Online tool simplifies employment verification

Photo By Jo Anita Miley | Courtesy Photo Vanessa Midgett  

REDSTONE ARSENAL, AL, UNITED STATES

10.02.2019

Story by Jo Anita Miley 

U.S. Army Garrison - Redstone Arsenal

If you’re seeking employment or applying for a loan, you will probably need to provide employment verification information. At one time creditors or prospective employers could call a personnel office for the needed information.

Now, employees can provide information such as job title, tenure and salary through an online employment verification tool.

My Biz is an Enterprise Human Resources Information Systems, designed to allow employees to manage personnel data more easily. Introduced in February 2011, the Employment Verification Tool is a self-service My Biz tool that allows Department of Defense employees to send employment and salary information to an external organization or person directly from the Defense Civilian Personnel Data Systems in a password-protected document via email.

Vanessa Midgett, director of the Civilian Personnel Advisory Center, said the change is an improvement that saves the government both time and money because it eliminates middle people and gives employees direct access to their personal information. The Self Service My Biz EV tool enables employees to securely and conveniently release, via email, employment or salary information to an external organization or person. The information consists of employment only or employment and salary information. Employees can preview information on the screen before they complete the transaction. The recipient receives a password protected attachment, and the employee receives the password. The employee must provide the password to the recipient.

“Using the EV tool is better from a security standpoint, since our staff cannot validate who is a legitimate vendor,” Midgett said. “The verification process is self-directed and self-guided. To initiate a request, employees need the recipient’s email address along with their work or personal email address to use as a confirmation and validation of the employment verification. The EV tool gives autonomy to the workforce and employees retain their privacy. Employees have direct access to their own work history and can provide it to employers. There is no limit to the number of verifications an employee can submit.”

Midgett said her office is still a full service HR office that provides staffing/recruitment, classification, labor and manager employee relations services. Their primary mission is recruitment. Having employees validate their own personal information also frees up CPAC employees from doing employment verification and allows her staff to focus on the most critical tasks associated with human resources.

“One of the things they are doing at the Civilian Human Resources Agency South Central Region and all over the Department of Defense is to find ways to save time and money. All of DOD has been going through a transformation toward automation enhancement,” Midgett said. “The Army is also transforming and is affecting continual decreases in human resource authorizations, which increases the need to ensure that Human Resource Automation tools work effectively. The goal of Redstone CPAC is to continually move towards being the best customer-focused and technologically advanced human resources activity in the Army as we support our Soldiers, families, retirees and DOD civilians and contractors.”

Midgett said proper training is essential to avoid employees having problems using the tools on the MyBiz site. It’s left up to every government agency to ensure their employees are familiar with the site. There is a Help menu to provide access to guides and simulation videos, providing an overview of how to navigate My Biz in its entirety.

“We are raising awareness on all of the My Biz automated tools -- it’s mentioned during New Employee Orientation and pushed down to the HR teams within the various organizations on Redstone,” Midgett said. “We want to make sure employees know they now have access to their own information: the ability to update their supervisor or contact information, view and download their SF50 Personnel Actions or request employment verifications. It’s self-service, self-help.”

The Employment Verification Tool is available to all Army civilian employees via links through the Civilian Personnel On-Line, Army Benefits Center for Civilians and the Civilian Human Resources Agency website.

The following links will direct employees to My Biz in the Defense Civilian Personnel Data System:

• CPOL website: Access Benefits and Entitlements, which leads to the Employment Verification link, cpol.army.mil/library/benefits/2013-EV.html. This will direct the user to the Employment Verification information.
• ABC-C website: Via the www.abc.abc.army.mil/link under Quick Links on the left-hand side of the page, users will find Employment Verification. Users can then access the link that will lead them to cpol.army.mil/library/benefits/2013-EV.html.

The direct link for employees to log into My Biz, via DCPDS Portal is:
cmpo.dcpds.cpms.osd.mil/ and follow the Smart Card/Common Access Card log in process.

For more information about employment verification, contact your local CPAC. To submit Employment Verification comments or suggestions, log into My Biz, select the Self Service Interactive Customer Evaluation tool and the ICE My Biz link.

• Date Taken: 10.02.2019
• Date Posted: 11.26.2019 18:25
• Story ID: 353659
• Location: REDSTONE ARSENAL, AL, US