Data and Engagement Tools Are a Game Changer for Health Group

SLVBHG provides behavioral health treatment and care, and they needed an HR and payroll provider that could help them find and retain highly skilled and qualified workers for  specialized positions. In 2020, Chief Human Resources Officer Toni Martin turned to Paylocity for a solution that would automate core HR and payroll functions. Saving time by automating tedious tasks would free up her team to focus on driving engagement, improving organizational culture, and becoming a more strategic partner to their employees.

The Problem

Time-consuming, burdensome tasks plagued the SLVBHG team, and they struggled to recruit and engage top talent. Finding certified, qualified candidates for their specialized roles, such as nurses with prescriptive authority, was an ongoing challenge for the rural clinic. The team spent countless hours combing LinkedIn, scanning other job recruiting boards, and reading resumes trying to find the right people. Even after hiring, entering the data took upwards of eight hours per new employee. “Our previous payroll provider was fine for payroll but had nothing in HR and recruiting. It was extremely bare bones,” says Toni.

The lack of functionality facilitating connection between employees was particularly an issue. The SLVBHG team knows the important role recognition plays in a positive company culture, but their efforts were limited in their impact. Individual employees were celebrated as Employee of the Month and with Caught You Doing Something Good awards, for example, but they needed a way to share this with the entire team, especially with so many members on the road and spread out across eight locations.

As important as data is in the HR world, SLVBHG’s previous solution didn’t provide easily accessible data. Toni explains, “I had to manually pull the data and create spreadsheets. That would sometimes take me up to 10 days [with our previous provider], and we would have to do these spreadsheets quarterly. That would be an average of eight weeks a year spent pulling data and filling out spreadsheets. We needed a more efficient way.”

The Solution

 SLVBHG knew that Paylocity’s all-in-one system could help bring their employee engagement strategy to life, which studies show also results in increased profitability. They created opportunities for connection on Community and Impressions, Paylocity’s recognition tool. “We’ve been using Paylocity to get people more involved and engaged,” says Toni. “We celebrate birthdays and anniversaries on Community [Paylocity’s social collaboration platform], and our team members interact and communicate with each other. I recently sent a reminder out asking people to take a minute to recognize each other. And there was a huge flood of Impressions. We’ve had 200 impressions in 2020, with more than 30 individual employee awards that were given out through Impressions.”

Paylocity’s Modern Workforce Index (MWI) equipped Toni and her team in another critical way, by allowing them to pull the data they need in a matter of minutes and take it directly to their leadership team. “I was working on reporting from 2019 and had to go to our previous provider to get the information,” says Toni. “Then I remembered they don’t have the dashboards or reporting features we do now! With Paylocity, I can pull a report in a matter of minutes, and it puts the information in a pie chart, or I can drill down into the details. There are clear dashboards with scores attributed to our engagement. Our CEO is very visual so having the information in a way he can quickly glance at and understand has been huge.”

In addition to implementing the new platform, SLVBHG was also onboarding a new, dedicated recruiter, Hank Maxwell. “It only took two days to navigate and learn the system,” says Hank. “It’s super easy to learn. Once you enter information into the system, it’s all automatic and filters through the employee journey. And it’s definitely going to save us money, because it streamlines so many other programs.”

The Results

The team at SLVBHG was blown away by the transparency, visibility, and results they achieved with Paylocity’s platform, particularly Recruiting, Onboarding, and MWI. “This was the first time we’ve had an abundance of qualified candidates for an open position,” says Toni. “We’ve had more interviews for this specialized role than [all roles] in the last five years! We also have much more visibility to the data. We can now track where and how candidates are finding us, and why employees are leaving us. Not only are we more efficient, but we are also saving significant time and money.”

Toni’s experience affirms a recent Deloitte study, which revealed there’s a significant opportunity for cost savings when automating applicant tracking and recruiting with an HCM platform - upwards of $18,000. Toni and her team also saved nearly $7,000 by automating the Onboarding experience. In addition to the improved recruiting and onboarding processes, they’ve been able to cure their compliance headaches with the Compliance Dashboard. Automating these tasks saved the team more than 10 hours per new hire. The savings didn't end there, the team SLVBHG saw nearly $17,000 in savings a year by automating the open enrollment process. But even more value came from freeing up the team to focus on revamping their engagement strategy.

According to the same Deloitte study, automating communications and engagement can also save a company an additional $7,000 annually, and Toni found this to be true at SLVBHG, too. The team has seen a positive impact on overall employee sentiment and engagement. “I specifically focused on improving our culture in the last year. Having her workforce jump in and use the platform has helped her achieve those improvements in their culture. “With the Modern Workforce Index, I have a birds-eye view into our utilization and organizational health scores. I’m able to get a clear picture on who is using the platform (and who isn’t). We’re at 90% utilization and an 81% employee sentiment which is huge and above our industry benchmarks!”

The benchmarks have been especially useful for Toni and leadership since they had to hire outside consultants to help mine data like this in the past. With MWI, she can see high-level metrics, dig deeper into specific areas, and take action to improve if needed.

“We couldn't automate our processes with our previous provider, and there wasn’t a lot of data in the system. Paylocity saves us time and money by automating recruiting and onboarding. We're able to gauge our Employee Sentiment with the Modern Workforce Index. It's been a game changer for us in terms of improving our culture. That prescriptive guidance will help us keep moving forward, continued on our growth path as an organization. To have these tools at our fingertips will help improve our HR team but more importantly improve the employee experience.”