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Correction to the December 12 Gazette Article    top

The table that accompanies the "Paycheck Changes for Staff" article on page 10 of the December 12, 2002 Harvard Gazette showed the headings for the last two columns reversed. The correct table appears below:

Immediate Changes to Time Administration    top

Save/Run Time Admin Button Disabled Beginning December 16

There have been hundreds of individual time administration jobs queued when, in most cases, simply using the Save button would have been sufficient and the entry would have been processed when time admin next ran centrally. To address this issue and improve system performance, the Save/Run Time Admin button will be disabled beginning Monday, December 16.

Time Administration Process to Run Every Weekday

The University-wide batch time administration process will now be run Monday through Friday at 10, 12, 2, 4, and 6. This change will make updated processed data available for reports every two hours throughout the week.

When and How to Report and Approve Time
During the Winter Recess    top

Due to Harvard's winter recess, the deadlines for reporting and approving time will be amended as follows:

The normal schedule will resume during the first week of January, with a time entry deadline of 5 p.m. on Friday, January 3 and time approval/ adjusting to be completed by 5 p.m. on Monday, January 6.

Paydays for overtime-eligible staff will be adjusted as follows:

Many users have also asked which time types to use when reporting time over the winter recess. Here are some guidelines for clerical/ technical workers.

Notes

• The grid above refers to HUCTW and nonunion, overtime-eligible, clerical/technical employees only. For exempt employees, temps, or service/trades workers, please refer to the Personnel Manual, the relevant union contract, or your local HR office.
  
  
• "A day's pay" means one-fifth of the employee's pay for the week.
  
  
  

Changes to Expect in the Time and Labor
System Beginning in January    top

Beginning January 5, key changes to the PeopleSoft Time and Labor module are as follows:

• For clerical and technical staff, we will move from using job standard hours to using the Time and Labor default schedule as the basis for pay if no time is entered or approved.
• It will now be possible to override all pay rates in Time and Labor, and have these changes flow through to Payroll.
• The time type "NOREP" will no longer be used, and four new time types will be added. These time types are explained in the table below, along with the time type CMPPY (which was previously available but not widely known).

Standard Hours vs. Default Schedule

For clerical and technical staff, we will move from using job standard hours (the numerator in the FTE calculation) to the Time and Labor default schedule (the distribution of hours over days and the total in Time and Labor) as the basis for pay if no time is entered or approved. If any hours are reported for a day, the system will pay for only those hours. If no hours are reported for a day and it is not reported as a flex day, the system will automatically fill in the scheduled hours for that day and pay the employee accordingly. Here is a grid with examples of various time entry scenarios.

NOREP No More

As part of this change in processing hours and pay, the NOREP time type will no longer be used.

New Time Types

Using the Holiday and Holiday Worked Time Types

Policy: When an HUCTW employee works on a holiday, they are entitled to pay at 1.5 times their regular rate of pay for all hours worked as well as an additional day's pay for the holiday or a floating holiday to be taken at a later date.

Currently: When the time type HWK is used, the employee receives pay for those reported hours at 1.5 times their regular rate plus an additional day's pay automatically, because they are paid on a salaried basis. If the employee opts to receive a floating holiday instead of the additional day’s pay, departments must submit a Temporarily Reduce Pay form to recoup one-fifth of the regular weekly earnings.

Beginning January 5: If the employee works on a holiday and also wishes to receive pay for the floating holiday, they should report HWK for the worked hours and FHP for the payout of the floating holiday.

Reporting Time Off for a Scheduled Day

One-Time Pay Rate Overrides Extended to Overtime-Eligible Staff

Adjusters and timekeepers will now have the ability to override all pay rates in Time and Labor, and have these one-time changes flow through to Payroll.

Currently: Only pay rate overrides made in Time and Labor for temporary workers are transmitted to the payroll module and used in pay calculation. Pay rate overrides for clerical/ technical workers have to be submitted on an Additional Pay form.

