Today--Friday, March 15th--is the deadline for offer letter submission to Human Resources for any staff or student bi-weekly new hire or rehire starting on April 7th. Offer letter submission is the first step on the updated start date matrices for all new and rehires. All student and staff offer letters must be sent to HR before extending them to the new hire or rehire. This helps ensure that we remain compliant with our many institutional, USG, state, and federal regulations.

The next bi-weekly start date for eligible new hires and re-hires will be April 21, 2019. This will be the final bi-weekly start date before the end of this semester.

The offer letter templates for students and staff were updated January 2019 and are available on the intranet for review; this includes the Faculty & Staff Forms section of the Intranet and the HR Intranet, specifically the Employment Services section. Please discard any old saved templates and use the current documents online. We have added an enclosure to the offer letter templates as well; a Georgia Defined Contribution Plan (GDCP) form. A recent update to OneUSG automatically enrolls employees in GDCP if they fall under a certain set of criteria. By offering this form at the time we extend the offer, we will be able to identify employees who may be exempt from contributing and an exception to that default enrollment.

I’d like to extend a reminder of the Start Date Matrices we have in place for our monthly & bi-weekly paid staff and students. These matrices are in place in order to allow for adequate processing of new hire/rehire paperwork, and to ensure that your new/returning employees have all access they need on the day they are scheduled to report to work. We need all pertinent paperwork (offer letters, PAFs, etc.) prior to the effective date. Please keep these dates in mind as you consider adding/changing information such as, but not limited to:

• New hires
• Rehires
• Extending term dates
• Changing position titles
• Adding concurrent position
• Changing managers/timecard reports to

This window of time allows for processing of pre-employment background checks and drug screens (when required), review and processing of PAFs in all pertinent areas, compliance checks regarding eligibility for employment based on federal regulations, and for data entry into multiple systems to ensure all necessary access is granted.

Please be mindful of your records and adhere to the start and end dates for all employees. This ensures that we remain compliant with institutional, USG, state, & federal regulations and that we minimize any risk to the institution. If you wish to extend an employee’s original term date, please contact us prior to that date and in accordance with the respective start date matrix per the employee type.

All employees must meet all required clearances before they are eligible to begin work. There are no exceptions.

If HR issues a clearance date, employees cannot “volunteer” before said clearance date unless they have met the appropriate clearances required of a volunteer.

I have attached the April, May, & June 2019 matrices for monthly paid staff, bi-weekly paid staff, and students (all paid bi-weekly) for quick review of the upcoming months. We communicated changes to this process in October 2018; be mindful of the revised timelines and deadlines in place. Please see the respective tabs/sheets at the bottom of the spreadsheet for each category of employee/pay schedule. If you have any questions about these dates, please don’t hesitate to contact myself or any member of the Employment Services Team.

We have been informed that there will be another OneUSG Blackout during June 2019; these blackouts typically last 3-4 business days during 2 different weeks of the month. During these Blackouts, everyone is completely locked out of OneUSG. Blackouts bring about modified payroll processing timelines, which typically affect the start date matrices. As we receive additional information regarding Blackout specifics, we will communicate the details to campus. For now, please know that the June start date matrices are tentative and will likely be changing.  

Offer letters must be sent to employment@gcsu.edu for review & approval prior to issuing to your new hires and/or re-hires.

All PAFs must be sent to PAF@gcsu.edu for processing.