Compliance Corner: University makes effort reporting more consistent
University makes effort reporting more consistent
Faculty buy-in is ongoing process
Administrators at East Carolina University in Greenville, NC, decided three years ago to use a web-based, automated effort reporting system to replace the outdated paper-based system, and bids were requested. After sifting through six vendors’ proposals, administrators finally decided on a system proposed by MAXIMUS of Chicago, but requested additional changes to what was available, says Bonnie Kautsky, central administrative manager for effort reporting.
"It was a five-month process from the day we signed the contract until we did the first training session with administrative staff," she says.
The new system has helped administrators and staff by simplifying the effort reporting process, says Brian Farmer, director of grants and contracts. "So there’s less time spent in the process recording, reviewing, correcting, and certifying effort."
Also, the new system provides a consistent and accurate means of connecting reported effort to contracts and payroll, Kautsky notes.
The electronic effort reporting system takes the percentage of time employees confirm spending on a particular research project and use this figure to calculate payroll from each fund or grant account, she says.
"It works beautifully," Kautsky adds. "It converts the sum of the hours into a percentage and then ties it to a dollar amount."
Once information is uploaded into the system, the system generates an automatic e-mail to assigned effort reporting administrators of each department, and it creates a screen with the payroll and how the money is divided by grants and other accounts for the administrator to review and certify, she explains.
"The job of the administrator is to look at each of the forms generated by payroll to see if they have a correct representation of how that employee should be getting paid. If that employee is supposed to be paid 25% on a grant, it will show the administrator whether the 25% of the employee’s salary is covered by grant funds," Kautsky says.
If the administrator sees there is a missing form that would assign the employee to a grant, then the administrator can make an adjustment at this time, she adds.
"They are able to see right away that an action needs to be taken," Kautsky says. "Once they get that form, they can look at the salary distribution to make sure it’s correct, and 90% of the time it is as it should be."
Occasionally, there are paperwork delays, but the system catches these in time, she notes. From the investigators’ perspective, most personally certify the hours or percentage of time they have spent on a grant after the electronic system sends them a monthly report, Kautsky says.
The time investigators spend on certifying their effort could be as little as one minute per month, she adds.
Another method for determining effort is for research staff to keep track of time spent on each project, using 15-minute increments, and this is the method used by research nurses and study coordinators in the clinical trials department, says J.C. Cedars, MD, director of the clinical trials office.
"That’s how we chose to do it in our office," Cedars explains. "Staff fill in a code for what they’re doing for each 15 minutes; and for each study, there is a code, and then for the month an Excel spreadsheet will say, Study A — 20 hours; Study B — 10 hours,’ etc."
The university spent considerable time educating staff about the new effort reporting system, starting with two mandatory, six-hour sessions of training for department chairs, upper administration, and administrative or clerical staff who would have hands-on involvement with the system, Kautsky says.
"The first session was to let everyone know of the federal requirement of effort reporting and to explain the monthly reporting," she notes.
Staff had one month in which to take the two sessions, which were offered multiple times for their convenience. "After that, we had a second training which was scheduled in our computer lab, and this was hands-on training for all administrative staff and clerical staff at the department level," Kautsky says.
This session included various effort reporting scenarios with dummy data installed, she adds. Department administrators were expected to train their faculty and research staff, Kautsky says.
The institution worked on obtaining faculty and staff buy-in even before signing a contract with MAXIMUS, she notes.
"We had department chairs from academics and the medical school and four of us on the working committee fly to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore to see their MAXIMUS system in action," Kautsky recalls. "We spoke to department chairs there and got their opinions on it, and we did this primarily for faculty buy-in."
The two department chairs were satisfied with what they saw and expressed their opinions to their faculty when they returned, she adds.
Despite these educational and buy-in efforts, it has taken time to get the complete buy-in of all the faculty and staff, Kautsky says.
The real difficulty in obtaining buy-in and converting to this system was in creating an atmosphere of change at the university, Farmer and Kautsky say.
"People don’t want to change, and they feel they don’t have the manpower in their department to handle this," Kautsky points out.
Since the program has been up and running, administrators have found it to be easier and more efficient than the previous system, and so their support has been won over, she adds.
Some faculty members continue to dislike anything having to do with effort reporting, but the institution’s revised policies and procedures leave no room for dissent.
There is a built-in e-mail notification process that lets people know if they’re tardy in certifying their hours and salary, Kautsky says. If researchers neglect to complete the required certification of effort, there is a system of reminders, she adds.
If effort still is not certified following the reminders, policies make it clear that there’s an option of freezing the research account, Farmer explains.
"Effort reporting is an issue that we all have to deal with, and we have found certain tools at our institution have improved the process greatly," he says.
"The bottom line is we feel we have a good comprehensive system in place, and we certainly are not perfect, but we’re continually working to improve the system," Farmer adds.
Administrators at East Carolina University in Greenville, NC, decided three years ago to use a web-based, automated effort reporting system to replace the outdated paper-based system, and bids were requested.Subscribe Now for Access
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