j infostructures

Free Your Time Putting benefi ts in.formation on line lets /-IR managers do more

,,r's NOT UNCOMMON FOR AN HR

manager to find herself buried beneath reams of paper. The nature of the job entails keeping track of countless de­tails for each employee - name, ad ­dress, social security number, names and number of dependents, salary, which health insurance plan they have selected, how much life insur­ance they want, the list goes on and on. All that information has to be stored somewhere, right?

When Laurie Dalsgaard joined Jacksonville, Fla.-based Medcom Services Inc. in 1998 as the assis­tant to the president, it all was kept on pieces of paper stored neatly in her fiJ e cabinet. There were dupli ­cate copies of that information in the payroll department and with each department manager. The ef­fort to co llect, store, and process the data was fragmented, with each department head deciding for her­self how she wanted to keep track of it all. It was a nightmare.

both automate the paper-based ad ­ministrative processes and allow Med­com staff to self-administer their own accounts and benefits plans. The pay­off has been clear and swift.

As human resources coordinator, Dalsgaard is responsible for making

everything was done manuall y," she says. Whenever an employee changed status - moved, got married, di vorced, had a child, left the firm - the easiest way to take care of the new information was to have him fill out a new batch of form s. The same held true for each

open enrollment period. With a pa­per-based system, there was just no other way for both employer and employee lo have a completed and signed agreement of benefits.

"I started using IEmployeasej just to make sure that everyone was in the system for easy reporting such as census and things of that nature, and to make sure that the)· were enrolled in their hea lth care," she says. "Now I'm tracking tht'ir eligibility, I'm running census and confirmation statements and all kinds of custom report s, and \\'e'rc able to communica te with our eli ­gibilit y and billing department." It has also si mplified processes such as issuing I. D. ca rds li.i r new em­ployel'S and 111.1king sure that CO­BRA notilrca ti(lns arc sent out fo r anyone who qualities.

Despite the fact that Medcom is an administrator of health insur­ance plans for businesses that have elected to "self fund," the SO-em­ployee company did not have an of-ficial human resources department

Medcom's Laurie Da lsgaa rd saves time with HR automation .

Mcdcom was all racted to Em­pln)1ease fo r n nurnber of reasons, not the least of which was that there

to manage its own employees, benefit s, and the accompanying deluge of paper. Four months after Dalsgaard joined the staff, she was asked to "coordinate the effort." With a new title, human re­sources coordinator, she turned to Em­ployease, an Internet-based human resources management application to

~ y ANG EL A R . GARilER I

sb, .s ma I l o ff ,ce .c o m

sure all cmployl'L'~ arc set up with ben­efit s including hL"alth insurance, lifr in ­surance, and fl ex ible spending options. With the old paper-based method , she says she spent between 20 and 25 hours a week just pushing papers and track­ing down employees.

"!When) we hired an employee, what we used to do was fill out a sheet of paper, create a hard fil e fo lder, and

was no hardware or softwa re to be pur­chased, installed, updated, or main ­tained. The entire applica tion i~ accessed via lnternet,and any updates to the system are automatic - Emplo)'ease sends elec tronic messages to Dalsgaard to alert her to changes or new functions. The cha rge to Medcom is rninirnal with maintenance fees nf less than 55.50 per employee per month.

MAY 2000 SBC 4J

I -t-i n fostructures

Medcom put Employease to the test for 1999 open enrollment. "From start to fi · h · . nis ' it took about two weeks to get 1t up a d · n runnmg and ready to go for enrollment;' says Dalsgaard. To intro­

duce the new system to employees, she

and another administrator walked

=ach employee through the process. We sat in the conference room during

the open enrollment period with each person that came in. We had three

c_omputers set up and we would spend time with each one of them."

Open enrollment itself went smooth­ly that first year, and the new system cer­

tainly simplified reporting and tracking for Dalsgaard. But the employees didn't

really make use of the system beyond

- - 7,ro

-~ ;- ?1:_;f~~~tr~-~-~%r • There are software packages and Internet solutions available to help businesses manage all aspects of human resources. Following are just a few:

• ASCENTIS

HR Office 800-229-2713 www.ascentis.com

• EMPLOYEASE INC.

Employease 888-327-3638 www.eease.com

• REZLOGIC.COM

RezKeeper Rent applications for $100 plus $10 per month per user; or pur­chase for $1500 plus a small monthly hosting fee . 877-265-6525 www.rezlogic.com

• TRAK IT SOLUTIONS

Trak-lt HR-SBE $500-$900 888-236-2446 www.trak-it.com

• SOCIETY FOR HR MANAGEMENT

Web site includes links and list­ings of HR applications. www.shrm.org

44 MAY 2000 I SBC

that. She realized that they needed to be

shown how easy the new system could

make things for them. "I think at the

time it wasn't apparent to them that this

was something we'd be doing on an on-

for all HR information. "We're in the

process of putting our benefits, our

employee handbook, and any compa­

ny publication that would involve our

employees on their Employease, so that

going basis," she says. --------­"This year during open

they can go in and view

these documents them-

selves," she says. Medcom

is also posting provider di­

rectories, the internal

phone extension list, and

the client directory on the

enrollment, I think

probably about 10 of the

44 people on the system

had address changes that

occurred way back in 1999, and we weren't "If I'd had to do system, and soon employ­

aware of that:' "Now that we've fin ­

ished our open enroll­ment for 2000, I've been

taking three to four em­

ployees a day and spend­

ing an hour with them

open enrollment

manually it would

ees will also be able to view

pay stubs on line.

have been so much EASY ACCESS

more cumbersome.,, Employees access all this information through the

and training them one-on-one on self

serve," she says. "Just stressing to them

the importance - that we're going to be

communicating to them through this

product, we're also going to have com­

pany documents on this product, orga­

nization products, and that it's

important that they keep their self­

serve account current at all times and [ that they] check it once a daY:'

SELF-SERVICE WITH A SMILE

As Medcom employees become more comfortable with the system, the ben­

efits of automation increase for both

Dalsgaard and the staff. "Through the

self-serve feature, they can go in and

check messages that I've sent to them.

They can go in and check their person­al information, change their password,

change addresses, change phone num­

bers. They can add dependents if they've had a child, if they're getting

married, or anything like that," she

says. "And anytime they change or modify their account through self­

serve, they system electronically noti ­fies me. I can look at, approve, and pass

[ the changes] through individually, and then the message gets sent back to

them through their self-serve account."

Now the staff knows where to look

Employease Web site. They

log on, enter a user name and a pass­

word, and they're set. And because it's

Internet-based, they can log on from

home or work. And for those employees

who don't have Internet access at their

desks - about half- Medcom has set up

two computers in the conference room.

"We just went through our open en­

rollment, and of course our rates went

up. And it took me five minutes to en­

ter the new, current rates," says Dals­

gaard. "When people enrolled they

knew how much would be deducted

from their paychecks. If we'd had to do

open enrollment [the old way], it

would have been a full 40 hours for n,·o

weeks. It has truly made our lives so

much easier." The end result for both Dalsgaard

and Medcom has been a savings of time

and money. Employease has allo\\'.:d

Dalsgaard to dramatically mt the time

she spends on HR paperwork. "Now

1 'm probably spending IO hours a week on HR functions, and that includes set­

ting up workshops, orientation pro­grams - things that don't necessa rily

have to do with managing our group

through Employease." ''I'm able to do other things," sh<'

says. Like pick up a new title: coordina­

tor of training and development. •

'.) b c.s ma ll off 1C e co m