Administrative staff who support supervisors who hire and manage student employees received some extra assistance this month in navigating their new role.
In the transition to improved service delivery (ISD), which created service teams to process the bulk of human resources and finance transactions, about 220 Iowa State staff in local departments and units were identified to fill a job management (JM) support role. Most HR activities for student workers, by far the university's largest group of employees, are handled by department and unit staff.
That's where JM support staff come in. They can process whatever routine student-employee human capital management transactions a supervisor would like them to take on.
"We wanted to have somebody local to help support the student employees and the managers of those student employees in the departments," said Mindi Balmer, information management director in university human resources (UHR).
JM support staff can see much of the same information and perform most of the same actions as a student employee's manager. That allows them to help with onboarding and offboarding, job changes, time sheet approval and adjustment, and compensation changes.
"We gave the JM support role similar access that a manager has for a student employee," Balmer said.
To enhance the proficiency of JM support staff in Workday -- which digitized what had often been a paper-based student hiring process and will provide richer data on student employees -- UHR held an information session in Howe Hall last week. A crowd of about 100 attended, giving them a chance to ask questions and get detailed tips from Balmer and other experts. Two user labs for JM support staff also were held earlier this month.
"JM support staff play a vital role in ensuring our student workers are taken care of," said interim vice president of university human resources Kristi Darr. "UHR and the Workday team are committed to staying connected with this group and other HR support roles to make sure they have the knowledge and resources needed to be able to do this work effectively and efficiently. We truly appreciate their efforts."
A video recording of the Sept. 18 information session is posted to Learn@ISU (search for the session titled "Job Management Information Session Recording"). Check out these job aids for step-by-step instructions on performing HR tasks related to student employment:
