Faculty Focus on Research: Salary Certification to Ease Administrative Burden

The FST Leadership Council recently signed off on a decision to transition UVA from effort reporting to salary certification as part of finance transformation’s continuous improvement efforts.

After the review of several options, including Workday’s Effort Certification, the recommendation is to implement Huron Employee Compensation Compliance (ECC) to replace our current Effort@ system. Since UVA will already implement Huron’s pre-award system (to replace ResearchUVA), we were able to negotiate a competitive price to include ECC as well. Final security-related sign-off is pending UVA ITS review of Huron security information gathered through a survey. The initial conversation between ITS security experts and Huron representatives went well, with ITS satisfied with the information Huron provided.

If all goes to plan, Huron ECC will be implemented after Workday Financials goes live on July 1, 2022. The first salary certification cycle using ECC would take place in the February-March 2023 timeframe. Huron ECC has been implemented at other universities, some of whom transitioned to Workday Financials, so integration between ECC and Workday should be seamless. The transition from effort to salary certification will align UVA with other R1 institutions that are looking at various ways to reduce administrative burden for both faculty and the institution, without compromising on compliance.

In late 2014, the federal government provided updated guidance on standards of documentation for salaries charged to federal awards and removed examples referencing effort certification. In 2015, UVA’s Organizational Excellence Office, Office of Sponsored Programs, and Financial Office of Compliance conducted focus groups with 110 faculty members in five schools. The major themes were consistent across the schools, and there was an overwhelming plea to improve Recon@UVA and Effort@UVA to reduce the associated burdens. In 2016, a consulting firm also evaluated ways to increase efficiency in federal compliance areas with a main focus on effort reporting. When the Finance Strategic Transformation project began, it seemed the opportune moment to act on these insights to better preserve the research time for UVA's esteemed faculty.

Office of Sponsored Programs Director of Post Award Urmila Bajaj, also the FST grants management co-lead, has long been an advocate of shifting to salary certification. Bajaj says, “We have heard from our faculty; they’re spending a lot more time on administrative tasks instead of research work. Federal funding is public money; we understand that we need to adhere to the federal compliance requirements. We can achieve that by creating an ethical and compliant environment, utilizing efficient systems supported by clear policies and guiding principles without overburdening the faculty and staff.  This transition to salary certification is one area where faculty and staff are going to appreciate UVA’s stand to reduce the admin burden drastically.”

While the change has not been formally announced yet, the FST team has communicated with departments, which have shared updates with their research faculty. Bajaj explains that faculty are enthusiastic about what they have heard so far.

Keep an eye on the blog for more information about this decision, and you can always stay up to date on project-related decisions with the FST Decision Log.