Student employees are interested in receiving their pay checks twice a month, a recent Student Government survey of 105 student workers says.

Student Senate Internal Affairs Chair Ronnie Deedrick said Monday 91 percent of those surveyed would prefer to be paid twice per month as opposed to monthly pay checks.

If Eastern converts to paying all employees twice a month, which can only be done through a direct deposit system, it will catch up with all other schools, Charles Phillips, director of Human Resources, said Monday.

“The electronic deposit of funds is the norm,” he said, referring to the system where an employees’ pay check is electronically deposited into their bank accounts.

It is impossible to institute semi-monthly payment without a majority of students switching to direct deposit, because of the amount of labor required to process student payroll each month, Todd Bacon, assistant director of payroll, said Monday.

In order for students to receive payment twice a month, actions need to be taken to decrease the amount of labor needed on the input and output of the payments, Bacon said.

“We’ve got the factors in place to enable us to do this,” Bacon said.

On the input end, a new system to be implemented this fall, Kronos, will be used to gather time and attendance, Bacon said.

On the output end, 80 percent of student employees need to sign up for direct deposit, Bacon said.

The Student Senate began looking at the idea of semi-monthly payment last semester, but the issue has come up several times in the past few years, Deedrick said. The survey was started toward the end of the fall semester and finished in January and February, he said.

Questions on the survey asked if students understood the concept of direct deposit, otherwise known as electronic funds transfer, if they would be in favor of semi-monthly payment, if it would be inconvenient to switch to EFT and if they would be willing to sign up for EFT in order to be paid twice a month.

Ninety-one percent of those surveyed said they would prefer being paid twice a month and 93 percent said it would not be inconvenient to switch to EFT.

When the Student Senate began working on the project, 20 percent of student workers had EFT, and that number has since risen to 40 percent, Deedrick said.

If 80 percent of student workers sign up for EFT, the recommendation would be made to convert the payroll system, but it would not happen right away, Bacon said. Programming changes need to be made to accommodate the system.

All student workers would receive the semi-monthly payment if 80 percent switch to EFT, Bacon said.

Student employees could begin receiving paychecks twice per month as soon as the end of this year if the appropriate technology is installed and enough students sign up for electronic funds transfer, Bacon said. However, the decision is up to the Business Affairs Office and Information and Technology Services, he said.

Since 1997, Eastern employees, excluding student workers, have operated on an EFT system for semi-monthly payment, by a decision of Eastern’s Board of Trustees, Bacon said. The same decision may eventually be made for student workers, but has not yet, he said.