Travis County Commissioners Court
Tuesday, July 26, 2011 (Agenda)
Item 9
number 9,, consider and take appropriate action on an employee survey regarding whether to change from a twice monthly to a biweekly payroll and a decision-making process.
>> I just wanted to introduce (indiscernible) I want you to do it to start.
as we introduce david youngman, beth blankenship to my left is replacing the retiring in a few days charles vaughn as the chief assistant for our payroll auditing division.
and that has been beth has been with our office for 11 years, ran the team.
she has an mba.
she's a cpa.
very qualified.
lots of systems background.
and expert in payroll and we're glad to have her in that position.
so just -- ladies, go ahead.
I'm just here for that purpose.
>> and I am diane blankenship sitting next to beth blankenship.
or we could be the davenport fz you like that.
we're happy to do that too.
we have the item before.
and the item before you is to request your permission to survey our employees regarding switching from a semi monthly payroll cycle to a biweekly payroll cycle.
I believe this has come before the court I have heard in the last decade or so a time or two.
>> that was years ago.
>> years ago.
>> sponsored by Commissioner Davis.
>> okay.
very good.
it's one of the things that we have been looking at in conjunction with converting over to sap.
and I believe the team feels like it would be a good thing as we're looking at converting over to sap and it's one of those things that it's considered a best practices.
it's something our peers do, some of our larger peers like harris county.
they use a biweekly payroll.
however we think one of the things before we bring it to you that you are going to want to know is what do the employees think about it.
so we thought we would get and get your permission to survey the employees about it to have the statistics for you.
I think it's important to note that we want to go ahead and get out in front in this before we switch over hrs systems from hte system to the sap because there's going to be a lot of programming that has to be done in conjunction with the hrs system and payroll system.
so we feel like if we're going to do this now is the time to do it.
because we don't want to pay for the programming twice in sap as we roll it out.
we feel like this is a pretty good 10 year decision we're making here and that you would like to have the opinion of the employees before you in addition to the other part of the item.
>> what is the timing of this as far as the survey being given to the employees and of course, I guess, the timeline if the court decides to go with this particular proposal, the timeline that would be involved as far as the -- our end of it and anyone in payroll, their concerns as far as the timing mechanism.
I'm quite sure they may be set up, but then there is a timing issue.
so what would be the timing issue.
>> there's a time where if we went to a two-week and the bimonthly hit at the same time, and so there would be times that you could convert and times that you cannot.
and so you have the --
>> the best day to do that next year would be first jan of 2012.
>> January first of 2012?
>> right.
>> if we were going to do it.
because everything kind of merges at that time.
and diane is exactly right.
one of the things we told you early on with sap is that -- there are going to be some policy issues that you need to look at, as we're looking at a new system and just make some decisions.
we're just going to bring those forward.
and decide what you want to do.
then we'll move forward on that.
it is more expensive to handle payroll the way it is now because we really are treating nonexempt people like they're exempt.
because we're not paying for the exact days, but half a month.
and months are different.
lots of complexity there.
but there's changes to go to biweekly for employees.
so I think diane is right.
we need to see what employees think and then look at it and see what you want to do because we would like some of these things to start laying in before we convert.
and so that we're doing knot doing everything at conversion.
and remember, we into go live with payroll hrs on January of '13.
and so what we would like to do if we're going to do this, there's only certain dates to get it converted and get it going along and we would tell the vendor when setting up the payroll system that we're on biweekly and she's right so that we're not programming twice weevment have a series of these things and we're talking to other -- our departments are working closely together on this.
so we'll be bringing issues like this to you for your decision.
there's not a right or wrong decision.
>> we do have a survey ready to go.
it was part of your backup.
and we could get that out probably this week with your approval.
>> we plan to do it electronically, but there's also been some departments such as tnr, the road and bridge crews that their hr liaisons have told me they would like hard copies of surveys in the future because they feel like they don't get to participate.
which we will provide for them and then input the information in and collate the data.
we're happy to do that.
this affects them a lot.
a lot of them are hourly people and when the payroll is smooth, it's a little bit more difficult for them to understand what they're being paid as when it's smooth to 86-point scwiks hours as opposed to however many hours they're actually working.
so we definitely want to get their opinion on this.
>> okay.
>> once we get the survey results back, we need to know how you want us to present that information to you.
if you would rather do it in a court session like this or if you would like to have a work session to discuss in detail the biweekly payroll.
but with the short time frame that we've got before we would need to implement on January 1st of 2012, we would like to get a final decision if we could by around the first of September.
>> mid August if possible.
>> [ laughter ]
>> what would you consider to be a good reliable level of response?
how many, I guess?
>> well, I think any level of response is a good predictor.
one of the things that I think is important, if we only got 20% responding to this survey, then they would tell me that 80% really don't have an opinion one way or the other.
and I've heard a lot of things anecdotally.
I've heard some people say I have my bills set up.
like getting paid on the month.
I've had other people say I would prefer to get my paychecks more frequently.
I would like to understand my paycheck.
so rather than rely on the anecdotal view, we would rather just see what happens.
but I do think that is something.
if you have only 20% of the people participate, that's telling thaw a lot of people really don't feel passionately one way or the other.
>> one of the things we wanted to do was contact the payroll administrators to encourage them to relined miend their people to fill the survey in and I think it will help also as diane mentioned to have paper copies that people can fill in if they don't have access to the computer.
>> you see a decision-making process.
what does that cover?
or do we -- if we approve the survey, have we approved the decision-making process also?
>> well, we just need to know whether you would want us to come back to court like this or if you would like to have a work session that would give us an opportunity to present you with more detail.
>> you're not obligated by what result of the survey is.
>> let's plan to do it on Tuesday if it looks like we need a fuller discussion, we'll just set it for work session.
how is that?
I guess the responses that we get will give us some indication of how much time we should penned on it.
I do agree that if we think that we ought to give ourselves flexibility to spend quite a bit of time, we ought to have a work session for it.
but if we just want an evaluation, an overview, Tuesday is a good day.
so move approval.
>> second.
>> discussion?
all in favor?
that passes by unanimous vote.
Commissioner Gomez temporarily away.
The Closed Caption log for this Commissioners Court agenda item is provided by Travis County Internet Services. Since this file is derived from the Closed Captions created during live cablecasts, there are occasional spelling and grammatical errors. This Closed Caption log is not an official record the Commissioners Court Meeting and cannot be relied on for official purposes. For official records please contact the County Clerk at (512) 854-4722.
