Students have complained that Grinnell’s new payroll system is resulting in decreased pay due to wage rounding. The Union of Grinnell Student Dining Workers (UGSDW) met with representatives from the College to discuss wage rounding this week.
Unlike Novatime, the College’s former payroll system, ADP Lyric does not pay based on the exact number of minutes student employees work. Instead, work is paid based on 15-minute intervals. ADP uses seven minutes to round clocked-in time to these 15-minute intervals. For example, students who clock between seven and 21 minutes of work will get paid for 15 minutes. ADP is in its first semester as Grinnell’s payroll platform.
Grace Dukesherer `26, a student employee at the mailroom, has felt the effects of rounding firsthand. For some of her hour-long shifts at the mailroom, she said she was only paid for 45 minutes of work.
“If I clocked in at 8:55 and clocked out at 9:50, then ADP says I only worked 45 minutes,” Dukesherer said in an interview.
On Oct. 29, UGSDW and the College met as part of a regular Union Management Committee (UMC) session to discuss wage rounding. The College and the Union use these meetings to discuss workplace and contract issues, according to Morgan Smith `26, the co-president of UGSDW. During the meeting, Smith said, the College informed UGSDW that the rounding was an intentional decision to better match how full and part time non-student employees are paid.
According to federal labor regulations (29 C.F.R. § 785.48[b]), employers may round time entries to the nearest quarter hour as long as the practice averages out and does not systematically disadvantage employees. During the UMC, the College stated that rounding will either balance out or benefit students overall.
Dukesherer disagrees. “I think especially for people who work 50 minutes, this could definitely cut down on their wages,” Dukesherer said.
Ellen de Graffenreid, vice president for communication and marketing, in an email to The S&B, mentioned several instances in which students benefit from rounding. “A student who clocks in at 6:06 p.m. and clocks out at 8:10 p.m. would be paid for two hours and fifteen minutes but would have worked only two hours and four minutes,” de Graffenreid wrote.
For UGSDW, the lack of communication from the College about wage rounding to student employees and supervisors is also a problem. Smith said that the College had not informed the student body about these changes, which they believe reflects a larger problem.
“This gets into a larger issue of complaints that I’ve heard from both students, staff and faculty about the College not clearly providing guidance on how ADP works, the issues that are going on, when they’re being fixed, things like that,” said Smith.
De Graffenreid told The S&B that Human Resources has been in contact with faculty and staff about ADP issues. However, there have not been any emails about rounding sent directly to student workers. Jana Grimes, vice president of human resources, sent a non-student staff wide email on ADP issues on Monday, Oct. 27.
“I recognize that several of these issues have impacted many of you in your daily work and apologize for the inconvenience and frustration this has caused,” Grimes wrote to staff. “Some of these we could anticipate, however, several of the issues we’ve encountered since launching ADP to campus were not expected nor known, as they did not show up in the pre-launch test environment.”
“I hesitate to criticize them [the College] because we knew from the start that this was going to be a long and complicated rollout,” said Smith. “So, we as the Union are trying to give them grace, as they have requested.”
UGSDW will continue to monitor the rounding to ensure that student workers are not negatively affected, Smith wrote to The S&B following the meeting.
