SHARP-Shooter February 2003
2002 Total Compensation Statements are Online
The 2002 Total Compensation Statement is now available for employees
to view online at the new Employee Self Service Center at http://www.kansas.gov/employee/
The Total Compensation Statement displays the employee’s direct and
indirect compensation paid in 2002. Statements are provided for all
benefits eligible employees who were:
- Active in the SHARP system on January 13, 2003, and
- Employed all or part of Calendar Year 2002.
Statements for employees at Regents Institutions are not available
on the Employee Self Service Center. Regents Institutions will provide
statements for their employees.
Agencies may also use SHARP reporting capabilities to print a Total
Compensation Statement for individual employees. The report is located
under “Report” in the Administer Workforce panel and must be printed
using a laser printer.
If you print a report for an employee please also give the employee
a copy of the Total Compensation Statement Information Form. It lists
examples of the types of pay and employer contributions that may be
included in the employee’s statement and is posted at http://da.state.ks.us/SHaRP/documents/
.
The Division of Personnel Services and the Division of Information
Systems and Communications used SHARP data to create the statements.
If you have questions please contact Connie Guerrero at (785) 296-0754,
e-mail connie.guerrero@da.state.ks.us
or Patti Pearce at (785) 296-7232, e-mail patti.pearce@da.state.ks.us.
Employee Self Service Center is New
Employees can log in to the new State of Kansas Employee Self Service
Center (formally AKSESS) for their Total Compensation Statement, Benefits
Confirmation Statement, and to make their elections during the annual
Group Health Insurance Open Enrollment period. Other links available
at the Employee Self Service Center include employment information for
Civil Service jobs and HealthQuest. Several new self service options
will become available in June 2003. Additional information regarding
the new options will be coming soon.
Vacation Leave Overages
It is not too early to assist your employee’s with managing their
vacation leave in preparation of the fiscal year end.
According to Kansas Administrative Regulation (K.A.R) 1-9-4(a)(1)(C)(2)
(Vacation Leave): “At the end of the last payroll period paid in each
fiscal year [for FY03 this date is 06/07/03], up to 20 hours of any
accrued vacation leave that exceeds an employee’s maximum accumulation
of hours established in paragraphs (a) (1) (A) and (B) shall be converted
to sick leave. After this conversion, all remaining vacation leave over
the maximum accumulation of hours shall be forfeited at the end of the
last payroll period paid in that fiscal year.”
To view K.A.R. 1-9-4 in its entirety, go to the Kansas Administrative
Regulations website at http://da.state.ks.us/ps/documents/regs/art-9.htm#1-9-4.
Vacation Overage Conversion Instructions (both General and Detailed)
are available at the SHARP Customer Service Documents website page:
http://da.state.ks.us/sharp/documents/.
To assist you in determining who in your agency is currently over the
maximum vacation, you can generate the SHARP Vacation Leave Overage
report (KBEN354) using the following path: Go > Administer Workforce
> Time and Leave > Reports and then enter the Department and Page Break
Level criteria.
Additional vacation leave overage reminders will be conveyed to agencies
and employees prior to the end of the fiscal year.
SHARP Agency Meetings Scheduled for April
The second round of agency meetings will be held in April, 2003, at
Topeka and Wichita. The schedule is:
- April 23, Topeka, Morning Session, at the Memorial Auditorium
- April 24, Wichita, Afternoon Session, SRS Conference Room 3080
- April 30, Topeka, Morning Session, at the Memorial Auditorium
- Registration information and times will be coming soon.
Update on Email Use in the SHARP 8.0 System
The SHARP upgrade to PeopleSoft 8.0 introduces several automated workflow
and self-service processes that use individual email addresses to contact
both SHARP users and employee self-service users. Current self-service
processes such as group health insurance open enrollment will also use
the same method of access, user ID’s and passwords, and email addresses
as the new SHARP applications.
The following information discusses who will be affected by the new
processes being implemented and employee email address requirements
and use.
1. Who will be affected by the new processes?
New self-service and workflow processes may affect all state employees.
This includes both SHARP users and employee self-service users. “SHARP
Users” in 8.0 are similar to the current SHARP 7.02 system users. These
are employees who are authorized to enter transactions or view information
in the system. “Employee Self-service Users” refers to all state employees,
including SHARP Users, who will use the employee self-service features
of the new system. SHARP Users will have two separate ID’s - one for
SHARP access and one for employee self-service access.
