Bryan Health Implements Enterprise-Wide Payroll Changes with Ease
BRYAN HEALTH'S EXPERIENCE
Bryan Health’s struggle with ongoing staffing shortages meant the award-winning health system had to continually rely on temporary labor to ensure business continuity, patient safety, and high-quality patient care.
“Our challenges are not unique,” said Regina M. Bergh, financial controller at Bryan Health. “Reliance on temporary labor has increased across the industry, and the temp labor rates have gone up significantly.”
To contain labor costs, healthcare leaders at Bryan Health wanted to focus on staff retention. Their strategy was two-fold: Expand remote work options and offer premium/incentive pay for certain employees.
However, taking these steps was difficult. Bryan Health’s existing payroll system couldn’t support a growing remote workforce, and it also didn’t provide data insights necessary to make the transition effectively. Configuring the system was also a challenge. Making system-wide payroll changes was largely a laborious, manual process.
In addition, the health system’s five-person payroll team was already stretched thin, and it would be stretched even thinner in the near future as Bryan Health acquired two new hospitals, adding an additional 1,000+ employees into its fold.
“Making a lot of changes in the system or different pay practices to retain our workforce is really time consuming for the small team that we are,” said Jen Volzke, CPA, MPA, Payroll and Accounts Payable Manager at Bryan Health.
Bryan Health turned to symplr for help. Leveraging the Time and Attendance solution—enabled the health system to efficiently implement enterprise-wide payroll incentives without adding additional administrative burden on HR staff. The result? The health system could respond to workforce challenges more nimbly and retain top talent more effectively.
CONFIGURING PAYROLL CHANGES WITH EASE
“Implementing premium/incentive pay was a complex process,” said Volzke. “The eligibility was quite refined,” she added. “Only certain people can earn premium pay based on the job code, entity, tenure, and other factors. symplr really helped direct us in terms of which hierarchy to use so that everything goes smoothly.”
Without symplr’s help, the premium pay initiative could have taken months or more to implement. Instead, it only took a few weeks, allowing payroll staff to focus on other high-priority tasks.
“symplr is an important partner,” said Bergh. “We could not have gotten these changes programmed efficiently into our system without them.”
IMPROVING STAFF RETENTION
Since implementing premium/incentive pay, Bryan Health has already seen a positive impact. “It has been really well received by staff,” said Volzke. “They’re being incentivized to work non-traditional hours and shifts.”
Bergh agrees. “We’ve really appreciated how responsive symplr has been during this time when we’re trying to retain our workforce and incentivize them to work extra hours so we can rely less on temp labor,” she added.
IMPROVING EFFICIENCY DURING SYSTEM-WIDE EXPANSION
Bryan Health also uses symplr’s Time and Attendance solution to gather the data it needs to streamline payroll processes as it onboards new hospitals. “We’re using some of the reports and data to see if we can integrate our pay practices, combine things, and be more streamlined,” said Volzke. “We’ll need a lot of data to get to that point.”
In addition, symplr helps streamline the employee onboarding process by providing Bryan Health with access to an e-learning module that trains new staff on how to use the system.
“This is a huge improvement for our team,” said Volzke. “To not have to onboard people will be a game changer.”
COMBINING TECHNOLOGY WITH EXPERTISE
Partnering with symplr hasn’t only given Bryan Health access to time-saving technology; it also provides the health system with one-on-one consultative services to maximize return on investment. For example, when Bryan Health recently updated its API, symplr’s team was immediately available to ensure badge readers functioned correctly.
Continuous collaboration between symplr and Bryan Health helps improve staff satisfaction. “Our payroll analyst really appreciates learning IT and systems-related information. symplr has often taught her things she uses the next time a similar project comes around,” said Volzke.
LOOKING AHEAD
As Bryan Health continues to focus on employee retention and attracting top talent, it will leverage symplr’s Workforce Management solutions to streamline payroll processes and address workforce challenges with ease.
“symplr is our partner, working side-by-side with us to help us implement workforce solutions as quickly as possible so we can focus on providing high-quality patient care,” said Bergh.
Learn more about symplr Workforce Management Time and Attendance, as well as other solutions:
- symplr Workforce
- symplr Workforce Mobile App
- Low Energy Bluetooth® Technology Beacons
- Series 5000 Time Clock
- symplr Recruiting
- symplr Talent Sourcing
- symplr Learning
- symplr Physician Scheduling
- symplr Clinical Communications