Paperless Payroll Becomes the Norm at Duke
Beginning July 1st, 2009, all Duke University and Health system employees will receive electronic direct deposit statements instead of printed statements. More than 13,000 staff and faculty have already elected to discontinue receiving paper statements, and transitioned to the self-service Duke@Work website. The final paper statements will be distributed on June 25, 2009, for monthly-paid employees and on July 2, 2009, for biweekly-paid employees.
Duke has purchased, printed, and manually distributed more than 600,000 paper pay statements in previous years. This unsustainable paper-dependent system is costly for Duke, requires additional resources to distribute and has a significant environmental impact. The change to paperless payroll is a huge step forward for Duke's sustainability efforts, but also serves to highlight the potential for sustainable solutions to reduce costs in light of current economic challenges.
In a March 1, 2009 letter to the campus community, President Brodhead appealed to everyone to use Duke's collective, creative, strategic spirit in envisioning a new, more efficient and effective university of the future. While the transition to paperless payroll is only a small step, it is a reminder that sustainability initiatives should be the primary area of focus as we look to re-direct organizational resources toward our primary research and education mission.
The experience of Duke@Work has contributed to significant gains in terms of daily administrative efficiency within departments, as well as for the ultimate recipients who receive their information much sooner under the electronic model. Furthermore, the electronic safeguards around the data are more reliable than a paper-based process in which paper statements touch several hands before they reach the ultimate recipient. And in many cases, unclaimed paper statements are returned to Corporate Payroll Services for destruction.
Clear and concise instruction on the use of Duke@Work is available at http://hr.duke.edu/selfservice/. Any further questions regarding the Paperless Payroll initiative can be directed to Corporate Payroll Services at 684-2642.