed when reviews are completed.
Managers now have real-time visibility into workforce data for better management, and employees can use solution self-service tools to view their timecard, pay, and accrual information.
The integrated solution has streamlined payroll processing from two days to just three hours, has increased payroll accuracy, and provides timely, detailed payroll reports.
With less time spent on administrative tasks, staff members have more time to devote to UTEC's important mission, including innovating the ways they serve UTEC's young adults.
