Managing a large workforce without clear visibility into productivity is challenging — especially in a hybrid environment with multiple teams and business units. For MedRisk, a healthcare services organization with more than 3,200 employees, that challenge became more complex after several acquisitions expanded the company’s footprint.
Leaders needed a way to understand how work happens across teams, tools and locations. To solve this, MedRisk turned to workforce intelligence.
In a recent webinar, Jeffrey Ericson, SVP of Infrastructure and CISO at MedRisk, joined ActivTrak Chief Customer Officer Gabriela Mauch to discuss how his team uses ActivTrak to:
- Bring visibility to a complex workforce
- Recover millions in labor costs
- Guide smarter workforce decisions
Here are the highlights from that conversation — listen or watch the full discussion here.
Bringing visibility to a complex workforce
One of MedRisk’s biggest challenges? Understanding what’s happening across different entities following multiple acquisitions.
“One of the interesting questions was one of our entities is about the same size as MedRisk in terms of the number of people, but vastly different in revenue,” Jeffrey said. “And so the immediate question from the outside was, well, why is that? Are they overstaffed or understaffed?”
Workforce analytics makes it easy to identify the underlying differences, rather than jumping to assumptions about staffing.
ActivTrak also equips the team with data to answer important questions such as:
- Are employees working the expected number of hours?
- Are teams operating efficiently across departments?
- Where are the gaps between expected and actual productivity?
For example, ActivTrak revealed some employees worked far more than expected — up to 16 hours per day. While that level of effort might indicate strong performance, it also raises questions about workload balance, role alignment and team capacity. These insights allow managers to make better decisions about staffing and work-life balance.
Identifying $3M+ in labor savings
With ActivTrak, improving workforce efficiency doesn’t require dozens of reports or complex analysis. It often comes down to two primary dashboards — checked daily.
First, executives rely on Workforce Utilization (Financial Loss Analysis) to check for gaps between expected and actual work hours, translated into FTE dollars. This helps leaders see where teams are over- or underutilized.
“We look at the financial report daily,” Ericson said. “There’s really no two ways about it — there’s a financial loss, and if that’s attached to a department, you’re on the radar. But the salient question is why.”
From there, managers turn to Productivity Trends to understand what’s happening at the team and individual level. This makes it easy to see if issues are due to workload imbalances, broken processes or ineffective tools.
Together, these two reports create a simple rhythm: Executives identify where there’s a gap, managers investigate what’s driving it and teams take action.
“Our financial loss, which probably topped around $7 million a year annualized, is down around $3 million right now,” said Ericson.
That improvement also raised an important question — how complete is the data behind those insights?
For MedRisk, visibility is closely tied to endpoint management. ActivTrak data is delivered through a Minimum Baseline Configuration (MBC), which includes the ActivTrak agent installed across managed devices. When endpoints fall outside that baseline, activity may not be fully captured.
By expanding endpoint coverage and ensuring the MBC is consistently applied, MedRisk not only strengthened the accuracy of its workforce analytics but also improved overall compliance. More complete visibility leads to more confident decisions — and fewer blind spots across teams, tools and workflows.
Using data to guide smarter workforce decisions
By starting small and rolling out ActivTrak over time, MedRisk has empowered managers and supervisors with “just right” insights.
“The more engagement at the supervisor level, the better off the metrics are of that team,” Ericson said.
These frontline leaders now have the objective data they need to coach employees, validate performance concerns and take action early. So far, they’ve used it to:
Improve tools and workflows
One unexpected insight came from application usage data. Leaders noticed Notepad was one of the most-used tools among customer service employees — which didn’t add up.
After digging in, they learned customer reps took notes in Notepad because their core system didn’t allow edits while a customer record was open. The workaround added unnecessary steps and slowed productivity. By updating the system to allow in-app note taking, leaders removed friction and improved efficiency.
Monitor compliance and work patterns
Workforce analytics also reveals gaps in how work happens.
“We had two respected, high-performing managers,” Ericson said. “But one showed 10 hours a day of productivity and the other showed 30 minutes.”
After investigating, the team learned the second manager was working just as hard but outside approved tools. The insight allowed leadership to address important compliance issues that would have otherwise gone unnoticed. This level of visibility reinforces both operational oversight and compliance by ensuring work happens within approved systems.
Create a culture of accountability
Rather than forcing adoption, MedRisk created demand. Leaders shared high-level insights first, sparking curiosity among managers who wanted deeper visibility into their teams.
Over time, managers began asking for direct access to use the data in daily decisions and employee coaching conversations.
Sometimes, it takes one data-driven conversation to get someone back on track. In other instances, the insights reveal broader opportunities to improve processes. In each scenario, workforce analytics gives managers, supervisors and executives a clear path forward.
Ready to empower your leaders with workforce analytics from ActivTrak?
MedRisk’s experience shows what’s possible when organizations replace assumptions with workforce data. From uncovering hidden capacity to improving tools and reducing labor costs, workforce analytics helps leaders see how work actually happens.
Ready to discover similar insights in your organization? Watch the demo videos to see how ActivTrak helps teams measure productivity, optimize resources and make smarter decisions every day.
