Phoenix Life Insurance Saves $500,000 Annually Using EmpCenter^®

The Phoenix Companies, Inc., headquartered in Hartford, Connecticut, is a leading provider of life insurance, annuities, and asset management products. The company offers a broad portfolio of products and services to help meet the needs of affluent and high net worth individuals and of institutions.

WorkForce Challenges & Issues

Prior to selecting WorkForce Software’s EmpCenter Online solution, The Phoenix Companies went through a long, manual, paper-based process to collect time and track attendance. The Phoenix Company had anywhere from 60 to 80 administrative people collecting paper timesheets from 1,500 employees and then keying that data into a spreadsheet. The company also manually calculated complex accrual rules. The manual processing created a number of issues, including time recording errors, missing time-off requests, as well as a high number of unapproved timesheets so employees could be paid for time not worked. Often times the handwritten timesheets were difficult to read and were keyed incorrectly.

“We knew there were issues, because departing employees had larger than expected time-off balances,” said Debra Lemek, senior payroll coordinator at Phoenix Life Insurance Company. “The bottom line was that employees were not entering their time-off, so they were paid for what appeared to be unused time when they left the company. Another issue surfaced when managers failed to notify HR when an employee quit. This meant that the organization continued to pay salary, and accrue time-off and other benefits, after the employee no longer worked there.”

Selecting WorkForce Software

“We chose WorkForce because of the company’s workforce management expertise,” said Lemek. “The WorkForce team has a profound understanding of payroll processes and best practices. They quickly determined our needs and configured EmpCenter to automate our manual processes and resolve our workforce issues.”

After evaluating other vendor’s products that were identified in the RFP process, Phoenix selected WorkForce’s EmpCenter. WorkForce’s EmpCenter was the only product that could meet its complex needs without software customization or workarounds, which meant future upgrades would be simple and cost-effective.

Implementation

The Phoenix Company had an aggressive 16-week implementation schedule. “Our deadline only gave us 16 weeks to configure, test, train and deploy the system,” said Suzette Louro, assistant vice president of employee services for The Phoenix Company. “But WorkForce made this the best implementation I’ve been involved in. The project manager was very responsive and the consultants had our best interests in mind – a rarity these days.”

A critical piece in the success of the implementation was that every milestone occurred on schedule. Dedication and communication helped make the happen. If obstacles came up, all team members were informed, so they could be resolved quickly and the project could keep moving forward.

Data Collection

For years, 1,500 employees at Phoenix tracked their time by writing it down on paper and handing it off to payroll personnel. Up to 80 people were involved in entering that data, and the processes took 40 to 50 hours each week. Today, it takes ten minutes to submit timesheets.

Phoenix’s salaried employees also use EmpCenter’s web-based timesheets to enter exception-based data, like sick days and vacations, while hourly employees enter all hours worked. The system automatically calculates overtime pay based on pre-defined business rules and regulations, so employee paychecks are always accurate. When employees forget to enter their timesheets, EmpCenter alerts managers via email, so issues are fixed before they occur.

“EmpCenter helps us better manage FLSA requirements with accurate data,” said Debra Lemek, senior payroll coordinator at The Phoenix Companies.

Results

The Phoenix Company has significantly reduced costs and increased employee productivity by using EmpCenter. Because the system saves so much processing time, now only one person is required for the task and the others are free to help make improvements to other parts of the business.

Now, managers are responsible for collecting and approving their employees’ time electronically, and employees and managers receive email alerts when timesheets are not turned in. “In the first payroll run using EmpCenter, we went from zero to 1,450 approved timesheets turned in,” said Louro. “This was a major accomplishment.”

Cost Savings

The Phoenix Company saves $44,000 per month by not paying terminated employees and another $3K a month by accurately tracking sick and disability time-off.

Other significant results come from the accurate tracking of overtime hours and reduction in costs to manage compliance with FLSA overtime labor laws, and avoiding costly fines.

By reducing the time it takes to process and submit timesheets from 40 to 50 hours per pay period, to just ten minutes, The Phoenix Company saves $500,000 per year, which gave them a payback on EmpCenter of less than six months.

“We’ve seen significant cost savings and more efficient management of our employee interactions using EmpCenter,” said Lemek.