Happy National Payroll Week Everyone!
To those of you who work tirelessly all year long to ensure our Michigan Medicine Staff are paid correctly and on time, you are appreciated!You are committed in your roles all over the organization and your work is the scaffolding that supports Michigan Medicine in our successes and accomplishments.
As timekeepers, approvers, final payroll sign-off persons, & pay analysts it takes:
- A passion for ensuring accuracy in everything you do.
- Understanding policies, contract language and standard practices.
- Learning from your mistakes and adjusting to improve processes.
- Sharing lessons learned with others for the benefit of the whole.
- Being a self-starter & continuous learner.
- Building positive and effective relationships at every level.
- Effective communication of detailed, complex, and nuanced information (it takes practice and experience)
- Holding yourselves and others accountable when necessary (integrity).
- Staying organized.
- And much more………
These roles require a unique combination of skills, abilities, and know-how to be successful! You should be very, very proud of the great work you do and the Difference it Makes!
Take the necessary time to support your wellness and to spend time with family and friends. Your well-being is a priority! Be Well, Do Well and Stay Well!
Timekeeping & Approval Process Reminders:
Report and approve time BEFORE the data entry cut-off day (a.k.a. Payroll cut-off day).
This means all steps in the time reporting and approval process need deadlines set to support meeting this expectation. Including deadlines for:
- Employees reporting their time.
- Supervisors reviewing time, making corrections, and approving accurate timesheets.
- Timekeepers auditing timesheets, making corrections as needed, sending back to supervisors for final approval.
- Employees must be notified of any changes and the reason for changes as soon as possible.
Why is it important to have the bulk of all time reporting and approvals done BEFORE the cut-off?
- In case we experience unexpected technical issues like the outage we experienced last week, which didn’t allow us to login to the system and make changes or to approve time on cut-off day.
- Unexpected absences or delays of any kind.
- Natural disasters or other system/power outages
We cannot prevent issues from happening. We can be proactive to ensure the best possible outcomes when they do.
Additional Note:
Ensure there is a backup person assigned for each timekeeper and approver. Approvers can assign up to 5 delegate approvers in the system who can approve time for their staff if they are unable to. Guide to Creating & Maintaining Delegate Groups
It is strongly recommended that each department include reporting and approving time in their Continuity of Operations Plan (COOP). Use the plan when necessary vs putting off steps in the process until a later time/day than the set deadlines.
Temporary FTE/Effort Increases or Decreases
For temporary changes in a regular employee's appointment fraction (less than 4 months) the preference is to set the FTE based on what it will be long term. Use OTR (over appointment regular at 1.0 pay) or ETW (excused time without pay) to adjust to actual standard hours worked and adjust PTO accruals as needed using the Incremental PTO (OAP) Process.
An example of this is when newly hired employees work full time or 1.0 FTE temporarily while in training and then drop down to a .9 or .8 appointment fraction after training is completed. Rather than set their FTE at 1.0 and changing it after the training period, set the FTE at the .9 or .8 they will be working long term and make the adjustments listed above to make the pay and accruals correct for the short period of time