- Hi, everybody, I'm Mark Balthrop with Learning and Employee Development. And this is a video that we're making available as a conversation about bi-weekly payroll conversion. This video should provide you with several resources on working with it and we'll have continued resources available from now on, so I'm first gonna introduce Tommi Ledoux, Tommi is the deputy director of HR and Tommi's gonna talk to us about the why. Tommi, why are we doing, going to bi-weekly payroll?

- Thank you, Mark. We're actually, there's a statutory mandate that every state agency be on a bi-weekly payroll system. And if, OKDHS, if we lead this initiative, we will not only be able to upgrade our systems that we currently use, but we'll also have more control over our payroll processes. Another thing to keep in mind about going to bi-weekly payroll is that there's no longer going to be a first or a second payroll. Meaning that there's not going to be any minimum annual leave balance requirement anymore. Which means that new employees will be paid sooner, and also you will have access to your accrued leave more quickly. You'll have access to it every two weeks, and that's opposed to every month.

- All right, we're gonna turn now to Cathy Menefee, and so she's gonna talk to us about some of the hows, how it works, as well as a few of the resources that, that would be available to us.

- Okay, so, Mark, I think the first thing that I wanna tell people about is when are we transitioning, I think that's the most important thing. So, like Tommi just told us, our pay periods run from the 16th of the month to the 15th of the month right now, and so we will transition into our first bi-weekly payroll beginning on August 16th. Because we timed those up, there won't be weird payrolls that we have to run for a couple days, and so it's really advantageous to both HR and to finance for us to do that. So that first bi-weekly payroll is gonna be from August 16th to the 29th, and it will pay out on September 11. The thing that I think is really important to understand is, how do we get paid today? So today we're on a monthly, what's called anticipatory payroll, and that means that on the day that we get our checks, on the 15th, we're being paid for that day. So we haven't even really finished the day that we're being paid for, so this is a change in the way that we're being paid. We'll be paid two weeks behind. That gives time for everything, all of your timesheets are done, everything's processed, any sort of shift differential or overtime or any of those things, those will all be processed and on your regular check going forward. So the other thing that I want to tell you about is because we're switching from that monthly anticipatory to a bi-weekly paid in rears model, there's a couple things. One, when you get that first check on September 11th, it's only gonna be for 80 hours, so it feels like you're being paid for a whole lot less. But it only has to last you two weeks, right? 'Cause then you get your next paycheck. In that interim, we have a really rare opportunity where we can do some leave conversion. So, like Tommi said, this is statutorily mandated, and as part of that, in that language, we can have 40 hours of sick leave that you cash out. As you guys all know, you can't cash out sick leave for anything, right? It just sort of stays with you and then sometimes you can use it to buy some extra time when you retire, but other than that, you can't be paid for sick leave. But in this case we can. So you can have 80 hours of leave, and you can have any makeup of that leave, it can be compensatory time, it can be annual leave, it can be that sick leave, up to 40 hours, and that will be an 80 hour kinda free bi-weekly check, if you will? To make that September 11th payment feel like it's a whole month. That's optional, nobody has to do that, but it's just something that's provided to sort of help bridge the gap.

- So the last monthly paycheck is August 15th, the first bi-weekly paycheck is September 11th, and the second one would be the 20, what, fifth? Something like that.

- The 25th, that's right.

- Okay, so from August 15th through September 25th, you would get, you're sort of caught up, but there is a little deficit there for the September 11th, the one in the middle. And that is where a person can make up for it as long as they have some leave to cash in. And we don't even cash in annual leave except to use it or when you leave the agency, so that's a unique opportunity but then even the bigger unique opportunity is cashing in sick leave, which never happens. So for a lot of employees, that is going to get people caught up, am I hearing that right?

