Durham, NC - During the holiday season last December, the Corporate Payroll Services office received an unexpected gift.

"A department payroll representative walked in with two boxes full of undelivered pay statements," said Robin Miller, assistant controller for disbursement services. "Those statements not only represented wasted paper, time and money, but they also represented potential exposure of payroll information because they were sitting in someone's desk for months."

Miller doesn't expect to see such gifts coming back to Corporate Payroll Services this year as Duke moves to paperless pay statements. In July, Duke University and Health System will transition to full adoption of online pay statements through the Duke@Work self-service website for those employees participating in direct deposit.

Since Duke@Work was launched last year, more than 13,000 faculty and staff have elected to stop receiving their paper direct deposit pay statements. The secure website, which offers employees access to view and update their personal information online, offers numerous advantages for viewing pay statements online, including:

• Access pay statements 24 hours a day, 7 days a week,
• View pay statements the day prior to payday (funds are not available until payday)
• Retrieve pay statements dating back to August 2002,
• Secure access to protect personal and payroll information,
• Supports Duke's sustainability efforts by reducing use of paper, and
• Improves departmental efficiencies for manual pick-up/delivery of statements.

Miller said that Corporate Payroll Services often receives requests for earnings/wage verification for mortgage applications or government requests. "Now, people can go online and print their latest pay statement whenever they need it."

The day before each pay date, faculty and staff receive an email reminder at their Duke email address to notify them that their new pay statement has been posted for viewing through the Duke@Work site. The secure site can be accessed from any computer with Internet access using an individual's NetID and password.

The paperless process will also help reduce expenses for the University and Health System during a challenging economic time. Duke typically purchases, generates, and manually distributes more than 600,000 paper pay statements.

"In this economic climate, we're looking closely at major administrative processes to see if there are ways we can do things differently to reduce costs," said Kyle Cavanaugh, vice president for Human Resources. "The savings we are able to gain can help reduce the need later for cost-saving measures that have a more direct impact on the workforce."

The final paper statements will be distributed on June 25, 2009, for monthly-paid employees and on July 2, 2009, for biweekly-paid employees.

For more information about Duke@Work or to access pay statements online, visit: http://hr.duke.edu/selfservice/ or call the Corporate Payroll Services team at 684-2642 with questions.