Staff Excellence: Payroll and Tax Services

Thousands of Purdue University and Purdue Global faculty and staff set out to work each day to support their families, lifestyles and futures, and thanks to the persistence of the university’s Payroll and Tax Services team, they know they’ll go home with accurate and timely compensation for their efforts.

“We work diligently every day to ensure employees are paid correctly and on time,” says Candace Shaffer, associate vice president of benefits and payroll. “If we fail, not only do we negatively affect the lives of our employees, but we also weaken the integrity of the university and positive strides in employee and student relations. Each member of our team takes their jobs very seriously and understands that their positions impact your lives.”

Led by Shaffer, the 18 members who make up the Payroll and Tax Services team work behind the scenes to process biweekly and monthly checks for approximately 31,000 systemwide Purdue and Purdue Applied Research Institute employees and 2,800 Purdue Global employees. In 2022, the group’s efficient operations led to the distribution of more than $1 billion in taxable income. 

Always striving for excellence, Payroll and Tax Services is continually evolving its timekeeping, payroll and tax services procedures to better support the university and the individuals who constitute its workforce. In recent years, the team has implemented updated processes for remote I-9s to serve the university’s growing number of remote and hybrid employees, operationalized a wage overpayment dashboard and developed key performance indicators to work toward creating a perfect payroll system.

The team also holds the responsibility of ensuring Purdue’s hiring and pay processes are compliant with state and federal requirements. To do so, they have expanded resources for onboarding, I-9s and taxes to guarantee that the university’s 14,000 new hires each year have the tools to navigate its required compliance following the start of their careers at Purdue.

Providing extraordinary customer service is a daily affair for this group of experts, who always take care to address any question or request that comes their way. As the bridge between employee master data management and finance, the team works diligently to minimize issues across campus by fielding approximately 36,000 inquiries each year related to garnishments, timekeeping, payroll processing, tax services, and I-9 and work authorization.

Without the exceptional efforts of Payroll and Tax Services, many of the university’s operations would slow to a halt. Beyond its mission to serve Purdue employees, Payroll and Tax Services strives to constantly improve system stability, processes and customer service, underscoring the team’s endless pursuit of excellence at scale within the campus community.