One of the most time-critical projects within the Cornerstone initiative is Human Resources/Payroll (HR/P) Transformation, which goes live on January 2, 2025.
By now, you may know the “what” of HR/P Transformation: Rutgers is transitioning its human resource and payroll systems from PeopleSoft to Oracle HCM (Human Capital Management) Cloud and improving some of the related processes.
You may also be aware of the “why” of the HR/P Transformation initiative: to improve the work experience at Rutgers by modernizing, unifying, and simplifying the administrative information systems and processes for HR and payroll across the university. The goal of this project is to ensure that by the time we hit the January 2, 2025 go-live date, everyone at the university will encounter fewer obstacles and technical issues with HR and payroll matters.
But are you aware of what’s driving—or, rather, guiding—this work? The HR/P Transformation is guided by a set of six principles: people-focused, engaged, strategic, consistent, technology-enabled, and data-informed/accessible.
Currently, the project teams are working on, or continuing to refine, the systems to ensure they meet the needs of the university and its community. We recently wrapped up three weeks of sessions confirming the base configuration of the system with campus and unit representatives and moved from there to the first round of system integration testing.
The next step—which kicked off earlier this month and will continue through the summer—is the future-state Business Process Reviews (BPRs). The goal of the BPR sessions is to define the processes and procedures that will be in place once the new system is implemented. The BPRs also will inform how the HR/P initiative will affect the daily roles and responsibilities of those involved in this work today. Lastly, this process will help the project team drill down to the details of Phase 1 topic areas such as strategic workforce planning and time/labor.
Beyond that, at this point we’re not able to answer how Phase 1 of the HR/P initiative will affect specific roles, especially daily. However, through the future-state BPRs, we’ll be able to identify, share, and train on any differences or gaps in process and technology.
As we make steady progress in HR/P Transformation, you may be wondering about the endgame, when you’ll know about it, and how this will all affect your daily work.
To that end, the project teams will continue communicating with you—every step of the way—through Cornerstone News as well as via targeted emails to stakeholder groups within the university. You may also hear from one or more of the 220-plus members of the universitywide Change Agent Network, which is an extension of the project and communications teams.