The campus has made a quantum leap forward by replacing the old paper time card system with fully electronic payroll software. But is it actually any better for the students? To me the system is overly complex and where it helps in some work departments, it hinders in others.
Prior to this change, many of the departments used various forms of timekeeping to record the hours of the student workers. Some were hand filled-out forms while others resembled old fashioned punch cards. Tech services was one department already using an electronic record keeping system. At the beginning of this semester Blackburn switched to APS, an online payroll system company, that keeps track of hours worked and (in the case of paid hours) creates checks for students.
However there are several issues that result from the new payroll system. For instance, it now obviously requires an internet connection and access to a computer. While all buildings on campus are equipped with Wi-Fi, there is a tendency for that connection to malfunction, sometimes for hours at a time. Despite this, work must continue and student workers need some way to account for those hours. Certain members of each department including managers and supervisors can add on hours for students manually but this adds several tedious steps to the process. Students who are unable to clock in must then pay close attention to how many hours they have worked and report that to their manager or supervisor who then adds the hours manually. This creates extra strain on student workers, managers and supervisors.
The new payroll system works best for departments that begin and end their shifts in one place. This is because remembering to clock in and out when your job requires you to work outside of an office for small spurts of time is difficult. Accounting for those hours that are not as standard as the rest of the campus was easier with paper time cards. The situation becomes especially muddled when work takes students off campus. Take The ‘Burnian for example. It is rare that this type of work is done entirely on campus. Some of the articles require interviews that take place off campus. One could clock in, leave campus for the interview, return and clock out (which is what I would recommend in any situation where work takes you off campus) but it is one more thing to have to remember when conducting work. The new payroll system locks down workers’ freedom by requiring every little moment of work to be accounted for. Simple activities such as sending work-related emails require you to clock in because there is no other way to account for such activities. The new system is just not as effective for the combination of working while learning. Balancing these two activities is now more difficult since the implementation of the new payroll system.