HR & Benefits Case Study: Nixon Peabody
Leading law firm saves green by going green with Web-based workforce management software.
Client Profile
Nixon Peabody LLP is recognized as a "Global 100" law firm — one of the largest in the world. With 700 attorneys collaborating across 25 major practice areas in 18 office locations, including Boston, Chicago, London. Los Angeles, New York, Paris, Rochester, San Francisco, Shanghai, Silicon Valley and Washington D.C., the firm's size, diversity, and advanced technological resources enable it to offer comprehensive legal services to individuals and organizations of all sizes in local, state, national, and international matters Additionally, Nixon Peabody launched the Legally GreenTcampaign which signifies their unique combination of legal experience, thought leadership, and responsible citizenship, and their commitment to serving clients and community.
The Challenge
This paper-based solution created unnecessary processing costs and overhead for the HR department - specifically with the hand keying of benefits and deductions during year end.
Nixon Peabody knew that this was not a sustainable practice and thus began a corporate initiative to "go paperless." While the immediate need was within the HR department, there was focus on finding a solution for taking the payroll department paperless as well in order to:
- Cut operational costs
- Improve efficiency within payroll and HR departments
- Improve employee productivity with self-service
- Ensure anytime, anywhere access for all employees
The Solution
Recognizing the impact on operations and the workforce that making the switch from paper to software would cause, Nixon Peabody took a phased approach to going paperless. Key to this was finding a product that:
- Was integrated with their existing payroll provider and benefits carriers
- Leveraged Internet based technology to make it easy to go paperless and also serve their multiple office locations.
- Could provide more than just time tracking and offered integrated HRIS functions like online benefits enrollment, paystubs, and W2s.
- Had superior deployment and support teams to work with them through the project and beyond.
iEmployee was identified as the ideal solution because it not only fit the business requirements of the project to take HR paperless, but iEmployee also offered additional Web-based solutions like, online timesheets and paystubs, to support their goal to go paperless.
The Benefits
Nixon Peabody only needed to work with one vendor for all of their needs, they were able to save significant time and resources that would have otherwise been consumed by evaluating, integrating, and deploying multiple solutions to take their HR and payroll departments paperless.
Initially started with their displaying pay stubs, W2s, HR + and Benefits information, Nixon Peabody then moved to online time sheets, open enrollment and use of the Salary Planning and Time Off modules. "For many years we delivered our 10-page benefits statement in a paper format," Said Lynn Kendrot, Senior HRIS Administrator at Nixon Peabody.
Since deploying iEmployee, Nixon Peabody has achieved their goal of going paperless to support their corporate Legally GreenT campaign, cut operational costs, and created efficiencies within their HR and payroll departments. Additionally, the value of employee self service has driven more employee engagement especially with their benefits: "We wanted our people to get involved and see what their elections mean on a day to day basis," said Lynn Kendrot, "Just listing them on a paystub doesn't demonstrate their value and importance. With iEmployee we were able to achieve this goal."
