Human Resources Software

Social Services Organization Appreciates Reports in Staff Files

“Our data-driven decisions are now much easier and faster than before.”

Karla Harrison, Human Resources Coordinator
DDI VANTAGE

Customer Profile

DDI VANTAGE of Salt Lake City, Utah serves children from birth to three years old with special needs, and adults with disabilities. Karla Harrison, their human resources coordinator, along with two other people in their HR department and the executive director, has been using Staff Files for three years. Even though they have only 145 current employees working at their organization, they use HR software to keep track of the personnel information of current employees, as well as contractors, allied personnel, and ex-employees.

Situation/Challenge

Prior to implementing Staff Files, DDI VANTAGE had been keeping track of employee information by hand and on multiple spreadsheets, which meant reports were created manually. At that time they had approximately 125 employees and found record keeping to be extremely time-consuming. “Much of the tracking we do now wasn’t even possible then because of the extensive work load it would have been for a small department,” said Karla. “Creating reports was horrible because only a minority of the data was on spreadsheets; the rest had to be determined from each, individual employee file.”

They have three different programs and eight sites in their social services organization. They weren’t able to be as supportive to those programs because they couldn’t track the information each one needed.

They needed a centralized database that would allow them to run reports quickly, so they researched HR software on the internet and found Staff Files. Karla said “it was reasonably priced, intuitive to use, and didn’t have too many bells and whistles that would make it cumbersome.”

Solution

Now with Staff Files, the HR department at DDI VANTAGE can run numerous reports for their own department, the executive director, and their insurance companies. They’re able to generate a Reminders report for their supervisors to do annual performance evaluations. The HR department can check whether trainings and certifications are up-to-date and send reminders to the supervisors of staff members who have unmet requirements. They use many of the Staff reports including the birthday, anniversary, and training reports. They also enjoy the photo availability, so they can maintain familiarity with all of the staff. Their favorite report is the Employee List that allows them to pick the fields they want to display in order to generate a custom report. They can get statistics very easily for their three programs, which each have their own reporting requirements. “Our data-driven decisions are now much easier and faster than before,” Karla said.

They’ve been able to customize the fields in Staff Files with their own titles. They altered the descriptions because their needs didn’t fit exactly into the pre-defined fields.

They also use Staff Files to look up employee addresses and insurance coverages, make mailing labels, and see whether a former employee is re-hirable and why or why not. Phone employment verifications are much easier and more efficient now, too.

Benefits

DDI VANTAGE found that by using Staff Files their reporting and tracking capabilities increased. “There is MUCH more information that we can track now,” said Karla. “Not only is it now even possible, but it’s easier and faster.”

There was an immediate increase in productivity, mainly for human resources, but also for the supervisors who were keeping track of some information themselves. Now they just get a monthly report letting them know what is required for that month. It also helped reduce the workload of the business office which sometimes had to run reports for the HR department because they tracked some things on spreadsheets that was also needed for human resources. “We save several hours every week by using Staff Files, plus we are more efficient,” Karla said.

In general, Karla is very appreciative of Staff Files and would recommend it to other organizations, saying “We appreciate the simplicity of use and that it doesn’t have to be way complicated to be beneficial.”