Why NGHS is sticking with payroll company after paycheck delays

Brian Wellmeier, The Times, Gainesville, Ga.
·2 min read

Feb. 15—Northeast Georgia Health System has elected to retain payroll management provider ADP after completing a review of the national processing vendor and its services.

The New Jersey-based company came under scrutiny in late-December after NGHS' 10,000-plus employees experienced a delay in receiving their paychecks — once in November and again Christmas weekend.

In response, NGHS moved to coordinate with upper levels of ADP's leadership to "develop a plan" to prevent any such issues from arising in the future.

"Our finance team worked closely with ADP to develop a plan to help ensure we don't have any issues that would result in any payroll delays after our typical payday...every other Friday," Vice President of Finance Roy Griffin said. "We have been assigned a dedicated account representative to follow our transactions through what's called the payment settlement process. With that in mind, we're sticking with ADP and trusting the process we have with them will work in the best interest of all NGHS employees."

NGHS, which attributed the delays to a lapse in communication between the third party payroll processing company and various banks and credit unions, transitioned its payroll services to ADP Oct. 1.

Sean Couch, a spokesperson for NGHS, said the hospital is actively reinforcing the notion that employees can expect checks to come in every other week, rather than at a specific hour, by the end of the day on Fridays.

"We totally recognize that what happened the last time around, right before Christmas, caused anxiety because it was the first time where folks who were used to seeing those pending deposits, depending on their banks, sometimes popping up on Thursday night or first thing Friday morning," he said. "We're trying to reinforce with our workforce that, if you did get paid on Friday, you got paid on time."

Couch said ADP has assigned additional personnel to oversee NGHS' payroll operations to guarantee employees receive their checks on pay day as expected.