Senators asked about how timesheets for bi-weekly/hourly employees should be managed prior to and during the holiday break. Shuter said, where possible, supervisors should go ahead and approve timesheets for Dec. 16, 2022 – Dec. 29, 2022, and Dec. 31, 2022, when no hours are worked. Supervisors who have employees working over winter break will need to approve hours worked. When Workday goes live, timesheets will be due Monday at noon. Employees are encouraged to check the for details.

Questions about the WorkdayHR transition should be directed to workdayhr@louisville.edu.

President Search

Staff Senate Chair John Smith provided a follow-up to the recent announcement of Kim Schatzel’s appointment as UofL’s new president. He said that Schatzel’s accomplishments in shared governance, student success and business acumen throughout her professional career made her the best choice as UofL’s next president. Smith recently contacted the Staff Senate chair at Towson University, where Schatzel has served as president since 2016, and was assured that Schatzel’s engagement in and support of Staff Senate issues and initiatives are exemplary.

Excellence Awards

Laura McDaniels from the UofL Employee Success Center shared information about UofL’s 2023 Presidential Excellence Awards. Nominations are being accepted until Feb. 15, 2023. Staff employees are eligible to receive the Outstanding Performance Award and the George J. Howe Distinguished Staff Award. Both staff and faculty are eligible for the Cardinal Principles Champion and Outstanding Supervisor awards. Winners of the Outstanding Performance, Outstanding Supervisor and Cardinal Principles Champion awards receive $1,000, and the George J. Howe Distinguished Staff Award winner receives $5,000. More information and nomination forms are available on the .

ITS Updates

Interim Chief Information Officer Brad Anderson gave an update on network outages which occurred across the university between September and December. While each instance was different, all resulted in disruption of network access and/or internet use. Anderson said that work is underway to provide additional means of communication to further minimize impact to end users including information on the ITS webpage that will provide updates on outage causes and resolutions. When outages prohibit or limit access to the internet, Anderson advises end users to access the ITS webpage using their cell phones. RAVE alerts about outages will deploy in extreme circumstances. Access the for more information.

AAPI

Andrew Zhao, an associate professor in the Department of Anthropology, was on hand to share the successes of the . The employee resource group was established in 2021 to build community, address the needs and lift up the unique perspectives and experiences of UofL’s AAPI community. The AAPI leadership team is growing and looking for leaders to take the employee resource group to the next level. They are looking for a variety of skills to round out their leadership team and are accepting until Jan. 17.

The next meeting of the University of Louisville Staff Senate will be held Tuesday, Feb. 14, 2023, via MS Teams. Committee reports, meeting minutes and other information from the Dec. 13, 2022, Staff Senate meeting are available on the .

In regard to this necessary change, President Bendapudi stated, “a university can only be a great place to work if it is able to provide the resources necessary for its people to be most effective.”

PeopleSoft, an enterprise management system developed nearly 30 years ago, has several inefficiencies that contributed to increasing costs and a poor user experience. In addition to these problems, the parent platform service, Oracle, recently announced that they will stop supporting the PeopleSoft HR software by 2031. Given these challenges, the university began the search for a new and improved enterprise management system.  

When tasked to find a replacement for PeopleSoft, the Information Technology Services team worked diligently to identify the system that would best address the needs of employees, as well as the great place to work goals of the . After working with various members of the campus community and engaging over 77 stakeholders across 20 departments for feedback over the last year, the Workday software was selected as the best system for the university and its employees.

Workday is an industry leader that provides a unified system for Human Capital Management (HCM). The implementation of the modern cloud-based system will offer timely and cost-effective functionality to employees while simplifying and standardizing numerous HR processes across the university. The functionality of the software will improve hiring processes, reduce payroll calculation and processing errors, upgrade security and provide users with a more positive overall HR and payroll experience.

While introducing the Workday software to Staff Senators in November of 2020, Mary Alexander-Conte, director of disbursement services, stated, “it’s going to make our lives a lot easier, both internal to payroll and external to all of our departments.”

In addition to its user-friendly dashboards, Workday also includes mobile-friendly technology that will allow employees to access and change personal information, view paystubs, find business directories and access various HR polices and information all from their personal mobile devices. The intuitive mobile interface will provide users with immediate access to time entry and approvals, and Workday’s bi-annual system updates will ensure that employees always have access to the most efficient and reliable HCM system available.

Other leading educational institutions and organizations have already taken advantage of the host of benefits offered by Workday, and now UofL has begun the phased transition to the software. Over the next six years, Workday will be integrated across several areas of the university in phases. First, Workday’s HR software will be used to replace our Peoplesoft HR system. After Workday HR is implemented then the university will start the Workday Finance journey. 

