Up Close & Personnel: Payroll and Systems Administration

Ever wonder what keeps UD running smoothly? Up Close & Personnel, a weekly feature, profiles the employees who keep UD ticking around the clock throughout the year. This week, the focus is on Payroll and Systems Administration.

Mary Walters and Rebecca Santoro

2:35 p.m., Dec. 7, 2004--“UDeserve Our Best” are the watchwords of UD’s Office of Human Resources. This is the first in a series of features about Human Resources’ units that will also highlight Benefits, Classification and Compensation, Recruitment and Employment and Training and Career Development.

Payroll and Systems Administration, the HR group that assists employees and units with payroll-related matters, strives to exemplify that philosophy by maintaining and safeguarding employee personnel records and by helping individuals and units get the information they need when they need it.

When you find your W-2 form in your mailbox come January, you can thank Linda Chriscoe, Diana Brinkley and Anna Bloch.

Together, the three prepare 15,000 W-2s, plus direct-deposit forms and federal identification forms.

The Payroll section of the Office of Human Resources is the closest thing to a human perpetual motion machine on campus. The 13 women who work there process electronic and paper forms for a variety of payroll and personnel transactions such as new hires, promotions, transfers, merit raises and retirements. They work on multiple biweekly deadlines, computer problems, PeopleSoft maintenance, job employment data forms, Flex accounts and verification of employment. They are responsible for getting a wide range of payroll deductions correct, from union dues and savings bonds to season tickets and outdoor pool fees.

"Although we do it in the background and it is not noticed by most people, we deal with the full life cycle of everyone at the University from the time they’re hired until the time they leave the University," Bloch, systems administrator for the section, said. "Although we do not see them every day, we touch every employee’s life at the University."

Lisa Hutton and Anna Bloch

Mary Walters, who comes from a customer service background, says she likes the interaction with employees.

“I like working hard and certainly this lends itself to that,’’ Walters said. She rarely takes more than a few days vacation in the summer, since summer and fall are especially busy seasons in payroll.

While the rest of the campus is enjoying a more relaxed pace, Payroll staffers are processing July raises for salaried and professional workers, September increases for faculty and all the paperwork for new fall hires.

There’s no kicking back when the pay transfers go smoothly because there’s always another deadline to meet. When other employees get into holiday mode around Election Day or Thanksgiving week, payroll employees have the same amount of work to do but just fewer days to do it.

“One day off, two days behind,’’ one said.

“We use the slack periods to get caught up,’’ another said.

Payroll staffers say the work is voluminous but the company is good.

Denise Lindsey, Kat Collison and Kathie Wilson

"We get along amazingly well. It is a really good place to work," Kat Collison, a system specialist who troubleshoots computer problems, said.

Payroll staffers also said they like dealing with departmental Human Resources liaisons and employees who have questions.

“There’s a real personal effect that we have, and we don’t take that lightly,’’ Walters said. “We realize we are dealing with people’s money, and we’re here to make things go smoothly.’’

Kathie Wilson checks and rechecks records entered into the university’s payroll system. Administrative assistant Cathy Taylor, senior records specialist Lisa Hutton, payroll specialist Diana Brinkley, and administrative assistant Linda Chriscoe also are involved with processing, checking and rechecking, along with 10 students who work in the file room.

If you’ve signed a payroll deduction for anything from life insurance to United Way, Debbie Fields, records analyst, has handled it. Fields’ job is to handle deductions for every employee.

Debbie Fields and Cathy Taylor

Taylor deals with employees from 30 countries, and it’s taken her up to 30 minutes to explain why a noncitizen must make Social Security and Medicare payments. She does it so well that one employee brought her a thank-you gift.

"I like trying to help them," Taylor said. "I always try to put myself in their position. If I were in another country, I would like someone to take the time to help me."

Administrative assistant Denise Lindsey maintains the administrative web and generates reports. Lindsey spent a recent Friday afternoon on the phone with a bank trying to rectify the bank error that stopped a student worker’s paycheck in its tracks.

When she was finally able to get the bank to rectify its error in the student’s favor, it made her day. “I would hope that someone would do something like that to help one of my children if he or she were in that situation,’’ she said.

“Things are very intense in Payroll because you’re dealing with people’s money,’’ Lindsey said. “The Office of Human Resources basically touches every person on campus, and we get to meet a lot of very nice people. We all work very well together.”

Article by Kathy Canavan
Photos by Kathy Atkinson

E-mail this article

To learn how to subscribe to UDaily, click here.