Founded in 1991, Disability Services of the Southwest (DSSW) is one of the largest providers of support services to people with disabilities and the elderly in Texas. Its services include personal attendant services, nursing, and therapies as well as assistance in home modification, adaptive aids, job coaching, and supported employment.
Challenges
Previously, the San Antonio-based company had been using an accounting solution for its payroll processing and was manually handling its HR and benefits processes.
In addition, DSSW handled its performance management processes manually. Each year, the HR team had to generate an active employee roster for each manager, determine the necessary documents for each of those managers, collect and distribute these documents, and manually input completed data into assorted systems and databases.
Solutions
To control costs, improve data integrity, and increase strategic reporting capabilities, DSSW has been leveraging UKG Pro® since January 2009 — after a launch that took just seven weeks.
“With Pro, we have one system of record for all employee management processes, so we have complete visibility into our workforce,” said Laurie Lyssy, Chief Financial Officer for Disability Services of the Southwest.
“Because employees are hired and off-boarded as needed for specific projects, it can be easy for something to slip through the cracks, like continuing to pay benefits to an employee because he or she has not been deactivated somewhere in one of the systems, Lyssy added. “The UKG Pro solution’s streamlined reporting capabilities give me information to quickly identify and fix problems before they escalate and become costly.”
“With Pro, we have one system of record for all employee management processes, so we have complete visibility into our workforce.”
Laurie Lyssy
Chief Financial Officer for Disability Services of the Southwest
Results
With a fluctuating workforce, DSSW uses Pro to break out total compensation costs by project, job, state, or Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) classification.
Before Pro, the reporting tools within the accounting solution that DSSW had been using were not developed with the specific compliance and reporting requirements of human resources.
Pro provides DSSW with HCM analytics that can be sliced and diced in seconds to quickly deliver strategic insight, which is especially important for organizations that have a large user population that is on the move. DSSW now is evaluating turnover from year-to-year or month-to-month with real-time information.
In addition, with Pro’s feature for performance management, data across the organization is instantly reportable for HR and company leadership.
“Once I start the process for performance management, Pro sends an email notification to employees so they can log in and complete their self-evaluation,” said Sandra Rodriguez, HR Manager for Disability Services of the Southwest.
“After associates finish these evaluations, the documents automatically move to the appropriate managers who provide their feedback, and the docs are routed to HR for final approval," Rodriguez explained. "The information is then immediately live and reportable in Pro. Everything flows much easier, and the process is better for everyone — employees, managers, and HR.”
With approximately 85% of its workforce out of the office, DSSW is using Pro’s Web access to provide better service to employees. With Pro, access to HR services is available 24/7.
“Because of Pro, we don’t need the employee right in front of us to provide help,” said Rodriguez. “For instance, at the end of the year we had employees on vacation that completed their self-evaluations online from their homes or travels. We love that all of our HR information is centralized, reportable, and available in Pro via the web.”
