Recently, some student employees have reported difficulties logging their hours via the payroll software Oracle, which Middlebury has been using for the past few years.
Salome Moreno ’25 began working as a manager at the Language Tables this past August. According to Moreno, she expected the position to be reflected on Oracle as soon as she began working, but she realized that the position for manager at Language Tables was not visible in her online portal.
“The only option I saw was ‘Middlebury Temporary Worker’ so I began logging my hours under this title. However this was not my actual position, so I wasn’t getting paid for a month of my work,” Moreno said.
Alexis Welch ’22.5 experienced a similar issue when she accidentally logged her hours under “Temporary Worker.” When she attempted to correct the mistake, an error message appeared on her portal so she was unable to submit her timecards. The application later crashed and she was not able to be paid.
“It is tough because I worked around 30 hours and I still have not been paid. I live off-campus, and I pay for rent monthly, so it has affected me paying for things on time,” Welch said. “It is frustrating that I need to put in a lot of time on the back-end because of an error I made in the beginning.
Vice President for Human Resources and Chief People Officer Caitlin Goss told The Campus that this may be a result of the new standard hiring timeline that Human Resources implemented this year for students and other employees.
“Student employees can now start in their jobs every Monday and their timecards are available by Thursday of that week in Oracle for them to enter hours,” Goss said.
Goss explained that the Student Employment Office (SEO) noticed some students entering their timecards before the position was made available on Oracle, which resulted in them inputting hours through wrong positions. “Temporary Student Worker” is a default position in Oracle that shows up for all students so they are able to access the payroll software. “This job has a 0$ wage and no payment will be issued,” the SEO explains in their timecard submission reminder emails.
Students who were affected may submit their hours for a previous pay period through an online form and receive retroactive payment in the following paycheck.
SEO also moved job listings from the PeopleAdmin software to Workable this past summer. Students and employees use Workable to apply for a position and move through the recruitment and hiring process.
“We made this change to improve the user experience of our applicants, hiring managers and our HR team,” Goss said. “So far, we have heard lots of positive feedback about the tool being easier to navigate, having a mobile friendly user interface and having a lower barrier to completing an application.”
The change in software for hiring does not affect the process for students logging in their hours through Oracle. However, there is a learning curve for adjusting to Workable during the hiring process and SEO is working with hiring managers and supervisors to ensure a smooth transition.
Goss told The Campus that issues with Oracle have come up on a case-by-case basis and it does not appear to be a system failure. When these issues arise, Goss encourages students to email the SEO office.
“The SEO is very responsive to their emails,” Moreno said. “They gave me the solution for retroactive pay and have been really helpful.”
