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Friday Feature – Pay Holds

Last week, I said that I would tell you all about pay holds. Good to my word, I am going to show you how easy it is in Escape Online to audit credentials, creating pay holds when the audit turns up irregularities.

Auditing credentials in Escape Online is a simple two-step process.

As you know, in California, it is the COE’s responsibility to ensure that every person in an assignment for which the State requires a credential is filled by a person that has the appropriate credential. Every payday, the COE must check the employee’s credentials against the jobs they held. Escape Online calls this the Credential Audit process. And, with a little bit of setup, the audit happens automatically every payday with very little effort on the part of the payroll technician.

After payroll has been submitted by the districts, the COE runs the Credential Audit activity.* It only requires two simple steps: enter the pay date and click GO. Really! When you click GO, Escape Online reads the pay day information (online and offline) to determine if the employee holds the appropriate credential for their assignment. If the employee does not have the appropriate credential for their assignment as defined by the pay matrix, a pay hold is created.

Of course, there is the flexibility to take an employee’s pay “off hold.” But, if the pay hold is legit, the Payroll Processing activity automatically converts any ACH for that employee to a paper check so that you can literally hold it until the employee shows you the correct credential for the job.

Amazing!

Now, you may be asking yourself, how does Escape Online determine which jobs need credentials. That is a great question and I mentioned one way briefly above: the Pay Matrix. Actually, we have three ways to define what jobs need to be audited: at the person level, at the account level and at the job class level (using the Pay Matrix). Next week, I will give you a quick peek at how each one of these works.

* Districts and charters can run the audit, too, if they are set up with the proper permissions!

Employee Onboarding: Improve First Impressions & Lasting Retention | Part Three

A recent study shows nearly 70% of your teachers are not engaged in their jobs. That’s troubling news for American education.

Many district administrators balk at a statistic that drastic, believing it cannot be true of their district. But according to a recent Gallup survey of 7,200 teachers, 31% of teachers are engaged, 56% are not engaged (although satisfied), and 13% are actively disengaged.

Gallup defines these terms as follows:

Engaged: “Involved in, enthusiastic about, and committed to their work . . . knowing the scope of their jobs and constantly looking for new and better ways to achieve outcomes”

Not Engaged: “May be satisfied with their jobs, but they are not emotionally connected to their workplace and unlikely to devote much discretionary effort to their work”

Actively Disengaged: “Dissatisfied with their workplace and likely to be spreading negativity to their coworkers”

Naturally, any organization would want its employees to be engaged with their daily job and company culture. The benefits or the costs of engaged or disengaged employees are obvious. However, the burden of K-12 school districts to engage its employees is far greater than increasing a profit line.

Any district employee – especially a teacher – who is “enthusiastic about, and committed to their work” is significantly more likely to make a positive impact on a student’s growth. We need our students to be surrounded by a faculty and staff who are “looking for new and better ways to achieve outcomes.”

Yet according to Gallup’s sampling results, less than a third of K-12 teachers in the U.S. are actually engaged with their roles in their districts. How can we work to correct this?

In part one and part two of this series, I defined onboarding and talked about its benefits for school districts and their new employees.

In part three, I want to help equip you to successfully improve the number of engaged employees for your district.

Fostering Engagement for Retention

The word ENGAGE is a handy mnemonic for remembering six key actions you can take to foster engagement in your district and increase employee retention – and not only with new hires.

  • Expanded recognition
  • Networking availability and encouragement
  • Generated “input for impact” dialogue
  • Access to resources
  • Giving your time
  • Evaluations made often

E. Expanded recognition

Employee recognition should be given across all levels of the district. Employees should feel welcomed as a member of the team by their peers, as valuable assets by their immediate supervisor, and as individuals by their district administration.

Establish programs for effective recognition that increase the number of persons highlighted, such as rewards or employee spotlights on district newsletters or allowing peer “high-fives” to be given via social media, as examples.

N. Networking availability and encouragement

Networking is important as a career- and relationship-building opportunity. If an employee doesn’t have the chance to build a relationship with other members of the district (on multiple different levels), then that employee probably won’t be engaged with his or her role in the district.

Here are some potential networking options:

  • Committees and task forces
  • Work team projects
  • Division or department challenges
  • Group wellness activities
  • Community service projects
  • Campus renovation days
  • Group volunteer days
  • Staff meal prep
  • Interest-based outings

G. Generated “input for impact” dialogue

Most employers collect information on why employees leave, exit interviews. Why not collect information on why employees choose to stay? Kathryn Tyler of SHRM HR Magazine writes about the value of interviewing employees who have chosen to stay at your district in her article “Who Will Stay and Who Will Go?”

Start with the top performers and influencers of your district. Find out what it is about your district that engages them. Not only will this interaction further their own engagement by asking their valued opinion, but it will help you to understand how to engage the rest of your staff as well.

