QUASR gets boost

Additional $800,000 given to new HR system

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The Queen’s University Administrative Systems Replacement (QUASR) project has received an $800,000 boost from the University’s operating budget in order to complete the last leg of a three-year task.

QUASR, a $35 million project, is comprised of new financial software, released in 2009, SOLUS, released in 2010, and a new human resource system which was set to be released in 2011.

“The human resources system includes payroll, so it means that all the employees at Queen’s, they will receive their paycheques through this new system,” said Vice-Principal of administration Caroline Davis.

In December, the Board of Trustees approved the additional funding as well as an extension for the human resource component until Feb. 17.

SOLUS will be shut down until Feb. 20 during Reading Week to allow for the installation of the HR system.

“Some students get paycheques,” she said. “There are interactions between the SOLUS system and the HR system.” Davis said the delay was due in part to labour negotiations between the Canadian Union of Public Employees and the Queen’s University Faculty Association over the summer.

“We figured that getting these collective agreements done so the University could keep operating was probably more important than finishing off the human resources component,” she said.

The additional funding will go towards the wages of eight consultants, four staff positions and the licensing fee for the old system. “What we’ve done is essentially borrow money from ourselves and then we’ll be repaying it through the operating budget over the next [nine] years,” she said.

Davis said Queen’s employees on a bi-weekly pay period will get their first paycheques from the new system on March 2, while those on a monthly system will get their paycheques on March 30. She said neither group will face a delay in pay.

Davis said the old human resource system was maintained by a small group of employees who are set to retire soon.

“We had an old system, very old technology. Three or four people in the whole world who knew how to run it … it’s too big of a risk,” she said. “When the administration sat down four years ago, primarily it was because of the risks involved in trying to maintain these very old, creaky systems going forward.”

Tags

Administration, QUASR, SOLUS

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