July 22, 2004
Moving toward a paperless payroll
In the beginning, there was the printed paycheck. Monthly, and later twice a month, departmental clerks picked up the checks and schlepped them back to their offices while employees waited, toes tapping with anticipation, to rush their checks to the bank.
Then came computers, and in 1984, direct deposit of paychecks became available at the UW. But even as numbers of direct deposit participants grew, some departmental clerk still had to pick up those check-sized papers and deliver them to employees one by one.
The vast majority of UW employees now are on the direct deposit plan. The University currently pays about 37,000 people on each payday, payroll officials say, with about 32,000 direct deposit advice statements and about 5,000 actual checks for those holdouts who want their money the old-fashioned way. And that’s a lot of paper.
But now the UW is taking the next step and making payroll virtually paperless. Starting with the Sept. 10 payroll, direct deposit advices will be available to employees only through the Employee Self-Service Web site — under www.myuw.org. Employees can print out their advice statements from the site instead of receiving them on paper. That is, unless employees specifically request to keep getting the paper advices sent to them each payday, as before.
Linda Braziel, director of the UW payroll office, says the change is an efficiency measure that will save time and effort, and thus money.
“A lot of the people I know and hear of get this nine-and-a-half-cent piece of paper every two weeks and put it in their desk drawer,” Braziel said. “I tell people we are spending about $70,000 a year printing these forms, and from what I hear, they either don’t get used or are used once or twice a year.”
She said whether they are direct deposit advices or paper checks, in some departments, “literally, one or two people may spend all day stuffing these advices into envelopes and passing them out to people and putting them in their mailboxes. A lot of people doing a lot of work that we’re thinking is not necessary in most cases.”
Braziel said this change will not affect those employees who receive actual paper checks each payday — but she added that “we are encouraging people to get off checks and use direct deposit.”
If employees do nothing, their direct deposit advice statements will automatically convert to e-mail delivery with the Sept. 10 payroll. Those wishing to continue receiving their paper advice statements each payday can choose that in two ways:
- Enter the Employee Self-Service area of the “My UW” site (http://myuw.washington.edu/) and click on the “printable earnings statement” area in the upper-right-hand corner of the page. That will take you to another page where you can check a box with your choice. You’ll be taken to another page that explains the new process, and if you still want paper advice statements, click “submit.”
- Ask the payroll coordinator of your office to enter your choice into the OPUS (Online Payroll Update System).
Braziel said feedback over the coming change has been mostly good. “I’m hearing a very positive reaction — by far the majority of people are enthusiastic about this.” She said many employees hadn’t known that the information was there on the ESS site all along. Another plus, she said, is that both the money and the information tend to arrive one to two days before payday.
Still, there are some holdouts who don’t wish to be carried along on the waves of technology, Braziel said, and others have expressed concern about people with disabilities who can’t easily use computers. For them, she said, the paper advice statements are always available.
Braziel said she and her staff got to thinking about what a visual representation would be of the effort saved by the new policy.
“What we came up with was, if all these checks and advices were laid end to end, they would stretch from Seattle to Portland, or Vancouver, B.C.”