This will also give you the opportunity to collect data to determine critical timeframes for engaging employees in your district, prior to when your data indicates an upswing in voluntary departures. In their survey, Gallup uncovered correlations between how experienced a teacher was and their level of engagement.

engagement by experience level chart

Insights like these can help you make informed decisions for your district.

A. Access to resources

Remember, engaged employees are “constantly looking for new and better ways to achieve outcomes.” It would be hard for an employee to innovate or improve the impact of their job if they don’t have access to valuable resources. You need to equip your district’s staff, so that they can equip your district’s students.

Here are just a few examples of resources you could provide to your employees:

Cover class or job responsibilities to observe a peer or meet to collaborate
Send to workshop, class, clinic, presentation
Nominate for a committee or team
Bring in a specialist, presenter, program
Introduce to an expert, colleague, organization
Provide web links, videos, newsletters, trainers

G. Giving your time

Your district’s administrators and supervisors need to genuinely and generously give time to their employees, especially in the onboarding period. Spend this time giving employees validation by slowing yourself down to listen to their needs and ideas and to build real relationships with them. If you meet your employees on a level of respect, first as a person and second as an employee, you’ll stand a far better chance of earning their respect and keeping them in your district.

E. Evaluations made often

Effective evaluation is like effective practice. You need to commit to regular evaluations so you can understand the status and see the growth of each employee, and they can understand your expectations.

Early in an employee’s career, frequent evaluations will help establish engagement between you and your new staff member, and it will help you track their productivity. Over time, as the employee demonstrates progress and mastery in their role, you can distribute your evaluations less frequently throughout the year, so that you can focus more time on new employees. Noticing that you are “loosening the leash” a bit by spacing out evaluations demonstrates trust, which in turn increases the employee’s motivation and engagement.

If you can form a habit of talking with your employees – not at them – early and often in their careers, and provide the necessary guidance and resources they need to grow in their role, your district will enjoy and retain a more fully engaged team.

In the fourth and final post in this series, I will talk about how you can use technology to spread out your district’s onboarding process to give more attention to specific areas that are often overlooked by the common onboarding experience: areas beyond mandatory compliance notifications and the “dos and don’ts” in procedure handbooks and policies.

Employee Onboarding: Improve First Impressions & Lasting Retention | Part Two

In the last blog post, I defined onboarding, explained why it’s important for districts to master, and offered one area where school districts can cultivate the loyalty of their new employees: pride. In part two of the series, I want to give you some practical tips for how you can approach the onboarding experience in a way that will further engage your new employees and help them to understand your expectations.

Your Objectives for Onboarding

As a school district, you have specific takeaways you want your new employees to understand after going through the onboarding process. In “Onboarding: The First Line of Engagement,” Martin and Bourke offer five benefits organizations want to achieve through onboarding:

1. Ensure new employees are engaged and assimilated into the company’s culture

2. Help your new employees become productive faster

3. Increase retention of new employees

4. Improve the experience your organization offers via more effective employees

5. Save on long-term costs

The first two are obvious and important. You need to bring your new hires into the fold of the district staff. And this isn’t just for their own sake. A Texas Instruments study showed that employees reached “full productivity” two months sooner when their onboarding process was fully attended to, as compared to those whose was not.

A lot of ground can be gained or lost in two months. After two months, nearly half of a semester is over. Employees have already established their opinions on their position within the district, and students have certainly solidified their opinions of the district’s staff. After two months of employment, the battle for an employee’s engagement has largely already been won or lost.

However, an effective onboarding process affects more than the productivity of your employees. Improving your onboarding experience also improves your district’s employee retention and long-term recruiting costs.

David Lee of HumanNature@Work cites several examples of organizations that reduced their employee turnover by improving their onboarding experience. Hunter Douglas reduced their employee turnover from 70% to 16% in just six months. Likewise, Designer Blinds reduced their annual turnover from a staggering 200% to less than 8%, which directly translated to a reduction of their recruiting budget.

However, the true cost of something isn’t always in dollars and cents. The cost of losing your best employees to voluntary attrition can also be seen in:

1. A lower morale of remaining employees
2. Questionable supervision inquiries
3. Reduced public satisfaction
4. Service or performance declines and delays
5. A change in organizational reputation

Your Employees’ Objectives for Onboarding

So how do you improve your onboarding experience? One of the biggest mistakes you can make in your employee onboarding is to take a one-sided approach to the process. Another is trying to cram too much into too little of a time frame. Two parties are involved in the onboarding process: the district and the new hires. You must take adequate time to acknowledge the needs and wants of both parties in order to have an effective process.

Often the time crunch of compacting onboarding activities into only a few hours or a couple of days causes district staff to overload and overwhelm their newest talent at a time when those recruits should be most excited and enthusiastic.

If you want to change your district’s employee engagement and retention, invert your onboarding process and focus on employees’ questions first.

