The OMES Human Capital Management (HCM) team has continued to make progress on the Job Catalog Project. We currently have 31,960 state employees. Of those, 29,653, or about 93%, are now in the standard alphanumeric job profiles in the job catalog. During Phase 2, 122 new job profiles were created. There are 55 job profiles still being worked on. 

The following table outlines work completed:

We will continue to work with agencies on the remaining job profiles and assist with updates to workers as needed. Maintenance on the job catalog will be ongoing as jobs will continue to change over time and will require updates to job descriptions or creation of new levels or new job families. If you have workers who are still in nonstandard numeric job codes and have not sent a position description questionnaire for the job, please email those to Deanna Ferron or Margot Barnes. 

This timeline is subject to change, but we will continue to share communications as the HCM team progresses through each phase of the project. Questions are welcomed and can be emailed to the same contacts above.  

With employees working remotely outside of Oklahoma, the state, as the employer, is required to withhold and submit income taxes to that state and report unemployment and other wages/taxes as applicable. If an agency has employees working outside of Oklahoma, the work location needs to be updated to the state where the employee is physically working. The employee tax elections need to be timely updated to reflect the new tax jurisdiction for income tax and unemployment withholding/reporting purposes. 

Please help communicate these requirements to agency HR recruiting and onboarding personnel as many tasks are performed or initiated by them. Although OMES Central Payroll processes the actual payments and reports to the other states, agency personnel must be familiar with the requirements for any state in which employees are hired. Contact OMES Central Payroll with questions concerning state agency employees working outside of Oklahoma. 

OMES has created an automation process for timesheet entry and approval notifications to employees and managers. The automation takes the place of manual processes and emails for contacting employees and managers when time is not entered, submitted or approved. 

The automation is set to send three reminder emails for the prior week’s time beginning on a cadence of every four hours from noon on Mondays to noon on Wednesdays. Once an employee’s time has been entered, submitted or approved, they will be removed from future emails. Agency payroll personnel will also receive the emails so they can monitor the progress and determine action to take after the last reminder is sent. In addition, reports are generated listing entries that were successfully completed and how many notifications were sent before the entries were completed. Reports are generated daily, monthly, quarterly and annually and can be sent to agency leadership for review and analysis of trends. 

OMES implemented the automation in 2024 and has seen a significant increase in the timeliness of employees and managers entering, submitting and approving time. This has allowed the payroll team to focus on processing payroll and other tasks and responsibilities without being pulled away to ensure that all time is approved prior to payroll processing. Several other agencies have since implemented the automation with more in queue to roll out this year.  

Any agency interested in the automation can submit a service ticket requesting information on the timesheet entry and approval reminder automation. An automation team member will contact you to discuss the process and implementation. 

40 O.S. § 165.3a allows employers to provide employees the option of designating a beneficiary for wages and benefits payable upon an employee’s death. There is no requirement for this, but agencies may want to consider adopting such a policy. Providing the option to employees relieves stress and anxiety on the family members and provides agencies with clear guidance on who is to receive final wage payments. However, this statute does not include any longevity payment that may be due as of the date of death of an employee.

74 O.S. § 840-2.18(H.2) authorizes any longevity payment to be paid to the decedent’s surviving spouse, or to the decedent's estate if there is no surviving spouse. 

For more information or sample forms and instructions, email payrollreporting@omes.ok.gov. 

Additional articles related to more specific payroll topics can be found in the monthly CAR Newsletter. Agency personnel are encouraged to subscribe to the newsletter. The current and archived newsletters are available on the OMES CAR Newsletter webpage.

When an employee’s termination reason is due to death, the date of death must be entered in Workday@OK. This date is important for processing payments after the date of death, benefit purposes and reports.  

As part of the termination business process, a To Do task is sent to the HR specialist to populate the date of death. Within the business process task, select the orange box labeled Edit Personal Information to add the date of death. Once entered, return to the inbox and select Submit. This information can also be found in the Employee Lifecycle – Hire to Termination job aid. 

If the date of death is not entered at that time, this can also be done by selecting Actions on the worker’s profile, then navigating to Personal Data > Edit Personal Data and populating the date of death.