- No, you're exactly right. So, to be able to access that, there's a leave form on the Infonet, and we have previously sent out those links, we're happy to do that again. So you would just fill out that form. We have to manually enter all of those, and we have a whole bunch of employees, so in order to give the payroll team time to do that, we've asked for those forms to be submitted by June 15th to ensure that we have everybody's time in there. So what I wanna tell you about that, though, is that just because you have to turn the form in on June 15th doesn't mean you have to have all that leave available on June 15th. They're gonna enter that form into the payroll system, but that's not gonna run until the beginning of August. That gap conversion leave payout happens on August 28th is when you'll actually see those funds, so it's exactly two weeks after, basically. So you still have two more months to accrue that leave. So what we would encourage you to do is, if you wanna take advantage of that, you should fill out that form and you should tell us the priority of what leave you'd like to take. So if you say, "I wanna take 40 hours of sick leave "and 40 hours of comp time." Any additional annual whatever. Then, when they enter it, they'll do it that exact way and it will only take what you have available. So let's say I put 40 hours of sick leave and 40 hours of annual, but on the date that that's run, I only have 30 hours of each of those. That's okay, it will only take 30. You can't go negative on your leave, that's not anything that can happen.

- That form, you find it on the Infonet under forms, and I think we're gonna email that out. It's a PDF form that you can just send back to finance, is that how that works?

- That's right. Yeah, so you'll just send it to the bi-weekly payroll email distribution list, and we will process it for you.

- Do you have anything else that you'd like to add?

- So I think the thing that I would just say is that, you know, there's a whole bunch of stuff going on right now and so we are, are trying our best to understand, how do we carry on with the things that we have to do and to carry out. We're in a position where we need to update systems and we need to get on the state standard and we need to do those things because it's the right thing to do. But we understand it has a very real impact on the way that, that we, as employees, it's different as the person in finance who's tryin' to update systems versus Cathy Menefee, DHS employee that's sort of living all this stuff too. And so we understand the impact that that has and so what I would just encourage people, ask questions. If you don't understand something, ask for help. We want to be that, we can't help things that we don't understand and details that we can't consider, so if you have different experiences then feel free to share those. If you're thinking it, somebody else probably is too. And so we wanna be able to address any of those concerns and to help in any way that we can.

- Thank you so much. Okay, I'm gonna bring, we have two more people to come on here, and one of them is Blake Parks. Blake is with Oklahoma's Credit Union and they are generously making a lot of resources available to DHS employees during this, so, Blake, could you talk to us about that a little bit?

- Hello, everybody. At Oklahoma's Credit Union, I was so pleased to be with Oklahoma's Credit Union 'cause we've been helping Oklahomans and state employees for over 65 years. We have actually helped other agencies transition into a bi-weekly payroll, so we have helped state employees go through this before, and so we're here to support you during this conversion, and there's a few things that I wanna just address is that, if you do have a loan with Oklahoma's Credit Union, we can look at those payment dates and maybe split them up two times in the month or, you know, looking at your payment is a really good thing to do during this time to see how you can spread them out over the month if they were all in the middle of the month previously, so if we can help adjust some of those bills or payments, we're happy to do that. We can even work with you on skipping a payment if you need, there's a lot of things that we can do and it really just comes down to your personal situation and we have a whole team of experts at Oklahoma's Credit Union to help you with questions that you have, so even if you're not a member, give us a call, we're always happy to help. With a membership, we have certified financial counselors that can help people no matter where you are in the state, they can help over the phone, virtual video call, email, we can help you create a budget if you've never created one or maybe look at your budget to help create a specific plan for you.

- You say there's all this stuff for members, how do you become a member?

- Yeah, so it's very easy and it really just takes depositing five dollars into a savings account with us. And you can do it on your couch, if you wanted to, on your smartphone or your laptop. But you can also just give us a call and we can do it over the phone. We make it super easy. Our whole mission is to help Oklahomans do more with their money, so if we can save you money, that's our goal.

- Great, Blake, thank you so much, I appreciate it. We're gonna turn now to our final presenter who is Laree Reidenbaugh. She has helped so many people, she's devoted her entire professional life and part of her personal life to helping DHS employees any way they can. She, probably better than anyone, knows what's being experienced, so lemme welcome Laree, she's my friend and my colleague, and so, Laree, we would love to hear from you.