Ask yourself what your individual employees want to know. Then ask yourself what the district wants its employees to know. Your employees’ questions may seem secondary compared to the high-level expectations the district needs to set, but if the employees’ questions aren’t answered, they might be too preoccupied to focus on what the district is communicating.

In “What New Employees Really Need to Know,” Lin Grensing-Pophal shares three categories of questions on new employees’ minds, as well as the order in which they should be addressed:

The Things That Affect Employees Personally

“Where should I park? What should I wear?”
“Where should I report? What are my work hours?”
“Will I be expected to work overtime? To work evenings? Weekends?”
“How does the phone system work? When will my email be active?”
“What’s my network login and password? Do I get keys?”

The Things That Affect Employees as a Member of Their Department

“Who will I be working with?”
“Who are the people I need to get to know in the department and in other departments?”
“How will my work be judged?”
“Are there opportunities to serve on special committees or task forces and how can I find out more?”
“If I have ideas, suggestions or concerns, what channels exist to share those concerns?”
“How do people prefer to communicate in this organization? (Face to face? By e-mail? Phone?)”

The Things That Affect Employees as a Member of the Organization

“What are the organization’s mission, vision and values (and how does my department fit into this)?”
“Do we have a strategic plan? What does it entail?”
“What are the major external issues that impact us?”
“What are our priorities? What are our long-range goals?”
“What are employees rewarded and recognized for?”

As Maslow from your psychology class has suggested, if you can meet the more foundational, immediate “safety-security-survival” needs of new employees, they will be in a better frame of mind to consider their place within the district at large and be more receptive and engaged for your district agendas.

Conclusion

Focusing on your employees’ needs first will guarantee that they are engaged in the onboarding process from the start. By engaging them, they’ll become better assimilated into your district staff, and therefore become productive faster. Productive employees are generally more satisfied with their roles in the district, and will likely remain at the district longer, improving district performance and saving on recruiting expenses. In part three of my onboarding series, I will give you specific tips for fostering engagement to improve employee relationships and retention.

Friday Feature – Working the Adjust Payroll List

Continuing on our journey through the tasks of year end, I want to point out one of my favorite features in the Adjust Payroll activity. The reason I think adjusting payroll is part of my “year end journey” is because at year end, most of our customers process extra payrolls.

Let me explain. At year end, payroll technicians process the “regular” payrolls and the “summer” payrolls with no extra time because everything must be done by year end!

Obviously, payroll technicians need all the extra help they can get, so Escape Online uses the first four columns of the Adjust Payroll list to give you a quick indication of what is going on with that particular employee’s pay: if they have an alert, adjustments, pay holds or changes to gross or net.

Check it out and you will see why this is one of my favorite features:

  • A – Indicates if there is an alert (e.g., IRS lock-in letter, a garnishment or a court-ordered medical dependent coverage) for this employee.

  • (We will learn more about this awesome feature in next week’s Friday Feature!)

  • Adj – Indicates if there were any adjustments and what type they are:

  • A – All possible adjustments

  • E – Earnings Adjustment

  • D – Deduction Adjustment

  • C – Contribution Adjustment

  • B – Both Earnings and Contribution and/or Deduction adjustments

  • O – Some other adjustment

  • Hold – Indicates if there is a pay hold (yes) or not (blank).

  • (Another awesome feature I will champion in an upcoming Friday Feature!)

  • Chg – Indicates if the employee’s pay changed:

  • + for added to pay cycle

  • N for net change

  • B for base change

  • G for gross change

These handy-dandy columns let us know, at a glance, that there is an employee with an alert, another employee had an adjustment to a contribution and every employee has had a change to their pay, mainly changes to base pay and being added to the pay cycle.

Now that’s a time saver any time of year!

Friday Feature – Multiyear Processing

Today is the day that many districts open up multiyear processing, which is when you can submit and process requisitions and invoices in this fiscal year and next. Most of the organizations that don’t have Escape Online open the new year by granting access to a “new database for next year” so they can begin entering requisitions and working on budgets for 2015/16. To get to the “new” database, they have to log out of the current year and into the next year. No one much likes having to work in two different systems. When we designed Escape Online, we listened. So, we made Escape Online a multiyear system. Users don’t have to sign in and out. They have one system that crosses fiscal years. They can see everything with one login. We also automated when “next year” resources become available each year, rather than making system managers remember to turn various features on and off. Let’s have a look!

This is a screen capture from a LIVE customer for their vendor requisitions. The green highlight shows that users can start entering vendor requisitions for 2016 on May 1, TODAY! The yellow highlight shows that users must stop entering 2015 requisitions on September 15.

You could change these dates every year, but you don’t have to. It is not required. It rolls from year to year. That is exactly what I mean by smart. Once you have had all of the discussions about how your department’s requisitions are going to work, you don’t have to revisit it every year, which saves meeting time and money!

