Healthcare payors from across the U.S. gathered together to share best practices for implementing new technology as well as lessons learned. Read on to see the highlights and key takeaways from their discussions.
In this article, we discuss:
With healthcare costs rising and demand for care shifting rapidly, the health insurance industry is eager to transform. Yet transformation projects are not a one-size-fits-all endeavor. There are many possible paths to success, as well as common pitfalls to avoid.
Customers and partners from the Workday healthcare payor community gathered together recently in North Carolina to exchange ideas on effective HR and finance transformation. One representative captured the sentiment, “When implementing innovation, we always ask, ‘What are the other payor organizations doing?’”
Following are the key themes that emerged from their discussion.
Kalan Comba, Workday North America chief technology officer, led a discussion on technology strategy, AI, and opportunities ahead. It’s important to have technology tools that enable multiple possible futures, he said, allowing users to adapt over time. Comba also shared how consolidating technology systems benefits organizations by requiring less maintenance and risk.
Comba said managing the AI trust gap requires guardrails in AI development and ensuring that human welfare is considered. In addition, working with technology partners who value responsible AI is a competitive advantage.
Health plans face many common challenges with their job recruiting processes. For example, scheduling interviews and processing feedback often involves tedious manual steps that cause delays and a poor experience for both recruiters and job candidates. Meanwhile, leading insurers need to find ways to bring talent into the organization faster and to manage hiring at scale for a wide variety of roles.
In a race to transform, engaging and learning from peer organizations moves the payor community forward.
A technical analyst from a payor organization shared that since transitioning to Workday, the team has streamlined interview scheduling and now has one source of truth for gathering feedback from candidates and getting support in the hiring process. The team was also able to minimize manual processes, including reducing coordination and scheduling time by one full business day.
“The biggest reason we pushed forward with interview scheduling was to automate processes to improve efficiency for our interviewers and recruiting coordinators,” the analyst said. As a result, “It increased the visibility for our recruiting team to see the interview status and schedule.” The team is also better able to manage feedback from interviews and deliver more accurate reports.
The lines are blurring between permanent and temporary workers, and most workers don’t stay with one organization for their full career. “Businesses need to move away from the siloed sourcing and hiring practices of the past,” said Dan Smoker, director of extended workforce strategy at Workday, including the Workday VNDLY vendor management system (VMS).
One customer shared that prior to transitioning to Workday VNDLY, they had faced long-standing challenges with their flex staff program. “In our previous VMS, we couldn’t integrate. We couldn’t identify who was a flex staff worker, vendor worker, or regular contractor.”
Because managers didn’t have a consistent process, they were entering contingent workers into two different systems. As a result, “We had a hard time auditing data and ensuring data was clean, and had issues with the information feeding into finance,” said Smoker. Having an effective contractor management tool has been critical for moving toward total workforce optimization.
Another technology leader at a payor organization emphasized the value of a strong change management team when implementing a new VMS. “Having a relationship with our managed service provider was the best outcome out of our implementation,” the leader said, adding that it helped streamline onboarding with their contractors and increased data integrity. “Now we can get more insights into the workforce.”
Payor organizations are grappling with how to effectively equip their talent today while also evolving their workforce for the future.
One payor organization detailed their journey of providing company-wide training, which included 9,500 learners with over 1,000 learning opportunities.
The organization’s director of digital learning and performance advised that before evaluating technology providers, leadership should first figure out the role learning plays in their organization. “Get the workforce to change the mindset of how they look at learning. It’s no longer a place you go to when there are required courses to take. It enables skills and career growth,” said the director of HR operations.
To move forward, the team broke down its learning strategy into content, learner experience, and measurement evaluation. Using Workday Learning, the team has optimized its investment and met its learning strategy goals. Working with an implementation partner on the process and establishing reporting for compliance as well as program effectiveness was also key.
Ultimately, learning programs can become a catalyst for understanding employee skills and attributes and delivering highly targeted pathways to career growth.
The data says it all. “There’s consistent evidence for the link between engaged employees and a better employee experience,” said Deborah Kuness, principal business psychologist with Workday Peakon Employee Voice. “You reduce absenteeism, attrition, and safety incidents, and increase customer satisfaction, growth, productivity, and efficiency.” Studies have also found that having engaged employees is a key indicator of business success.
Kuness added that a successful employee listening strategy will be gradual, requiring change management and consistent communication with employees. Highly engaged organizations create a culture of listening by surveying employees quarterly at minimum. While some argue that’s too much surveying, Kuness said, “You wouldn’t look at finance data only once a year, so why would you look at employee sentiment only once a year?”
There’s consistent evidence for the link between engaged employees and a better employee experience
Deborah Kuness
Principal Business Psychologist
Workday Peakon Employee Voice
An effective employee survey experience empowers employees. It also empowers leaders to receive real-time feedback, driving accountability and encouraging dialogue beyond the surveys.
“The biggest blocker to success of a listening program is not survey fatigue, it’s lack of action fatigue,” Kuness said. When employee feedback is not acted on, that deeply undermines the success of the program. Empowering leaders with intelligent and actionable insight and promoting timely follow up is key. When organizations get listening right, they drive connection, contribution, and belonging.
From large and diversified national insurers to smaller, regional health plans, nearly all payor organizations look to technology to help simplify tasks, consolidate information, and enable agility. Being able to configure and customize technology to serve specific needs is critical.
“There’s a standard toolset for adapting Workday for your business needs,” said Dan Mourning, analytics and platform extensibility expert at Workday. “You can configure processes, approval flows, and documents depending how you want those processes to behave.”
Mourning added that Workday Extend—a capability that allows users to build their own apps on Workday—helps customers create custom functionality. “Customers are developing a mass of applications and deploying across HR, finance, and supply chain,” he said. “No matter how much configurability we add to Workday, there will always be additional things people wish it could do. Workday Extend puts the power into your hands.”
Peer organizations are often the best resources to equip health plan leaders with fresh ideas and best practices. Being engaged, meeting peers, listening, and learning move the payor community forward.
Staying connected with Workday partners also adds value. “If we know your business better, we can serve you and customize for you better,” said Jill Maiorano, national director of the Workday payor division.
For more information and insights, check out additional healthcare industry stories.
Providers need to build resilient supply chains that help deliver patient-centric, value-based healthcare. Data-driven insights, automation, and AI and machine learning (ML) set the stage for strategic change and innovation.
Integrating a vendor management system can revolutionize the management of the contingent workforce for healthcare payors, ensuring efficiency and reliable data.
In this episode of our Industrious podcast series, John Kravitz, vice president of healthcare at Workday, expands on findings from a recent IDC survey focused on transformation in healthcare. Kravitz also shares insights from his work with other healthcare leaders and background as a former healthcare CIO.
More Reading
The manufacturing industry faces a significant labor shortage, and attracting and retaining the next generation of workers, particularly Gen Z, is crucial for its future success. Here’s how.
We’re delighted to share how our professional and business services customers are planning with agility, finding efficiencies in finance, and improving the employee experience. Read on to learn this year’s category winners for the Workday Industry Innovation Awards.
How can HR leaders ensure their people have the right skills for the future? In this episode, Sharon Wingfelder, CHRO at First American Financial, joined Emma Chalwin, CMO at Workday, to talk trends in HR, getting the most out of AI, and cultivating a positive workplace culture.
