Effective 10/16/09 all travel expenses, travel advances, and expense reimbursements will be distributed through your Human Resource Paycheck.For more information please see the newFact Sheet:Pay Advice for Expense Reimburement(pdf) or visit the Travel Guidelines web page.

UMass Lowell is committed to reducing our carbon footprint and thinking about new ways to conduct business in a more environmentally friendly manner. There are a few significant ‘Green Initiatives’ that are being introduced as part of the continued rollout of the upgraded Human Resource system, called HR Direct. While these are ‘Green Initiatives’, they are also changes which benefit employees and improve the efficiency of our operations.

Green Initiative #1 – You Don’t Need Our Advice to Go Green!:

HR Direct allows employees to view their pay advice online and is also available a day earlier than the printed advice. Employees are encouraged to voluntarily opt out of receiving a printed pay advice. To turn your pay advice GREEN please send an email to hr@uml.edu stating you’d like to stop receiving a printed pay advice.

Green Initiative #2 – Direct Deposit of Travel Reimbursements & Advances:

Beginning with the October 16^th payroll, employees will now receive travel reimbursements & advances directly in your bi-weekly pay check. This will have a positive environmental impact as UMass will eliminate multiple cycles of printing and distribution of reimbursement checks. Employees get the benefit of having a single process to receive paychecks and reimbursements from the University.

Green Initiative #3 ‘ Self-Service Time Reporting:

Almost 500 employees are currently reporting their time via HR Direct self service and no longer are completing paper timesheets. This significant reduction in paperwork will save users and departments from printing, authorizing, and storing all this paper. This alone will reduce our campus consumption of paper by an estimated 100,000 sheets per year. The Human Resource Office expects to roll this out to all departments by the end of the year.

We continue to introduce new departments into HR Direct for self-service time reporting.The goal is to complete the rollout to administrative offices by the end of November. No definitive planhas been set as toif/how/when faculty will be added totime and labor self service. We also have not confirmed when we will add student employees into HR Direct as we continue to haveissues with getting their logon securityfully established.

The conservative rollout strategy has been necessary to to allow the Human Resource office sufficient time to work with end users and make necessary adjustments to their employee data.As this is the first time we’ve built in a workflow approval there is a lot work which goes into establishing the employee reporting lines within the HR system.

Here are some numbers as of the first of October.

• 739 employees have logged into HR Direct
• 70% of employees who are using HR Direct have logged in at least once during the last 2 weeks (one pay period)
• 374 employees are reporting their own time via HR Direct self-service
• 96 managers are approving time via HR Direct

A couple new initiatives ongoing include:

1. Employee Expenses will soon be included within a paycheck. There will no longer be separate checks.
2. Pay Advice statements are now posted online the Thursday before pay day – i.e. one day earlier
3. Employee can voluntarily suppress their pay advice. To do so, just email HR@uml.edu
4. The time reporting schedule is still being evaluated. There is increased pressure on the HR office to fix errors on the critical Tuesday. Ideally something can change to give them more time to fix these and ensure employees get paid correctly.
5. We are in the process of developinga survey to assess the usability and functionality of HR Direct. In the mean time if you have feedback please post here or send an email to Richard_Conley@uml.edu