HR Release 4.0 top
As noted in the last
issue, the next major release to the PeopleSoft HR system
(HR release 4.0) is scheduled to go live next Monday, August
25. Please note the following changes in deadlines and system
availability:
- The PeopleSoft system will be down
from 5 p.m. on Friday, August 22 until 8 a.m. on Monday, August
25. No transaction processing, queries, or reports can be
run during this total system blackout. The Time and Labor
modules will also be down, resulting in earlier-than-usual
deadlines for time entry and approval.
- Specifically, time for the workweek
ending Saturday, August 23 must be entered by 5 p.m. on Friday,
August 22. Time administration will run as normal on Sunday,
and time approval needs to be done on Monday, also as normal.
However, time entry and approval deadlines will be earlier
than usual for next week, the week preceding the Labor Day
holiday. That is, time needs to be entered for the workweek
ending August 30 by Thursday, August 28 at 5 p.m. Time administration
will be run that evening and time needs to be approved by
5 p.m on Friday, August 29.
Here are the new functions users can expect
to see:
- New Quick Hire forms for students
and other temporary and LHT employees. Training on the new
Quick Hire temporary process is available: Sessions are scheduled
for August 21, 25, 28, and September 3. Contact your local
registrar to sign up. Updated brochures for managers of
temporary
employees and for student
workers are also online.
- Time and Labor access will be inactivated
when an employee terminates. Currently, employees who have
terminated can still enter time, though they don’t get paid
for it.
- A view-only Benefits
Summary will be available via employee self-service using
the navigation path Home > Self Service > eBenefits
> Home > Benefits Summary. This statement displays each
employee’s health and welfare benefits, life and disability
insurance, Flexible Spending Accounts, and 403(b) TDA elections.
The statement is being made available to help support benefits
open enrollment, which runs October 31 through November 13.
- Four new reports, and enhancements
to the PeopleSoft-enabled Personnel Action forms, as described
in the last issue.
- Changes to security for PeopleSoft
forms as described below.
Security Change to PeopleSoft Forms top
As part of our Release 4 enhancements to the
PeopleSoft-enabled Personnel Action Forms, we will be adding
security to restrict access to all job-data forms.
Because the job data change forms will now
be “smarter” and will automatically populate more fields, we
must limit access to these forms to a more appropriate group
in order to ensure confidentiality of data. Currently, all employees
automatically receive access to all forms.
To accomplish this change, Applications Administration has removed
access to the forms (listed below) from the existing PS^HR/PAY^TUB^Forms
User role. Access to thse forms is now housed in a new role,
PS^HR/PAY^TUB^Enhncd Forms Usr.
- New Hire
- Rehire
- Add Concurrent Job
- Job Data Change
- Leave of Absence
- Additional Pay-One/Recurring
- Additional Pay-Gifts/3rd Party
- Termination/Retirement
All employees will continue to automatically
receive access to personal data change forms (listed below)
through the PS^HR/PAY^TUB^Forms User role.
- Personal Data
- Emergency Contact Information
- Direct Deposit
How will this change happen?
Effective August 25, only users who currently
have security to access HR, Payroll, or Benefits roles will
retain access to the job data forms listed above. A
list is being compiled of all users who currently have access
to HR, Payroll, or Benefits roles, and as of August 25 those
users will automatically receive the new PS^HR/PAY^TUB^Enhncd
Forms Usr role. In the future, every employee will continue
to receive automatic access to the personal data change forms,
but access to the job data forms will be by request only.
What should I do if I need access but do not have it?
If you need access to the job data forms above and find that
you cannot access them, you should contact the appropriate authorized
requestor in your tub.
Preparing for Benefits Open Enrollment top
As mentioned above, benefits
open enrollment is fast approaching. Harvard’s Benefits Services
Group (BSG) takes a “snap shot” of employee data from PeopleSoft
on October 1 to begin the process of preparing the systems
and the materials for telephone-based enrollment. BSG has
a method for capturing employees hired or terminated after
October 1 so that they can be included in (or excluded from)
open enrollment.
