Contents of this page

1. Manager & Employee Self Service

2. Pay Cards

3. Overview of the MN Fair Labor Act

4. Payroll Accounting Basics

5. e-Learning

6. Trends in Workforce Automation

Title & Description

Speaker / Bio

A. Manager & Employee Self Service

Miriam Ward
Director, HRMS and Payroll Services
Office of Human Resources
University of Minnesota

Miriam Ward has functional responsibility for the University's HRMS and HRSS (self service) applications and payroll operations.  Ward has more than 30 years experience with HR Systems in corporate America, the health care industry and in higher education.  She is a founding member of IHRIM and served on three chapter boards as well as on the association board of directors. 

Jaynie Atanasoff
Project manager for enhancements to the SAP HRIS system at Deluxe Corporation.  Responsible for training and development, business process redesign, team leadership and project financial analysis.  Background is in finance responsible for capital projects, corporate tax and compensation accounting.  Prior to Deluxe I was in public accounting (Deloitte and Touche) where I held the position of Staff Auditor.

B. Pay Cards

The Pay Card is a rapidly emerging new solution available to pay your employees, especially those that do not have bank accounts. This solution allows employers to reduce costs associated with the generation and distribution of paper checks and the best thing is that employees love them!  The pay card is even viewed as a benefit from the employee perspective.  This session will discuss the various features and functionality of the pay card programs and how employers are incorporating pay cards into their business operations.

Linda M. Obertin, CPP is the Sr. Director, Payroll at Sodexho.  Sodexho is the 57th largest employer in the United States with 120,000 employees in 6,000 locations throughout the US.

Linda has 16 years of in-depth payroll experience, which has included responsibility for management of payroll, benefits and HRIS.  She has held positions in the Human Resource, Payroll and Accounting divisions for corporations in the profit and non-profit sectors ranging from 300 employees to over 100,000 employees. Her work also includes developing and implementing expatriate payroll systems and re-engineering payroll systems and processes.

Linda is a Certified Payroll Professional.  She currently chairs the APA’s Emerging Technologies subcommittee of the Large Employer Task Force and is a member of the Nominating and Elections Committee.  In 2002 Linda was honored with the "Payroll Woman of the Year" award and in 1999 Linda received the APA’s Citation of Merit Award. Linda has also served as an instructor of the APA’s continuing education courses.  She has written articles for Paytech and is a speaker for the American Payroll Association.  She is also a member of International Human Resources Information Management Association.

C. Overview of the MN Fair Labor Act

The workshop will focus primarily on the state and federal labor laws including the minimum wage, overtime, the child labor laws and other employer requirements such as breaks, final paychecks, and the parental leave laws. Also a question answer session will be part of the workshop.

 Marlane Burgess, DLI

D. Payroll Accounting Basics

Irene Chapman, CPP is President Elect of the American Payroll Association and a Senior Consultant with PeopleSoft.  Prior to her current position she was a Senior Consultant with Cotelligent, Director of Payroll for Transamerica Corporation and Payroll Manager for The Pillsbury Company.

Ms. Chapman has over 25 years of experience as a payroll professional and earned her Certified Payroll Professional (CPP) designation in 1986.  She has served on the APA’s Speaker’s Bureau, the Automated Clearing House Committee, and the Hotline Referral Service, held offices in local APA chapters in both California and Minnesota, and contributed articles to PaytecH and PVN.  She was a member of the APA Board of Advisors and in 1995 she received the APA's Meritorious Service Award.  She has presented seminars and workshops at many APA and software user group conferences.  Additionally, she was appointed to represent the payroll profession on the National Automated Clearing House Association’s (NACHA) ACH Vision 2000 Task Force, which examined the future of the ACH and the needs of its customers.

She is a graduate of Syracuse University and received her MS degree from Cornell University.

E. e-Learning

Al Feldeverd
Allen holds a Masters in Education from the University of MN with emphasis in Adult Education and the use of Electronic Learning with Adults. Currently works as a HRIS Analyst for Community Health Care. In 1997 developed justification for an e-learning system within Wausau Hospital. Started with 1500 users in a centralized location. Current system now provides training for 4000 users over a wide geographic region.

F. Trends in Workforce Automation

Making Sense of the HCM Marketplace

Ron Hanscome has an extensive 18-year background in HCM technologies and solutions, including roles as a practitioner (with United HealthCare and Medtronic), consultant (with Watson Wyatt Worldwide and REH Consulting), and vendor executive (with Lawson Software and Ceridian Employer Services).

Ron's areas of expertise include packaged application capabilities assessment, strategic linkages between IT and HR executives, human capital management (HCM) leading practices, process improvement, and software product marketing/product management. Prior to joining META Group in April 2002, he had his own consulting practice, which focused on helping companies implement business processes and technology solutions to fully use their human capital. Ron is an active member of the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) and the International Human Resource Information Management Association (IHRIM), where he recently completed a seven-year term on the Magzine Editorial Committee, including three years as Editor-in-Chief of IHRIM.Link, the national publication of the association.