Author Archives: Norma Clark

4/1/10 – Mandatory Ethics Requirement for All Public Employees ‘ State Ethics Commission On-Line Training Program

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The following information has alsobeen communicated through UML Today and Email to all UMass Lowell employees.

Employees are encouraged to do this training as soon as possible. There is no penalty for not completing it by April 2.

To: Faculty, Staff, andUndergraduate & Graduate Student Employees

From: Jack Giarusso, Executive Director of Human Resources

Re: Mandatory Ethics Requirement for All Public Employees ‘ State Ethics Commission On-Line Training Program

Date: March 29, 2010

The MA Legislature and Governor passed legislation, Chapter 28 of the Acts of 2009, imposing mandatory ethics education and training for all public employees. The mandatory training requirement of the Act requires that all University employees must complete a State Ethics Commission on-line ethics training program by April 2, 2010, and again every two years thereafter.

University employees hired after April 2, 2010 must complete this training within 30 days of beginning Universityemployment and again every two years thereafter. The on-line training program takes 15 to 30 minutes to complete. The training consists of 25 hypothetical situations involving potential conflicts of interest or other violations of the state ethics law and test general ethics knowledge and the basic requirements in matters like accepting gratuities, self-dealing and nepotism, confidentiality, and post-retirement restrictions.

To access the State Ethic Commission on-line training program, visit http://db.state.ma.us/ethics/quiz_MEthics/index.asp. Upon completing the on-line training program you will receive a certificate of completion. Please print out the completion certificate and mail the certificate to Human Resources, Dugan Hall, Room 200. You should also retain a copy for your records. You may also fax your completion certificate to 978-934-3036, or e-mail a scanned version of your completion certificate to HR@uml.edu.

Employees who lack regular access to a computer at their worksite may use workstations in the Human Resources Office in Dugan Hall, Room 200 to take the on-line training program. Employees who are unable to comply with the on-line training program requirements because of limited English fluency, reading comprehension, or special needs should contact Human Resources.

Employees on leaves of absence will be required to complete the on-line training program when they return back to work. Please contact Human Resources at 978-934-3560 if you have any questions about the mandatory on-line ethics training program requirement for public employees.

While the on-line training program is comprehensive, no training can cover all of the difficult ethical issues that could be encountered. The State Ethics Commission provides free, confidential legal advice about how the law applies in a particular situation. I encourage you to seek legal advice from the State Ethics Commission at 617-371-9500 and/or the Division of Human Resources if you face a potential conflict of interest.

Additional information regarding this new mandatory education and training requirement may be found at the State Ethics Commissions website at: http://www.uml.edu/ethicsed.

Floating Holiday on 3/17/10

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Wednesday, March 17th is a Floating Holiday for many UMass Lowell employees. On this holiday, UMass Lowell remains open for business.

Benefitted employees, who work on the holiday, earn compensatory time that can be used at a later date.

Employees who are entitled to holiday pay on the March 17th (Evacuation Day) and report time via HR Direct Self-Service should review the job aidon Floating Holidays.

2/25/10 – Info on Student Employee Time Reporting Self-Service & HR Direct Rollout

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Throughout the last year the Administrative Systems Integration office has been working with the Human Resources officeto transform a few long standing paper processes over to more modern computer based tools. The goal continues to be improving services to all our internal and external constituents while concurrently streamlining operations and becoming more eco-friendly.

In April 2009 we introduced HR Direct which is UMass Lowell’s first human resource self-service application. All employees have self-service access to view pay data and personal information. Employees have the option to stop receiving a paper pay advice since that data is now available online 24 hours per day. New self-service update features will be added in 2010 for employees to adjust contact information, update tax withholding, and change direct deposit data. Perhaps the most significant change of all has been in the area of time reporting self-service, so I’d like to highlight a few key elements of this.

HR Direct self-service time reporting has been rolled out tomost employees already and student employees will soon be added. When fully implemented, the University will accomplish many tangible benefits including:

  • A completely paperless time reporting process.
    • A decrease of UMass Lowell consumption of paper by over 2000 sheets of paper each week and over 100,000 per year.
    • Eliminate document retention requirement as most time reporting records will be electronic. By law, the University is to retain at least 3 years worth of timesheets so there are currently over 300,000 paper timesheets filling campus filing cabinets ‘ all that space will soon be free!
  • Streamlined business processes
    • HR Direct operates per pay period (bi-weekly), hence employees and managers will perform time reporting tasks half as often as they do on paper.
    • Salaried employees only need to report exceptions to their regular schedule. Hence if they have no adjustment for the pay period, then they don’t need to login and report time at all.

We now have over 900 employees reporting time via self-service and over 200 managers logging in to approve time in HR Direct.

Later in 2010 we will be transitioning student employees onto self-service time reporting. This is a significant change and we are very interested in hearing any concerns you have. We have already held a meeting with a couple dozen timekeepers and have had significant input from a few offices. We realize this will be a significant change, but the rewards of a paperless system with fully auditable records is a major driver in this project.We are open to exploring additional enhancements and policy changes, but need to do so within the boundaries set by the Commonwealth and University. The transition from paper based time reporting to online self-service is an adjustment for all users, but the fundamental job responsibilities of an employee and manager are unchanged. Employees need to report time that accurately reflects the hours they worked. Once an employee’s time is recorded, his/her manager must confirm that services have been delivered in accordance with this record.

Additional information on HR Direct is available at http://www.uml.edu/hrdirect .

We value ideas, suggestions, and feedback from all employees. Please directinput to the following email asi@uml.edu or respond via our HR Direct Feedback form.

