How a Healthcare Tech Company Transformed its Separation Process

Three employees reviewing data

Company Industry: Healthcare
Employee Count: 15,000+
Involuntary Attrition: 5.5%


The Company

This international healthcare technology company is trusted by healthcare payers, providers, and consumers to handle more than 15 billion transactions per year. The company provides clinical, financial, and patient engagement solutions that inspire a stronger, better coordinated, increasingly collaborative, and more efficient healthcare system.

The recipient of many prestigious awards in technology and healthcare, the company has been recognized for its success using cloud capabilities to create comprehensive, compelling solutions that are making a significant impact in the healthcare industry.

The Challenge

The company’s personnel needs were constantly in flux due to continuous innovation and growth through acquisitions. Due to the customer- and market-dependent nature of the industry, the company sought a more efficient way to manage the impact to its people when business demands necessitated workforce reduction.

In the past, similar separation events took the company anywhere from 32 to 45 days between event initiation and generation of employee release agreements. On average, it cost the company approximately $256 per additional day an employee was kept on board. In the best-case scenario of a 32-day process, the company still spent more than $8,000 per employee.

For large-scale events, the cost easily totaled millions of dollars.

Aside from the financial impact to operations, the company’s offboarding process required a project manager to coordinate complex analysis and involvement from several teams. The process was manual and inefficient, using general programs like Word, Excel, and email to manage many moving parts. This imprecision created too much room for error, posing reputational, financial, and legal risk.

The Solution

Seeking a more efficient and cost-effective way to manage these ongoing workforce changes, the company enlisted the help of Onwards HR’s separation technology.

The Impact

  • Shortened the processing timeline by 75%. What previously took the company a minimum of 32 days took only 8 days with Onwards HR.

  • Reduced costs by $6,000+ per employee separation. At $256 per employee per day across payroll, severance, and benefits, the 8-day timeline yielded a cost savings of approximately $6,144 per person.

  • Increased productivity by 83%. By using separation technology to generate employee agreements and evaluate workforce reductions for compliance with employment law, Human Resources and Legal teams no longer wasted time on routine tasks. There was another big victory, too.

  • Gained the equivalent of a full-time HR team member. By using Onwards HR, the company no longer needed a project manager dedicated to separations. Instead, the employee was reallocated to another key HR initiative that the company hadn’t been able to implement.


This might not be the kind of technology HR professionals think they need, but once they have it, they’ll realize the considerable time savings it creates and the pressure it removes from HR and legal teams in ensuring accuracy of required documentation, as well as avoiding any wrongful termination lawsuits.
— SVP People Solutions, HR Shared Services

How did Onwards HR make such a significant impact?

  • Onwards HR allows for timely collaboration among teams by leveraging real-time updates to improve communication and workflow.

  • The separation management technology develops a robust event history by documenting justification of events, impacted employees, and approvals throughout the offboarding lifecycle.

  • Dynamic configuration options enable quick generation of documents, including necessary legal waivers and severance agreements.

  • Data analysis is easier and more accurate, enabling companies to evaluate trends over time.

  • Built-in tools help prevent costly legal proceedings by building comprehensive employee files and evaluating for compliance with the WARN Act, Title VII, and corporate guidelines.

The Recap

A Google award-winning healthcare company was able to:

  • Increase productivity by 83%

  • Reduce the processing timeline by 75%

  • Save ~$6,000+ per employee in payroll, severance, and benefits costs

You could be the next success story.