Boston University’s Student Employment Office released a new payroll system in June, which has caused various payment issues for some student employees.
The new system, MyBUworks — also known as SAP — revamped the previous hour-entry portal, which has prompted varied responses from student employees and supervisors.
The new Student Employment Office portal. SEO changed the payroll system for Boston University students in June. KATE KOTLYAR/DFP PHOTOGRAPHER
The change in the student employment system follows the update to the Student Information System, MyBU Student, which was implemented earlier this year.
Bob Gaipo, assistant manager for the College of Arts and Sciences Information Technology department, said he wishes the platform was more “user-friendly” for students, although there have been improvements on the staff end.
“I was able to see people’s resumes right away and see everything in one location,” Gaipo said. “I think that that makes it a lot better than the constant emails I would get.”
However, Gaipo said they received little communication from SEO on how to navigate the new system.
SEO previously used a “custom-built system to hire and pay student employees,” according to BU Spokesperson Colin Riley. The updated interface adds students to SAP, used for central hiring and payroll for faculty and staff.
The new system aims to create “seamless onboarding and payroll processing,” according to a June 27 announcement on the SEO website.
“At the core of all of these changes was the need to retire the old legacy mainframe system that has been in operation for 40 years,” Riley wrote in an email.
Despite having completed all the necessary forms, one of Gaipo’s employees has no presence in SAP on either end, so neither Gaipo nor the student can input the student’s work hours.
“I don’t think we got a huge amount of insight into [SAP] until right before it rolled out,” Gaipo said. “We were invited to, it wasn’t even a training session, but an overview session … a couple of weeks before they actually transitioned into the new system.”
The overview session did not mention that students would need to reenter their direct deposit information, Gaipo said.
“That should have been part of the training,” Gaipo said. “So [that] I don’t have students who are now waiting for checks to get mailed to them [who] would have eagerly set up a direct deposit had we known that it needed to be done.”
An SEO representative, who wished to remain anonymous for job security purposes, said that the technical issues affecting the new payroll system are “happening across the University, not just [with SEO],” referencing the campus’ concerns about delayed financial aid awards.
“As much as it’s making students frustrated, we’re also getting overwhelmed with all the issues,” they said. “We can feel students’ frustration.”
Riley wrote that “BU is working to repair any hiring errors before the next run of payroll.”
Sophomore Yasmeen Elshafey said she has to wait over a week for her check to get delivered to the payroll office because she was not notified she had to reapply for direct deposit, which she said is a “really big inconvenience.”
Over the summer, Elshafey participated in the First-Year Student Outreach Project with the Community Service Center, where she said it originally took her three weeks to be registered in SAP as a student employee.
Four weeks later, Elshafey said she still hasn’t been paid for those shifts.
Orest Ormenaj, a senior and a student technician at CAS IT, said the new system is not as user-friendly as the old one, but “it’s competent.”
Unlike other student employees at CAS IT, Ormenaj said he has not had any issues with receiving his pay.
“I might miss out on a few hundred dollars in my paycheck if it gets mailed to my house, and then I got to wait a few days to cash, and that’s okay,” Ormenaj said. “There’s a student out there who might not have enough money for groceries one week if they don’t get paid on time.”
