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[dale1]

I'm dealing with some HR policies at my campus that are driving me slowly insane.  It turns out our other campus has the same HR policy but their staff actually interpret it differently and in a more reasonable and humane way.  Post your HR inanities here, and let's commiserate together!

[helpful]

Can you give a (general) example?

[michigander]

My number one has already been discused on a couple of forums:  the use of automated online employment applications that won't be processed without a specific dollar amount for desired salary which really ought to be put off until the final negotiation stage.

I also dislike variations on fee courtesy that require the employee to file a FAFSA.  I realize that employers in this economy can sometimes gain significant tuition revenue by harvesting all of an employee's financial aid eligibility, but it gives my employer a lot of my personal information that I'd rather they not have.

[cj405]

I also dislike variations on fee courtesy that require the employee to file a FAFSA.  I realize that employers in this economy can sometimes gain significant tuition revenue by harvesting all of an employee's financial aid eligibility, but it gives my employer a lot of my personal information that I'd rather they not have.

What now?

[dale1]

@helpful:

Without giving too much away, there is a policy regarding intra-level moves (i.e. from Accountant Level 1 in X unit to Accountant Level 1 in Y unit).  The policy is interpreted on this campus to mean that if one moves laterally, even if the positions are different and the scope is different, no pay increase is available.  So in the above example, if one went from Accountant 1 in a small unit to Accountant 1 for the university (difference in scope), a pay increase would not be possible.

What's even worse is that at another campus in this system, the HR people don't interpret the policy the same way.  Departments and units can get away with offering higher salaries for lateral moves.  Completely unfair.  Why would you want a policy to be interpreted in the most narrow way possible given a heterogeneous organization?

[zharkov]

I think I'd side with the evil HR side on that one.  I'd expect that all "level 1s" with X years of service should be making the same pay.  If the other department is really more demanding, why not hire someone as "level 2" and pay them more?

Anyway, my beef is the amount of forms and paperwork we need to submit to pay an honorarium.  We're just talking a few hundred dollars, at most.  HR in turn blames the US Dept of Labor for making the rules stricter.  (I don't know if that is true or not.)

[dale1]

Evil HR is evil because:

1. There are too few levels and the differences among positions are vast.  So you could actually go from "Entry Accountant" to "Second Accountant" or "Assistant/Associate Director of Accountancy" and be in the same level.
2. The same policy is being interpreted and implemented differently one two campuses in the same system - thereby creating a terrible disincentive to invest in yourself or stay in the system because you cannot get a pay increase for a legitimate increase in responsibilities.

There used to be very many levels, so these conflicts didn't exist.  But now that there are just a handful of levels, legitimate increases are not possible because too many positions fall in the same category - it's like bringing 20 levels down to 7.

[polly_mer]

Dale, you should wave when you pass me on campus.  I'm not affected by that particular policy, but, yes, it's been a problem around here for people like administrative assistants.  I've heard people say, "Can you believe that that's only being advertised as a level N for that workload?  I was interested until I read that part of the ad."

[msparticularity]

We have an odd mix of HR and payroll processing procedures that lead to serious cash flow issues for personnel. To wit: I got an internal grant to work as part of an internal team on a university-wide effort. I was to be paid the equivalent of one month's salary for work done across two months. For reasons that escape me, HR decided to pay this in a single lump sum on the same date that I was to receive my summer school pay--and to treat the total sum as if it were a single month's pay. In other words, I and everyone else who was involved in this project and who also had a summer school course suddenly had a one-month base pay that reflected an annual income of twice what we actually make--with everything, including federal income tax, withheld accordingly.

Of course, I will get that $1500 or so back eventually from the IRS, along with the excess state income tax that was withheld. The thing is, there are really very simple ways in which this could have been handled--and most would actually have been far more correct from both a legal and an internal and state-level auditing perspective. But no--this was apparently easier for some mindless clerk. And you don't even want to know how they go about reimbursing employee-paid expenses...

[barred_owl]

Don't get me started...

It's not so much our HR policies that aggravate me--it's the way those policies are put into practice and/or the limited capabilities of the HR staff in dealing with issues ranging from hiring procedures to payroll.

In my first month at this gig, I had a run-in with the "benefits coordinator" who miscalculated (or erringly entered) the deductions for health insurance I was supposed to pay.  Second month at the gig--guess what?  Had to pay more toward health insurance than the previous month because of her error.  Her apology?  Nonexistent, except to say, "We've been really busy."  Honest to goddess--that was her reply!!  It amounted to an "Oopsie!"  I dunno--I find "oopsie!" unacceptable as a response when a person's paycheck comes in at several hundred dollars less than expected...

