Success Story

Four County Mental Health

Four County Mental Health Improves Communication and Efficiency

“CS3 Technology is very good about listening to what the specific, end result you need is and recommending a way to get you there. There is no way that we would have gotten the functionality out of the system without CS3.”

Jodi Hayse Director of Human Resources

Since 1964, Four County Mental Health Center has been providing outpatient mental health services to residents in four counties in Southeast Kansas. Funded by various grants, county funds, private fees, insurance and Medicare/ Medicaid, Four County works with more than 3,000 clients each year. Ranging in age from 3 to 103 and covering every walk of life, Four County helps clients achieve a little bit of independence in their daily living.

Accountability

“As a not-for-profit agency, we strive to be very good stewards with our resources,” said Jodi Hayse, Director of Human Resources at Four County Mental Health. “We have county and executive board accountability; how we spend our money gets a lot of attention. We want tremendous value for the money that we spend.”

Four County had been using Sage HRMS for a few years before Jodi arrived in 2001. Unfortunately, the system was not set up correctly and the users were not trained properly. After a call to Sage Software, Four County was steered toward CS3 Technology. “It has been wonderful ever since,” said Jodi of her relationship with CS3. “CS3 came in and helped set us up correctly and providedtraining for our people. This went a long way to improving the value of the system in our organization.”

Growth

As Four County continued to grow and expand, so did their HR needs. “Our almost 300 employees are very spread out and work primarily with clients in the field,” said Jodi. “We needed to find a way to communicate more efficiently about benefits, time off and just general HR questions.” Employees had to either call or come in to the HR office in order to get basic HR information. This took away from an employee’s productivity, not to mention the productivity of the HR department. In addition, there were some privacy issues with the way the reports were prepared. “We were using a variety of spreadsheets to track employee information as well as manually-prepared documents,” said Jodi. At the time, Four County was improving their company’s intranet and wanted to find a way that any employee with network access could also access their HR information over the web. Once again, they turned to CS3 for advice. After a thorough discovery by CS3 was completed, there were several things that could be done to help improve efficiency and productivity at Four County.

Recommendations

CS3 recommended Sage Employee Self Service as well as implementing some additional Payroll features. Employee Self Service was rolled out with the release of Four County’s intranet. “The implementation went smoothly because CS3 did a lot of legwork up front to scope out what the system would look like,” said Jodi. “Everything was completely customized to the way that we needed to communicate with our employees.” This gives Four County a clear picture of how funds are being utilized and Four County can track multiple jobs and different pay rates across funds.

The next step was rolling the system out and training almost 300 employees. “CS3 Technology has tremendous expertise with HR departments and they were able to guide us in creating effective training, customized for us,” said Jodi. “ESS is now part of our training for new employees.”

Results

“It’s amazing the difference in the number of calls we handle,” said Jodi. “Employees are thrilled that they can access benefit information as well as vacation and sick time whenever it is convenient for them.” Four County’s intranet benefited as well. “Employees can visit one spot and take care of everything. We have definitely improved communications with employees through our intranet. We also learned the value of communicating with our employees,” said Jodi. “Our employees are definitely happier.”

CS3 continues to play a significant part in supporting Four County. “We love that everything is completely integrated. Now, when a new employee starts, we only have to set them up in one system. This saves us a lot of time,” said Jodi. “We have to provide a quarterly Medicaid report that shows every instance of direct and indirect service for Medicaid clients. This includes an allocation of wages, benefits and retirement costs for everyone who not only has direct client contacts, but for people who support the case worker,” said Jodi. “It is a very difficult report to gather information for as we would have to access multiple sources to gather the data. CS3 was able to create the report for us and it saves us days each quarter compiling the report.”

“There is no way we would have gotten the functionality out of the system that we have without CS3. We have been to their offices for training and we have attended their Solutions conference the last several years,” said Jodi. “I don’t know what the most valuable part of our relationship with CS3 Technology is. Their knowledge is valuable, their follow up is amazing, the training is wonderful and the staff is great, you know you will always get an answer.”


Client Information

Four County Mental Health

Independence, KS

www.fourcounty.com

  • Founded in 1964
  • 300 employees
  • Field-based employees

Business Issues that Led to Need for New System

  • Distracted employees from case work by having to call about benefits and HR information
  • Antiquated benefits tracking system
  • Communicate with employees across four counties

Results of Implementing Sage HRMS

  • Fewer calls to HR department for basic HR information
  • Employees understand the value of their benefits
  • More productive and happier employees
  • Higher utilization of company intranet
  • One point of data entry for a completely integrated system

Impact of Relationship with CS3 Technology

  • Developed Employee Self Service System
  • Created customized training for employees
  • Report development to streamline information
  • Accessibility to everyone in the company for support
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