Workforce Management for Senior Living Facilities

Full of organizations with the mission to provide a safe and dynamic community dedicated to dignified aging, life fulfillment, and service to the broader community, senior living facilities have a challenging goal, so it's important to ensure that your workforce management processes are finely tuned. 

Here are some of the challenges of operating a senior living facility, and how a seasoned payroll and HR provider in the industry can help.

Challenges of Operating a Senior Living Facility

When it comes to assisted living facilities, the necessity to provide excellent care requires patience, empathy, and dedication, in addition to a long list of other things that don't even include handling back-end operations. That's why it's crucial to use a solution that can easily solve back-end challenges, so you can focus on patient care above all else. 

Some common challenges experienced by senior living facilities include:

• Inflexible reporting functionality and complex data structure of incumbent software
• Issues with PBJ reporting requirements
• Lack of automated HR information systems
• Division of data between HR and Finance departments

Inflexible Reporting Functionality

Many senior living facilities rely on third-party accounting software, operated in-house, to handle and manage their complex human resource (HR) and payroll administration requirements. With many of these facilities having a hundred, or even hundreds of employees, meeting the organizational needs with these types of processes often doesn't get the job done. Even more so when it comes to reporting.

With third-party accounting software (and similar systems), the basic needs of payroll may be met, but often getting even the simplest HR report can be a challenge. 

How HCM Software Can Help

HCM software brings a level of capability that is unmatched when it comes to fast reporting capabilities, simple report customization, and easy data manipulation. 

By also bringing all data into a single system record, individual departments can work faster and together, collaborating like never before. 

PBJ Reporting

Most senior living facilities have a lot of trouble when it comes to PBJ reporting, even those already using HCM software. PBJ reporting is often done, manually, as many facilities do not have a way to summarize and compile data. 

As a result, manual PBJ reporting becomes a complex and labor-intensive task that can distract your team from their most valuable goals. Manual reporting can also lead to inaccuracies and accidental omissions. Such mistakes can lead to increased audits, citations, reduced reimbursements, and additional surveys by regulatory authorities, all of which can hurt compliance and the general reputation of a facility. 

How HCM Software Can Help

Unfortunately, even with modern HCM software, PBJ reporting can still be a huge challenge for organizations. 

That is why it is crucial to find a payroll provider with seasoned experience in the senior living industry, such as PayNW. 

PayNW clients in the senior living industry gain access to a powerful dashboard with key statistics that every leader needs to track, including things like retention rates, overtime percentages, staffing, scheduling efficiencies, expenses, and more.

Lack of Automated HR Information Systems

As a result of most organizations defaulting to things such as third-party accounting software, general HR tasks, and responsibilities can be hindered and slowed down. 

Many senior living facilities, for example, offer robust employee benefits offerings, many with tiered plans. It can be difficult for facilities to manage tier and other plan changes without an automated solution. 

Another challenge lies in collecting payroll deductions, as disparate systems can often lead to inaccuracies and improper deductions. 

How HCM Software Can Help

An HCM platform can help streamline and automate each step of the employee life cycle beginning with core HR functions such as job requisition during recruitment and hiring that seamlessly transfers information to the onboarding and training process.

Managers can also effectively manage time and attendance of employees, discover the landscape of their cost and productivity, and build optimized employee schedules, all while continuing to put their people first with learning management, employee benefits, and more. Then, when it's time, quickly and accurately process payroll.

Division Between HR and Finance Departments

Many senior living facilities have a need for separate HR and finance departments, due to the size of their organization. HR may be responsible for things such as setting up new employees and payroll deductions, while finance is in charge of things such as payroll processing. 

When separate departments are working outside of a singular system, it can create challenges such as errors resulting from duplicate data entry, missing or inconsistent data, issues with ad hoc reporting, and more. 

How HCM Software Can Help

By utilizing HCM software, organizations can bring all their employee data under one roof, so all departments are working out of the same system. 

That way, when a change is made by HR that say, effects payroll deductions. The system automatically makes the proper adjustments for you, so that finance is ready to run payroll at the push of a button. 

Benefits of HCM Software for Senior Living Facilities

Aside from solving the previously mentioned challenges, some other benefits that senior living facilities often experience when switching to an HCM platform include: 

• A 90% decrease in the time it takes to run reports
  
• Easier PBJ Reporting as a result of our Senior Living Reporting Dashboard
  
• All necessary personnel gain easy access to their respective employee wage information, offering insightful payroll reports that can help facilitate the preparation of individual departmental budgets
  
• Increased staff productivity due to streamlined and automated routine payroll and HR tasks
  
• Reduced administrative time and costs due to streamlined and automated routine payroll and HR tasks
  
• Simplified management and audit of employee benefit plans and certifications 
  
• Simple employee deduction management as a result of system flexibility and intelligent data structure

Find a Senior Living Facility Payroll Service

If you are struggling with payroll, HR, and other workforce management tasks, it may be time to consider reaching out to a payroll service for senior living facilities, such as PayNW. 

Only with PayNW can organizations gain both modern HCM software, and powerful reporting tools tailored for senior living facilities to track things such as retention, overtime, per-patient day expenses, and nursing summaries with average wages.

To learn more about our HCM solutions, contact us today, or learn more about our one-of-a-kind Senior Living Reporting Dashboard.