Like Msparticularity, I have a summer research grant (internal).  Upon notification of the award, I was told that I would receive my stipend (one month's salary, more or less), on July 1st.  July 1 came and went--no stipend.  Subsequently, I had to send an email message/question to SIX different people to ask when I might expect to receive that stipend.  Two responded, and their answers were contradictory--not surprising, since these two worked in two different offices (HR and Sponsored Programs).  Sadly, those two offices are physically located in the same building, approximately half a hallway from one another.  You may draw your own conclusions about the effectiveness of interoffice communication in my university system.  At this instant, I have my fingers crossed that I will see my stipend direct-deposited in my bank account on Monday.  I'm not holding my breath, however.

I imagine, in fact, that I will receive my stipend sometime in November, with a follow-up email that translates to "Oopsie!"

[polly_mer]

Oh, man, those oopsies with pay.  Let's see

• Oh, you haven't been paid for two months because we entered the wrong date on your contract so that it ends December last year instead of December this year?  Well, I can withhold at the ten-dependents-claimed rate and give it to you in one lump sum next pay period.
• Oh, remember when I insisted that insurance required you to elect for having your 10-month contract paid over 12 months?  Well, I messed that up even after you did the paperwork three times, so for the next two months, your paychecks will only be the 100 buck insurance stipend.  Oopsie, my bad.
• Well, yes, your paycheck was less than it ought to have been during the 10 months, but that was the furlough days, not the spreading of money from 10 months into 12 months. 
• Yes, you filled out the effort report a month before the one-week contract and signed the contract, but since the contract wasn't filed with us until two weeks after the work was done, you cannot be paid for four months since the one person who can authorize that payment is on vacation.

[brixton]

HR just instituted a policy where the low-level administrative staff hours are clocked based on when their computer is on.  Our IT department is very small and very unreliable.  It is not rare to come in and find the offices offline, which means the administrative staff turn on their computers, no power, and thus aren't registered as being here.  This means that the head of unit (me) has to fill out all sorts of forms documenting that the computers were offline (even though the campus is small and if our computers are offline, every one's computer is offline.)  We then have about 10 more hoops to jump through to confirm that the ad staff was indeed here.  If one counts the number of admin hours that one captures by this screwy system.  Multiply the secretarial hourly wage, and then compare the number of hours theyre losing from my bigger paycheck to document my staff's presence, you wonder what HR was thinking.  It's not like any office had any secretarial absentee problem (that I know of).  Sigh.

[scotia]

There are so many policies and such a general lack of competence that I do not know where to begin. One particular bugbear is that we now have a 'streamlined' electronic system for handling job applications. Part of this 'streamlining' means that everyone on the SC has to login to the system and print off the applications themselves (I have yet to serve on a SC where anyone has them electronically when we hold short-listing meetings). So instead of someone who is paid at an admin assistant's rate doing the work we have deans, heads of department and faculty - with significant opportunity and salary costs - printing off the materials individually. We cannot pass the job on to our own admin assistants because the system is set up with our main university logins, which we reveal to anyone on pain of something severe.

The crazy thing is that most departments have one admin assistant who has to look after up to 20 faculty and several hundred students. The bit of HR that deals with my division of the university has four admin assistants.

[glowdart]

We have an odd mix of HR and payroll processing procedures that lead to serious cash flow issues for personnel. To wit: I got an internal grant to work as part of an internal team on a university-wide effort. I was to be paid the equivalent of one month's salary for work done across two months. For reasons that escape me, HR decided to pay this in a single lump sum on the same date that I was to receive my summer school pay--and to treat the total sum as if it were a single month's pay. In other words, I and everyone else who was involved in this project and who also had a summer school course suddenly had a one-month base pay that reflected an annual income of twice what we actually make--with everything, including federal income tax, withheld accordingly.

Of course, I will get that $1500 or so back eventually from the IRS, along with the excess state income tax that was withheld. The thing is, there are really very simple ways in which this could have been handled--and most would actually have been far more correct from both a legal and an internal and state-level auditing perspective. But no--this was apparently easier for some mindless clerk. And you don't even want to know how they go about reimbursing employee-paid expenses...

When faced with this situation, I once tried to reason that the summer grant money was meant to help with my expenses during the summer, not with my expenses when I get my tax return in March. 

To make a similar point, a colleague once tried to get reimbursed for credit card interest charges that resulted from summer expenses sitting on the card until the money was actually released via tax return 9 months later. 

[menotti]

Not my university, but one I work with: The statewide hiring freeze means one cannot hire anyone, including students, on grants.

I mean, what?  We can't accomplish this work without staff.  We will not get the money if we can't do it, and we certainly won't get more in the future.  Bye, bye, overhead.  There is no conceivable way this makes sense..