One employee makes one small change.
Maybe they update a benefit election. Maybe their employment status changes. Maybe a payroll deduction needs to be adjusted.
It sounds simple enough.
Then that one update touches payroll, billing, insurance eligibility, reporting and compliance, and suddenly several people are asking why five different things changed at once.
This is the point in the story where Kayla Morrison steps in.
Kayla is Total Solutions’ iSolved & Benefits Coordinator, but her unofficial role may be more accurate. She calls herself “the translator between people, processes and technology.”
That means she helps everyone understand what happened, why it happened and how all the moving parts affect one another.
More importantly, she wants to keep the same problem from happening again.
Throughout that career, she has developed a knack for seeing patterns other people might miss.
She can look at disconnected reports, recurring errors or an inefficient workflow and begin identifying how the pieces relate. She isn’t satisfied with correcting one incorrect entry and moving on.
She wants the root cause.
“I enjoy creating structure and clarity out of complexity,” she said.
That sentence explains Kayla’s approach pretty well. She likes taking something complicated, finding the logic inside it and building a process people can actually use.
Her coworkers come to her when an issue crosses several teams or systems, or when they need help deciding which part of a complicated situation to tackle first.
She brings order to the chaos, but she also keeps the people involved in mind. A technically perfect solution isn’t very helpful if it makes everyone’s job harder.
Much of Kayla’s work is designed to disappear.
When benefits information travels correctly between systems, payroll deductions are accurate and employee enrollments reach the insurance carrier without an issue, no one stops to celebrate the complicated process happening behind the scenes.
They simply see that everything worked.
That is the goal.
One of Kayla’s biggest projects at Total Solutions was leading the setup of open enrollment in iSolved and configuring the carrier feeds used for benefits administration.
She coordinated with multiple parties, configured plans and deductions, validated enrollment data and worked through carrier requirements so information could move accurately between systems.
There were a lot of details, and every detail affected something else.
Kayla wasn’t interested in creating a process that worked once. She wanted one that reduced manual entry, lowered the risk of billing and enrollment discrepancies and could continue working as the organization grew.
That is her favorite kind of solution. It fixes today’s problem and makes tomorrow’s work easier too.
The detail that surprises most people about Kayla has nothing to do with benefits administration.
She became a licensed cosmetologist when she was 19.
Kayla loved the mix of creativity, technical ability and personal connection that came with cosmetology. She still follows hair, makeup, products and beauty trends, and she can happily talk about them long after the original conversation has ended.
At first, cosmetology and HR technology may sound like completely different worlds.
Kayla doesn’t see them that way.
Working with clients taught her how to listen carefully, notice small details, solve problems in real time and understand what someone was actually asking for. Those skills followed her into operations and HR.
She may be working with a system instead of a salon chair now, but the basic approach is similar. Listen first. Understand the person behind the request. Pay attention to the details. Then find a solution that helps them feel more confident moving forward.
Kayla likes technology, but some parts of her routine remain pleasantly analog.
A notebook always stays on her desk because writing things down helps her map out complicated processes and organize her thoughts before she turns them into action.
There is also coffee, but the cup matters.
Kayla strongly believes coffee tastes better in the right mug. A favorite cup can improve an ordinary morning, and an insulated tumbler keeps the operation running during a busy afternoon.
Her proposed warning label is accurate:
Warning: Fueled by coffee, curiosity, and the need to find a solution.
The curiosity may be the most important part.
Kayla is the person who asks why a process works the way it does. Then she asks whether it could work better. Then, before anyone has fully answered the first question, she has probably started sketching out a new workflow in her notebook.
Ideally, there is a slow morning with no alarm.
There is coffee, obviously, followed by a nail appointment or spa day, time with friends and something good to eat. If the weather cooperates, the day moves to the lake and ends with live music.
Kayla would also love to become a professional-level singer. She doesn’t need the skill for work, but it would improve karaoke, road trips and any situation involving an unexpected stage.
If Total Solutions ever becomes a workplace comedy, she would like Tina Fey to play her.
It makes sense. Kayla is quick, organized and calm when the plot gets complicated, and she’s usually the person working out how everything will come together before the rest of the characters realize there’s a problem.
In real life, she’ll be at Total Solutions doing much the same thing.
She’ll be connecting people, systems and information, and she’ll be looking for the solution that makes the whole experience work better.
Just put the coffee in the correct mug first!