Starting in July of 2022, all units and departments will utilize Workday HR. In the coming months, readiness and development sessions will be conducted along with the university’s software implementation partner, Huron. To get the campus ready for the Workday HR system, the project team will leverage the , training sessions, video guides and step-by-step aids to assist employees during the transition.

Employees are also encouraged to share questions and feedback with representatives of UofL’s . The Change Ambassador Network kicked off in April under the leadership of Melissa Shuter, executive director of operation support services. The 50 employees serving as change ambassadors in this network act as representatives for every unit and department across the university, and also include representatives from the Faculty and Staff Senates, Commissions, and lead fiscal officers. The feedback collected through the change ambassadors, as well as town halls, will be used to refine and improve the system moving forward. Additional information including the current implementation timeline, the list of change ambassadors and FAQS can be found on the website.

As part of the Great Place Journey campaign kicked off by President Bendapudi to keep the campus community informed about each of the major projects and initiatives happening in the university, regular updates about the implementation of Workday and other major university initiatives will be regularly provided to the campus community via UofL News, the UofL Today employee newsletter and the Student News and Events newsletter.

President Bendapudi reviewed the university’s commitment to anti-racism. Updates were provided to senators on the Commission on Diversity and Racial Equity (CODRE), current progress on commitments made in the , and the financial benefits of healthcare expansion.

CODRE has been tasked with developing a plan to implement the university’s anti-racism agenda. CODRE is considering reforms and actions needed within five key groups in the university community: faculty, staff, students, administrators and trainees, which was identified as a subcategory of students. A representative from the Office of Diversity and Equity will be assigned to each broad area and will assist in future implementation of anti-racist policies and practices.  

Updates were also given about the university’s Strategic Plan. The plan outlines a commitment to increase need-based aid for first-time freshmen to 20% by the year 2022. Bendapudi was proud of the progress made on this commitment, reporting an increase from 8% to 17% as of this year. 

Bendapudi added that efforts toward diversity and equity are also related to the university’s healthcare enterprise expansion, which included UofL Health-Mary & Elizabeth Hospital, the only hospital in Louisville located west of Interstate 65. Last year’s healthcare acquisitions as well as partnerships made with Norton pediatrics have proven to be strong financial assets for the university.

“In my third year, we are much stronger financially than we were, and we are making investment in things that we think matter,” she said. 

Executive Vice President and University Provost Beth Boehm addressed a student petition for a pass/fail option for the fall 2020 semester. Both the Academic Scenario Planning Committee and the Coordinating Committee determined that this would not be in the best interest of students or the university for many reasons, including accreditation for future semesters.

The Academic Scenario Planning Committee is reviewing the use of proctoring software, specifically Respondus, which depends on facial detection. Concerns about racial bias within the software were brought before the committee over the summer. Faculty members and students are contributing to the committee and they are working diligently to prepare recommendations for the future. The provost emailed all faculty on Nov.6 with a warning about this bias.   

Both Bendapudi and Boehm gave remarks on the importance of flu vaccines in the coming months. TAll faculty, staff, and students are encouraged to take advantage of the free flu shots administered through Campus Health Services, even if they will not be physically attending courses in the coming semester.

Senators were provided updates on COVID-19 testing by the executive director of Campus Health Services, Phillip Bressoud.

Bressoud announced that Campus Health Services will be adding molecular Helicase Chain Reaction (HCR) testing for COVID-19. This new testing option is approximately half the cost of traditional Polymerise Chain Reaction (PCR) tests. Hundreds of the new HCR tests can be processed daily in office. It is expected that the new testing option will be available in December.

A winter break schedule is being developed so that COVID-19 testing can continue being available on campus. The testing site at Cardinal Station Health Center will be open between Dec. 18 and Jan. 4 in order to accommodate health care employees and the campus community. 

Senators received an update on a PeopleSoft HR software replacement from M. Rehan Khan, vice president of Information Technology Services and chief information officer. The system, initially developed in the 1990s, has inherent inefficiencies that can contribute to increasing costs and negatively impacting user experience.

The ITS team diligently worked within the campus community over the last year by engaging stakeholders across 20 departments for participation and feedback, conducting interviews with 14 higher education institutions using other software, and price negotiation among vendors. The result of their efforts showed overwhelming support for Workday HR Software.

Kahn reported that a recommendation to the provost and chief financial officer has been made in favor of selecting Workday as the replacement for PeopleSoft. The cloud-based HR software will be introduced to the university gradually in two-year phases, the first of which is set to begin in January 2021.

Committee reports and a of the virtual meeting can be accessed on the . The next Faculty Senate meeting is scheduled for Dec. 2 via Microsoft Teams.