For existing employees, however,
delays in the submission of job data changes (particularly
an employee’s annual salary or time status) with an effective
date prior to October 1 often result in the need for manual
corrections so that benefits eligibility and rates are figured
correctly.
To make the process go as smoothly
as possible for both employees and administrators, please
submit all known or planned job data to take effect prior
to October 1, by September 20. If this happens, they can be
processed right away and reflected in the data snapshot taken
on October 1.
Salaries with No Costing top
In July, FAD Payroll noted a substantial increase
in salaries going to default. When we investigated, we found
800 employees who did not have salary costing set up for FY2004.
While a process was run centrally in late
April to copy FY2003 costing rows into FY2004 (as one of the
first steps in the ASIP), it was a local responsibility to submit
FY2004 costing for employees hired after that time. However,
some departments did not realize this was the case.
To help solve this problem and prevent more
salary costs from going to default, Payroll manually reviewed
and cleaned up salary costing on the 800 employees, using the
following process:
|
1 |
Identify
and review salaries going to default. |
|
2 |
If costing exists for 2003, assume that this should have
been used for 2004 and use it to override the costing
for Friday's payroll. |
|
3 |
Enter
that same costing for 2004 so that future payrolls will
not be coded to default. |
This cleanup effort was performed on Friday's
weekly and biweekly payroll for the pay period ending July 19,
2003 (paycheck date July 25). Anything that has already posted
to the General Ledger will need to be corrected through journals.
Please keep in mind the following reports to help you manage
employee costing:
| |
|
| COS002 - Inactive Costing
Audit |
Look up employees whose
salaries are being charged to a chart of accounts code
combination that has one or more inactive values. |
| COS004 - Employees with No Defined Costing |
Look up data for employees with an active
job record but without any salary costing. |
| PY109 - Employee Chart Disable Impact
Listing |
Identify employees whose salaries will
go to default if a particular chart of account value is
disabled. This report is especially important to run before
you close out a grant or project. |
How to Hire Temporary Employees Into Regular Jobs top
A common situation at Harvard is the hiring
of a temporary employee into a regular (non-temporary) or LHT
job. Assuming there has been no break in service, the Job Data
Change form should be used with the following action/reason
codes:
| |
|
|
Job Data Change
form *
* As of August 25, 2003, the Transfer form will be eliminated.
The Job Data Change form will be used for transfers as
well as other job data changes. |
Data Change
If the employee is being hired within
the same HR department |
TTR |
Transfer
If the employee is being hired into a different
HR department |
TTR |
Under these conditions, it is not necessary
to terminate and rehire the employee.
New Requirement for Administrative Systems
Training Participants top
Beginning in late August, there will be a
change in the requirements for signing up for hands-on classes
run by the CTD Administrative Systems Training department (formerly
known as FAD Training and Performance Support, this group provides
training on University financial, HR, and reporting systems).
Going forward, students will be able to work
with a “copy” of the real production system.
Instead of logging in to a training environment using a generic
ID and password provided by the instructor, students will now
do their exercises by logging in with their real user IDs and
passwords.
Instead of doing tasks designed for an “average”
user of the systems, students will be using real data that will
be controlled by the same security restrictions that they have
on the job. This type of exercise provides students with a much
better learning environment since they will be able to work
with realistic data from their departments.
For this new practice to work, students attending
hands-on training classes will need to have their logons and
security set up before our weekly copies of the systems are
made.
To accomplish this, requests for new logons
and/or the security responsibilities that go with them must
be sent by local tub authorized requestors to Applications Administration
no later than Wednesday of the week before the student will
be coming to a class.
For example, if you are attending a Web Voucher
class any time next week, the request for a Web Voucher logon
must be at Apps Admin by the end of this Wednesday. If this
does not happen, the student will not have a logon that they
can use during the class.
Students who do not have logons and proper
security at a hands-on class will still be welcome to sit through
the lecture and watch the demonstrations. However, they will
need to understand that, in most cases, they will not be able
to participate in the hands-on exercises.
