Starting in December, student employees, staff and faculty will receive pay through the payroll and human resources (HR) system Paycom instead of Self-Serve Banner. Hourly staff will begin timekeeping through Paycom on Dec. 16, and student employees will begin logging their hours in January, according to Payroll Manager Allie Hepler.
Director of Faculty Relations & Sponsored Research Jericho Knight anticipates the largest change student employees and other hourly staff will see is in reporting their hours.
With Paycom, hourly employees can manage their timesheets on a mobile app or online. Clocking in and out can also be done on the app or online, as opposed to only at physical kiosks. Five kiosks will still be available on campus for those who prefer to clock in and out in-person, according to Hepler.
To help with the transition, Paycom will provide university employees with online tutorials, a chatbot and three on-campus training sessions the first week of December.
Student Employment is also delaying the system switch for student employees to avoid added stress during finals, according to Employment Specialist Claire Moore.
“We don't want students worrying about [the transition to Paycom] while they're worried about finals and leaving campus,” Moore said. “I'm expecting [students will have] some trainings and communication in December, but I know that students are going to be checked out, so they can expect more detailed follow-up in January.”
While employees are in charge of logging their hours and turning in their time sheets, Paycom will make this process more efficient by using alerts to remind employees to do these tasks on time, according to Moore.
Paycom will also make payroll and HR processes more efficient in other ways. Director of HR Laura Barnard says the system’s interface is more user-friendly than Self-Serve Banner.
“It’s just kind of a system that you can move through much quicker,” Barnard said. “Banner, you have all these different screens that you go through. So I think that’s where the efficiency is, … you can find [the] data and, … the reports are just much more robust and easier [to access].”
HR currently uses People Admin and Self-Serve Banner to manage personal data and onboarding and benefits paperwork. Some of this information will be transferred over to Paycom in the coming months, according to Barnard.
A benefit for full-time staff and faculty will be how Paycom keeps track of benefit plans. Knight says he looks forward to seeing how much easier employees can access their employment packages.
“[Paycom] really gives employees some good tools to be able to look at their own pay, look at their own records where now … for faculty they’d have to come and ask me if they didn’t save all those records,” Knight said.
Knight adds that though the university is shifting away from using Self-Serve Banner for payroll, Self-Serve Banner will still have student and personnel records.
“[Self-Serve] Banner does Payroll, and it does a whole lot of other things, so [we’re] looking at how the two systems [Payroll and Paycom] will talk to each other … because they’ll still need to,” Knight said.
For student employees, Moore also highlights the importance of having Paycom mirror the pay reporting experience of off-campus employers.
“This is kind of the next phase of updating the payroll and timekeeping part of the student employment process to be more reflective of what off-campus employment looks like,” Moore said.
Students with questions regarding the transition to Paycom are encouraged to contact Student Employment. Other university employees can direct questions to the payroll department.
Camille Kuroiwa-Lewis is the Editor-in-Chief of The Beacon. She can be reached at kuroiwal26@up.edu.
