A Modern HR System Powers Community Services

The Challenge 

Catholic Charities New Hampshire (CCNH) is one of the largest private, non-profit human service agencies in the state. The organization creates new pathways for people facing challenging life situations. Skilled professionals offer an array of healthcare and social services programs: parenting education; adoption & maternity services; life planning; legal representation for prospective new citizens; anti-hunger & anti-poverty; services for homeless and struggling veterans and continuum of care options for the elderly from independent/assisted living to short-term rehabilitation and long-term care.   

CCNH is a complex organization from an HR and payroll perspective. It employs approximately 950 employees across more than 20 different facilities around the state. Within this decentralized organization, there are different pay structures. For example, there are six healthcare services facilities that operate 365 days a year and include a host of compensation variables such as bonuses for holidays, short notice shifts, and recruiting referrals. In the words of David Twitchell, VP of Human Resources, “the payroll person needs to really pay attention to get it right.”   

Twitchell’s HR team consists of six staff members at headquarters and ten dedicated HR staff members onsite at select facilities to handle recruitment, employee relations, and payroll reporting. Given the size and requirements of the organization, it’s a pretty lean team, so Twitchell is always looking for new efficiencies.  

Previously, CCNH was using a local payroll and HR solution with fairly basic capabilities, but they had outgrown it. “We really needed something more 21st century,” said Michal Waterman, Director of Human Resources. “Our existing solution had served us well, but it just didn’t have the functionality we needed to run our expanded operations. Payroll cards had to be filled out and checked manually at each location. There was no consolidated reporting and no integration with our 401(k) provider. We were essentially running eleven separate payrolls every week. It was incredibly inefficient.” 

The Approach 

In 2013, CCNH was introduced to Paylocity’s HR and payroll solution, which was already in use at a number of other non-profits across the country, including CCNH’s neighbor, the Diocese of Manchester, NH. In addition to its comprehensive capabilities, Paylocity’s dedicated non-profit services team was well-versed in the unique regulatory, budget and administrative requirements of organizations like CCNH. This gave Waterman and her colleagues comfort that Paylocity had the functionality and expertise CCNH would need to support its HR and payroll needs as the organization continued to expand its community service efforts.   

CCNH started with Paylocity’s HR & Payroll module. This offered immediate efficiencies by enabling a single view of the organization’s payroll. Multiple facilities still reported time and processed their own payroll, but Waterman was able to more easily consolidate it, so the organization had a combined view of metrics like total payroll expense, turnover, and 401(k) participation. In addition, Paylocity’s pre-built integration with bswift, CCNH’s benefits administration solution, enabled a single login for employees and HR admins. HR staffers no longer need to take the extra step of sharing payroll data with CCNH’s 401(k) provider and employees have seamless access to their payroll and 401(k) information in one interaction. 

Centralizing Payroll 

Paylocity had been in place for about a year at CCNH when David Twitchell took on the newly created role of VP of Human Resources. He had experience with several leading enterprise HR systems, but this was his first with Paylocity. “It was very intuitive and easy to navigate; very robust but much simpler than some of the other systems I had used in the past,” he said. This gave him the confidence to expand what CCNH was doing with the system.   

While payroll was consolidated with Paylocity, each facility was still managing its own time-reporting process through another 3rd party solution. To automate this process, Twitchell rolled out Paylocity’s Time & Labor Module. They did this by putting Kiosks (Samsung tablets) connected to Paylocity in each location for employees to clock in and out. HR staffers at each facility are still responsible for signing off on the time reporting, but the data is automatically submitted to headquarters and consolidated into one centralized payroll run. This saves time for staff at the individual facilities as well as for Twitchell’s team at headquarters. They now run split payroll on a weekly basis and get it out the door on time every week without incident.   

Plus, new tablets provided and serviced directly by Paylocity ensure no hardware maintenance headaches for CCNH IT staff members. Twitchell continues to find ways to make life simpler for CCNH employees. With Paylocity’s Mobile and Self-Service app, employees can easily submit and approve hours, view pay stubs, check vacation time, and request and approve time off right from their desktop or mobile device. Before then, these questions typically all came into the HR team.   

Twitchell continues to find ways to make life simpler for CCNH employees. With Paylocity’s Mobile and Self-Service app, employees can easily submit and approve hours, view pay stubs, check vacation time, and request and approve time off right from their desktop or mobile device. Before then, these questions typically all came into the HR team.   

Adoption of the Paylocity Mobile App has already reached 70%, exceeding Twitchell’s expectations. “Paylocity did a great job of training our HR team and our managers out in the community on the Mobile App. It’s very well used and really streamlines things for all involved.”

The Payoff 

Efficiency and Control 

CCNH’s decision to centralize payroll delivered immediate benefits. In addition to providing greater control over the process, Paylocity dramatically improved payroll processing for the entire organization. This freed up HR staff in each facility to focus on recruiting and retention, creating a more positive work environment, and enabling staff to deliver the most effective services possible to those in need. 

Informed Decision-Making 

Twitchell and Waterman are both big users of Paylocity’s reporting capabilities, regularly tracking metrics like headcount, labor cost trends, retention factors, vacation time, and benefits usage. The easy-to-configure dashboards provide intuitive data analysis for easy tracking and sharing. This provides the CCNH management team with important insights to identify bottlenecks and inform operational decisions about recruiting, work environment, staff allocation and budget. 

A Service Partnership 

Customer service is one of the key aspects of CCNH’s relationship with Paylocity. “Few technology implementations are perfect,” said Twitchell, “but the people we deal with at Paylocity are absolutely top notch. They are extremely helpful, always willing to go to bat for us. And their follow-through is excellent.” 

The partnership is also supported by Paylocity’s dedicated non-profit services team. “We had some challenges with new EEO1 Component 2 reporting last year. It was our first time dealing with the new regulation and it was very complicated. The account and service teams at Paylocity worked with us all the way through it, confirming the requirements and checking our progress every step of the way. Their tenacity was really impressive and helpful.”  

As Twitchell looks to the future with CCNH and Paylocity, he believes there is a lot more to be done. “We’ll continue to add more and more of the Paylocity capabilities to enhance our ability to provide the best possible service to our employees and the people in the community that depend on us.” 

• Unified payroll for a highly decentralized organizational structure, creating big operational efficiencies 
• Valuable insights on key HR metrics, improving decision-making 
• More time for HR staff to focus on core functions and community service mission