Clocking in to be required at MU

Marijo Dixon is not happy. Within the next year, the information technology analyst at MU’s Truman School of Public Affairs may have to punch a time clock to show how many hours she worked in a day. Every other MU employee who is paid by the hour may have to do the same.

Dixon said she hasn’t had to deal with time clocks since she was 18, when she worked at Sears in St. Louis, printing baby pictures.

“It was the most horrible, mindless job I ever had in my life,” she said. “I don’t know what they’re trying to do to my image, what they’re trying to do to my morale.”

No official timetable has been set for the change to online-based payrolls, said Paul Toler, director of business services at MU, but it is happening.

Currently, hourly employees fill out bi-weekly time sheets, sign the sheets, and then get a supervisor’s signature. Under the new system, department heads will have three options for keeping track of employees’ hours: install a physical time clock in the office, have employees clock in electronically on their computers or have employees self-report their hours in an online reporting system similar to the current paper-based system.

Twelve departments already use an old version of the software that will be used for keeping track of employees’ hours. Those departments will be the first to be added to the new online system, followed by departments that have asked to make the switch. Eventually, all of the more than 8,000 nonsalaried employees at MU will clock in online, Toler said.

The rest of the UM System will follow, said Brian Sanders, payroll manager for the UM System.

“It’s time to update,” Sanders said. “Collecting information on paper is outdated these days. We have to get into the electronic age.”

The online system will help calculate overtime and paid leave, he said.

Though the change to paper-free records has been in the works for more than a year, the staff who will be directly affected feel like they have been left out of the loop, Dixon said. No details about how the new system will work or when it will be put into effect have been communicated to staff, she said.

Dixon and Angel Anderson, an administrative assistant in the School of Journalism, are exploring the issue for the MU Staff Council, said Rebecca Bergfield, chairwoman of the Staff Council.

The topic has generated a lot of discussion.

On Friday, Anderson sent out an e-mail requesting feedback from employees about the move to time clocks. By Monday afternoon, she had received 30 replies. Seventy percent of those replies are against the change, she said.

Dixon said she is concerned about the lack of communication between the people making the decision and the people being affected.

“This is something that affects us, and yet no one asked, ‘What do you think?’” she said.

Sanders, who is handling the UM System-level upgrade, said there is a chain of people responsible for passing the details along. Toler and Amy McKenzie, manager of payroll and records, were to pass the information to the fiscal officers of each department, who were responsible for passing that information along to hourly staff, he said.

Any questions will be addressed Oct. 26, when Toler will meet with the Staff Council to talk about the change.

Dixon, for one, is looking forward to the meeting.

“I may have some misinformation,” she said. “I don’t have all the facts. Now we want to get some.”