Beginning January 5: For all OT-eligible staff (including temps), all pay rate overrides made in Time and Labor will be transmitted directly to the payroll module in PeopleSoft, and will then be used in payroll calculation. This is true for all time types except FXOFF and TOE.

Parental Leave

Those employees with seven years' or more service receive 100% pay for the time of the parental leave. All hours should be reported using the time type PAL. Those with less than seven years' service receive 70% pay for the period of the leave. To "fund" the remaining 30%, employees may use accrued paid time off (PTO).

Example: A clerical/ technical worker with standard hours of 35 per week and five years' service is entitled to a 70% parental leave benefit. This would be calculated and reported as follows:

70% of a 35-hour schedule = 24.5 hours reported as PAL
30% of a 35-hour schedule = 10.5 hours of PTO

Note: PAL must be spread across all workdays. PTO should be used for the remaining hours in the standard workweek.

Common User Mistakes

One-time pay rate override: We've seen unintentional pay changes, so please be careful when using the Override Pay Rate that you are overriding the correct hours at the correct rate.

Decimal places: Be careful when entering the dollar amounts for meal money and override rates. The system does not check for missed decimal points and will happily process a $700 meal allowance.

Time Reporting: The Apply Schedule button populates the employee's weekly hours on the time reporting screen, but the Save button must be used and the confirmation screen accepted for the information to be stored in the system and made available when time administration next runs.

Comp time earned and taken within same week: There is no need to report comp time earned and comp time taken in the same week.

Example 1:

No need to enter time like this:

Instead, report:

Simply report the actual hours worked for each day (note: the system will not fill in additional hours for Friday). When the time administration process runs, the system will look for the total weekly hours, apply the business rules, and calculate any overtime hours beyond the scheduled weekly hours. No overtime would be generated because the weekly hours total 35.

Example 2:

For a week that contains a regularly scheduled day with no reported hours but with the other days that week making up 35 total hours, report one Flex Day. Do not use Comp Time.

Report as follows:

Two New Procedures to Make
Student Hiring Easier     top

Some recent changes have been made to facilitate hiring student temporary workers.

• If the student already has an I-9 on file, you can photocopy their student ID with this designation, and attach it to the New Hire form, rather than redoing the I-9 and sending the paperwork to Holyoke.
  
  
• We are encouraging students to use direct deposit. Some of the problems with the distribution of student paychecks have to do with the variety of addresses and jobs that students may hold. A check might get cut properly, but it winds up going somewhere the student doesn't think to look. With direct deposit, students will know that all the money from all their jobs is going to the same place. The online form takes less than five minutes to complete, and can be submitted directly to Payroll by the student.

Processing HUCTW Progression Increases
for January 2003    top

By now, tubs should have received spreadsheets from FAD Payroll indicating planned increases by individual, as well as data on individuals to receive bonuses in lieu of increases (BILs). Tubs need to verify the increases, make corrections, and provide 33-digit costing for BIL payments, and return the spreadsheets by noon on Monday, December 16.

How Temps Are Being Converted
to PeopleSoft  top

All temporary employees were converted from IDMS (the old personnel/ payroll system) to PeopleSoft with an appointment end date of 12/31/02. For all student employees, the end date will be removed entirely: that is, the job will be made into an appointment of undetermined length, since students can continue to work as temporaries as long as they are enrolled.

To facilitate reclassification of non-student temporary employees to a less-than-half-time ("LHT") position, without an end date, we are offering a one-time mass data conversion process as follows:

• Any non-student temporary job in which money has been earned since PeopleSoft went live on 9/22/02 will have its appointment end date extended to 1/31/03.
  
  
• Inactive jobs (i.e., those which have received no pay since 9/22) will be allowed to auto-terminate, as planned, on 12/31/02.
  
  
• On 12/6/02, data on non-student temporary active jobs was extracted from PeopleSoft and sent to tub human resource officers in spreadsheets. Instructions were provided on how to amend and return the data to reclassify temporary employees as LHTs.
  
  
• Departments should now be identifying temporary employees with whom they wish to have an ongoing employment relationship, and negotiating the terms of the new LHT job. These employees must understand that accepting an LHT job means that any other temporary job they may have at Harvard will be terminated.
  
