Outstanding Process Improvement Award – Increase Effectiveness and Efficiency
University of North Georgia
Chancellor’s Service Excellence Recognition Program
2015
For years the process to hire and rehire a student worker required completion of a paper form, the Student Work Agreement (SWA) and additionally for new hires, a clearance sheet was given to the student by HR to notify the supervisor they were cleared to begin working. One section of the SWA had to be completed by the student, another section by the supervisor and then signed by the budget manager or department head. The approval process to complete the form for a new Student Worker became very inefficient across a multi-campus institution.
The form had to be physically sent between campuses for signatures and then returned to HR for processing. Delay in campus courier service or misplaced forms could add days or weeks to the process in order to be finalized by HR.
In the summer of 2014, an ad hoc team consisting of Karen Banks - HRIS Specialist; Lance Hundt - Manager – Systems Engineering (IT); and Crystal Matthews - Assistant Director – HR Operations recognized the need for a change to how this paperwork was managed and began working closely to develop and implement a new electronic process. The initial implementation of this process began Fall Semester 2014. Additional background information on the process improvement is provided below.
UNG has an intranet, myUNG, that utilizes SharePoint. SharePoint is a web application platform that offers a set of tools that can be used to provide intranet portals, document and file management, collaboration, and social networks. SharePoint also offers workflow capabilities to help automate business processes with electronic forms and approval signatures. By having all employees and students already using myUNG, this became an ideal solution to setup a new Student Worker Agreement process. The team decided to mirror the current form being used as a template, but instead of paper this would be electronic. The global UNG directory is linked to the form and this allows for the use of the workflow features in SharePoint. The team decided to make the form completely supervisor driven and therefore no longer needed the student to complete any part of the form. The new process would follow this path:
1- Supervisor would access myUNG from the UNG homepage
2. Supervisor would fill out all fields on the Student Work Agreement (SWA)
3. Completed form was then submitted electronically to HR for processing
A few of the required fields on the form are student name, supervisor name and budget manager/department head name. When the name is inputted into the form, this links to the global directory. When the supervisor submits the form and depending on questions answered on the form such as “has this student worked on campus before?”, this will determine the notification emails sent after the form is submitted. Depending on whether the student is a new hire or rehire also determines the type of email they are sent.
Example 1: Student A has never worked on campus before. This student will receive an email with a link to the electronic student new hire packet along with instructions about the documentation required for the I-9 Employment Eligibility Form. Student A’s supervisor will also be notified via email that their student is not to begin working until all paperwork and documents have been received by HR.
Example 2: Student B has worked on campus before and is being rehired for another semester. The student will receive an email with instructions on when and how to reactive their timecard.
The University of North Georgia has 5 campuses with a student population of 17,000. Since Fall Semester 2014 until now, we have processed in excess of 2200 Student Worker Agreements. This new electronic studenthire/rehire process has significantly decreased the time it takes to receive and process paperwork. Departments and supervisors have expressed their appreciation on the creation of this new process and how much this has streamlined the hire/rehire process of student workers. In the future, the team will continue to refine the process even more to suit the different needs of the institution. SharePoint is very configurable to our needs, and we believe that what this team has created could be duplicated by other institutions and even expanded into other categories of employees to offer streamlined processes and better customer service.