60,000-Employee Health System Transforms Its People, Patient Experience with AI-Powered UKG Suite

Employee EngagementNewsPayroll and Compensation Management

By Business Wire On May 17, 2023

UKG, a leading provider of HR, payroll, and workforce management solutions for all people, announced that Bon Secours Mercy Health, a longtime UKG customer and one of the largest health systems in the U.S., is transforming its employee experience in order to deliver outstanding patient care with the AI-powered UKG workforce management suite.

“Within six months, we saw payroll corrections drop significantly, which correlates to improved retention because, when you pay people correctly, they’re less likely to leave, and we only expect to see more improvement in this area.”

Deeply dedicated to improving patient outcomes through the use of innovative technology, Bon Secours Mercy Health migrated to the modern, cloud-native UKG workforce management solution to better manage rapidly changing patient and staffing needs across its 48 hospitals and 1,200 care locations, as well as to support the complex scheduling needs of its 60,000-person workforce.

“Several years ago, Bon Secours and Mercy Health merged, and part of the overall alignment was to bring us onto one, cloud-based workforce management system,” said Mickey DeAngelo, director of HR workforce technology at Bon Secours Mercy Health. “We wanted a solution we could take full advantage of right away but that could also scale with us over time. UKG’s industry-leading platform gave us that opportunity.”

Within just a few months of migrating to its new UKG solution, the health system experienced success in four critical areas: staffing, scheduling, pay accuracy, and retention.

“Having the right people in place to provide high-quality care is crucial, so, along with our UKG implementation, we created a central staffing office that handles all scheduling and timecards, so our frontline managers can focus on patient and employee needs,” said DeAngelo. “Our data shows that managers who have adopted this change are spending more time on the floor with patients and nurses, and, more importantly, we’re seeing patient quality scores rise, which, in healthcare, is tied to our reimbursement.”

The increase in patient scores is also a reflection of higher employee engagement, which Bon Secours Mercy Health says is driven, in large part, by more flexible scheduling options, including the ability for employees to self-schedule, swap shifts, and create best-fit schedules through the mobile-first UKG solution. Managers are saving between four and six hours each, per pay period, through advanced scheduling; intelligent dashboards help keep incidental overtime within acceptable levels; and quarterly compliance reports that used to take up to eight hours to complete are now finished within minutes because of centralized data within UKG.

“UKG gives us the flexibility to meet rapidly changing needs. From Monday to Thursday, our staffing needs may change, so we need to change the way we offer incentives and the way we try to fill shifts. Intelligent shift swapping was a huge win for our associates, too,” said DeAngelo. “One of the beautiful parts of it is that it’s so integrated into the process, associates don’t even realize it’s intelligence behind the scenes. The future of AI is going to move us into the future of healthcare to meet the flexible staffing model that’s being demanded.”

With concerns of employee burnout top of mind, especially as a result of the pandemic, Bon Secours Mercy Health also used its UKG implementation to align its pay practices, which has had a direct impact on employee retention.

“There were many different pay practices that existed across the organization that weren’t serving our overall needs and were difficult to administer, so we took the opportunity to standardize those,” said DeAngelo. “Within six months, we saw payroll corrections drop significantly, which correlates to improved retention because, when you pay people correctly, they’re less likely to leave, and we only expect to see more improvement in this area.”

Bon Secours Mercy Health credits its longtime partnership with UKG for helping to continuously evolve its employee experience in support of its mission of clinical and operational excellence.

“UKG is in it with us for the long haul,” said DeAngelo. “Healthcare is a rapidly changing industry, and we must be prepared to meet those changes and challenges head-on. UKG is partnering with us to transform our workforce and continue on our evolution track, so we are always in the best position to serve our patients.”

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