Personnel Appointments
Personnel working on sponsored projects administered through the Office of Sponsored Programs are employed in accordance with Ohio State faculty appointments and staff employment policies. Any sponsor specific requirements are noted in the Award Overview tab in the Portal.
Processing Appointments
All employment appointments on sponsored projects are made in Workday using department specific procedures. To meet sponsor reporting requirements, grant-funded appointments should be initiated or updated promptly.
Common times when grant appointments need to be reviewed/amended include:
- when a new award is established
- at the beginning and end of semesters (especially for graduate student appointments)
- at the beginning and end of periods during which faculty can earn Off Duty Pay (ODP)
- when a new person begins work on the grant
- when an appointment is changed, e.g., employee leaves, moves to a new funding source.
Factors Affecting Appointments
Salary Cap
NIH caps the salary that can be charged to grants (the NIH Salary Cap) at Executive Level II of the Federal Executive pay scale. While the cap amount generally increases in January of each year, Ohio State uses an "off-scale" charging practice of not charging grants at the new cap level until July 1 of each year. This practice is intended to mitigate to some extent the impact on awards that are flat funded (e.g., modular grants) or awards for which the outyears were funded at a lower cap level.
Faculty Professional Leave
University policy allows faculty on professional leave for longer than one semester to augment their leave stipend with funds from external sources such as research grants, provided that:
- the grant terms allow additional compensation
- the activity to be compensated supports the purposes of the FPL, and
- the combined external support and reduced leave stipend do not exceed the level of the regular annual salary.
Effort charged to an award while on leave must be certified and must reflect actual effort on the grant. The effort charged must also be reported accurately on RPPRs or annual progress reports.
Grant and Award End Actions
Shortly before a grant ends, all appointed personnel should have a new appointment, either to a different grant or to a university source, entered into Workday. Failure to do this will result in unallowable charges continuing to accumulate on the ended grant. Any unresolved overexpenditures on a sponsored award will be transferred to the cost centers listed in the expenditure allocation section of the ePA-005 after the award has been closed.
If a staff member's employment will be terminated at the conclusion of a sponsored project, it is important that the university's reduction in force policies be followed, especially with regard to adequate advance written notification. Questions concerning interpretation actions should be directed to human resources.
What is Effort?
Uniform Guidance (UG) Section §200.430 states, "It is recognized that teaching, research, service, and administration are often inextricably intermingled in an academic setting. When recording salaries and wages charged to Federal awards for Institutions of Higher Education, a precise assessment of factors that contribute to costs is therefore not always feasible, nor is it expected." In addition, UG states "Because practices vary as to the activity constituting a full workload... records may reflect categories of activities expressed as a percentage distribution of total activities."
Based on this guidance, Ohio State considers that the time spent on ALL university job activities constitutes 100% of a person's effort. Salary charges in Workday are distributed across funding sources as a percentage of effort allocated to each funded activity.
Effort Commitment
In a proposal, the principal investigator (PI) determines the effort each member of the project team will devote to the project, which upon award becomes the Committed Effort. Except for some programs (e.g., training grants) that require a specific effort commitment, there is no general guidance or directive regarding a typical level of effort. Rather, Committed Effort should reflect the PI's best estimate of the actual effort required to meet project goals.
- Committed Effort equals sponsor compensated effort plus cost shared effort Documented cost sharing should be limited to situations where it is mandated by a sponsor, or it is necessary to fulfill the effort commitment to the project by the principal investigator or project director.
- Committed research effort plus teaching load + other obligations = 100% Personnel effort on all active awards plus teaching load and other commitments cannot exceed 100%. 100% effort encompasses the total amount of time spent by a faculty or staff member in performing all of the activities required by his or her job with the university. Effort is not based on a 40-hour work week.
Committed effort must be reflected in Workday either by charging effort to the grant or cost sharing it against the grant. These system appointments drive the effort certification process.
Effort Certification
Certification Process
- In a proposal, a specific level of effort is offered, an award is made with the expectation that the offered level of effort will be delivered, and a grant is set up in the university accounting system.
- The PI initiates personnel appointments on the project, and payroll costs are distributed based on these appointments (how specifically individual salaries are shared).
- Effort reports are generated from payroll information in Workday for three reporting periods per year (Fall Semester, Spring Semester, Summer Semester). The reports show the average effort charged to each funding source over the months of the period being certified.
- Certifiers are asked to review the reports to ensure that the effort reported reasonably represents how effort was actually expended. As noted above, effort percentages are somewhat imprecise and granting agencies consider levels of effort within +/- 25% of that committed to be acceptable. If correct, the PI on the grant certifies his or her own effort and the effort of students, postdocs and bi-weekly paid employees charged to the grant. Co-Investigators and other professional staff certify their own effort. Effort reports should be certified within 90 days of creation.
Correcting Effort Report errors with Payroll Accounting Adjustments (PAAs)
Certified/signed effort reports should not be corrected, except in rare circumstances. Therefore, if a signer determines that an Effort Report is wrong, it should not be signed. Rather, the certifier should immediately request that his or her department initiate one or more Payroll Accounting Adjustments (PAA). PAAs are the mechanism by which already incurred salary and benefit charges are moved from one funding source to another. Detailed instruction on creating and submitting a PAA can be found here.
To facilitate processing, it is important that the questions in the PAA system be answered carefully. Once a PAA has been processed the signer will be notified that a corrected effort report is available for certification.
To maintain the integrity of the effort reporting process and to allow for timely sponsor billing, all effort reports should be certified within 90 days of generation i.e.,
| Work performed in... | Fall Semester | Spring Semester | Summer Semester |
|---|---|---|---|
| ...should be corrected if necessary and certified by the end of | April | September | November |
Once the certification period given above closes, changes can no longer be made to a report except in rare circumstances, OR to remove effort to a department account, and any uncertified sponsored project charges may be transferred to a department account. The only exception to this procedure is if a sponsor requests a change, e.g., because an award was made very late. Questions about late PAAs should be sent to ospgrantaccounting@osu.edu.
Consequences of inaccurate effort reporting
Certifiers should review the Acknowledgement of Responsibilities Associated with Effort Certification that must be made on each effort certification. It indicates that failure to comply with effort certification requirements can result in serious financial penalties for the university. Additionally, criminal charges may be brought against an individual certifying a falsified effort report. Therefore, exercise due diligence when reviewing and certifying effort reports. If a report is incorrect, work with your department fiscal representative to initiate corrections and wait for a new report to be generated before certifying.
Additional Resources
- For Investigators and other certifiers: View a short video in BuckeyeLearn
- For ePA005 approvers: View a short video in BuckeyeLearn