After 40 years of its current system, the University of Wisconsin System will be receiving a new modern Human Resource System that will affect more than 67,000 university employees across the state.
The new system will encompass all human resource administrative business processes including employee hiring, record maintenance, payroll and benefits, according to Gareth Green, University of Wisconsin Human Resource communications specialist.
Green said HRS also clarifies employee funding by showing employees where their money is coming from and allowing the universities to see exactly who is getting paid.
The HRS will secure the future of UW employees’ salary and personal information, he added.
“It will ensure simply that people will get paid when they are supposed to,” said Darrell Bazzell, UW-Madison vice chancellor for administration.
All the data will be stored in a computer-based central file including personal information such as social security numbers, which will no longer be handled on paper, Green said.
The old system, dating back to the 1970s, has been used by the UW System even through the technology revolution, UW System spokesperson David Giroux said. He added the current system often requires information to be shared among multiple sectors because there is not a unifying system in place.
“The system we use now was developed back when nobody had a personal computer on their desk,” Giroux said. “It is written in a computer language that is antiquated, to be polite.”
At the time of its creation, the old system was cutting-edge, Green said, but modernization has made the system hard to comply with, and it is increasingly difficult to find programmers who are able to fix and change the system.
Green explained HRS will allow the UW System to save money and time because new regulations will be easier to execute with a central database because one change will affect the whole system.
“Going to this standard system puts us in a better position for when we need to implement regulation updates,” Green said. “The software companies can simply make the changes, and we don’t have to worry about them.”
This is a step for the Human Resources Department that will truly secure the whole system, Green said.
Giroux said the main concern with the old system was it was not reliable enough for the amount of people it supported across the UW System.
“Implementing this new system is not unlike having to replace the roof of your house. It’s not thrilling to replace it, but then it starts to leak, and you end up spending more money on damages than a new roof,” Green said.
It is even feared one day the entire system will eventually collapse. This collapse would be disastrous to the employees and UW schools, Bazzell said.
The HRS will be implemented in the spring of 2011 under a set budget.
“Everything we have seen says this project will be 100 percent on time. I can say with a great deal of certainty this project will succeed,” Green said.