We are all familiar with our local HR department and use their support and guidance for many activities. Employees and managers are the key customers of HR. Their needs are the drivers of our processes and programs.

For example, let’s take a look at Payroll. Employees must receive paychecks on Fridays. In order to ensure this, efficient and timely processes must be in place for entering data for a new employee in the HR application, entering and approving time, setting up direct deposit, and pay distribution.

Our challenge is to streamline and improve these services for our customers in the new, upgraded environment. New functionality such as viewing pay advices online will help us accomplish this.

As we add improvements, we will need to ensure that we:

‘ Provide accurate data and information

‘ Are timely and efficient

‘ Meet government and state regulations

‘ Incorporate Human Resources Leading Practices that were identified at the onset of the project.

So how do we ensure that the people, process, and technology are all incorporated into developing an application? By working together as a team and identifying how the technology and processes support and improve the daily operations of our employees.

Get Ready for Direct Access to Human Resources

What is the HR Direct Project?

The HR Direct Project is working on a major University initiative to advance the Human Resource Management System (HRMS) to the most current release of the application.

Why Upgrade?

Here are the top reasons to upgrade to the latest HR Application:

1. Plans to introduce three new human resource components:

‘ Commitment Accounting

‘ Employee Self Service’three great features!

‘ Enterprise Learning

2. Offers a new look and functionality with several added human resource components:

‘ Core HR functionality

‘ Base Benefits

‘ Payroll

‘ Talent Acquisition

3. Pilots of some exciting HR component possibilities:

‘ Manager Self Service

‘ Time & Labor Employee and Manager Self Service

4. Provides assistance in ensuring compliance with tax updates and other federal and state reporting changes.

New Look for the HR Application

If you’re familiar with the current HRMS system, you know that it is a panel-based system. With the next release, comes a whole new look for the HR application. It is now web-based!

The application still allows for the same flexibility. You can securely open a new window in the application without leaving the task you are working on. The major difference is it has the look and feel of a website.

A Sneak Peek at Self Service

The HR organization provides you and over 20,000 other employees across the University with numerous services, including the printed pay advice you receive on a bi-weekly basis. We are preparing to bring HR to the next level in providing excellence in customer service.

In our daily lives, we have so many self service options: pump your own gas, check out at the grocery store, etc. It just makes sense to have direct access to review your personal information and pay advices at anytime. Instead of going to the office, placing a phone call or sending an email to your HR representative, the plan is to have you directly connect to the information you need.

Our goal is provide employees with direct access to personal information through an HR Self Service center. With such a large and diverse employee population, the project is seeking to minimize risk and hence will gradually roll out self-service features to the University.

We are currently focusing on a few basic employee self service features. The project anticipates initial release of the following self service functionality to employees:

‘ Ability to maintain your emergency contact details

‘ Ability to view your personal data summary

‘ Ability to view your pay advice.

Future Self Service Possibilities

As we advance in the self service area, we want to make sure the functionality provided best serves the University. The best way to do this is to allow actual employee and manager user groups to test the functionality.

The plan is to release the following components to pilot groups:

‘ A Manager Self Service pilot group will have the opportunity to complete a select number of functions.

‘ A Time & Labor Employee Self Service pilot group will have the ability to input their time into the HR application.

‘ A Time & Labor Manager Self Service pilot group will be able to approve submitted time in the HR application.

We plan to collect feedback from the pilot groups to ensure the success of future rollouts.

Who is the Project Team?

Members of your campus HR office are key stakeholders and are working on the team along with the President’s Office and University Information Technology Services (UITS). Each project member has substantial knowledge of the business or technical processes involved in the daily operations using the current HR version 7.6 application.Theresa McDonald and Melissa Sullivan have been the Lowell subject matter experts participating in the project.

Project Approach

The project has a phased approach: Planning, Design, Development, Training, Testing, Deployment, and Stabilization.

Project Status

In Fall 2007, we completed the Planning phase. Subject Matter Experts from each campus participated in detailed discussions about existing business processes and functionality offered in the current version. These sessions helped determine what functionality to upgrade or implement (project scope) and the activities that must be completed to make the project a success (deliverables).

We began the Design Phase in 2008, which focuses on defining business requirements and designing the application both functionally and technically.

We are currently wrapping up the Testing Phase of the project and are starting some of the Training aspects, although end user training won’t occur until March 2009.

Continue to come back and read more about this project. We expect to post new information a few times per week.