  
• Spreadsheets with temp-to-LHT reclassifications must be returned by January 17. Those temporary jobs that are not being reclassified will be allowed to auto-terminate on 1/31/03.

To review, LHTs are employees who:

• work less than half-time (less than 17.5 hours/week)
• may work at these jobs indefinitely
• may have no other jobs at the University
• may be exempt or overtime-eligible
• are paid weekly, and
• have the fringe rate of the appropriate group (22.7% for exempt, 28.9% for overtime-eligible).

A brochure for managers explaining more about temp and LHT job categories and rules is now available on the atwork.harvard.edu website. Please contact your tub HR office if you have a temporary worker who should be recategorized as an LHT in January.

A Spherion "Payrolling" Option for Very
Short-Term, Temporary Employees    top

If your department has temporary employees who will work for a month (four pay periods) or less, you may want to consider having them "payrolled" by Spherion, a service in which Spherion pays employees and maintains their employment records. This option allows you to forgo filling out a New Hire form and having the employee's time entered and approved in Time and Labor.

For more information, including rates to have employees "payrolled," call Spherion at 5-1500 (Cambridge campus) or 2-6200 (Longwood campus). The Spherion payrolling option should not be used for Harvard student temporaries.

e-Mailing the Help Desk   top

Because PeopleSoft questions are becoming increasingly complex, users are beginning to prefer to submit them by e-mail so that the exact question and details are preserved. If you have an issue that you'd rather e-mail than call about, the Help Desk address is uis_helpdesk@ harvard.edu.

Please include the following information in your e-mail:

• details of the problem
• whether the issue's priority is urgent (preventing business operation), high (significantly impacting business operations), or normal (in your opinion)
• whether the issue is an enhancement request
• which functional/applications area it relates to, and
• your phone number and Harvard University ID.

A Change to the Advance Amount for the
January Pay Transition    top

After a final review in December with financial and HR deans across the University, the following changes will occur in January as planned with one significant change:

• Pay frequency will move from semimonthly to biweekly for administrative/ professional and clerical/ technical staff.
  
  
• Harvard will begin to pay these staff members entirely in arrears, rather than partially in advance as we do now.
  
  
• A non-voluntary, interest-free advance of about nine days' gross pay will be disbursed in the first biweekly paycheck on Friday, January 10. (The previously announced plan was to disburse nine days' net pay.)
  
  
• Beginning on Friday, January 24, the advance will be recouped by an automatic deduction to be taken in the twenty-five paychecks remaining in calendar year 2003.
  
  
• Full-time staff will get three personal days as of January 1 (regular proration rules will apply for part-time staff and those who start after January 1) and the award year for personal days will shift from fiscal to calendar.
  
  
• HUCTW progression increases will take effect.

The goal of the change from nine days' net pay to nine days' gross pay is to further diminish the impact of the pay transition in the first quarter of the year for affected employees. However, a larger advance means a larger payback in subsequent paychecks, so everyone should be encouraged to plan accordingly. Please log on to atwork.harvard.edu and follow the link entitled pay frequency changes (in the "News & Events" section) for more information.

Although the following changes have previously been discussed and considered, it's also important to clarify what is not happening in January:

• We are not moving to "positive pay" for clerical and technical workers. Pay for their regular schedules will continue to be processed regardless of whether hours have been submitted or approved. For many workers and managers, the concept of "positive pay" is linked with pay frequency and payment in arrears, but they are separate aspects of Harvard's pay practices and will be implemented on different timetables.
  
  
• We will not make comp time balances available online, nor enforce a system-based rule that comp time balances cannot be negative. To do this would require the collection of comp time balances from all tubs as of 9/30/02, which has not proven to be a priority during stabilization.
  
  
• We will not bring any other paid time off balances (vacation, sick, personal) online in January, nor will we require that exempt staff begin entering their paid time off taken online.

e-News for Users of Harvard's Financial Applications   top

Please follow this link for additional news of interest to users of the financial applications.

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