Most practices don’t spend much time thinking about human resources. If you have a small number of employees, you really shouldn’t have that many HR issues, right?
Wrong.
Letting HR issues slip can be bad news for your practice. In the worst case it can prompt a lawsuit from a disgruntled former employee, but even in the best cases it can mean chaos and confusion in your working environment, which can lead to high turnover rates.
The good news is that there are solutions to your HR dilemmas, and some of them are available right out of a box containing customizable software. Just as an EMR can help streamline work flow with patients, technology is available to better manage staff and reduce turnover.
Taking the first step
The first step in getting help is admitting you have a problem, and nowhere is this truer than in HR. Just because you have a small number of employees, or your practice doesn’t have a dedicated HR person, doesn’t mean your practice isn’t dealing with HR issues and paperwork on a daily basis.
“Historically, if there is not a dedicated HR person, usually the person who has been doing the record keeping for the HR function suddenly finds themselves in that position,” says Jana Abrams, human resources and marketing director for Atlantic Urological Associates and president of the Human Resources Society of MGMA.
Generally that person is the office manager — and the office manager often is overwhelmed. Consequently, HR matters tend to get a minimal amount of attention.
Don’t live in denial about the amount of paperwork and drudgery that HR issues can generate for your practice. With time and attendance sheets, health and retirement benefits, keeping current with licensure, and managing employee records, there’s hardly any time to deal with serious issues such as getting a new hire settled in or taking disciplinary actions when needed. And that’s not even counting payroll!
If your practice doesn’t have an HR plan, then it definitely has an HR problem.
Begin at the beginning
“I think most people tend to choose time and attendance programs to implement first because they feel that it directly impacts the bottom line,” says Abrams.
That’s especially true for practices like Atlantic Urological, which has eight offices throughout central Florida. A simple time and attendance program allows multi-site practices to import employee information into a single database. With all of that information in a central location, the practice can run reports that help it identify staff drains and reduce overtime costs.
Equally as important is the time-saving factor. While Atlantic Urological outsources its payroll to a third-party organization, some HR software is designed to interface with time and attendance programs to make the payroll and benefits process seamless. “When you use a software package, you lose a lot of time involved in having to manually compile those records to process the payroll,” says Abrams.
Time and attendance programs also allow you to compile trending reports. Is your staffing configuration correct? Does the physician have an adequate amount of support staff? Are employee absences more prevalent at certain times of the year? These are all questions that the software can help you answer.
Time and attendance programs can also make the process of establishing a new hire much easier by helping determine average salary, establish pay grades, and monitor the average annual salary increase for each position.
The downside of benefits
Whether it is health insurance or a 401k plan, employee benefits are great incentives for retention. They also take a large amount of time to manage. Typically, the office manager takes care of enrolling new employees, fielding questions about insurance benefits and reimbursement procedures, and acting as a liaison between the retirement plan and the practice’s staff. Not only does this require a lot of time, it usually entails an incredible amount of paperwork.
