The Cost of Poor Recordkeeping in Long Term Care
Any business that strives for success must have insight into its overall operations, spending and where costs can be cut to remain profitable while still excelling at what it does. In long term care (LTC), this is certainly no exception. With tight budgets, an extremely competitive landscape and often high staff turnover, organizations that specialize in this industry must be truly diligent to ensure profitability while achieving the ultimate goal of providing the best possible care to its clients.
Poor recordkeeping is, unfortunately, something that plagues many LTC businesses. Often understaffed and required to make last-minute scheduling decisions, the administrative team does what it can with the limited tools they have – handwritten notes added to a stack of papers that are never filed, inaccurate spreadsheets or maybe a clunky, only half-used record keeping system that doesn’t give a holistic view of the entire organization. After all, it’s expensive and a hassle to update record keeping tools and it just seems easier to keep doing what they’re doing because so far, it’s working. But at what cost?
The Effect on Payroll
Payroll is highly regulated in every organization, and there are constant changes to laws – local, state and federal – that can affect compliance. This is especially true in a setting with hourly workers. If payroll records are not well kept, or if a payroll system is not up to date, it could mean the difference between being compliant or breaking laws, which can lead to hefty fines.
Having an efficient, easy-to-operate payroll system can ensure a company is adhering to necessary legalities, as well as pinpoint areas of concern and allow for quick mitigation of these issues. It also allows for automation, which minimizes the risk for human error and creates efficiencies throughout the department, saving time and money.
The Effect on Time & Attendance
When an LTC organization doesn’t successfully track its labor, it can be missing a slew of costly factors. Too many workers at once, uncaught blocks of overtime, repeated call-offs or the inability to understand if staffing targets are being met are an expensive, huge disservice to the overall business.
Using an effective time and attendance tracking system allows the organization to gain valuable insight into labor trends. It can be used to customize workflows to manage staffing, time off and all facets of operations, and even be configured to use automatic notifications for overtime. This kind of system saves time, hassle, paperwork and money, while providing a holistic view of overall staffing and time management.
The Effect on Valuable Employees
When a business is fortunate enough to secure responsible, caring and trustworthy employees, there’s a need to engage, build rapport and provide training in order to retain them. If proper data isn’t collected and reviewed, it’s impossible to understand what makes these exceptional employees tick, or what continuing support they need to stay long-term. That could mean potentially losing valuable individuals, but also the impactful costs of recruiting, re-training for the same position and potential scheduling hiccups.
Having a reliable overall HR solution allows the organization to incorporate meaningful employee engagement activities including learning/training opportunities based on their own data trends to better employ and retain the best workers.
The Effect on Benefits
When recordkeeping is poor, the time spent on managing, tracking and communicating the eligibility requirements, plan availability and details of overall benefits can become out of control. This not only wastes valuable time that could be spent on more strategic HR activities, but it also sends a message to employees that the company is disorganized.
Utilizing an employee self-service benefit software solution can ultimately save an LTC organization time and money. All benefit plans and carriers can be displayed in one central location, where employees have insight into eligibility, availability, comparisons, deduction information and more. Reports detailing valuable employee trends, spending and usage can be created quickly so benefits personnel know exactly what works and what doesn’t.
Are you ready to invest in a better way to keep records in your LTC? Axiom Human Resource Solutions provides a one-stop solution for all human capital management needs, to take the time and stress out of recordkeeping and save costs by creating efficiencies throughout your organizations. Contact us today for a free demo and to learn more.