- Thank you. And hello to everybody out there in DHS that's watching. One of the passions of my heart, we have a program called the Employee Assistance Program. With the Employee Assistance Program, we get six visits per calendar year. Which means every January, those visits open again. One of the things I'd like to emphasize is that those visits are absolutely confidential. It is easy to connect with that. The number to call for EAP is 234-0630. When you call that number, identify yourself as a DHS employee. There is a short, short intake and, again, it is confidential. We will never know that you called that number, that is completely confidential. For those six visits, you have complete flexibility how to use them for your family. You can use those six visits for yourself, you can share them with family members, or you can give them to a family member residing in your home. So you have complete flexibility on how you use those. The other great part about the EAP program is, with that same number, after hours, they have 24 hour a day live counselors that will talk with you. So let's say something happened and there was a challenge at 10 o'clock at night. You call that number, you could talk to a live counselor, a licensed professional counselor, and it will not take away from your six visits. So you have that as well. If, when you call that EAP number, if you have a counselor in mind that you would like to use, someone that you have an established relationship with that individual, you may ask for them. If they are not on the list, please send me the information, I will make sure it's forwarded, and many times we have seen counselors added to the network. Let's say that you walk through a process and you have an appointment with a counselor, and it just doesn't quite seem to be a fit with you. That doesn't mean there's anything wrong with you, it doesn't mean there's anything wrong with the counselor. But the way I explain it is, we didn't marry everybody we ever dated. Not every connection works for that, so feel free to contact me if you choose to do so, contact MPET, but we want to have the right fit for you. The other thing that I would emphasize is that we do have other resources that can be available to you, so I encourage you to call my number if you choose to do so, the number's 323-2155. Call and let's look at some things, we'll try to work to customize a package for you, but whatever we can do to get services in your hands, that's our commitment to you.

- I've heard from employees that said, well that they wanted to use EAP, but they didn't want to cost the agency any money. Can you tell us about, how does that work? Do we pay more when people use it?

- That's a good question. Whatever services that we choose to use for ourselves as individuals does not cost the agency more money. The other thing that I would again say, if we don't use those visits, we lose them, and so I encourage people to use those resources for yourself. Sometimes it may be as simple as going through the experiences that we're walking through, how can I be a better parent to my children? Or how can I be more effective? There's a realm of ways that these can be used. So I encourage people to use their resources.

- I hear you urging people to use the EAP. EAP providers are licensed professional counselors, licensed marriage and family therapists, and licensed clinical social workers. And there's no co-pay, this isn't part of your health insurance, is that all right?

- Absolutely. The other thing that I will share is if you, again, already have a pre-existing relationship with a counselor, why not see if they could be added to the list and you'd get six free visits on top of what you may be working through with your health insurance. If I was going to have a process of making this available and legitimatizing the services, my statement would be, "Healthy people ask for help." The people that aren't asking for help are the ones I'm really concerned about. But every healthy individual has other healthy individuals in their lives, and so as we walk through this process together, again, I encourage individuals to use the resources at your fingertips.

- Could you speak to us from your heart about all that we're going through at, in our agency now?

- One of the things, this is very, very strong to me, is that, as we go through these processes and as we go through these changes, for some it is a minor inconvenience. But for some of us, it is a real sit down, take a look, and make some hard, hard decisions. I am in the latter column with you as we walk through this, and so looking at these things, let's make some decisions that are healthy for ourselves. One of my favorite statements with that is if we do not tell our money where to go, we're gonna wonder where it went. And so, being proactive on that for my own part, taking a look, sitting down, what is it going to mean to me, and then making a decision that will best benefit myself and my family.

- Thank you so much. Many of you have seen me at connections or in other leadership kind of things, and I always tell the story that DHS exists because things are not the way that it's supposed to be. And we are people who try to help that in every way we can. And even through all the hardship, DHS is a place where we, we bring light where there's darkness, we bring resources where there's lack, and we bring hope where there's despair or even apathy, and that's the work you're doing! And so, I pray that everybody is fully supported in this, please do not suffer in silence, reach out to us, there's probably more resources there than we've talked about or that you might imagine. All right, thanks so much, everybody.