Ascentis Employee Self-Service contributes to a better workplace
When the CALIBRE Vice President of Human Resources, Michelle Voisinet Caylor joined the company in 2000, she discovered that employee data was stored in multiple locations, including Microsoft® Access™, various spreadsheets, and stacks of benefits enrollment forms. Caylor realized that a comprehensive HRMS (Human Resources Management System) solution was critical.
CALIBRE decided to purchase Ascentis HR with the online Employee Self Service module. Ascentis automates workflow processes that enable HR to improve management of employee compensation and benefits ranging from personal data, benefits, compensation history, leave/vacation, COBRA, OSHA compliance and more.
As a result, open enrollment became much more efficient. With the open enrollment Wizard, employees were able to take an active role in maintaining their personal information, including selecting and changing benefit elections through the year. For employees, Ascentis Employee Self-Service made working with the administrative aspects of their employment and with the HR department an important factor in their overall workplace satisfaction.
Ascentis integrates HR and payroll databases, streamlines processes and reduces errors
In addition to providing employees with a more interactive experience, Ascentis has also benefited HR, payroll and senior management by automating critical employment related processes. “Before we had Ascentis, HR was maintaining sensitive employee information (names, addresses, benefits enrollments, salary/title changes, organizational chain, etc.) in our benefits database and maintaining the same information in our Microsoft Access database, which also managed our corporate Intranet,” said Caylor. “Meanwhile, payroll was tracking much of the same data in several additional databases as well: ADP® PC Payroll for Windows, Microsoft Dynamics™ SL (formerly Solomon) and DATABASICS TimeSite (an online timesheet system).”
As a result, the same information was being manually entered into several databases, opening the door for inevitable data-entry errors at each point of input. CALIBRE spent countless auditing hours ensuring that the data agreed in each database. While HR scrutinized monthly invoices to ensure employees were correctly enrolled in the many benefits programs, the HR staff could not see the employees’ payroll information to ensure that the proper payments were being deducted.
Caylor continues, “With Ascentis HR’s ability to connect to ADP PC Payroll for Windows, HR and Accounting no longer spends days auditing payroll for such things as deductions and salary adjustments. Changes now flow from a single source, which takes less than an hour to complete and cuts data entry time in half. Audits for synchronization between the HR software databases have been virtually eliminated and payroll errors have been reduced by more than 90%. In addition, with fewer paycheck errors, employees now have more confidence in our payroll staff.”
CALIBRE’s HR department focuses on strategy while reducing costs
Because Ascentis HR is so easy to use, update and deploy, CALIBRE has lowered overhead costs. For example, HR no longer incurs the cost and wait-time of requiring a programmer or vendor to manage the database. In addition, having fully automated benefits management has allowed CALIBRE HR to accomplish more tasks (minutes vs. days), so fewer employees are necessary to manage the same workload. Caylor estimates this saves CALIBRE between $30K and $40K annually. Caylor concludes, “As the director of human resources, I now spend fewer hours on daily administrative tasks and more time focusing on strategic initiatives.”
