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M <br />ORANGE COUNTY <br />HILLSBOROUGH <br />NORTH CAROLINA <br />.ana,ver s D�ce <br />August 12, 2010 <br />Fellow Orange County Employees <br />1isl -Z0i aead /T.S2 <br />I am taking this opportunity to communicate with all of you on a very important issue and <br />to update you on corrective improvements to the County's payroll system. Economic <br />conditions dictate the County must pursue efficiencies wherever possible to ensure <br />valuable resources are not wasted. County staffing reductions force us to look for <br />methods to improve productivity and eliminate wasteful practices, especially related to <br />areas where staff can avoid repetitive work processes that do nothing to improve services. <br />Several aspects of the County's current payroll process are tedious, repetitive and <br />outdated We are operating a paper driven process that requires multiple persons to <br />manually complete, review and sort timesheets for 800 employees every two weeks. <br />Manual errors each payday require corrective actions alter the payroll has been issued. It <br />is a wasteful use of individual effort by numerous employees involved in the process <br />from beginning to end. This is the primary reason the County will automate the process. <br />Automation of the payroll process will count each employee's time in a manner that <br />assures correct time worked is recorded-, overtime (if applicable) is correctly applied and <br />the accuracy of the payroll will be automatically verified. <br />An issue must be addressed prior to implementing this simple payroll accounting change. <br />The current payroll system created a process that actually counts and pays employees in <br />advance of actual time worked <br />Currently, for a payday scheduled on Friday, the Monday before is the day that <br />"anticipated" hours to be worked for each employee are submitted by departments to our <br />payroll processing staff. Staff in Finance and Human Resources complete several <br />functions related to getting the payroll ready for deposit to each employee's designated <br />bank account at 12:01 AM on Friday morning of paydays. The actual verification of <br />deposits to be made by the bank to employees is complete and at the County's bank on <br />Wednesday before the Friday payday. <br />The County's work week is currently Monday through Sunday (EMS, Solid Waste and <br />the Sheriff's Office and other Department work Saturdays and Sundays). Payroll on <br />Fridays for each employee's payday is deposited prior to actual days worked; Fridays for <br />all employees and Saturdays and Sundays for those departments regularly working <br />weekends. <br />This situation creates the need after each payday to make corrections for all employees <br />not working scheduled hours; taking vacation or sick leave instead of working; <br />recalculating the impact of overtime worked on those days; and, any other issue that <br />might affect actual hours worked. These,tasks take Finance and Human Resource staff <br />away from other important functions and create payroll issues for employees every <br />payday. <br />AREA CODE (919) 246 -2300 • 688 -7331 • FAX (9 19) 644 -3004 <br />Ext. 2300 <br />