Project team soon to roll out Employee Self Service system

Self-service has its benefits, and the University’s new Employee Self Service Web interface, which University Human Resources Management, Networking Services and Information Technology and Payroll will soon launch, provides several.

The Employee Self-Service system will allow University-paid employees—students, faculty and staff—to access and update personal information via the Web. “It’s going to allow people to take care of some of the functions that they now have to go to an HR administrator or contact Payroll to do,” said Alex Bosch, Director of Human Resources Finance and Operations.

Employees will access the new system using their CNetID and password.

Bosch, who leads the project for UHRM, noted that his department, the Provost’s Office and the Payroll Department have, for the past 25 years, been using a paper-intensive, mainframe human resources/payroll system. “One of the things we wanted to do was add some functionality and make it easier for people to use.”

Enabling the Human Resources/Payroll system to be Web-based was the first step, followed by providing access and training for Human Resources department administrators. The project team launched that pilot in April 2008, and HR administrators who were trained now use the Web interface.

An introduction to the wider University community will begin the last week of February in a phased rollout. Changing contact and home address information, filing W-4 tax exemption forms, changing direct deposit information, and viewing pay history and previous W-2s will all be available through the ESS system. “Right now, you can only have direct deposit into one account, but we’re going to expand that so people can deposit money in up to three accounts,” said Bosch.

“Currently ESS has pay stub information beginning in December 2007; eventually it will have a rolling 24 months of payroll history,” he added. Employees also can elect to enter up to two additional e-mail addresses to their contact information.

“So we’re providing new functionality,” said Bosch, and “employees will be able to retrieve information and print it out for themselves,” he added. While employees begin to use the Web-based application for updating personal information, project leaders will continue to build on the system’s uses, adding other functions, such as benefits employee self-service for health and welfare plans and the possibility of implementing a manager self-service component.

“The benefits employee self-service will allow employees to go in and take a look at their health and welfare benefits elections, and at certain times they’ll be able to make changes, such as during an open enrollment period,” said Bosch.

He expects the benefits self-service component to launch in a pilot phase some time during mid- to late summer of 2009. “Eventually, we would like to add a manager self-service component, where managers would be able to submit transactions such as bonuses or salary adjustments electronically instead of submitting some form,” he added.

“Eliminating paper, automating and streamlining business processes, and providing information to employees are the overall goals,” said Bosch, noting that the Human Resources’ Records Department hopes to see a decrease in the annual 45,000 transactions it currently processes.

A Web-based training module will be visible in multiple locations on the University’s Web site with tutorials for both employees and HR administrators, said Bosch, and either a Payroll or UHRM staff member will address e-mail inquiries. NSIT staff members, reachable at 4-TECH, will assist with any possible CNetID password failures.