This change will affect the following classes:
- Web Voucher (and the Web Voucher
section of the Getting Up and Running on University Financial
Systems class)
- General Ledger
- Fiscal Budget Tool
- Time Adjusting, and
- Local Payroll Processing.
Our AWS2, HUDINI, and AWS3 training classes have already had
this requirement for several months. Any future hands-on classes
will also have production logons as a prerequisite for doing
the exercises.
Follow one of these links to determine your tub's authorized
requestor(s):
Updates to Personnel Manual top
To reflect human resources policies developed
or clarified as part of the HR Project, the Personnel
Manual for Administrative/Professional and Non-Bargaining Unit
Support Staff
has recently been updated. Here is a table summarizing the changes
that have been made:
| |
|
| Information
Security and Privacy Policy |
Added text to reflect
specific data-stewardship recommendations that evolved
as a result of the new HR information systems. New text
is highlighted in red:
The information that staff generate
or maintain in the course of their duties belongs not
to them individually but to the University, which entrusts
it to their custody. The custody of University information
is the responsibility both of the custodian and his or
her supervisors. Managers should adopt, announce, and
enforce safeguards and procedures to protect the confidentiality
of such information. Local units
are responsible for
• Ensuring
an adequate organizational processing structure is in
place to ensure that HR data is properly managed and
processed.
• Assigning
employees their roles in the HR information systems.
Care should be taken to ensure roles are assigned at
appropriate levels within the organization and that
individuals are knowledgeable regarding University policies
and procedures.
• Ensuring
all employees are appropriately trained and informed
regarding University policies and procedures. Some local
units currently have structures in place requiring signed
agreements. These agreements serve to inform employees
of their responsibilities and any sanctions for non-compliance.
Web statements are another tool used to ensure employees
are aware and understand their duties and the employer
expectations
Everyone must protect the confidentiality
of University information that is not intended to be made
public. University staff may not use non-public University
information for personal ends, nor obstruct its use for
proper University purposes. Particular care must be taken
by supervisors and custodians with personally identifiable
confidential information pertaining to staff, faculty,
and students. While such information must be accorded
the strictest safeguards, so that access is given only
to those whose duties require it, the
robustness of the HR information systems is such that
at times, employees will have access to more information
than their job strictly requires. Employee information
should only be shared in the context of Harvard business
and on a “need-to-know” basis. In some situations this
may be intra tub (within the tub) or inter tub (cross
tub). There may times when an employee views confidential
data while performing an HR or payroll process (tub or
center). It is that employee’s responsibility not to share
or use this information to advance another cause.
|
| Types
of Employment |
Added the following sentences:
“[Temporary employees] may have more
than one temporary job at a time, as long as the jobs
are in different Departments, and each job is limited
to three months.”
“If any employee holds concurrent temporary
jobs with different rates, any overtime will be processed
using a blended rate. This is an FLSA requirement.”
“To determine if an individual should
be hired as an employee or an independent contractor,
see the policy paper “Individual Independent Contractor/
Consultant 3/10/03” at http://vpf-web.harvard.edu/
documents/.”
“Harvard has a preferred vendor for
temporary help. Details can be found online here: http://vpf-web.harvard.edu/procurement/norrell/.“ |
| Standard
Workweek and Alternative Work Schedules |
Added the following text:
“Overtime eligible staff are required
to enter their hours worked in the online Time & Labor
system (or have their hours entered for them by a timekeeper
or via a feed from another electronic time-collection
system).” |
| Administrative/
Professional Staff Salaries |
Added the following text:
“Salary advances will be issued in extraordinary
circumstances only and will require a letter of approval
from the employee’s Financial or HR Dean or Director.”
|
| Vacation |
Added the following text:
“If a staff member reduces hours from
full- to part-time, the maximum cap will be reduced proportionally.
If this results in a vacation balance above the maximum,
the staff member may request to be paid for some or all
accrued unused vacation.”
“From time to time, questions arise
concerning whether it is permissible to allow exempt employees
to take vacation days in increments of less than a full
day. Exempt employees may, in keeping with their exempt
status, take accrued, unused vacation days in half-day
increments rather than in full days. However, if an exempt
employee has exhausted his or her paid leave accrual and
is absent for a partial day, the employee’s actual salary
may not be reduced for the partial day absence (other
than for a partial day absence under the Family and Medical
Leave Act - FMLA).”
