Legislative Session Closes Without Biweekly Pay Transition
Post date: May 10, 2018 9:54:38 PM
From: Department of Personnel & Administration <dpa_biweeklypay@state.co.us>
Date: Wed, May 9, 2018 at 4:50 PM
State of Colorado Employees,
As you know, we have been working to implement biweekly payroll over the last few months. Biweekly is an industry best practice. It's the best structure for both employees and the state, carries significant advantages over semi-monthly (twice a month) pay, and saves taxpayer dollars. We recognized that there would be short-term issues associated with implementing biweekly and addressed those with the proposed loan and benefits holiday programs.
Part of the implementation required legislation that authorized biweekly pay as opposed to the existing law to move to semi-monthly pay at some point. While we worked with legislators on the required language for a transition as well as the loan program, yesterday the proposed bill failed.
We continue to believe that biweekly pay is a better option for our employees. Unlike semi-monthly pay, biweekly pay delivers consistent paychecks to employees every two weeks. Additionally, biweekly pay allows the state to capitalize on the full benefits of the new HRWorks system and aligns pay periods with federal law.
However, failure to get legislative approval means the state as a whole will not be moving forward with biweekly payroll as planned in July of 2018. This also means:
The state will not have a benefits holiday for the month of July. If you have state health and/or dental insurance, your employee contribution for July will be deducted from your July paycheck(s).
The state will not be issuing interest-free loans to employees as there will be no statewide transition for now.
The biweekly pay information sessions will be cancelled. If you continue to have questions, please send them to dpa_biweeklypay@state.co.us.
Instead, we will be evaluating the capabilities of the new HRWorks system and the business needs of individual agencies before, during, and after the time of implementation to make the best possible decision for the state and for our employees. As we complete this process, individual agencies may continue to exercise the authority they have always had to choose to move forward with changing payroll cycles within the current capabilities of our systems in order to meet their business needs.
The law providing that the state move to semi-monthly lag pay reads that this will be done at the discretion of the state personnel director. If the decision to move forward with semi-monthly pay as a state is made, this transition will not occur before mid-2019, and we will provide you with ample notice and details of how the transition will work. In the interim, agencies may choose to move forward with the transition to biweekly pay and will communicate with you directly.
We understand that the uncertainty regarding this transition has been difficult, but we chose to communicate with you as early as possible to give time to prepare. We, along with your individual agencies, will continue to provide you with updates as decisions are made on how we will proceed with our preparations for the HRWorks implementation and potential payroll changes. We appreciate your engagement and patience throughout this process. The support you provided to us and to your teammates with your questions and ideas reflects the very best of our workforce.