New task communities at the faculty are well under way

By Bente Kjær, 6/7/2023

In March, the steering group behind the work with administrative processes at the faculty decided to establish two task communities across the faculty's administrations.

• A task community regarding travel booking and reimbursement.
• A task community regarding registration of vacation and absences.

The two task communities, which are meant to both contribute to increasing the resilience of the organization and alleviate the task pressure on individual employees, have now been in existence for a few weeks.

During this period, in collaboration with the consulting firm Carve, they have been working on identifying specific initiatives to reduce the time spent by administrative staff on travel expense reimbursement and vacation registration.

A new website assists with travel reimbursement

In the task community for travel booking and reimbursement, the focus has been on reducing the number of return loops, which occur frequently.

A sample of 228 travel reimbursements from weeks 12 to 14 revealed that 156 errors were recorded, resulting in or should have resulted in a return loop.

To address the numerous errors, employees in the task community and personnel from the Travel Office have collaborated to find solutions that make it easier to process travel reimbursements.

It has resulted in SUND's travel guide

In the travel guide, you can find:

• Assistance with missing and/or incorrect documentation.
• Rules regarding the use of private car/train for travel.
• The app that makes it easy to continuously document expenses.

You can find the travel guide at your employee portal on SDUnet (Please note that the information is only available in Danish):

• Faculty Administration
• Department of Sports Science and Clinical Biomechanics
• Department of Molecular Medicine
• Department of Psychology
• Department of Regional Health Research
• Department of Public Health
• Department of Clinical Research
• Department of Forensic Medicine
• National Institute of Public Health

It should be easier to register vacation

In the task community for vacation and absences, there has been a focus on gaining an overview of the challenges involved in planning vacations and understanding the underlying reasons. The purpose is to identify initiatives that can improve the process.

A significant part of the difficulty with the current registration process is due to issues with understanding and using the Human Capital Management (HCM) system. Users find it difficult to view their accrued vacation days, and the data entry itself is not user-friendly.

Consequently, those responsible for vacation registration receive numerous inquiries that they have to follow up on and manually verify.

Moreover, there are employees who need reminders to register their vacation. This follow-up also occurs manually since the system does not provide an overview of who has yet to register.

The group's improvement proposals include:

• Enhanced communication and guidance for end users and managers.
• Better follow-up tools.
• Possible process changes for certain employee groups at the faculty, including the group not primarily employed at SDU.

The task community has presented its recommendations for the further process to the steering committee and is now in the process of planning the implementation of the prioritized initiatives.