It works for more than just vendor requisitions, too. This same current year/next year concept works for stores requisitions, department requisitions, invoices, journal entries, AP payments, direct payments and employee payments.*

Very smart for system managers. But, what about the user experience, you know, those people entering the requisitions and whatnot? How are they to know which fiscal year they are in?

pic_news_ff_deptmultiyearnew.jpg

Escape Online automatically gives the user a choice of fiscal years when they click the New button. The user selects the fiscal year for the requisition or invoice or journal entry and Escape Online does the rest.

Very smart, indeed!

*AP payments, direct payments and employee payments multiyear processing is setup in the Organization record. All other multiyear processing is defined in the Department record.

MyLearningPlan FAQs (Now Frontline Professional Growth)

Questions about our professional learning and teacher evaluation management system formerly known as MyLearningPlan? You’ve come to the right place!

Here are a few of the most frequent questions we hear from school districts that are researching Frontline Professional Growth. Don’t see your question here? Feel free to contact us!

Why isn’t it called MyLearningPlan anymore?

MyLearningPlan, a well-known provider of educator professional growth and evaluation management tools for K-12 school districts, was acquired in May 2015 by Frontline Education.

Frontline Education is a leading provider of school administration software. MyLearningPlan is now part of Frontline Professional Growth, aligning it with the rest of the solutions Frontline Education offers.

How is Frontline Professional Growth different from MyLearningPlan OASYS or PDMS?

These applications are still a part of Frontline Professional Growth, although these days they’re known as Employee Evaluation Management and Professional Learning Management They are part of the broader Frontline Professional Growth solution, which includes tools to manage professional learning and evaluation, as well as resources for teachers to enhance their own learning and collaborate with each other online.

Why manage professional development online?

 
Frontline Professional Growth isn’t about removing the human touch from employee evaluations or professional learning. Quite the opposite, actually.  By simplifying the professional learning process, compiling forms, goals and PD resources in one place, and improving transparency throughout the whole evaluation process, Frontline Professional Growth helps district leaders cultivate consistent, substantial professional learning for all staff. Plus, by giving teachers direct access to their PD resources and evaluation data, teachers can revisit their goals regularly as they seek to grow in their careers.

What forms are included in the solution?

Frontline Professional Growth is all about flexibility. Districts can provide their current forms and rubrics, and our employee evaluation management tools allow you to configure the process to fit what you need. The management tools will allow you to oversee every component of the evaluation process, including: self-reflection and goal setting, in-class observations, student learning objectives and growth data. That means you can focus on having meaningful discussions about instructional practice with educators.

How does Frontline Professional Growth simplify how we manage forms?

By adding all your forms online within Frontline Professional Growth, the data is easily tracked by not only the end user, but by administration as well. This eliminates the need for spreadsheets to track things like licensure, salary movements, district-required hours and other requirements. Instead, the system replaces your spreadsheets with easily accessible reports, which can always be downloaded to Excel if needed.

Will the solution allow for multiple methods of scoring?

Yes! Frontline Professional Growth’s configuration process is very flexible. Districts can determine their scoring philosophy, be it a Scoring Form Approach, Holistic Approach or a hybrid of these approaches. The solution also allows districts to use conversion charts.

Will the teachers have access to their evaluation data?

Yes, teachers have direct access to their evaluation data, enabling them to regularly assess their progress.

Teachers have the ability to complete forms such as self-reflections and SLO/SGO forms. They also have the ability to upload evaluation evidence via the artifact section – an electronic portfolio for teachers.

Can districts manage SLOs in the solution?

With Frontline Professional Growth, you can host all of your Student Learning Objective data in one system, managing single or multiple SLOs for each person.

Does the system support educator growth based on evaluation results?

You can incorporate data from multiple measures, and with the full Frontline Professional Growth solution, recommend targeted professional learning based on evaluation results. This is known as the Learning Loop, and provides professional learning recommendations through the correlation of individual evaluation outcomes to state-standard-aligned PD opportunities.

Can the system help us with collaborative professional learning?

Yes! Our professional learning management system helps create and manage any type of collaborative or blended learning. Using Groups in Learning & Collaboration Resources, users can participate in discussions with one another, share files, upload videos to request feedback and more. Potential collaborative learning activities include Professional Learning Communities (PLCs), book studies, mentoring and collegial circles. They can be leveraged within the district or even across districts, connecting educators from across the nation to collaborate and share ideas. Groups can also be combined with face-to-face workshops for a more blended experience.

How can we recommend professional learning specifically to our teachers who are in need of improvement?

If your district is using Frontline’s Employee Evaluation Management system, the activities in your Professional Learning Management Catalog can be aligned to recommend professional learning based on evaluation outcomes.

How does Frontline Professional Growth help to streamline professional development management?

Frontline Professional Growth can make your office paperless! We can create your forms online for things such as conferences, graduate courses, salary movements, tuition reimbursements, mentoring plans, mentoring logs, Personal Goal Plans, and more. Then, we help you create an electronic workflow so the form is automatically routed to the appropriate administrators.