All state agencies will be affected by these changes. Currently, a number
of small agencies do not enter transactions into SHARP. With the implementation
of 8.0, these agencies will use SHARP for certain purposes and their
employees will use the self-service processes.
2. What processes will use email?
Five processes are being implemented that will use email. Each process
is listed below along with an explanation of the process, who will be
affected, and estimated volumes of email.
Form W-4 Exempt Status Expires - This annual process will run each December
to notify employees currently exempt from income tax withholding that
their exemption will expire on December 31st and a new Form W-4 needs
to be completed. An email will be sent to each employee that is exempt
from withholding. Email will be sent to approximately 180 employees
statewide. (Note: A worklist item will also be sent to agency SHARP
Users with the security role of Agency Payroll Workflow Administrator.)
Form W-5 EIC Status Expires - This annual process will run each December
to notify employees who have a Form W-5 (Earned Income Credit Advance
Payment Certificate) in effect that their certificate expires on December
31st and a new Form W-5 needs to be completed. An email will be sent
to each employee with a Form W-5 in effect. Email will be sent to approximately
50 employees statewide. (Note: A worklist item will also be sent to
agency SHARP Users with the security role of Agency Payroll Workflow
Administrator.)
Form W-4 Self-Service Changes - This self-service application allows
employees to enter their own Form W-4 tax withholding information changes.
Once an employee enters the Form W-4 changes, an email confirming the
changes is sent to the employee and another email is sent to the agency
SHARP User with a security role of Agency Payroll Administrator. (Note:
Changes to additional withholding amounts and tax information for other
States cannot be entered through the self-service application.) Email
will be sent to approximately 70 employees per day statewide. Employees
at Board of Regents’ Institutions will not use this process.
Paycheck Confirmation - This process will send an email each pay period
informing agencies that the on-cycle payroll has been confirmed and
paycheck information is available to employees through the employee
self-service paycheck view. The email will be sent to the SHARP User
in each agency with the security role of Agency Payroll Administrator.
One email will be sent to each agency per pay period. Board of Regents’
Institutions will not use this process.
End of Employee Probationary Period - This process will run each pay
period to identify state employees whose probationary period ends within
30 days. An email for each employee identified will be sent to the SHARP
User in each agency with the security role of Agency HR Administrator.
Approximately 1,600 emails will be sent per pay period statewide.
3. Will employees be required to have an email address?
All employees, both SHARP Users and Employee Self-Service Users, must
have an email address of some type in the system at “go-live”. This
email address can be a work address, personal address, or a default
address set up by an agency for its employees that don’t have an email
address. The requirements for each of the two user groups are as follows:
SHARP Users: These employees must have an email address that is accessible
from work. Normally, this would be an email address the agency provides
to the employee.
Plans are being considered that would use these email addresses to communicate
SHARP related information such as system availability directly to SHARP
users. A recent agency survey indicated that all SHARP users in the
current 7.02 system have work email addresses, so we do not expect this
to be a problem.
Employee Self-Service Users: These employees can use either a work email
address provided by the agency, a personal address that does not have
to be accessible from work, or a default address established by the
agency. (Note: SHARP users will also have an email address for employee
self-service. This email address can be the same as the work address
noted above or it can be a different address.)
We strongly encourage each agency to provide an individual email address
to each of its employees. Our agency survey last year indicated that
a majority of state employees currently have email at work. However,
a significant number of employees do not. Agencies have noted a variety
of budgetary, work location, and job duty issues that would make it
difficult for them to provide email to these employees in the short
term. If an agency has employees without work email addresses, the agency
could consider one of the following alternatives:
Employees’ Personal Email Addresses - Employees may use personal email
addresses for the self-service processes. This option should be at the
discretion of the employee. This approach has been successfully used
the last several years for the on-line Group Health Insurance Open Enrollment
process.
Free Email Addresses - Another low cost option an agency might use is
to assist employees in setting up a free email address via a third-party
such as Hotmail.com or Yahoo.com. If this approach is used, an agency
might consider setting up a personal computer with Internet access in
a shared location for employees to access periodically. There are also
a number of libraries and educational institutions throughout the state
that provide citizens free access to the Internet.
