Canadian HR Reporter

16 www.hrreporter.com F E A T U R E S WITH more than 90,000 students, more than 10,000 faculty and staff, an additional 8,000 to 10,000 hourly staff across more than 400 distinct departments and 20 unions, the University of Toronto is no stranger to the importance of managing and engaging a complex and dynamic workforce. However, for decades, the university suffered from decentralized internal processes that cost employees time and departments money — until about five years ago, when it embarked on a multi- year journey to overhaul the workforce m a n a g e m e n t i n f r a s t r u c t u r e a n d re-envision the employee experience. The cost of relying on paper The biggest challenge it had been facing was the workforce management silos that existed across the campuses and the resulting issues with data quality. Over time, lacking a centralized data hub, each division had developed its own method of tracking hourly employee time: using paper timesheets, Excel spreadsheets, individual PC-based systems or clock-based systems. Then, once captured in their unique timekeeping system, divisions trained staff to manually re-enter this information into a complex enterprise resource planning solution shared by all departments. While this allowed for some semblance of a full view of employee time across the university, it was an incredibly laborious, inefficient and duplicative process for all divisional staff. When all was said and done, completing HR and payroll processes — for employees who sometimes held up to 10 distinct solution by Kronos to tackle its timekeeping and payroll processes and help cultivate an exceptional employee experience from the ground up. Developing a grassroots pilot program Like any large project, it was important to start small, so the university developed a staged rollout of the new solution. Due to the broad range of jobs and wide variety of union groups and associate contract agreements, this would be a particularly complex project, so it decided to start with one of the most complex and administratively burdened faculties: the Faculty of Kinesiology and Physical Education (KPE). At the time of initial implementation in 2015, KPE employed more than 500 staff — from lifeguards and fitness instructors to administrative staff and team mascots — with just one payroll professional supporting the entire faculty. This made for cumbersome and time-consuming payroll processing: In the span of one year, the payroll professional was responsible for inputting 1.5 tons of paper timesheets and required nearly 800 hours to process payroll (about 30 hours each biweekly pay period). Excitingly, it didn't take long to see a dramatic decrease in administrative burden, including virtually eliminating paper timesheet tonnage, so other departments were keen to be next in line for this new tried-and-true model of efficiency. Within two years, the grassroots effort had reached a breaking point, and the outcomes were so immense that a summer co-op student was hired to manage SIZEABLE WORKFORCE CHALLENGES UNIVERSITY job types with different pay codes — required a staff of 350 people across all three campuses. Simply put, for the sake of staff, managers and the working culture as a whole, the university was in desperate need of a more efficient and accurate w o r k f o r c e m a n a g e m e n t s y s t e m . Specifically, the school was searching for a solution that could: • m o d e r n i z e t i m e k e e p i n g b y electronically gathering all hourly employee time to ensure accurate time and attendance information and reduce payroll processing errors • automate payroll by calc ulating an unlimited number of pay codes a n d a p p l y i n g t h o s e p ay c o d e s accurately and consistently across the university • m i n i m i z e r i s k b y e n s u r i n g compliance with the numerous legislative and collective bargaining agreement requirements in the academic ecosystem • streamline HR processes to save s t a ff t i m e , r e d u c e p a p e r u s e a n d i n c r e a s e d e p a r t m e n t - w i d e productivity. After years of research and testing, the university ultimately selected a comprehensive workforce management For years, the University of Toronto suffered from decentralized internal processes that cost employees time and departments money. So, the school embarked on a multi-year journey to overhaul its workforce management solution, says Cathy Eberts F O C U S O N : H R T E C H MODERNIZING A DATED HR SYSTEM Timekeeping and payroll processes have helped to maximize productivity, reduce manual payroll errors, ensure compliance and engage employees. 10,000 number of faculty and staff 400 number of departments 350 number of staff previously required for payroll and HR systems 1.5 number of tons of paper timesheets previously input at one faculty 800 number of hours to process payroll previously, per year, at faculty $200,000 savings per year in staff time for every 2,000 workers who moved to new HR system

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