When a University of Colorado employee leaves the university to retire, take another job or ends their appointment, it is critical for termination information to be quickly, accurately recorded to comply with university policies and state regulations as well as ensure a proper benefits payout to the employee.

Campus liaisons are now able to more quickly enter details of an employee's departure, thanks to a project completed in February 2020.

The University Information Services (UIS) HR IT Services team, in collaboration with the UIS HCM Application Development team, Employee Services and partners from all four CU campuses, successfully updated the termination process in HCM, the university’s Human Resources system.

The project’s February 2020 completion serves as an important milestone in the continuing efforts to replace the complex, electronic personnel action requests (ePAR) used to process job changes, terminations and other transactions with PeopleSoft-delivered, template-based transactions (TBT). This transition to the TBT framework helps to minimize the effects of vendor updates on systems and operations, and it keeps CU in compliance with Oracle for support.

A TBT provides a template-driven method of streamlining data entry. HCM users select a template based on the transaction they want to complete, and the template displays the correct pages and fields that need to be updated. This simplifies system usage and reduces processing time for more than 900 campus users.

These efforts were identified by Human Resources leadership as a priority for CU. The cross-campus HR Services Management Committee used this project to set the technical framework to remove the remaining ePAR transactions and replace them with TBTs.

The project team focused on improving the user experience from a technical standpoint and minimizing disruption to campus users. A total of 1,352 hours were spent over the 7-month project, and its success reflects the care and expertise of the HR Services Management team. On average, this change will save users an estimated 514 hours of time savings each year going forward.

Bob Sudo, director of HR IT Services for UIS, attributed the project’s success to “the dedication and collaboration from all team members involved.”

“Blood, sweat and tears have been shed by the HR Service Management team, but what a great group of experts to join together for the good of the whole system,” said Shelly Raney, senior HR and Payroll professional for UCCS.

Raney said the transition “from Termination ePARs to the template has been a snap.” Little change management was required. Instead, users were given interactive demos and succinct step-by-step guides that helped them avoid any hiccups that might hinder completing their transaction.

The team is driving toward a single user experience for entering HCM transactions over the coming 12 months. The HR Services Management Committee has identified the next transactions set to move to templates – job changes, pay rate, data changes and all leave transactions – and work is underway.

The termination project’s success set the technical framework for future efforts and serves as an exemplar project on process and collaboration.