One of the shared services units of the university, the Core Administrative Processing Support (CAPS) Center provides payroll and personnel transaction services for departments. Centralized processing expertise in this way leads to fewer errors and more time for units to devote to departmental missions and goals.

Guidance for compensation and classification is different depending on the position category (e.g., academic, staff, postdoc or other student categories). To ensure effective decision-making regarding salary, Human Resources helps managers by providing guidance and information toward data-driven decisions around employee compensation and classification.

All employees of the university have their core employment details recorded in a Personnel Action File (PAF; also called ePAF for electronic records). Information on file includes specifics related to an employee's position and related changes over the course of an employee's career, including hire date, job title, pay grade, retirement plan and more.

Although difficult for those involved, layoff is sometimes a necessary course of action for the university. In the event of a layoff, offboarding procedures conducted differently than for other exiting employees. Employees facing layoff may also be eligible to receive transitional pay based on their length of service to the university.

Employees may be granted leaves of absence from their position in certain circumstances (e.g., prolonged illness or injury, seasonal variances in work, etc.). Leaves of absence can be either paid or unpaid, depending on the situation. Similarly, provisions in federal and state regulations (e.g., FMLA, VESSA, Workers Comp, USERRA, etc.) apply to some leaves and protect an employee’s job during their time away.

Occasionally, payroll situations arise that require an adjustment of the university's usual payroll process, or need to be handled in a different way (e.g., overpayment; employees taxed as nonresident aliens, etc.) to ensure proper processing. Separate procedures are available for these instances to help ensure accuracy and compliance with all policies and regulations the university must follow.

The university always looks to hire quality candidates for open positions. Human Resources helps support departments each step of the way, beginning with posting a job opening, through assisting with background checks and onboarding of final candidates. Recruitment processes are different based on the type of role being hired (e.g., academic position; staff positions), and required background checks have their own steps to complete.

Many software platforms are at work across the university, whether to help conduct day-to-day operations or store information. These platforms utilize different types of security permission based on role or the type of work being done, which are maintained through different points of the organization depending on the platform.

The university uses the general term "separation" to describe when a faculty or staff member's service to the university concludes. The manner of the departure could be either voluntary and involuntary (e.g., retirement; termination; transfer to a new position in another department within the University of Missouri System; etc.).

The term "time and labor" is used across the university to cover a few interrelated topics of conducting work, including the processes that faculty and staff use to log hours in order receive pay and report leave taken, the section of the myHR employee portal software where employees complete these actions, as well as administrative actions taken to approve logged time as part of payroll.