Beautiful Dashboards. Real Insights.

Frontline Professional Growth puts the information you need at your fingertips.

See How  

Our district purchased Frontline’s Learning & Collaboration Resources. Can we use those courses in Frontline Professional Growth?

Yes! Resources can be easily added to activities in Professional Learning Management as a source of professional learning. Additionally, districts may upload their own curated resources to the Resource Library. All resources are also available for exploratory learning at any time

Does it integrate with my other software systems?

Frontline Professional Growth integrates with Frontline Absence Management to automatically create an absence and generate a sub request when a PD request requiring a teacher absence is approved.  State-specific integrations are also available.  Additionally, Frontline Professional Growth integrates with other systems via an sFTP process. Frontline provides a list of current integrations here.

How much does it cost?

Frontline Professional Growth is billed as annual subscription based on a per-user license. If you’re interested in using the system, a Frontline representative can discuss your specific needs and send you a proposal.

Does using Frontline Professional Growth save my district time and money?

Yes! By streamlining the submission and approval of forms, evaluation process and access to learning resources, as well as making your data readily available, Frontline Professional Growth saves your administrators time that can be devoted to working with educators to improve student outcomes.

The Cost of Professional Learning:

Do you know your current spend?

Find Out  

What hardware or software do I need to install?

None! Frontline Professional Growth is an entirely web-based solution, so only an Internet connection is required.

Where can I learn more about Frontline Professional Growth?

Visit our solution page for more information about using Frontline Professional Growth.

You may enjoy this hand-picked content:

Best Practices in Professional Learning: Greece Central School District  

 
 

Frontline Professional Growth Frequently Asked Questions (Formerly MyLearningPlan PDMS)

Questions about our professional learning management system formerly known as MyLearningPlan PDMS? You’ve come to the right place!

Here are a few of the most frequent questions we hear from school districts that are researching Frontline Professional Growth. Don’t see your question here? Feel free to contact us!

Why isn’t it called MyLearningPlan PDMS anymore?

MyLearningPlan, a well-known provider of educator professional growth and management tools for K-12 school districts, was acquired on May 1, 2015 by Frontline Education.

Frontline Education is a leading provider of K-12 administrative software. MyLearningPlan PDMS is now part of Frontline Professional Growth, aligning it with the rest of the solutions Frontline Education offers.

How is Frontline Professional Growth different from MyLearningPlan PDMS?

Despite the name change, the software hasn’t changed in terms of functionality — although now the Professional Development Management application is just one part of the broader Frontline Professional Growth solution, which includes tools to manage professional learning, promote coaching and peer collaboration and train and calibrate observers. Our team is working constantly to improve Frontline Professional Growth’s integration with the rest of Frontline’s solutions to provide your district with even better tools.

Why manage professional learning online?

Frontline Professional Growth isn’t about removing the human touch from professional learning. Quite the opposite, actually. By simplifying the professional learning process, compiling forms, goals and PD resources in one place, and improving transparency throughout the whole evaluation process, Frontline Professional Growth helps district leaders cultivate consistent, substantial professional learning for all of their staff. Plus, by giving teachers direct access to their PD resources and evaluation data, teachers can revisit their goals regularly as they seek to grow in their careers.

Can the system help us with collaborative professional learning?

Yes! Our professional learning management system helps create and manage any type of collaborative or blended learning. The program creates Team Rooms where users can participate in discussions with one another, share files and even log their time together. Potential collaborative learning activities include Professional Learning Communities (PLCs), book studies, mentoring and collegial circles. Team Rooms are a great way for users to share work with one another, such as lesson plans based on new learning. Team Rooms can also be combined with face-to-face workshops for a more blended experience.

How can we recommend professional learning specifically to our teachers who are in need of improvement?

If your district is using Frontline’s employee evaluation management system(formerly known as MyLearningPlan OASYS), the activities in your Catalog can be easily aligned to recommended professional learning.

How does Frontline Professional Growth help to streamline professional development management?

Frontline Professional Growth can make your office paperless! We can create your forms online for things such as conferences, graduate courses, salary movements, tuition reimbursements, mentoring plans, mentoring logs, Personal Goal Plans and more. Then, we help you create an electronic workflow so the form is automatically routed to the appropriate administrators.

How does Frontline Professional Growth simplify how we manage forms?

By adding all your forms online within Frontline Professional Growth, the data is easily tracked by not only the end user, but by administration as well. This eliminates the need for spreadsheets to track things like licensure, salary movements, district-required hours and other requirements. Instead, the system replaces your spreadsheets with easily accessible reports, which can always be downloaded to Excel if needed.

Our district purchased Frontline’s course libraries. Can we use those courses in Frontline Professional Growth?

Yes! Content is easily added to the professional learning management system as an additional source of professional learning.

Does it integrate with my other software systems?

