Eye Care Practice Automates Employee Leave Tracking

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1 Eye Care Practice Automates Employee Leave Tracking Paid Time Off and FMLA Time Tracking Simplified for Practice Network Doctors Vision Center, a premier eye care practice in North Carolina, has eliminated guess work in tracking Paid Time Off (PTO) and Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) unpaid time. What was once a time-consuming burden of manual calculations and handwritten timekeeping is now a centralized, online system, which makes capturing and reporting of PTO and FLMA easy. Attendance on Demand, a cloud-based, subscription service for time and attendance helped streamline the once cumbersome attendance process to an efficient and time-saving practice. Doctors Vision Center can now concentrate on more pressing business issues such as, its customer service, and extending their network of 42 practices Attendance on Demand, Inc. All rights reserved. page 1

2 About Doctors Vision Center In 1980, Dr. Peter Hollis and Dr. Ted Watson founded the first Doctors Vision Center in Greenville, North Carolina. Thirty-one years later, it has expanded into a network of 42 eye care practices, 26 of which are corporate owned and located throughout North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia. Today, Dr. Watson continues to practice and mentor incoming doctors in the latest techniques for eye care. Dr. Hollis still serves as the Medical Director. Each center offers comprehensive vision care services including eye exams, treatment of eye injury and disease, and eyeglasses and contact lenses. Using the latest medical technology, Doctors Vision Center provides children, adults, and seniors with their best personal vision possible. Attendance on Demand cut down the time to prepare payroll to about 30 minutes. A Blurry Picture Doctors Vision Center previously used a web-based attendance system for its 250 employees to clock In and Out. The system was reliable but the user interface was difficult and time consuming for supervisors to navigate. It did not keep track of vacation or sick time nor could the payroll department easily track and report FMLA time. Supervisors at each of the locations are responsible for managing time for both salaried and hourly employees. The staff is made up of optometrists, an ophthalmologist, HR, marketing, office managers, receptionists, technicians, and optical staff. Supervisors created schedules and tracked In and Out punches for hourly employees. For salaried employees like doctors, total hours per shift were tracked in either 4 or 8 hour blocks. Doctors sometimes worked at more than one location presenting additional complexities in reporting the location where the time was worked. The company s bi-weekly pay period required supervisors to complete and authorize employee time cards. Once authorized, the time cards were sent to the payroll manager. Supervisors often had trouble editing the time cards because the punches never lined up correctly when punches were missing Attendance on Demand, Inc. All rights reserved. page 2

3 The user interface made it difficult to add in the punch in the right place, remarked Christina Seigel, Director of Human Resources. For example, if an employee punched Out for a break but forgot to punch back In, and then punched Out at the day s end, inserting the In punch from the break was difficult. PTO Tracking Concerns Doctor Vision Center had an automated system for requesting employee PTO. However when an employee asked about remaining vacation or sick time, there was no way to generate a report that showed benefit balances. Each employee s PTO had to be looked up on individual time cards and manually calculated. It s a great product. It s easy to use for my managers, employees, and from an administrative standpoint. Dealing with FMLA Intermittent Leave Capturing FMLA time was another headache for supervisors and payroll. Tracking both FMLA eligibility and use of FMLA was done by hand. Employees requested FMLA time on paper and turned it in to the payroll manager. If a second leave was requested, the payroll manager checked the paper records and calculated the FMLA time available. The Department of Labor s introduction of intermittent leave, where employees can take small increments of time for a qualified medical reason or treatment, increased the complexity of tracking to the minute-by-minute level. These manual methods were time consuming and prone to errors. Scheduling employees around another worker s PTO or FMLA time was tricky. Filling the void for an employee that had a sudden absence or medical emergency to attend to was a strain on the supervisors and coworkers. This led to difficulties in scheduling, overtime, and errors in capturing the employee s attendance data. Seeing Clearly Doctors Vision Center was frustrated with availability of information regarding employee benefit balances. The company wanted a system that allowed them to easily track PTO and FMLA. They also needed an intuitive user interface and easy access to PTO information for both the supervisors and employees. Putting Employee Attendance into Focus In April of 2010 Doctors Vision Center called upon the experts at Labor Strategy (Greenboro, NC) to implement Attendance on Demand, a more efficient and easy-to-use system to help manage their workforce. The company appreciated the Attendance on Demand, Inc. All rights reserved. page 3

4 fact that they didn t need to buy software to implement the system, no upfront investments in licenses or servers, and no need for costly maintenance. Employees punched In and Out over the web without the need for actual time clocks. It s a great product, said Christina Seigel, Director of Human Resources. It s easy to use for my managers, employees, and from an administrative standpoint. The Results With Attendance on Demand the supervisors and payroll manager can easily keep track of employee benefit balances and time off. Supervisors enter PTO, FMLA, or a forgotten punch into the system themselves streamlining and automating the process. Planned PTO or FMLA is scheduled and unplanned time is captured when it occurs and recorded. Attendance on Demand simplifies time tracking and improves communication for both the supervisors and the payroll manager. Employee PTO and FMLA balances are displayed on their time sheet. With this information at their fingertips, employees always know where they stand. Requesting time off is easy and providing additional information about time off can be typed in the online request process. The supervisor receives the request, compares it with departmental schedules, and signs off on the selected dates. FMLA time is also tracked easily and accurately. Instead of taking half or whole days off for a qualifying medical reason, for example, the employee clocks Out, goes to the appointment, then clocks back In. Attendance on Demand tracks the time off up to the minute to ensure the employee s time off is accurately recorded and they are properly paid. Red, Yellow, Green Visual Clues The payroll manager automatically receives the report of employee hours. If everything is correct for a location or department, the visual cue on the payroll monitor is green. If there is a minor problem, the error is highlighted in yellow and fixed accordingly by the supervisor or payroll manager. If there was a major error or missing data that prevents payroll from closing, the location or department is highlighted red and the payroll manager contacts the supervisor to correct it Attendance on Demand, Inc. All rights reserved. page 4

5 Overall, Attendance on Demand cut down the time it took Doctors Vision Center to prepare payroll to about 30 minutes. By adding a system that allows the supervisors to easily capture PTO and FMLA time and report schedules and attendance, Doctors Vision Center can now concentrate on patient care and expanding their practice network. About Labor Strategy, LLC. Labor Strategy, LLC. (Greensboro, NC) implements time and attendance solutions to a range of businesses. With over 20 years of specific experience in the time and labor area, Labor Strategy helps organizations streamline payroll processes and control costs through high-quality service and support. The Labor Strategy team collaborates with business to eliminate manual intervention and duplicate data entry, and instead puts into place solutions; advanced time clocks and services take the work out of complex employee scheduling, labor and wage calculation. About Attendance on Demand, Inc. Attendance on Demand supports the labor management needs of thousands of companies and more than a half million employees across North America. Launched in 2006, Attendance on Demand is a rapidly deployed, cloud-based solution that minimizes a company s risk and technology investment while providing advanced features for securely managing labor data calculating pay rules, scheduling employees, budgeting labor, and automating recordkeeping for labor law compliance. With standard uptime over the industry average of % and above average customer retention rates, Attendance on Demand removes the worry of maintaining expensive infrastructure. An extensive North American distribution network helps organizations use Attendance on Demand to reduce labor expenses and improve decision making. To find out how Attendance on Demand can help your organization, call or visit Attendance on Demand, Inc. All rights reserved. page 5 Attendance on Demand is a registered trademark of Attendance on Demand, Inc. 5/11 rev 03/15