Continuous Improvement Bright Spot: SFS Federal Work Study Vouchers

 A key part of continuous improvement culture is "finding the bright spots" -- looking at who has had success making changes and operating differently. Small changes can make a big difference!

The Issue:  Completing the paperwork to hire a student for a Federal Work Study (FWS) position was a pain point for schools and units.  Imaging and reviewing the paperwork was a pain point for Student Financial Services (SFS).  The process involved duplication of effort, manual entry of data, lack of consistency between two systems of record (HR and Financial Aid), manual imaging of thousands of individual submissions, and such “quaint” elements as wet signatures and faxed or emailed forms.  It was a lot of effort for everyone involved, but necessary to make sure both the student and the job were eligible for Federal Work Study.  Often, SFS would receive FWS vouchers that were incomplete or that had incorrect information, which meant team members would have to double back and check with the submitter.  When faxed or emailed, forms could also get lost or sent in unusable file formats.  And because the hiring and voucher-creation processes were entirely independent of one another, and because SFS had no access to the hiring information, there were challenges from a reconciliation standpoint as well.

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The Improvement:  The SFS Federal Work-Study team noticed that much of the voucher information was already being entered in Workday as part of the hiring process, yet it had to be re-entered on the FWS voucher in order for SFS to have a copy for federal audit purposes.  What if the information could be pulled directly from Workday to populate the required voucher and job description?

The Solution:  Shuler (then of SFS, now part of the FST team), Hopkins, and others from within SFS (including Ashley Rogers, Beth Steppe, Mary Fields, and Sabrina Whitcomb) worked with the UVAHR Team to make the improvement.  The cross-functional team was able to develop an integration between Workday HCM and ImageNow that transformed the process.  Now for almost all FWS-hire-related functions (Phase I) the submitter provides a few additional data points on an integrated questionnaire; the remaining information is pulled directly from Workday; and the FWS voucher and job description are automatically generated, approved electronically by departmental representatives, and sent to the SFS ImageNow system through a nightly process with no extra labor involved!

The Benefits:  The data submitted with the form is now more reliable, as it is fed directly from Workday hiring information.  Also, since the form is electronic, incomplete forms are a thing of the past due to required fields (fields that also have clearer explanation of the information being sought).  No emailing or faxing is required, and the SFS review process has been streamlined dramatically as a result of standardized formatting, typed vs. hand-written entries, and many fewer opportunities for user error.

The Bottom Line:  Last year 855 Federal Work Study students were hired, resulting in 3,194 imaged pages (submissions are more than one page each, and students often hold more than one position).  Shuler, Hopkins, and their colleagues finished the new process in August (in the midst of a pandemic and distributing CARES Act funding!), just in time for it to be useful for schools and units that were hiring student workers for the fall.  Because continuous improvement is continuous, the next step is creating a similar approach for FWS compensation changes as well as hires – that’s a Phase II enhancement, on the docket for early 2021!

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A big shout out goes to Janet Turner-Giles and the Talent Flex Team, who provided insights as to end-user and downstream impacts on the HR and departmental side, and especially to senior analyst Maggie Breeden, also of UVAHR, whose Workday programming prowess was instrumental in making the new process operational. Thanks to the SFS Federal Work-Study team and our ImageNow colleagues.  Thank you, all! 😊

 

Got a bright spot to share?  Email the Continuous Improvement team at  uvafinance_ci@virginia.edu