Hartford HealthCare is one of the largest health systems in New England, employing 37,000 people across more than 500 locations. The organization was named by Fortune as one of America’s Most Innovative Companies 2023 for its commitment to product innovation, process innovation, and innovation in culture.
Challenges
A longtime UKG customer dedicated to constant innovation, Hartford HealthCare knew UKG’s newest AI-powered workforce management suite would better help the health system keep up with the changes and challenges of the healthcare industry as well as help manage and care for its staff.
Solutions
Hartford HealthCare migrated to UKG Pro Workforce Management (formerly UKG Dimensions) to strengthen its mission as a great place to work and better support the needs of frontline staff who are deeply committed to delivering exceptional patient outcomes.
“Our goal is to care for our patients and our community. To do that, we have to take care of our people first, and that’s where UKG comes in,” said Amanda Lopes-Edson, manager of shared services at Hartford HealthCare. “UKG lets us meet our people where they are — whether that’s bedside caring for our patients or at home with their families — with innovative technology that’s easily accessible and available at their fingertips.”
“Pro Workforce Management is incredibly versatile and robust, especially the staffing dashboard. We can get a detailed view of where our people are working at any moment and compare that to our patient census information to ensure we always have proper coverage across our units,” said Lopes-Edson. “With the UKG Pro mobile app, employees — including float staff — can swap shifts, pick up open shifts, and request shift coverage, which not only gives them choices and greater work-life balance but helps us cover shifts faster to care for patients."
Manager of Shared Services
Results
In an industry that continues to battle staffing shortages, Hartford HealthCare implemented advanced scheduling in patient care areas across its locations to give employees greater flexibility when it comes to selecting shifts that work best for them. At the same time, managers and supervisors have real-time visibility into areas where coverage is needed most so they can make timely and accurate staffing decisions.
“Pro Workforce Management is incredibly versatile and robust, especially the staffing dashboard. We can get a detailed view of where our people are working at any moment and compare that to our patient census information to ensure we always have proper coverage across our units,” said Lopes-Edson. “With the UKG Pro mobile app, employees — including float staff — can swap shifts, pick up open shifts, and request shift coverage, which not only gives them choices and greater work-life balance but helps us cover shifts faster to care for patients."
Moving to the intelligent, cloud workforce management suite has created additional efficiencies for Hartford HealthCare that are being felt across the health system by employees, managers, and leadership alike.
“With Pro Workforce Management, we have now one standard timekeeping policy and platform — one source of truth for workforce data across all locations,” said Peter Nelson, director of payroll at Hartford HealthCare. “We have also removed duplications system-wide. For example, we previously had 19 different pay codes for the same job and now we’re down to just one. We were able to massively standardize what our managers can see and do in UKG which has really simplified their lives.”
“Another area of significant improvement is how we manage accruals,” added Lopes-Edson. “This process used to be managed outside of UKG. It was difficult for people to understand how much time off they had accrued, and it was a labor-intensive process for my team. Now, we don’t have to spend hours auditing and verifying information because Pro Workforce Management does it all for us. That means we can spend less time in the system and more time on the floor interacting with our people and our patients.”
For hospital leadership, Lopes-Edson says UKG has been especially critical in helping ensure overall wellbeing amongst employees.
“Our leaders utilize UKG to make sure we’re taking care of our staff. Wellbeing is top-of-mind for all of us, and the fact that our leaders can approve time off and ensure balanced coverage so our people can recharge or do other things outside of work that they love is tremendously important and valuable, and central to us being a great place to work.”
