Michael Freer
Chief Human Resource Officer Bethel University
Seminars
Thursday 25th June 2026
Discover: Automating the Hardest Problems in Higher Ed HR: How Bethel University Is Eliminating Manual Faculty Pay Work, Reducing Cost, and Improving Accuracy
9:40 am
- Tackling one of higher education’s most persistent operational challenges, complex faculty, adjunct, overload, sabbatical, and student worker pay, by replacing manual calculations, emails, and payroll handoffs with an integrated, rules-based HR and payroll workflow.
- Redesigning HR operations to automate end-to-end processes such as contract generation, compensation calculation, approvals, and payroll entry, significantly reducing error risk, cycle time, and administrative burden while improving transparency and trust for faculty and managers.
- Delivering material financial impact by eliminating redundant HR software and automating high volume transactional work, projecting $240k–$250k in annual software savings and $500k–$600k in total annual cost savings as additional HR and payroll processes are optimized over the next 12–18 months.
Thursday 25th June 2026
Develop: How Can HR Reduce Complexity Without Creating New Risk?
10:00 am
- Where does decision overload show up most clearly in HR operating models today?
- How do unclear ownership, manual work, and fragmented processes increase risk even when costs are reduced?
- What decisions should be standardised, automated, or governed centrally versus deliberately left local?
- How do leaders know when simplification has gone too far?