Yes. Frontline Professional Growth integrates with other systems via an sFTP process. Frontline provides a list of current integrations here.

How much does it cost?

Frontline Professional Growth is billed as annual subscription based on a per-user license. If you’re interested in using the system, a Frontline representative can discuss your specific needs and send you a proposal.

Does using Frontline Professional Growth save my district time and money?

Yes! By streamlining the submission and approval of forms, our professional learning management system makes your data more visible via our reporting tool. This creates the opportunity for an in-depth analysis of the efficacy of your professional learning processes .

What hardware or software do I need to install?

None! Frontline Professional Growth is an entirely web-based solution, so only an Internet connection is required .

Where can I learn more about Frontline Professional Growth’s employee evaluation management application (formerly MyLearningPlan OASYS)?

For more information about using Frontline Professional Growth for managing observations and evaluations, please visit this page.

Employee Onboarding: Improve First Impressions & Lasting Retention | Part One

For K-12 Human Resources offices, the task of staffing the district for another school year needs to be a two-sided coin, one side focused on getting (recruiting and selection), and the other side focused on keeping (onboarding and retention). Finding the top employees for your district is a complex and time-consuming project, but it is only part of the job. It’s just as important to focus on keeping your district’s top employees engaged and satisfied with their position at the district.

In some organizations, employee onboarding is limited to an orientation event that lasts maybe a few hours on the first 3 or 4 days on the job, but it is really more of an afterthought – the formalities that need to take place once the recruiting and hiring process is over. However, your district’s onboarding process can make a huge impact on the district atmosphere and your colleagues’ regular performance.

Whether thoughtfully crafted or simply superficial, your onboarding process affects the quality of your district’s relationship with its staff and the quality of the staff’s performance in a number of areas, including:

1.  Continuity of services
2.  Consistency in delivery
3.  Reliability & dependability
4.  Maintaining the culture
5.  Cost of replacement training, in dollars and time

While a high rate of employee turnover can result from a number of different factors, making an effort to improve your onboarding process in specific ways can drastically improve employee engagement and retention in your district.

What is Onboarding?

Onboarding is the combination of orientation and induction. The Society for Human Resource Management offers definitions for these two terms:

Orientation

“The introduction of employees to their jobs, co-workers and the organization by providing them with information regarding such items as policies, procedures, company history, goals, culture and work rules.”

Induction

“Programs designed to introduce and acclimate newly hired employees into the organization.”

While orientation and induction make up onboarding, onboarding needs to expand beyond the orientation event for it to be effective. An employee’s onboarding should start upon their acceptance of the job offer and continue through much of the first year, adding engaging practices and knowledge of district culture to the standard processes they learned on their first few days. Effective onboarding needs to be a shared experience.

The Productivity of Pride

Author and onboarding expert David Lee says, “The term ‘Onboarding’ refers to the process of integrating new employees into the organization, of preparing them to succeed at their job, and to become fully engaged, productive members of the organization.”

Fully-engaged, productive employees offer tangible benefits to your district’s overall health and recruiting budget. If you can convert your new hires into engaged district stakeholders, your district will enjoy higher employee retention. This means your district will spend less time and money on recruiting and hiring, orientation, travel and compliance-related regulations.

However, converting new hires into district stakeholders is easier said than done. You must learn to see your employees eye-to-eye and convince them to take up responsibility for the district’s cause alongside of the administrative staff.

David Lee offers one excellent sentiment to strive to create during your onboarding process: pride.

“You can be proud to work here.” If you can communicate this notion to your staff, both verbally (with support for your claim) and through the quality of the onboarding experience, you’ll be on your way to converting your new employees into district ambassadors.

In part two of my onboarding series, I’ll offer advice on how to approach the content of your onboarding process in order to better serve both the district’s and the employees’ needs and to further promote employee engagement and retention.

Is Your District Prepared for a Department of Labor Audit?

A Department of Labor (DOL) audit is the “monster under the bed” for many payroll and business professionals. You don’t want to believe in it. You don’t think you’ll ever see it. But it could pop up at any time, and if it does, it might not look pretty.

With governmental regulations constantly evolving, school districts need to validate their records and check every inch of their practices to make sure they’re not at risk in the case of a DOL audit.

How will I know if my district will be audited by the Department of Labor?

An auditor’s job is to ensure that employees are being paid according to FLSA regulations, as well as other federal and state laws (and that any workers under 18 are being paid according to child labor provisions).

In order to guarantee that these standards are being met in everyday situations, auditors may arrive at your district without prior notice. Generally they will provide a few weeks’ notice to allow you to gather your records, but they’re not required to notify you, and they may choose not to if an employee files a complaint about unlawful pay or practices.

When an auditor does arrive, a few things will happen:

  • They’ll request an extensive list of records for a random group of employees from a random timeframe during the last few years. 
  • They’ll review these records to see if there are any violations or inconsistencies.
  • If you fail to provide the requested documentation, your district will likely fail the audit and be subject to DOL penalties.