Regards,

Richard Conley

Director of Administative Systems Integration

2/12/10 – Time Reporting for University Closure

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During a pay period when the University closes for reason such as weather, time reporting entries will need to include hours for University Closure. Please use the information below as a guide for entering your time.

1. If the University is Closed for the entire day, enter your scheduled hours for the day. Click the Time Reporting Code list and choose UCLSD ? University Closed.

2. If you have no further entries, click [Submit].

3. If the University has a delayed start or early closure you will need to enter multiple rows ? 1 row for each Time Reporting Code ? such that the total is equal to your scheduled hours for that day. You will need to enter the REGULAR hours for hours worked and the remainder will be UCLSD for the hours of campus closure.

Example of time reporting for 2/10/10

Employees scheduled to work 8:30 -5:00

  • REG of3.5 for 8:30- 12:00
  • UCLSD of 4.0 for 12:00 – 5:00

4. If you have no further entries, click [Submit].

5. Click [OK]

2/5/10 – Attention Departments (Research Mostly)

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Effective immediately: Per instructions from the UMass President’s Office, all campuses muststop processing multiple retroactive payroll account swaps (LTA’s) on the same individual within the same pay period.

Additional Details — Stopping of Retro Payroll Processing

A number of issues surrounding retro (funding swap, LTA) processing have been discovered. The issues have included retro’s being duplicated, parts of retros not being processed and the latest is that the retro may not be processed as expected. After researching these issues, the common link is that they are all processing multiple retros for the same employee for the same pay period.

Departments may have seen these issues on reports (or in the system) as if the retro was processed twice, it was not processed at all or as if the amounts that were requesting to be moved did not happen as expected. We are in the process of trying to quantify these issues to see how many people are impacted as well as the dollar amount.

While we are researching the issues, we contacted PeopleSoft / Oracle. The specific issue that we presented to them was the retro not processing as expected. The response that we received back is ‘Unfortunately, accommodating multiple retros for same pay period was not in the original design of commitment accounting’. The suggestion from PeopleSoft is to consolidate data entry. Similar issues from other PeopleSoft customers have also been reported.

Based on the feedback from PeopleSoft as well as the number of issues surrounding retro on retro, we are requesting that we stop processing retro on retro. We plan to follow up with PeopleSoft on the issue but in the meantime we feel that this is necessary step to help us ensure that the retros are processed correctly.

2/2/10 – Late Time Approval Reports

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The Human Resources office has begun distributing reports to managers who do not approve time in HR Direct by the approval deadline. Thesystem deadline for each pay period is midnight on the Monday prior to payday.

Managers that receive this Late Time Approval Report (UMTL706)must review; sign; and retainit within thedepartment for three (3) years. It is an official audit record of the University.

The expected business practice at UMass Lowell is for managers to use the HR Direct application manager self-service functionality to approve time each pay period.Managers shouldmake every attempt to complete approvals using this application.

Using HR Direct for time reporting and approval provides the campus with a paperless record keeping system. It is also fully auditable and ensures compliance with all federal and state employment laws.

12/22/09 – Holiday Week Time Reporting and Approval

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Most campus employees will not be working the week between Christmas and New Year’s. As such, all are encouraged to report time for both weeksin the pay periodbefore you leave for the break.

For those employees using HR Direct time reporting self-service, there is nosystem change in the deadlines to report. Employees have until Sunday, January3rd @ 5:00 to report their time in HR Direct. Managers/Approvers can approve time until Monday, January4th @ 11:59 PM (Midnight). (NOTE: Managers can only begin to approve time afterthe Time Administration process runs. The first time that is run each pay period is on the Wednesday morning of the first week. Managerscan begin approving time on Wednesday afternoon – 12/23 -around 3:00pm.)

Department managers with employees using time & labor self-service may wish to set an earlier deadline for their staff to report time. As a reminder, the deadline for employees to make changes is one day prior to when you can approve them. Hence, if you wish to approve on Thursday, your employees should report time by Wednesday.

Contact Information:

HR Direct Login support ‘ IT Help Desk (x4357) — PLEASE NOTE there are special holiday hours in effect. Their hours are: Closed on 12/24, 12/31; Open on 12/28, 12/29, 12/30 from 10:00 ‘ 2:00pm

HR/Payroll; Time Reporting Policy – Human Resources (x3560)

HR Direct Application Functionality ‘ Administrative Systems Integration (Norma Clark x4764 or Richard Conley x4794)

12/11/09 Conflict of Interest Law NOW in HR Direct

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Starting on Friday,Dec. 11all faculty and staff using HR Direct will be provided with a link to navigate to the State’s Ethic’s Commissions Conflict of Interest Law page. Recent amendment to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Conflict of Interest Law, M.G.L. c.268A, requires that all faculty and staff receive a copy of a summary of the Law each year and submit an acknowledgement of receipt of the summary.

UMass has set up HR Direct to capture each employee’s acknowledgement. This will be presented to employees annually, but will not be required during every single login to HR Direct. Employees are encouraged to review the law summary and acknowledge receipt the first time they see this information presented. An email confirmation will be sent to Human Resources for personnel file recordsand a copy will be also sent to the employee. NOTE: Employees do not need to print out the summary or sign any paper document — this acknowledgement is done electronically.

New faculty and staff must comply within thirty (30) days of hire.

Within HR Direct employees can navigate to this Conflict of Interest page via employee self-service. The path is Self Service > Personal Information > COIAcknowledgement.

See an Example of Acknowledgement.