Business process directly affects customer service, employee satisfaction and the bottom line. With the Affordable Care Act it also affects your ability to accurately and legally track and report on your compliance. Even slight changes in process can increase revenue and productivity, allowing you to do more with less while also keeping you out of hot water. Here’s a quick check list to see if you have some processes that you can adjust today to advance and enhance all of the above.
· How often is the recruiting staff touching paper applications or paperwork from applicants in general?
o If your answer is more than once, you could improve your process. Consider on-line job boards and applications that include automatic candidate management functions to take away the pile of paperwork and attach it electronically to your applicant and soon to be employee files.
o For ACA your Notice of Exchange and Summary of Benefits and Coverage can be electronically deployed, saving time, postage and allowing for proof of receipt.
· Do you have written, simple procedures for each area your business? Is it updated and available to your staff? If questioned, would every staff member be able to tell you the process? If you answered no to one or all of these questions, you need to improve your process.
· Does your back office staff require more than a day to process payroll and billing? If your answer is yes, you could improve your process.
o How many people are involved in these processes? Do you have employee engagement and buy-in?
o How much paper is being used? If your paper/toner bill has increased or stayed the same, the process could be adjusted. Electronic invoices are perfectly acceptable these days as are electronic paystubs in most states.
o Could the front office do time entry, avoiding time needed to inquire about rates, hours and even whether or not someone is on assignment? Only the front office knows this, why not have them put in the hours and have the back office take it from there? ACA requires very precise hours of service tracking and can affect the difference between FT and variable hour employees.
· When was the last time your business processes were reviewed? If it’s been more than a year, you should take a look. Technology, your clients’ processes and your employees are changing at lightening fast speed, your process needs to be ahead of the game.
· Is the technology available being used appropriately or even at all by your staff? Have you shadowed various departments to see how they use the system, reviewed othe systems or asked them to assess their own processes?
o Have you made plans or already modified these to include your Affordable Care Act processes?
· Does your staff have the ability to see current employees with unemployment claims to get them back to work? If not, they should.