Workday@Yale marks first anniversary

July 1 marks the one-year anniversary of the launch of Workday@Yale, which has revolutionized how university business offices and Human Resources, Payroll and Academic staff get their work done, and how Yale employees maintain their personal information.

Since that Go-Live date, more than 60,000 business process transactions have been completed using Workday functionality — 10,500 of them job changes, almost 7,000 regarded as academic appointments, and 6,700 employee and student new hires.

More than 120 staff members from units across campus helped prepare campus departments for the switch, and pre-launch training sessions were offered to over 2,300 community members. During the transition, Human Resources and Faculty Affairs “Workday experts” and the Employee Services Hotline staff fielded questions, providing quick and often hands-on help.

“The learning curve has been amazing since last summer’s Go-Live of Workday. What we know now, versus a year ago, is incredible,” said Nicole Slabaugh, operations manager in the Division of Humanities.

“The first few months were challenging,” noted Jonathan Rohner, manager of finance and administration at the School of Art and interim director of finance at the Peabody Museum, “but as people became more experienced, everything smoothed out and now procedures are clearer and much more efficient. The support team for Go-Live has been extremely helpful. Each person answering the hotline showed complete dedication and understanding of the new system.”

Even after the launch, the Workday@Yale HR Innovation and Strategic Support Team worked to stabilize and optimize the system’s functionality, based on feedback from users — leading to the development of simplified business processes, refresher and hands-on clinics, and improved reports, training guides, and web resources. 

Workday users have praised the benefits of the new system.

“With the prior system, we never knew where an approval was in the process and who was next in line to review it,” said Theresa Pierson, director of business operations in the FAS Division of Humanities and Social Sciences. Now it is possible “to see what stage, and with whom, a business transaction is in — with just a glance,” she added. Pierson also noted that the organizational charts in Workday “are extremely useful, especially for new employees and for those who need to research which employees are assigned to specific units. Plus, the Workday directory is great because names pop up easily, even if you don’t know the exact spelling to use.”

“Workday has helped us get our work done more quickly as processing requests is much more efficient in this new system,” said Lauren Slater, human resources generalist in Employee Relations. “I think the easy accessibility to Workday is its biggest benefit. I can log in on my iPhone, iPad, or laptop, wherever I am, and get work done efficiently.”

The Workday@Yale team is now configuring Workday Financials, with an eye toward a July 2017 launch. With this new roll-out, “everything will be much easier, with Workday expanding beyond HR functions” predicted Nicole Slabaugh. “Workday Financials will pull it all together. One year after that Go-Live, I am confident that we will be this excited again about our learning curve and the efficiencies provided by Workday. We all learned Workday successfully this past year — and Workday Financials’ first year will work out great too!”

For more details, read this article on the Workday website. For further program information, visit the Workday@Yale resource website.