Added text in red:
“Such exceptional arrangements [accruing
vacation above the maximum] must be documented in writing
and maintained in the employee’s
departmental HR file.” |
| Military
Leave of Absence and Reemployment Rights |
Added text in red:
"Harvard will pay the difference
between an eligible employee’s base military pay and his/her
base University salary for up to 90 days of military service
per year, or through the balance
of calendar year 2003, whichever is longer. The employee’s
home department will pay for the first 90 days; if the
leave goes beyond this, the extension will be funded by
the University. The staff member must submit his/her
military leave and earnings statement to receive such
pay. The staff member may (but is not required to) use
any accrued vacation or personal days during any part
of the leave that would otherwise be unpaid."
Added link to http://atwork.harvard.edu/b-militaryleave.html. |
New AWS3 Reports and Enhancements
Now Available top
A new report titled “Termination Administration”
(AW024) was recently added to AWS3. This new report includes
five sub-reports:
- Detail Report showing
termination information for each employee, and
- Four Cross-Tab Reports
showing termination information by Reason Code and one of
the following: Salary Grade, Gender, Ethnicity, and Employee
Classification
Users with the role of HDW^HR^TUB^Reports
can access this report. In addition, there have been enhancements
to several existing reports:
| |
|
| AW007 Departmental Job Profile
(ENHANCED VERSION) |
• New parameters
allowing users to display or exclude temps, LHTs, and
leave of absences.
• Added 15- and 25-year service
indicators. |
| AW011 Summary and Detail of FTE (ENHANCED
VERSION) |
New parameters allowing users to display
or exclude temps, LHTs, and leaves of absences. |
AWS3 Report Samples Available Online top
Many users have told us that it is useful
to have a "picture" of how a report looks once it
has been run that they can consult before choosing which report
to use. This is sometimes easier to understand than reading
a description of what a report does or contains.
Although some people do not realize it, sample reports are
available under the Reporting tab on the HR
Admin page.
Simply click on the report you want to see (under the section
“AWS3 Reports”). A browser window will appear. Scroll to the
bottom. Under the section “How to Read This Report,” click on
the hyperlinked report name to view a sample of the completed
report.
New PCard Settlement System top
The upgraded PCard settlement system will
be available to users on the morning of Monday, October
20, 2003. In order to switch from the current PCard
settlement system to the upgraded version, there will be a system
blackout all day on Friday, October 17.
The look and feel of the new system will be
similar to the current PCard settlement system. The following
changes have been made:
- Users now log on to PCard through
Oracle Financials, as they would to complete a web voucher
or other financial transaction, and
- As with the other University financial
systems, Internet Explorer will be the supported web browser.
Members of the PCard project team will meet with local PCard
administrators and the UIS Help Desk in the coming weeks, to
provide more information and answer any questions.
American Express Increases Delinquency Fees top
Effective September 15, 2003, late fees will
increase from 2.7% of the balance to 2.99%.
Effective October 1, 2003, cardmembers requesting
duplicate copies for billing statements more than three months
old will incur a charge of $5 per statement request with a maximum
of $45 for multiple statements.
As a reminder, “printable versions” of statements
are available online for the previous six months, at no cost.
To enroll in this free service, visit www.americanexpress.com/checkyourbill.
About the e-News
top
The Financial Administration
publishes this semimonthly electronic newsletter for users of
Harvard University's financial, HR, and reporting systems, policies,
and procedures. Generally, the e-News is published on or around
the 12th and 26th of each month.
It contains:
- updates on projects underway to build
or improve University administrative systems;
- information about new University
policies, procedures, and forms;
- reminders about upcoming deadlines
and cut-over dates;
- tips and tricks for working more
easily or productively.
We welcome questions and suggestions
for improvement from readers. If your questions are of general
interest, we will answer them in future issues.
Please send comments, questions,
or suggestions for improvement by email to us at: fad_communications@harvard.edu
|
