Optimizing Benefits Administration with HRchitect: Supporting Timekeeping & Open Enrollment in UKG Pro

Client Background

This Client is a professional baseball team that plays in the National League. This Client’s inaugural season was in 1993, and their home stadium is well known for its high-scoring games. As a prominent team in Major League Baseball, they have a workforce that includes players, coaches, support staff, and over 600 employees. This Client operates in the sports industry, which lends to the organization’s unique employee structure; they employ a mix of full-time and seasonal workers, as well as salaried non-exempt staff, salaried exempt staff, and hourly non-exempt staff.

The Challenge

This Client sought to streamline and improve their benefits administration, ahead of the open enrollment period. The WFM and Benefits modules were not configured during their implementation engagement, led by another UKG partner, so numerous processes were still being executed manually by the Client’s internal team. HRchitect helped eliminate the most burdensome manual processes, including:

• Running a back-office file from UKG Pro WFM and loading it to UKG Pro for payroll.
• Paying employees incorrectly, as not all earnings were mapped between UKG Pro WFM and UKG Pro.
• Conducting manual tracking of Banked Holiday and Differential Day processes.
• Processing payroll for all employees simultaneously since the Differentiated Pay groups did not exist in their UKG Pro WFM system.

Client Profile

• Major League Baseball (MLB) team that plays in the National League (NL)
• 600+ employees
• Chose HRchitect to implement and optimize the UKG Pro WFM and Benefits Administration modules

The Project

The HRchitect consultants supporting this client included a UKG Pro WFM senior consultant with 18 years of experience and a Benefits consultant with 20 years of experience. These consultants supported the Client’s team throughout the project, focusing on optimization opportunities related to UKG Pro WFM Timekeeping and Open Enrollment via Benefits Administration, respectively.

The goal of HRchitect’s involvement was to ensure that this client’s employees could easily navigate their benefits options and make selections in an efficient and user-friendly environment. The HRchitect team played a crucial role in configuring and managing the Open Enrollment process, addressing any issues that arose, and ensuring the system functioned as intended for all employee groups.

Key Benefits

• Support and Guidance: HRchitect provided continuous support throughout the Open Enrollment period, addressing questions and ensuring any technical issues were resolved swiftly.
• Streamlined Benefits Enrollment & Improved User Experience: The HRchitect team helped implement an optimized Open Enrollment experience for this Client’s employees, making it easier to understand, choose, and manage their benefits selections, reducing errors and administrative burden.
• Efficient Process Management: This Client’s HR team could manage benefits with greater efficiency, knowing that the system was fully supported and that employees had the assistance they needed during Open Enrollment.

The Results

The HRchitect team fixed numerous system processes for this Client, but the most notable included:

• Resolved API issues, enabling this Client’s team to save time when processing payroll instead of running a back-office file from UKG Pro WFM and loading it to UKG Pro.
• Altered the pay code mapping between UKG Pro WFM and UKG Pro so that all earnings were mapped, and all employees were correctly paid.
• Rebuilt the Bank Holiday and Differential Day processes to ensure the team could begin automatic tracking.
• Added all pay groups to UKG Pro WFM so this Client could process pay by pay group instead of all at once for every employee.
• This Client was so happy with HRchitect’s involvement that they opted to renew our engagement.

In addition to these system process fixes, the Open Enrollment process was successfully executed with minimal issues, which resulted in employees gaining the ability to efficiently navigate the system and expressing appreciation for the new system’s simplicity.

HR administrators also greatly benefited from HRchitect’s assistance, as these new automated and streamlined processes allowed them to focus on more strategic initiatives rather than manually handling most tasks.

Overall, this Client was very satisfied with the support received from HRchitect during open enrollment to improve their system and processes. The project was initially scoped for 50 hours, but the Client extended the engagement and gave the HRchitect team as many hours as they needed to complete the full project. The HRchitect team remains committed to helping this Client optimize their HR processes, ensuring that their workforce management solutions continue to meet the needs of their employees.