SLC Hiring Protocols for Student Staff

Onboarding is how Berkeley Regional Services (BRS/HR) has streamlined the hiring process for the whole of Cal’s campus. All new staff or any staff who may have had a break in their employment with Cal are required to complete onboarding before beginning their employment. As an Academic Student Employee (ASE), you are also required to complete onboarding before you begin working with your SLC program.

• Once your SLC program decides to hire you, you will receive an offer letter via email with instructions for submitting your Employee Information Form (EIF). Once you’ve submitted the EIF, you should receive a DocuSign Packet with Onboarding instructions. In addition, you should receive an email to schedule an Onboarding appointment to verify your I-9 documentation.
  • Please note that there may be delays in receiving this email. However, if you don't receive an email and you have had your I-9 verified for a campus job before, double check with your supervisor to see if another verification is required before you begin working.
  • Ensure that you complete and submit the DocuSign Packet once you’ve received it from HR/BRS, usually before Onboarding, although this is not always the case.
• The DocuSign Packet includes instructions for the remainder of the campus hiring process. It will also collect information about your emergency contacts, demographics, citizenship status, etc. Lastly, it provides information on the UC Patent Policy, employee benefits, direct deposit, mandated reporter requirements, the payroll calendar, background check releases, and your official job description.
• To expedite the hiring process, ensure that you make your Onboarding appointment within 48 hours of completing the DocuSign packet. Please come prepared with all of the required Form I-9 documentation needed to complete Onboarding during your appointment (please note that failure to bring these documents could result in delayed onboarding).
  • To view acceptable I-9 documentation, view page Page 3 of Form I-9.
• As of Summer 2023, all I-9 documents must be verified In-Person by an authorized representative from HR or a designated alternative representative of your choosing. After completing the DocuSign Packet, you will receive an email asking you to either visit an HR office to get their documents verified OR fill out a form to select an authorized representative (a professional or personal contact, aged 18 or older, who can verify the I-9 documents). This representative should receive an email from HR with a form they need to fill out to confirm all information on the I-9 documents is correctly shared with HR and they have verified the authenticity of your documents.
  • Note: There may be a delay between you selecting an alternative authorized representative and that representative receiving a form from HR. If the delay is more than 1 week, please email bears_onboarding@berkeley.edu to follow-up about the status of the request.

• There are some changes to Onboarding that may occur. (All information is taken from Berkeley Regional Service's Onboarding Page 2.)

  1. First, review Page 3 of Form I-9 to make sure you have all of the needed documentation.

     1. F-1 Visas are the type of visa students would need to be allowed to work on-campus.

  2. All Foreign Nationals who are working in the US are required to attend a meeting presented by the Berkeley International House to report your arrival in the U.S. and to validate your stay and visa.

     1. Please refer to this schedule for meeting dates and times.

     2. For more information, please contact jscholar@berkeley.edu.

  3. International students working on campus will generally need to have a GLACIER account made for them after completing onboarding.

  1. GLACIER is a secure, online tax compliance software system that collects tax-related information from foreign individuals and receiving funds from the University of California, Berkeley. In addition, GLACIER determines residency status and tax treaty eligibility for foreign individuals.

  2. All foreign nationals working in the US and receiving funds from the University must have a GLACIER account/record.

  3. Please make sure to look for an email from GLACIER (glacieradmin@berkeley.edu), as a record should be generated for you.

  4. If you have not received an email and a GLACIER record needs to be established, please contact your Berkeley Regional Services (BRS) HR Partner or UC Berkeley's Central Payroll Office (https://controller.berkeley.edu/payroll/glacier-tax-compliance-system)

• If you have or plan to have more than one job, please ensure that your supervisor is aware of this. Also, you may need to attend more than one Onboarding session if you have multiple positions on campus.
• Students and part-time employees can hold multiple part-time positions as long as the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and pay schedules are reviewed and adjusted to one FLSA of either Exempt or Non-Exempt, along with one pay schedule of either monthly or bi-weekly, as determined by the FLSA exemption. This will be determined by the HR representative who will consult with hiring managers about the staff member’s FLSA status and pay schedule.
  • Students and supervisors should discuss the student’s work schedule availability, along with the department’s staffing needs prior to the job being offered to avoid any confusion with FLSA and pay schedule conflict.

