UKG, a leading provider of HR, payroll, and workforce management solutions for all people,announced that First PREMIER Bank and PREMIER Bankcard, a nationally recognized community bank and issuer of Mastercard credit cards, is increasing efficiencies, saving time and money, and providing an empowering employee experience with UKG people technologies.
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PREMIER employs a mix of hourly and salaried workers who serve bank customers across South Dakota and credit card customers nationwide. The $3 billion organization went live on UKG in 2018 for HR, payroll, recruiting, onboarding, and benefits, and launched artificial intelligence (AI)-powered workforce management in 2021 for an enhanced, full-suite experience.
“We’ve had tremendous success with UKG, and it was always our goal to have one system of record with UKG as our partner,” said Colleen Stratton, assistant vice president of total rewards at PREMIER. “One of our biggest successes since rolling out workforce management is payroll. The dynamic dashboards and reporting are so robust, and automatic timesheet approval so quick, we recently made the decision to move up our payroll schedule by one full week starting in September, which means our people will get paid faster.”
In the last year, PREMIER has reduced the amount of time it takes to process payroll files from four hours per pay period to just seconds. The amount of time supervisors now spend on timesheet approvals has also been significantly reduced by 3,000 hours — resulting in more than $106,000 in savings.
“That was our ‘aha’ moment,” said Stratton. “In the time it took my payroll manager to explain the hours-long process of exporting employee data from our previous time management system, that same process in our new workforce management solution was complete. That was a huge win and a tremendous time saver.”
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Another big win: reporting capabilities that allow PREMIER to make more informed business decisions and minimize compliance risk in an industry with ever-changing regulations.
“We are running reports constantly in UKG, everything from PTO usage and FMLA leave to open enrollment, to the number of hours our employees are volunteering in our communities. That information is shared with our senior executives, so we know if we need to hire more staff, or if the benefits we currently have in place are adequately supporting our employees’ needs,” said Stratton. “We also have automated our workflow for changes to an employee’s role or salary, or if they are taking a leave of absence. These changes used to be manual and prone to errors, so we’ve seen significant improvement in this area.”
While UKG has yielded significant administrative improvements, the solution’s Life-work Technology is also delivering happier outcomes for employees.
Employee surveys help PREMIER keep a pulse on employee sentiment by gathering real-time insights to help managers understand individuals’ preferences, leveraging natural language processing (NLP) and machine-learning technology to collect, measure, and analyze feedback. With its UKG learning management system (LMS), PREMIER is saving administrative time and improving the employee experience with automatic assignment of new-hire curricula and regulatory modules to specific employees. It’s also taking advantage of the solution’s flexibility by providing employees with a combination of live training, customer course design, and the option for virtual learning, in addition to other, unique use cases. Self-service capabilities have additionally led to an increase in employee engagement, as PREMIER staff can access information important to their work and lives from any device — at any time.
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“The learning solution played a critical role during the COVID-19 pandemic, as we were able to record our quarterly employee meetings and push those out through the LMS for everyone to watch remotely,” said Stratton. “We also held virtual benefits fairs last year and conducted all open enrollment training through the LMS instead of having live, in-person events at our locations. Our employees could view the recordings from home, with their families, and make the best benefits selections for their needs.
“In a similar way, employees love self-service because everything is available to them not only at work, but on their mobile devices. They can view their paychecks and they can update their personal information. We also have future forecasting for compensation statements so our people can see how much money they made last year compared with what they’re projected to make this year, which helps them better plan their lives. We also do all open enrollments within UKG so employees can, at any time, see their benefits elections.”
Next on its UKG journey, PREMIER will launch scheduling within its bank branches, which the organization anticipates will lead to even greater efficiencies.
“Right now, our branch scheduling is done on spreadsheets, which is very time consuming. Scheduling capabilities within UKG will give us much more flexibility and real-time insight into staffing needs, and we’ll be able to more accurately ensure our teller lines, vaults, and drive-throughs have the right people in place to serve our clients at all times,” said Stratton.
“Organizations such as PREMIER that understand the importance of putting people at the center of their business strategies are the ones producing exceptional results,” said Chris Todd, CEO at UKG. “People are the glue, the magic, that help organizations of all sizes, across all industries, succeed. Couple that with the power of innovative technology that anticipates business and employee needs, and it’s an unstoppable force.”
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