Rollins Receives CUPA-HR 2023 HR Innovation Award

Rollins’ Human Resources department has earned the HR Innovation Award from the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources (CUPA-HR). This $5,000 award recognizes innovative thinking in higher-education HR, especially models that can be adapted for use on other campuses.

Comprised of 34,000 HR professionals at nearly 2,000 member institutions around the country and abroad, CUPA-HR works to provides knowledge, resources, advocacy, and connections to achieve organizational and workforce excellence. The association also offers learning and professional development programs, higher-education workforce data, extensive online resources, and evolving regulatory and legislative information.

In 2021, the Rollins HR team embarked on a journey to transform its business process and HR systems in order to create more efficiencies across workflows. In partnership with an IT project team, the HR staff audited the areas that needed to be addressed and created a roadmap to identify solutions and prioritize the work.

The project team included human resources director Jennifer Addleman, process improvement director Cory Baden, payroll director Kathy Custer, enterprise applications director Sharon-Kaye Hector, senior IAM engineer Ron Pease, senior programming analyst Mark Schendel, help desk operations administrator Betsey Shutts, enterprise data director Dobby Spencer, senior programming analyst Ian Walters, and human resources director David Zajchowski. The project team was sponsored by Matt Hawks, assistant vice president of HR and risk management, Ed Kania, vice president of finance, and Troy Thomason, chief information officer.

Over the next year, the teams worked to complete several core projects, including employee and manager self-service portals, single sign-on for benefits, an online HR portal that gives employees access to more robust HR information and resources, an external website geared toward potential applicants, and other technological changes that have consolidated resources, streamlined processes, reduced data errors, and provided better service to employees.