Carilion works to fix payroll problem

By Dawn Jefferies & Mollie Halpern
WSLS Reporters
Published: September 5, 2008

The best and quickest source to find out the location of the distributions sites for the paper paychecks is the Carilion employee hub on the Carilion internet site.

The address is:  http://www2.carilion.com/hr/internal/index.html or you can go to http://www.carilion.com and click on “employee hub” in the blue menu bar on the left side of the page.

———————————-

Updated 6:10 p.m.

Carilion has also set up a special hotline number for its emplyees who use direct deposit.

You can also call this number find out how to get a hold of your paper check.

Call 540-983-3600 or 800-599-2537.

Employees can also go on the intranet and via Groupwise e-mail for a list of specific distribution sites.

———————-

Updated 5:10 p.m.

By Mollie Halpern

The 12-million dollars Carilion pays out to 7-thousand employees who use direct deposit—never made it into checking accounts.

Employees who live paycheck to paycheck—or have mounting bills that are now overdue—called the “WSLS 10 On Your Side” newsroom to express their concerns.

Mollie Halpern says: “I spoke to at least a dozen carilion employees and their family members today about the payroll problem. 

They all refused on-camera interviews—saying they’re afraid of Carilion retaliation, that they won’t be promoted, or even worse, fired.“

Mollie asks: “Employees told me they are terrified of the repercussions because Carilion told them not talk to the media.

Eric Earnhart, the Carilion spokesperson, answers: “We’ve never told them never to talk to the media and there would be no repercussion”.

Carilion sent employees e-mails throughout the day explaining why their direct deposits didn’t go through…

It says the problem was “human error”—and wasn’t even aware of it until ‘10 On Your Side’ told them about it.

Carilion tells ‘WSLS 10 On Your Side’ that an employee failed to send an electronic file of payroll data to Wachovia.

See, Wachovia processes that information and then distributes it to other banks and credit unions so that you—the employee—gets paid.

Carilion says it’s working to manually send that data to banks so that the checks are deposited today.

If that doesn’t work, Carilion has a back-up plan.

It’s issuing paper checks that will be available for pick-up today.

Carilion says it’s sorry its employees are suffering financially because of the payroll problems.

Eric says, “If anybody suffers from having extra fees or extra charges as a result of this, we’ll reimburse them for that.  Mollie asks: and that includes late payment and bank fees?  Eric replies, “Oh, absolutely.“

Carilion says its asking banks to withhold assessing those fees.

It says it’s working to improve procedures to make sure this payroll problem never happens again.

————

Original story 9:52 a.m.
Updated 10:54 a.m. with e-mail sent to employees
Updated 12:07 p.m. with 2nd Carilion e-mail about checks

If you did not get paid by Carilion today and would like to talk with WSLS’s Mollie Halpern on this story, call (540) 520-2554, or e-mail:

Updated 12:07 p.m.

Carilion now says the error that caused the direct deposit problem, was caused by a person.  Spokesman Eric Earnhart says in an e-mail to WSLS, that a “long standing employee, with an excellent record of service to the company, did not transmit a file to the bank that processes Carilion’s direct deposit checks for the company.“

Earnhart adds the payroll department did not know about the error until Friday morning.

Earnhart says Wachovia has “bent over backwards” to help resolve the situation.

Carilion says its goal to have all direct deposit checks deposited in employee accounts today.  If they can not do that, Earnhart says Carilion will use other means, including issuing paper checks, to make sure employees get paid today.  Carilion will reimburse any bank fees employees are charged as a result of the direct deposit error.

Earnhart tells us about 7,000 Carilion employees use direct deposit.

————-

Original story 9:52 a.m.

By Dawn Jefferies

Some Carilion employees are saying show me the money this morning.

According to spokesman Eric Earnhart, “a technical glitch with direct deposit” prevented workers from getting their checks as expected.

Several employees called WSLS 10 On Your Side this morning when they woke up and saw their checks had not been credited to their bank accounts.  Some said the money is typically in their accounts Thursday but they waited until this morning, only to find it was still not deposited.

Earnhart says He says Carilion is working to take care of it today.  Carilion is the largest private employer in our region.

Earnhart confirmed this e-mail was sent to employees this morning:

Attached Message
From: Carilion Technology Update

To: Carilion Technology Update

Subject: Direct Deposit Payroll Not Posting
Date: Fri, 05 Sep 2008 09:14:12 -0400

** High Priority **

Please do not respond to this email.

To: Carilion Staff
From: Accounting Services
Subject: Direct Deposit Payroll Not Posting

There has been an issue with direct deposit pay: employees with direct deposit
will notice that their pay is not yet in their accounts.

We are working as quickly as possible with banks to address this problem, and
find out how quickly pay can be posted to employee accounts.  We will provide
additional information as soon as we have it this morning.

We apologize profusely for the inconvenience.

Kerri Thornton
VP Accounting Services