Workday
Workday

 

Since the launch of Workday last month, employees have been experiencing firsthand what Metropolitan State University of Denver’s new Human Resources and financial–management system has to offer and the powerful tools and data that are easily accessible. Keep reading to learn about some key Workday highlights since going live. 

Workday transformations in action

Employees from across the University have embraced this modern technology and are already enjoying how easy Workday is to navigate and use. 

  • More than 4,000 Roadrunners have logged in to Workday over 65,000 times, with about 27% of those sessions happening on the Workday mobile app.  
  • The Payroll team has successfully completed one monthly and two semi-monthly payroll runs in Workday. 
  • The Office of the Controller has disbursed more than $28.1 million in funds to employees, students and service providers using Workday. 
  • Since launching, 50 job requisitions have been submitted through Workday and 23 have moved through the Hire business process, making the recruiting and hiring processes more simplified and a better experience for all users.  
  • Professional and Classified Non-Exempt staff (approximately 150 employees) are no longer using paper timesheets to track their time. The process is now completely electronic, and any corrections/adjustments needed can be made directly in Workday. 
  • Student employees are benefiting from an improved timesheet process, which includes a check-in/check-out feature, eliminating the need for external time-clock systems. And student employees who are working a split assignment can now see all shifts worked in one calendar view. 
  • The Workday Project Team, functional leads and Information Technology Services have resolved more than 600 service requests to date. After a sharp (and expected) increase at launch, new requests are decreasing week over week. 

Workday work in progress 

As with any implementation of this size, we anticipated some challenges, as no transition of this magnitude and complexity is ever flawless. Although there have been challenges, the Workday project team estimates that 95% of the implementation went smoothly and as expected.  

Collaboratively, functional experts and ITS have been working daily to fix reported issues at the root and address Workday Launch Support tickets as quickly as possible. Below is a summary of the work in progress.  

  • Data integrity: Transferring data from Banner (our original ERP and system of record) into Workday was a huge undertaking, and some challenges have arisen. The team continues to work to ensure the accuracy, completeness and consistency of all data.  
  • Student-employee logins: Some student-employee profiles were incorrectly loaded into Workday, causing login challenges. This issue has been corrected, and most student employees should now be able to access their Workday accounts.  
  • Payroll issues: Payroll issues affecting some employees have been identified. Any payroll errors reported are being prioritized, and a payroll ticketing process has been set up to escalate and resolve them as quickly as possible.  
    • Student employees: Some student employees’ pay was not processed because of the student-login issues mentioned earlier. The Student Employment and Payroll teams are prioritizing these and continue to correct and process payments as quickly possible.
    • Faculty: When transitioning full-time faculty profiles to Workday, the “academic” filter was not automatically captured in some faculty Workday profiles, resulting in full-time faculty not being paid appropriately. Once the issue was discovered, the Workday Team manually applied the academic filter, fixing it.  

Manual payments were submitted for employees with payroll issues. The Payroll team was able to process all manual requests within one business day. After manual payments were submitted, a failure in the bank integration was also discovered but was quickly corrected within 24 hours.  

Other payroll issues have been reported, but most have been one-off situations and are addressed case by case. Since payroll is the most complex business process, bridging HR and Finance, the team anticipated and was prepared for payroll challenges and continues to prioritize them as critical items. 

  • Security roles: The Workday Team continues to review and revise security roles for some positions to ensure that all employees can view data and perform tasks based on their job at the University. Issues related to security roles are being prioritized, and the team is working as quickly as possible to resolve requests efficiently.  
  • Gap analysis: Training materials and other collateral are continually being assessed and updated. Based on user experience, feedback and/or consistent questions/issues that are raised, new assets are being created to help bridge the learner gap. 
  • Reporting: Workday comes loaded with nearly 5,000 pre-built reports. Some data is still being loaded into Workday, and not every employee has access to the information they need or knows how to get it. Project-team members are working with end users and our consultants to refine permissions and training to ensure that the campus community can leverage this powerful resource. 

Watch for Monday’s article on maximizing this powerful all-in-one system.