Extending & Ending Employment
Whether they are graduating, taking another job, or the work they were hired to do is completed, it is important to keep track of when a student employee’s job comes to an end. The following information provides an overview of what to do when you must terminate a student employee as well as tips on how to avoid overworking, overpaying, or having to go through the process of re-hiring a student employee from semester to semester.
Monitoring the expected end date of a student employee’s job is an important part of your responsibilities as a supervisor. All student employee appointments auto-terminate (i.e., are automatically terminated) in ConnectCarolina on the expected end date that was recorded when the student employee was initially hired. The expected end date should be recorded in the student employee’s appointment letter.
Keeping track of a student employee’s expected end date is important as it will help you ensure that your student employees are not working beyond the last day of their appointment and will also allow you to extend or modify the length of a student employee’s appointments prior to auto-termination by the system. Please note that the auto-termination will NOT occur if there is a pending action in ConnectCarolina for a given student employee on the date of the expected end date. In those cases, monitoring expected end dates allows you to ensure that student employees are not continuing to be paid after their appointments were scheduled to end. Information on how to run an expected end date report can be found in the ConnectCarolina quick reference guide to HR/Payroll Reporting.
There are several types of breaks in employment that may be applicable to a student employee.
- Student employees in EHRA positions can be placed on Short Work Breaks, which suspends their pay, but keeps them active in the HR system. This is typically done for graduate students when their job has ended for the academic year (i.e., the class they served as a Graduate Teaching Assistant for ended for the semester), but who you expect to be re-hired in the same capacity for the following academic year. Short Work Breaks allow the student employees to maintain active employment status, which eliminates the need for them to complete the I-9 process again when they are re-hired.
- If a student is graduating from one program in the spring but enrolling in another program in the fall (i.e., undergraduate to graduate), they will need to take a break over the summer, as they are not considered to have active student status while between programs.
- Work-Study students are required to take breaks over the summer, with the first day of classes and the last day of exams defining the start and end dates of their jobs.
All student employee appointments auto-terminate (i.e., are automatically terminated) in ConnectCarolina on the expected end date that was recorded when the student employee was initially hired. Please note that the auto-termination will NOT occur if there is a pending action in ConnectCarolina for a given student employee on the date of the expected end date. In these cases, the termination will have to be completed manually by your hiring representatives.
If you need to terminate a student employee prior to their agreed-upon expected end date, it is important that you notify your hiring representative immediately. Keep in mind that if you are terminating a student employee for performance-related issues, the recommended best practice is to ensure that you have effectively communicated your concerns to the student and given them ample opportunity to improve their performance before you decide to terminate them.