UMass Lowell continues to push toward the implementation of industry best practices in the area of Human Resources and Payroll. Employee self-service is one such feature that we have been pursuing.

Currently all employees have access to the HR Direct system to see their Human Resource and Payroll data including the biweekly pay advice. Many campus employees and managers are actively using HR Direct to report and approve time.

Student Employee Time Approval

Our next big challenge will be transitioning all student employees and managersover to a self-service time reporting and approval process. We realize this is a significant change and have listened to feedback from users across the campus. As such, we have altered our original plan to roll out all student time reporting access this semester and instead will take a slower and more deliberate transition approach. The first step in this transition is for us to provide access and training support to all student employee managers to get them comfortable with the HR Direct self-service time approval process. Additionally, we need to validate that we have student employees reporting to the correct managers.

What is changing and when?

Starting this pay period (ending 4/24/10), we are asking managers to temporarily do a second layer of approval for their students. This new approval will occur within the HR Direct system and will eventually replace the paper signature process. Our goal is to ensure managers have access and are comfortable using the HR Direct system before we change the process further.

The newapproval process flow looks something like this:

1. Student hourly employees will continue to report time using paper timesheets.
2. Managers approve the timesheets as you do today.
3. Timekeepers will enter student time into HR Direct
4. Managers use HR Direct to approve student time. (NEWSTEP)
• Managers approve student time in HR Direct. This is the same process you follow to approve time for other employees.
• During this transition, unapproved time will continue to be “batch approved” at the end of the pay period. This will ensure students will get paid even if a manager does not approve time by the deadline.
• Student employees will be included in the late approval reports which are sent from my office to managers who do not complete time approvals online.
• If you are missing students or see student employees in your approval queue that do not report to you, please notifyHuman Resources(hr@uml.edu– x3560)

What if I have never used HR Direct to approve time?

If you only approve time for student employees, then you probably do not have access yet to use HR Direct for self-service time approval. We have approximately 85 managers in this category and you are NOT expected to do HR Direct approvals this pay period. You will receive a separate email by the end of April with information on your next steps.

Pilot Departments Wanted

We plan to pilot student employee self-service time reporting with a few departments later this year. This will entail student employees entering time via self-service and managers doing approvals online. If your department is interested in joining the pilot please contact Richard Conley (Richard_Conley@uml.edu x4794) or Theresa McDonald (Theresa_McDonald@uml.edu x3534) .

The HR Direct web page (http://www.uml.edu/hrdirect ) is always updated with the latest information on system functionality, time reporting procedures, and deadlines.

Questions and Contact Information

Information on Human Resource, Payroll, and Time Reporting processes and policies can be directed to the Office ofHuman Resources athr@uml.edu or x3560

HR Direct system functionality should be directed to Richard Conley (X4794)or Norma Clark(X4764)