AMERICAN FOODS GROUP REVAMPS THEIR LEAVE COMPLIANCE STRATEGY WITH PRESAGIA ENTERPRISE THE CUSTOMER

Transcription

1 AMERICAN FOODS GROUP REVAMPS THEIR LEAVE COMPLIANCE STRATEGY WITH PRESAGIA ENTERPRISE ABOUT AFG Employees: Facilities: Beef pounds shipped/day: Countries served: 4, million 38 THE CUSTOMER As a multi-state employer, how do you ensure compliance with the FMLA, state leave laws and Collective Bargaining Agreements when you manage leave manually at each of your facilities? This very question led American Foods Group (AFG) down the path of revamping its leave management program. Headquartered in Green Bay, Wisconsin, AFG is America s fifth largest beef processing company, with over 4,000 employees and 19 facilities located primarily in the Midwest. Shipping more than 4 million pounds of beef each day to over 38 countries around the world, AFG s employees work hard in positions that are often physically demanding, contributing to the company s large volume of leave requests. Additionally, AFG s high employee turnover rate makes recordkeeping difficult, especially when many employees are rehired later. On top of this, more than 65% of AFG employees preferred language is Spanish, creating legal challenges for laws with specific language requirements like the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA). With a constantly changing workforce and a need for bilingualism, keeping on top of leave requests at AFG is no easy task. That s why, in 2011, the company chose to optimize their leave management with Presagia Enterprise. Madison Green Bay Milwaukee

2 THE ISSUES Before 2011, AFG was managing leave manually at each facility. According to Trudy Gokey, AFG s Director of Employee Benefits, this decentralized system used spreadsheets a method that was plagued by inconsistency and gave little visibility at the corporate level of what was happening in the facilities. Among other issues, Gokey discovered a lack of documentation, inaccurate designations, forgotten employees on FMLA leave, and even employees who continued to receive pay despite being on FMLA or Short-Term Disability (STD). I want to forget those days, Gokey said. We had real concerns about compliance issues, consistency, and the way that family and medical leave was being applied. With an ever-growing number of leave laws in place nationwide, the need for employers to improve compliance has never been stronger or more difficult to fulfill. Having identified compliance as her primary concern, Gokey realized that her managers could not continue managing leave manually without putting AFG at risk of costly litigation. The world of HR is becoming much more legal in nature you feel like you need to be an attorney to work in HR, Gokey said. We have generalists at our locations and we didn t feel like we could teach them to be experts in all the laws that might apply to their employees. So how do you improve compliance without training your staff to be legal experts? In need of a solution, Gokey began the search for a compliance-driven absence management software. First, she narrowed down her search options to solutions that she knew would align with AFG s unique culture and priorities.

3 Our biggest concern was to find something that could accommodate our bilingual needs, she said. We needed to make sure that the proper letters and forms were being generated and returned in a timely fashion, and in the employees preferred language. Although Gokey considered outsourcing, she determined that its lack of personalized service to employees did not match AFG s culture and its high costs made it impractical. In addition, the manner in which Third Party Administrators wanted to set up the system lacked the flexibility that Gokey needed to deal with AFG s specific challenges. At the end of the day, AFG needed a system that was easily customizable to meet companyspecific needs like their bilingual workforce. They needed a system that could handle a myriad of company policies in addition to federal and state laws, with decision support to guide managers through determining eligibility. And they also needed a solution that would centralize and automate everything they do, to ensure that their leave management processes were consistent, efficient and effective.

4 THE SOLUTION Headed into the search with these specific requirements, it didn t take long for Gokey to find everything she was looking for in Presagia Enterprise. Presagia Enterprise is a cloud-based absence management software solution that includes FMLA, ADA, military and state leave regulations. Presagia s automated workflows guide users through the leave process, with decision support at every step along the way. With a Compliance Engine that monitors and manages over 450 pieces of federal and state leave legislation and is updated on a continuous basis, Gokey knew that Presagia had what it took to assuage her compliance fears. She also knew that having one centralized system to manage these various policies and regulations would be a vast improvement over AFG s former manual system.

5 We re not just using it for the federal and state leaves; we re also using it for other programs like collectively bargained leaves of absence, she said. It s really important that we are able to bring together all these regulations in one standardized system. What s more, Presagia was able to provide a simple solution to AFG s language requirements thanks to the software s configurability. When an employee requests a leave, the demographic file indicates their language of preference and Presagia s software automatically generates the appropriate correspondence. It s really important that we are able to According to Gokey, AFG s needs for bring together all these regulations in one configurability were complicated, but handled standardized system. smoothly by Presagia s team of experts. We went with Presagia because of the configurability, Gokey said. Our implementation was long because we had so many unique needs, but Presagia s support team was phenomenal in helping us get through those rough spots with additional training. Gokey was also impressed by the system s ability to integrate with their Ultimate HRIS and Payroll system and their Time & Attendance system. For example, the integration with Ultimate means that employee demographics data is automatically updated in Presagia Enterprise with no effort required, which saves time and resources by reducing redundant data entry. I love Ultimate s software, but it didn t have the ability to track family and medical leave, produce the letters that we need or do case management, Gokey said. That s where Presagia came in and filled that gap. Presagia Enterprise interfaces with HRIS and Time & Attendance systems.

6 THE RESULTS Now that her team has been using the software for over three years, Gokey says Presagia Enterprise has been instrumental in improving her team s efficiency, accuracy and most importantly compliance. I feel much more comfortable than I did before in regards to having consistency and being in compliance, she said. Our documentation is solid now; should we have any legal concerns or questions, we feel very comfortable in what we have to provide. I feel much more comfortable than I did before in regards to having consistency and being in compliance. Presagia has also been instrumental in helping Gokey s team identify potential abuse. With the decentralized system that AFG was originally using, Gokey lacked visibility into the leave process. But this changed with Presagia Enterprise thanks to reporting features that allow managers to monitor, measure and analyze leave data in real-time.

7 Before we found that people and managers were trying to circumvent the system, she said. Now we re able to catch those kind of things through reports and other features. I love the ease of being able to generate a report that has exactly the information I want to see on it. Looking back on the transition from implementation to now, Gokey said she has achieved peace of mind through the company s decision to implement Presagia Enterprise, which has allowed her team to meet their absence management goals. I love the ease of being able to generate a report that has exactly the information I want to see on it. We needed to get in compliance, she said. With Presagia, we ve accomplished that. ABOUT PRESAGIA Presagia provides Software as a Service (SaaS) absence management solutions to employers and Human Resources Outsourcing (HRO) providers. We monitor and manage more than 450 pieces of federal and state leave legislation in our proprietary Compliance Engine, including the FMLA and the ADA, and update the system on a continuous basis. Our software automates leave processes to increase efficiency, minimize absence, reduce cost and above all improve compliance. To learn more, please visit us at