Case study: University resolves payroll errors and restores employee trust

A large public university that has a health system and more than 19,000 employees.

The situation

The university realized that for more than three years, their payroll system hadn’t been correctly calculating overtime in accordance with the Fair Labor Standards Act. Calculating payroll is complicated under normal circumstances, especially for the health system employees, and the university faced a significant challenge in recalculating payroll for all employees from 2021 through 2024.

In addition to assessing which employees had been underpaid or overpaid, the university had to determine the actions it needed to take to rectify the situation.

The solution and results

Given the number of employees and pay periods to recalculate, our Business Consulting Services team partnered with our Automation and Data Analytics team to combine payroll and data automation expertise.

First, this combined team of advisors held meetings with the university and reviewed existing policies and procedures to gain a deep understanding of the existing payroll processes. Then, they used the automated workflow tool to map out how payroll should be calculated.

Using source data from the university, such as employee listings, time cards, and time code listings, the advisors calculated the payroll for 2021 through 2024. This enabled them to provide the university both high-level and detailed pay period data showing whether employees appeared to be overpaid or underpaid.

With this hard data, the university could support management decisions about payment discrepancies, repay employees they owed, and restore employee trust in the institution.