The Bluffs' challenges:
- Maintenance for existing labor management system discontinued
- Manual time entry
- Employees forget to punch in and out
- Fraudulent punches
MDI Achieve Touch Time
MDI Achieve's Touch Time is a unique time and attendance software system that accurately tracks employee hours and helps streamline the payroll process. With Touch Time, employee work time is recorded and totaled automatically, saving your accounting staff valuable time.
The impact of MDI Achieve Touch Time
- Secure fingerprint log-in prevents fraud and log-in errors
- Accurate reporting of time worked
- Integration between Touch Time and MDI Achieve Payroll
- User-friendly
- Cost effective
The Bluffs is a modern 132-bed not-for-profit skilled nursing facility serving the citizens of Central Missouri. Emerging from its long history as the "Boone Retirement Center", The Bluffs opened its doors as a completely new entity, with a new building, and in a new location in July of 2002.
The mission of the Bluffs was to develop a facility that would create a welcoming, homelike center for aging adults in the Columbia community. It was specially designed to evoke a sense of community among its residents, as well as to accommodate people based on their individual needs. Five separate subdivisions, designated as "neighborhoods", are equipped to accommodate varying levels of care, from short-term rehabilitation to skilled services, to a 16-bed Alzheimer's care unit and hospice care. The Bluffs has earned the reputation of being one of the best nursing and rehabilitation facilities in the state of Missouri, and is considered "the guiding light of long-term care."
MDI Achieve Touch Time Case Study
The Bluffs uses MDI Achieve Touch Time to help improve the accuracy and security of their labor management efforts
In 2005, when The Bluffs' labor management software system stopped providing maintenance, the facility needed to find a reliable replacement. Since they were already using MDI Achieve's On-Line Advantage software for their clinical and financial needs, the facility chose to implement Touch Time, a module of MDI Achieve's Staff Solutions suite. Touch Time, utilizing a touch screen monitor for clocking in and out, is a unique time and attendance software system that accurately tracks employee hours and helps streamline the payroll process. Recently, The Bluffs implemented the Biometric log-in feature of Touch Time. Now employees clock in/out by pressing their finger into a fingerprint reader.
"We ran into issues with employees stealing time, with employees entering each other's social security numbers, and staff was concerned about privacy when entering their social security number," says Asha Shaon, Director of HR and Training at The Bluffs. "The biometric log-in prevents that from happening as everyone is set up using their fingerprint for identification. In addition, employees don't have to use social security information or remember a PIN which improves accuracy and reduces time spent correcting errors."
"With our previous system, we manually entered time into our payroll system," explains Shaon. "With Biometric Touch Time, hours are tracked and totaled automatically in the software. At the end of the pay period, we download employee's hours into MDI Achieve Payroll which is fully integrated with Touch Time, saving an enormous amount of work and time."
"Since implementing Touch Time, improvements have been seen in areas such as our evaluation process, benefit packages review, and communication with employees," comments Shaon. "For example, employees' time is archived in the system and reports can be run for any time period. When doing evaluations or reviews, it's nice to be able to use that as a reference when discussing performance. In addition, benefit accrual rates and parameters can be easily updated in the system, and each employee's bank of hours is easily tracked and updated. This information is included on the employees' paychecks so they know exactly how much vacation and sick time they have earned."
The Messenger Manager is also a great feature as it allows communication of important updates to employees when they clock in or out. It's a reliable way to know that employees received important updates or requests.
"It's a very cost-effective solution for us with minimal hardware and we were impressed with the ease of implementation," says Shaon. "Employees are set up by scanning their index finger four times over the fingerprint reader and the fingerprint is converted into a unique code that is matched to that specific employee. This also sets them up in the payroll system."
