Workday: HR Evolved

I have had the opportunity to support and configure the Workday HR system for over four years. That includes the Workday modules for Expenses, Recruitment, Onboarding, Time/Absence, Payroll, Compensation, Benefits, Position Management, Talent Management, Learning, Reporting, and Analytics.

At my previous employer, we used several different HR systems like PeopleSoft, Kronos, Taleo, Microsoft Dynamics, and some home-grown self-service systems. All of those systems served a specific purpose, but it wasn't until using Workday that I realized the power of having EVERYTHING in one HR system.

Now that I've had a chance to fully explore and leverage the Workday HR system, I wanted to share some insights into what separates Workday from the other HR systems out there.

Note: I am in no way affiliated with Workday other than working at a company that uses the Workday application. This is not a paid promotion. I just want to share my personal thoughts on the Workday application with my fellow HR professionals, who are all navigating the complex space of HR software.

Recruitment and Onboarding

The Workday job board and candidate experience are definitely best-in-class. Candidates can easily browse and apply for jobs from their mobile devices. This is critical because nearly all job searching is done with a mobile device. No one wants to have to switch to a laptop or desktop computer just to fill out a job application once they find the job you are looking for on their phone.

Along with the great candidate user experience, Workday has an onboarding tool that we started using called Journeys. It's a masterful module that pops up on your Workday homepage and helps you navigate a transition you are going through (like becoming a new employee, transitioning into leadership for the first time, or being a leader and having a new employee start in your department). The Journey's tool is an easy-to-use, dynamic experience that provides the resources an employee needs when they encounter one of these scenarios. This really helps orient the employee and provide them with the information they need when they need it.

The Workday recruitment module has all of the best practice processes baked in, like sourcing, screening, interviewing, offers, post-offer, and hiring covered. But above and beyond those capabilities, it excels at recruitment reporting and dashboards. There are a ton of options for reporting, dashboards, scorecards, and analytics using a whole host of Workday tools (standard reports, delivered dashboards, custom reports, Discovery Board visuals, Prism analytics, and their People Analytics tools).

There are a lot of new exciting features available like candidate engagement, SMS messaging, and all kinds of tools to source and engage prospective candidates that I'm looking forward to learning more about in the near future.

Benefits and Compensation (aka Total Rewards)

Workday continues to invest in its benefits and compensation tools. We currently going through benefits open enrollment and the browser and mobile experience for our employees is top-notch. I especially like the tile format that lets employees view and select benefits and lets them know what they have or haven't reviewed yet. Each tile also provides custom text and links that help our employees navigate the sea of choices.

For the Advanced Compensation module, Workday provides a powerful set of tools for compensation planning, compensation changes, workflow, approvals, and reporting. The companies I have networked with at the Workday conference, all seem to be able to house and manage their complex compensation structures and processes within Workday.

One of my most recent favorite features that have rolled out for Total Rewards in Workday is the "Pay and Benefits Hub". This is a one-stop page for our employees to get a holistic view of their pay, compensation, and benefits all in one place. It's a great tool for employees to get a comprehensive view of the total compensation.

Training and Development

Having my degree in Adult Education and Training, I have always been impressed with Workday's approach to learning and development. The Workday Learning home page feels more like YouTube than it does a traditional LMS. Visually appealing, easy to navigate and the ability to consume learning paths (which are like playlists) are great for the employee experience. The ability to upload peer-to-peer content with approvals is a powerful tool and in line with the trends in learning and training.

Outside of the traditional learning system in Workday, you've also got the power of individual development plans, talent profiles, skills/competency management, goals, succession plans, performance reviews, check-ins, and calibrations.

Mobile Experience and the Home Page

It has been great to watch Workday evolve the home page of the website and mobile app. It's amazing to see how content is personalized to the employee through relevant tasks and reports using machine learning. As a manager, the Workday homepage lets me know when I have employees with upcoming birthdays and work anniversaries. It notifies me of important approvals or pending education I need to complete. And it lets me know if I have scheduled absences with my team. And it's all in one place. It is so helpful that I don't have to click and explore for what is relevant to me. It just cuts through the noise and brings the relevant content to the top.

I also enjoy the power of the mobile app. To be able to search for employees, view the org chart, find contact information, complete learning, manage my time, and so much more on my phone is a game changer. It's like taking remote work to the next level. I couldn't imagine going back to paper and emails to manage my work life.

Reporting and Analytics

I can't stress enough how powerful it is to have one HR system when creating reports. Before Workday, I used to have to download reports from various HR systems and export them to Excel. Then use vlookups and pivot tables to join the data and get totals. Those days are long gone. There are so many delivered reports and dashboards that just come out of the box. But along with that, the reporting, dashboarding and analytic tools within the system are jaw-dropping.

Just the ability to quickly create custom reports and then pull the data for a specific date and time is revolutionary. It sounds like a small feat, but it saves us from having to store snapshots of data in an HR data warehouse to accomplish the same task. And that's just with a basic custom report, developed in 5 minutes. And of course, you have all of the other features like reporting scheduling, alerts, report bursting, dashboards, and scorecards. You've got data visualizations and the availability of some very powerful and advanced reporting and analytic tools you can add too.

Workday Extend

New to us this year is using Workday Extend. It's this super powerful development toolset that lets you extend the Workday application so that you can craft and deploy your own Workday custom applications and worklets. This has allowed us and other companies to finally be able to do things in Workday, instead of doing them in SharePoint, Excel, or custom in-house programs. We're really looking forward to seeing the potential we can unlock in the Workday system using this tool.

In Conclusion

I've had the opportunity to use a lot of different HR systems. This is especially true since I teach a class on HR Information Systems at the University of Oklahoma for the master's program. And having seen, used, or experienced these other HR systems, I am deeply impressed and inspired by what Workday has been able to achieve.

I am excited about the future of HR and to see what innovations are coming. Who knows what we will evolve in HR systems around virtual/augmented reality, artificial intelligence, digital assistants, robotics, remote work, big data, cloud computing, blockchain, and so much more that we haven't even imagined yet.

#technology #hris #workday #hr #humanresources #hrtechnology