Traffic Cones and Payroll

2nd Edition

Monday, October 6, 2008

I have received several questions regarding Friday’s memo and thought they should be shared with all.

Location of the meeting –

The informational meeting for OE is scheduled to be held in the auditorium at the Department of Roads at 1:00. Diane Holthus at DOR sent me the following directions to get to the auditorium.

“The middle back doors at Roads will be unlocked (starting at 12:30 pm) so people may enter there instead of going all the way around to the front doors.”

Address Changes –

Q. My original understanding was that we would be able to enter changes but would then have to re-enter them after Open Enrollment because NIS would revert back to the old address.  If we can't enter address changes at all, we're going to have employee paychecks being sent to the wrong address!  Why can't we enter them, set them aside in a folder and then simply re-enter them when we get the all clear??  

A. Employees will not be able to change their address information during the OE process. They must submit the change information to the PR/HR staff for entry. Following the lockout period, PR/HR staff may enter the change information into the system to assure payroll is delivered to the correct address etc. HOWEVER, any such changes will be lost when the OE file is reset into NIS. If you want to make the change in the meantime, you should store the change form in a folder and know that it will have to be re-entered into the system once the OE data file has been restored to NIS.

The Lockdown –

Q. Will we be able to access NIS during these two days of the lockdown?

A. The simple answer is that you will be able to access any area of NOS that does not affect the database mining process, In addition to the three tabs listed in the first memo, a fourth tab will also be removed. That tab will be the Benefits Administration tab located in the Employee Maintenance folder. Employees will be able to access the self-service portion of NIS, PR/HR staff will be able to access reports and any other areas of NIS not excluded by the four tabs mentioned earlier.

Q. Why wasn’t the data file created over the weekend as in the past?

A. Accuracy and data integrity of the data file are paramount for good results. The file needed to be created as close to the OE start date as possible. Initially, this past weekend was not available to create the file since an update to NIS was already scheduled. We selected Tuesday and Wednesday as the least intrusive days since it was an off-week for bi-weekly payroll and the monthly payroll would not be started yet. Next weekend is too close to the start date to build the file and prepare the database before the OE start date.

If there are further questions, please email me with them and I will do my best to provide you with a speed answer.

Syl Luhring

State Accounting

471-1460

Syl.luhring@nebraska.gov