Apart from any program-mandated preparation that your SLC supervisor requires, all Academic Student Employees (ASEs) are required to attend a UAW orientation. Look out for an email from UAW representatives as they are the ones who organize the orientation and contact all ASEs.

• You may begin working as soon as you have completed Onboarding.
• However, you may want to communicate with your SLC supervisor regarding your pay schedule, because
  • You need to be added into UCPath before you can be paid.
  • You need to be added to CalTime, UC Berkeley's online timekeeping program, before you can be paid for your work by submitting timecards to the CalTime website.
• Depending on your circumstances, it may take at least one week to be added to UCPath and one additional week to be added to CalTime.
• Please see the Peer Staff CalTime Protocols page for more details, including:
  • How to check if you have been added to UCPath or CalTime,
  • How to submit timecards to the CalTime website once you have been added there, and
  • What to do to be paid if you have been added to UCPath but not CalTime.

Please review the SLC Hiring Protocols for Supervisors document.

It depends, but you should anticipate it taking at least two weeks if you have been newly hired. For Spring 2022, HR/BRS reports that it may take up to six weeks. For a more thorough breakdown of the process and steps involved, see the "Academic Student Employee Hiring Checklist" and "Onboarding Process Protocol" sections above.

As a best practice, your supervisor likely has put the start date as the beginning of the term (semester or summer). This date can be BEFORE you have been onboarded or officially started. The idea is that once you complete onboarding you are eligible to work and this can happen anytime AFTER the start date on your offer letter. You should not begin work before being onboarded and certainly not before your start date on your offer letter.

If it has been more than 1 week, please email bears_onboarding@berkeley.edu to ask about the status of the I-9 verification request.

According to recent communications from HR/BRS, the “expectation is for academics with appointments starting in the summer (or later) that they will arrive in the United States with valid work authorization prior to the start of the appointment. If an individual is not able to arrive by their start date, despite their best efforts to do so, they will evaluate what to do on a case by case basis.” If you are unable to enter the country, then you can check in with your supervisor on how to proceed.

You can have multiple part-time positions on campus as long as both positions have the same FLSA status (Exempt vs. Non-Exempt) and Pay Schedule (Biweekly vs. Monthly).

If the other position on campus is Non-Exempt Biweekly Hourly, then no action will be required from your part and your time reporting will proceed as usual.

If your other position has you report time as Real-Time (Clock-In or Clock-Out), then you can submit Biweekly Manual Timesheets each month, which can be found by the usual deadlines and submit them to HR following the protocol in the CalTime Supervisor Protocol  under the “What happens if peer staff do not submit ANY time for a pay period? How do we handle late pay in CalTime?” tab.

If your other position on campus has a different FLSA (e.g. Exempt Monthly Hourly Employee), then your SLC position will need to be changed to this designation, as employees cannot hold multiple jobs at different FLSA status or Pay schedule by the Fair Labor Standards Act. In this case, it is IMPERATIVE that you reach out to your supervisor and let them know you need to be switched to Monthly HOURLY for your SLC role. They will coordinate with HR/BRS to make the change.

Our HR/BRS partners will likely reach out to your supervisor of record or someone on our staff if a change in FLSA or Pay Schedule is needed during either your hiring process with SLC OR when your other position is processing hiring.

It is recommended that when you are hired for a position at SLC that you let your supervisor know if you currently work elsewhere on campus OR if you are hired for a new job elsewhere on campus. Ask your other job/new job what FLSA status and/or pay schedule this position has this way you can anticipate if a change will be required.

Unfortunately not! Employees with multiple part-time jobs must have a single FLSA status and be on one pay schedule by the Fair Labor Standards Act. UCPath and CalTime also do not permit an employee to concurrently have an active Exempt and Non-exempt job.

If your other position requires that your SLC appointment be changed to Exempt Monthly Hourly, then you will have to do Manual Timesheets for any hours worked for your SLC position following the Monthly Payroll Calendar and using this Monthly Manual Timesheet (For Dual Appointments). This applies primarily to Exempt Monthly Hourly employees.

If the FLSA status or Pay Schedule for your other appointment is NOT Exempt Monthly Hourly, then it depends, but you likely will need to do some form of manual timesheet for SLC work.