By Вen Li
On Tue., June 11, 2002 the Students’ Legislative Council voted to become more efficient.
By a vote of 11 to 1, they approved on second reading the purchase of the $15,570 automated time and labour management system from ITR.
"Since we opened the new MacEwan Hall, the number of hourly employees has increased by 60 per cent," said Students’ Union Vice-President Operations and Finance Robbie White. "The current manual system just isn’t working."
In addition to reducing record-keeping and data-entry tasks, the hand-scanning system will do many of the tasks associated with monthly payroll calculations.
At the first reading, some councilors expressed concern about both the expense of the system and the role of management in supervising employees.
"This machine does a lot of the human resources stuff for us, it’s not just a time sheet," said White.
White said the system should pay for itself within a year through reduced unworked time paid to employees–estimated at $10,000 per year–and the reduction of one full-time human resources position to part-time.
Card-reader systems were considered, but were rejected on cost and because the $3 cards could be lost or used to check in absent employees.
Although no specific date has been set for the installation of the hand-reader system, White said that it should be functional by September.