Default Email Addresses - An agency may provide a default email address
for employees without an individual email address. This address can
be an existing address or a new one set up for this purpose. Using this
option means that email sent to these employees would be routed to the
default email address. The agency would have to designate an employee(s)
to monitor email and develop procedures to distribute the information
to the employees. By using a default email address, the work effort
should be similar to that associated with the current paper-based process.
As employees are assigned individual email addresses, agencies will
benefit from increased efficiencies.
Each agency must provide the Project with one default address for the
agency. This address will be used during the data conversion process
to insert an email address for any employee in the agency that has not
supplied one (see No. 4 below). In addition, the agency may also use
this address during the hire process for employees who won’t have or
do not yet have an email address. If possible, the default address should
begin with the three-digit agency number. The agency default address
must be sent to the Change Management Team not later than April 1, 2003.
Agencies may also use default addresses other than the one “official”
agency default. For example, if an agency had several employees without
email in an office, the agency could choose to use an existing email
address in that office as the default for those employees. If an agency
chose to implement this approach, the agency would be responsible for
entering and maintaining the email addresses.
4. How will employee email addresses be collected prior to the upgrade?
The proposed methods for collecting and maintaining email addresses
in SHARP are outlined below. All state employee records in SHARP will
be required to contain an email address prior to “go-live” in June 2003.
SHARP User Email Addresses: We will collect these work email addresses
as part of a survey to be sent later this spring. This survey will request
security information needed to set up roles and permissions for SHARP
Users in the upgraded system. More information will be provided later.
Employee Self-Service User Email Addresses: Prior to implementation,
state employees will be encouraged to log in to a web site accessible
from the new State Employee Portal located at http://www.kansas.gov/employee/.
This site will allow an employee to enter or update his/her email address.
An email address will only exist if the employee provided an email address
as part of the October 2002 Group Health Insurance Open Enrollment,
Benefits Confirmation Statement, or Employee Total Compensation Statement
(available online February 14, 2003). If an email address was not provided,
or is no longer current, the employee must log on to the site that will
be deployed later this spring for this purpose to enter an email address,
or update one previously provided (if no longer correct). The information
obtained through the email collection process conducted this spring
will be converted to SHARP 8.0 during the implementation process in
June. If an employee does not provide an email address through this
process, we will insert the agency default email address into the employee’s
record as part of that implementation process. Additional information
about this email collection process will be sent once the final dates
and details have been finalized.
5. How will the email addresses of SHARP and employee self-service users
be maintained after implementation?
Existing Employees – Employees will update their own email addresses
by making needed changes through the employee self-service process.
New Hires – An email address will be entered in SHARP on the Personal
Data page as part of the new hire process. If an employee has not yet
been assigned an email address, or will not have access to one, an agency
default address may be entered. This email address will then be added
to the self-service profile for the employee. An employee can later
change the email address through the employee self-service process.
The SHARP upgrade Change Management Team is interested in working with
state agencies to support their efforts to identify and provide email
addresses and Internet access to all state employees. If you have questions
or concerns, contact us by email at SHARPCM@da.state.ks.us
or call Cecil Stout at 785-296-2130. Please send your agency default
email address to the Change Management email address noted above.
Readiness Checklist Reminder
The second submission of the Agency Readiness Checklist is due by March
14, 2003. Agencies should return the completed form to Doug Quinn. The
completed form can be emailed to SHARPCM@da.state.ks.us,
faxed to (785) 296-1168, or mailed to DISC, Attention: Doug Quinn, Landon
State Office Building, Room 751-S, Topeka, KS 66612.
A copy of the checklist can be found at http://.da.state.ks.us/sharp/documents/UpgradeMeetingNov7.20.htm
Notice:
If your computer is set up with the State Outlook e-mail, you can
select SHARP Change Management from the Global Address Book and send
any questions about the upgrade there. Otherwise send e-mail to SHARPCM@da.state.ks.us
.
Attention:
Stay up-to-date on the latest information about the SHARP upgrade
by signing up for the SHARP information list at: http://da.state.ks.us/sharp/infolist.htm
.
Please inform all SHARP users about this important list!
SHARP Customer Service Web Page:
http://da.state.ks.us/sharp
PeopleSoft 8.0 Free Pre-Class Tutorial
http://www.psknowledgecenter.com/af/peoplesoft/my/preclass.html
