Retroactive Pay Adjustments

Retroactive pay adjustments impose significant costs on the University and Health System in terms of money, employee relations and administrative time (retroactive changes currently account for almost half the work in the Payroll Office.) Accordingly, we are changing the policy; the following types of transactions will no longer be permitted:

• Retroactive adjustments to hourly or monthly rates of pay
• Retroactive effective date changes for position reclassification
• Retroactive transfers of employees between positions or departments
• Retroactive transfers of employees between the faculty/staff and biweekly payrolls as well as the faculty/staff and non-compensatory payrolls

In light of these changes, it is critical that no commitments regarding the effective date for pay adjustments be made to employees until written authorization is received from the appropriate budgetary official and Human Resources. All appropriate paperwork should be completed and processed in advance of the effective hire or status change date. In all cases, the required adjustment should be effective with the beginning of the next pay period after written authorization has been received. Retroactive adjustments in funding sources (which do not impact pay rates or classifications) are not impacted by this change.

There are occasionally compelling business reasons for permitting retroactive pay adjustments. These exceptions to policy will be handled on an individual basis, and will require the approval of one of the officers listed below:

Central Administration/DCRI	Tallman Trask III
Provost	James S. Roberts
Medical Center	Scott Gibson
Health System	Kenneth C. Morris

Approved pay adjustments of this type will be made in the following pay period, as a one-time gross adjustment for nonexempt (biweekly) employees or as a supplemental payment for exempt (monthly) employees. We expect these will be very infrequent.

This change is effective October 22, 2001 (11-2 biweekly pay period) for biweekly employees and November 1, 2001 for monthly employees. Any retroactive pay changes submitted to Human Resources and Payroll for these pay periods forward without required pre-approval will be returned to the initiating department.

This change in policy will substantially reduce costs, yet still provide departments the ability to address required pay and classification issues. We thank you in advance for your support.