Brandon U To Automate Employment Processes with EmpCenter

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 11/11/08

Brandon University in Brandon, Manitoba has licensed EmpCenter for Higher Education from WorkForce Software. The software automates the interactions that employees have with their employer.

"WorkForce Software offered a comprehensive solution specifically for universities, which was a key differentiator from other vendors," said Barbara Smith, director of human resources for the university. "Competing vendors offer pieces of the solution we were looking for, whereas WorkForce has extensive experience with the higher education industry. Automating our time and attendance processes, EmpCenter for Higher Education will help us manage our complex payroll rules and collective agreements."

The university has three unions and four collective agreements, with about half of its employees being a member of one of the unions. The current process for capturing time and attendance at the university is manual, including processing employee timesheets, supporting complex pay rules, enforcing collective agreements, and maintaining compliance to the terms and conditions of exempt and non-exempt employees.

"Depending on the employee type, each timesheet is processed in some way three or more times before it is finished based on the rules that govern each employee's pay," said Al Dunthorne, director of IT services. "Some of the biggest changes we will see are reduced or eliminated data entry, minimized error rates, and employee accountability."

"We were tasked with doing it faster and more economically, so we chose automation," said Dunthorne. "Using EmpCenter ... the HR and payroll departments will be more efficient without adding additional resources."

Once deployed, the application will automate many interactions for the staff, students, and the university, such as reporting hours worked, scheduling time-off, and tracking grant usage.

WorkForce Software's software is currently in use at the University of California, Santa Cruz and Ohio University in Athens.