What happens if we fail the Department of Labor Audit?

After fully evaluating your records, your auditor will send an official letter stating whether you’ve passed or failed, as well as any reparations that you’ll need to make if you do fail. What exactly your punishments could look like will vary depending on the context of your infringement.

If at least ten “exempt” employees complain that they ought to have received overtime pay for the last two years and the auditor confirms this complaint, you’ll need to provide back pay, under the supervision of the WHD, for those ten employees for those two years and pay an equal amount as liquidated damages, plus any attorney and court fees.

Clearly, it’s possible to incur crippling fines depending on the scope of your infringement. And in the worst of situations, where violations were knowingly incurred, the DOL has stated that “Willful violations may be prosecuted criminally and the violator fined up to $10,000. A second conviction may result in imprisonment.”

(These penalties get far worse if your district employs minor students and violates any child labor laws.)

What should my district be doing to protect itself?

 

Validate Your Classifications

Your district’s employee classification is one of the first things auditors will validate. Classifying employees as exempt from overtime simply because they’re paid on a salary basis is not compliant with FLSA regulations, but this is a common error in many school districts.

Organize Your Records

Another key requirement to preparing for an audit is to make sure you’re storing the required information, and that it is accessible if the auditor requests it.

Improve Your Time and Attendance Tracking

Improve record keeping and workflows by implementing web-based time and attendance system.

Cary Herring, Payroll Specialist from Montgomery ISD, said this about her prior, paper-based process: 

“If you had to pull from past time, you didn’t know where the [former] payroll person had put the timesheets. You have secretaries at different locations figuring out time; some of them are rounding, some of them are not rounding — you have very inconsistent figuring of the time. . . . When we’ve tried to go back and find things from prior times, there were some times you couldn’t find them.”

Cary Herring, Payroll Specialist, Montgomery ISD

That’s why Montgomery ISD switched to a web-based time and attendance program to track and manage their records. “With [the web-based program], everything was set — you have control of it. We knew everything was very consistent — there’s no messes there.”


Track Time and Attendance with Precision

Using a web-based time and attendance system helps you:

  • Automate how overtime is calculated. Getting overtime payments wrong is a major FLSA offender. Hand-keying overtime calculations into payroll systems leads to human error (sometimes overpayment of 1.2%).
  • Determine your district’s number of Full-Time Equivalents (FTE’s), necessary under the Affordable Care Act (ACA).
  • Calculate whether an employee has qualified for health benefits during the year, also necessary under ACA. It’s an auditor’s job to notice if your district has done these things.


Prepare for an Audit Regularly

Finally, one of the best ways to prepare yourself for an audit is to perform regular, voluntary audits. (In fact, regular audits may be required. Familiarize yourself with your state regulations and how they override or supplement federal regulations.) Many school districts hire outside auditors to evaluate their processes annually or biannually.

These audits go a long way in validating compliance and preventing fines potentially incurred during a surprise DOL audit. Not only will regular audits verify the legality of your classifications, payment and practices, but the overall experience of the audit will confirm whether you’re managing your records in a reliable and efficient way.

After experiencing several voluntary audits, then transitioning to a web-based time and attendance program, Cary Herring shared:

“It does affect a lot of people. [Before] it took maybe eight hours to pull the documentation. This last time it was very quick. It probably took an hour this time.” 

Cary Herring, Payroll Specialist, Montgomery ISD

Conclusion

If you checked your mail this morning and found a report from the Department of Labor, would you be confident in your processes, or would your gut sink?

Friday Feature – Adding Account Aliases to Your Reports

A few weeks ago, we talked about using account aliases, the 6-digit shortcut for the 60-digit SACS account. You don’t need any setup to use account aliases. They are built into Escape Online. You can use them in any field where you would normally type an account number. Pretty cool!
But, wait there is more.

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If your district uses account aliases extensively, like many current customers do, you may want to have those aliases appear next to accounts on reports. It is an easy change. Really!

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All you have to do is set the Alias on Reports field in the Ledger tab of the Organization record to Account Link Number and the account aliases will appear on every report that shows an account number!

Friday Feature – Creating a Custom List of Accounts

As the last blog in the Searching for Accounts series, we now understand the different ways in which we can search for accounts (series, wildcard, range). To celebrate our new found knowledge, let’s put what we have learned to use by creating a custom list of accounts. I’m going to show you the search page from the Fiscal-Accounts activity, but you could do this anywhere. You could print requisitions with certain accounts, manage your budget by looking at accounts in custom groupings, or check payroll journal entries. The list is endless.
For this example, I want to search for benefit accounts for certificated employees that work with special needs children in a supervisory or administrative capacity. (Told you I could get a customized list!)

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Here’s my search criteria. Let’s go through it line by line.

Fund – I am only looking at the general fund so I can use the lookup or I can type it since I know it by heart.

Object – I am using a wildcard (*) to “mask” part of the component. My account structure uses the last digit of the 3000 series object to designate a certificated benefit. So, I need to “mask” the two middle characters, thus 3**2.

Resource – I am using a range to focus the list of accounts to special needs resources.  The list will only include accounts that contain a resource within my range.

Function – I am focused on only two functions: Supervision of Instruction and School Administration. I use the comma to indicate a series. The list will only include accounts that have either 2100 or 2700 as the function.

When I press GO, out of the 25,396 accounts this district has for fiscal year 2015, Escape Online returned my customized list of 23 accounts in 1 second.

Perfectly manageable! Perfectly customized! (And, of course, if this is a list I want to review on a regular basis, I could save it as a search favorite!)

4 Reasons Our Substitutes Weren’t Working

Like most school districts, the substitute shortage has affected Elk River School District 728. Over the last three years, our district has struggled to fill all of its open jobs. In recent years, our district has struggled to fill all of its open jobs, which has created a few problems for us.

The Problems of Unfilled Absences

If we can’t get a substitute to fill an absence, we have to parcel out the students in a variety of ways to other teachers who are on the job. Some teachers have had to give up their prep hour to cover a class. In the elementary schools, we sometimes have had to move kids into other classrooms, with teachers doubling up. When we do that, our teachers’ contract requires that we double their pay, too. So we were seeing a huge cost increase, twice as much as it cost us for subs.

Shuffling students had other potential consequences that we were concerned about, too:

  • Quality of learning was likely diminished on those days.
  • Having underprepared teachers who were frustrated about doubling up
  • Students unfamiliar with the teacher they had
  • Overcrowding in the classroom.

Obviously, something needed to be done. The more I looked at it, the more I realized that the problem wasn’t that we didn’t have enough subs on our call list. The issue was getting subs that are on the list to say “yes” to us. We were making declarations about the reason for our problem while sitting here in the district office — and no one had actually asked a substitute. We surveyed our substitutes to learn more about subbing habits, preferences, and issues.

The Survey & What We Learned

We launched a survey electronically to our entire substitute list using Survey Monkey. In the survey, we asked them questions like: How long have you been substituting? At what districts? Which districts do you sub for most? Are there certain teachers or certain shifts you prefer? Would you choose to accept a job at another district over ours? Why?

We had a great response to the survey — 60% of our substitutes participated. From the results, we determined four primary factors that affected our substitutes’ motivation to work in our district.

1. We Needed to Adjust Our Pay Rate & Schedule Structure

We had a two-tiered pay rate schedule in which a substitute could reach the next pay rate within a given school year if they worked 20 full days. However, they’d have to start all over each school year. Naturally, most substitutes said they preferred to work in districts where a pay increase rolled into the following school year. As a solution, we raised our rates, added a third tier, and allowed substitutes — provided that their quality of service remained high — to roll over a pay rate increase from year to year.

2. We Needed to Train Subs on Internal Curriculum and Technology

We found that some substitutes felt unequipped or unprepared for certain educational technologies they found in the classroom, so we created a voluntary training program to help them feel more confident in the classroom.

3. We Needed to Improve Our Communication & Expectations

We found that our substitutes felt a lack of clarity in their roles, especially through:

  • Lapses in communication with the district and school staff at different times.
  • Little to no feedback on their performance, which makes it difficult to learn and improve.
  • Unknowns about what to expect or what is expected of them on a given day.

We want to engage and appreciate our substitutes, and we want them to know what we expect. To curtail some of the issues substitutes are experiencing, we’re working to develop a standard process for them to be onboarded and trained more fully. We’re also defining, documenting and implementing a standard process for providing feedback to substitutes on their performance. We don’t just want to hear about when a substitute trips up; we want to provide encouragement based on positive feedback, and we want to know how well we’re accommodating them.

4. We Needed To Give More Advance Notice

Finally, our substitutes reported that they want notice further in advance for available jobs. Using Frontline Absence & Time, we allow our different buildings and teachers to keep a list of preferred substitutes to work in their classrooms, based on substitute knowledge and past performance. However, we realized that we had made the window of time that other substitutes could see jobs far too small. By the time jobs became visible to them, they had already accepted jobs in other districts.

Now, we still allow our teachers to keep a preferred substitute list, but only for a very limited window of time. We encourage them to prearrange a job if they really need a specific substitute, and we now keep our visibility for all substitutes as open as possible, so that substitutes can see and accept our jobs before making other plans.

Conclusion

If your district is struggling to attract substitutes, make sure you understand your population. Track absence metrics and build reports that show which substitutes are or aren’t working, and what types of jobs they’re accepting, so you can get a better understanding of your district and what substitutes are expecting. If done properly with the right tools, the result will benefit everyone — supervised classrooms at the district and substitutes who are happy and prepared for their work.