WORKDAY – Super User Perspective
After working with multiple Human Capital Management (HCM) products both as Technical Consultant as well as Super User in my career, finally a product which is doing one thing picture perfectly i.e. Providing a Perspective. WORKDAY has stood out in all major People Process and leads the pack now. Software-as-a-Service model reduces up-front investment, lowers overall costs and brings continuously version upgrades with minimum disruption.
Subsequent to spending plentiful time scouting for various HCM products and working with few, I have always observed from HRBPs, HRIS Team, Master Data Specialist, HR Leaders that they and their team spend considerable time feeding the data in HCM but seldom reap the benefits of a product. They end up using the HCM as a source of maintaining employee dump just to create Employee ID, Login details for laptop etc. and miss out on those BAF (Benefit-Advantage-Feature).
Below are the 7 Unpretentious usage from Workday during my journey as APAC Workday Lead. This is neither aimed at comparing various HCM solutions in market nor exhaustive analysis of Gartner Magic Quadrant for HCM.
1. Reporting & Analytics – Using a single search bar to look out reports by typing just the keyword and getting historic as well as current data pertaining to Active HC, Entry/Exit, Promotion/Transfer/, Compensation Dashboard, Staffing status is fanciful. Moreover, these reports can be scheduled for a user who gets it delivered in his/her Workday inbox. Modifying a report or creating a report from scratch is a child’s play that helps HRBPs saving time otherwise spend in customizing the downloaded report
2. Employee History –TAB under employee records include the step by step history of every business process as well as time/date stamps of when the step was completed and by whom. No need to look back at personal files, email for when the employee was transferred or promoted or any other career milestone. It also shows the name of approver to whom the action is pending for approval.
3. Organization Tree – (As modest as it gets) With less than 3 clicks, Organization Tree can be downloaded in your favorite format (pdf/ppt/excel) with employee picture as well as the levels (N-1, N-2 etc.). Within the Org Chart, you can navigate the structure of your department and company by tapping on individuals. Chart once downloaded can be shared with the user without doing any slightest of the modification.
4. Workday Staffing Model (Position Management) – A position is an empty chair that inherits & maintains job information and employees fill those empty chairs. With position management in place, every position in your organization exists independent of your employees, whether it is filled or not and provided RECRUITER with the exact staffing status. With effective position management, HRIS team can save sufficient man-hours in maintaining the system and during Annual People Budgeting exercise. It also aids in Succession Planning and help guide employees into developing skills required in the next role.
5. Workday Recruiter – It allows you to Plan, hire, and onboard using a single HCM application. Workday Recruiting helps you manage high volumes of candidates with ease and maintains an interactive RECRUITMENT DASHBOARD to track key hiring matrices. Comfort with which candidate can login and apply to a job is praiseworthy and far-sighted. Evergreen requisitions cane be used to source and hire the talent continuously
6. Security Access – Security groups determine what you can see and what you can do in Workday. Defined for each business process like Promotion, Transfer, Termination etc. approval goes to the security group. This eliminates the need for email chains and prevents unauthorized data access.
7. User Interface – I am sure all the above 6 applications will be present in most of the HCM products in the market today but what truly fascinated the HR Team and Business Users is the Ease of Use and Minimalistic Uncluttered User Interface. Logical approval flow for HR related transactions and smoother data input adds to the usage coupled with the Mobile Version which is a must-to-have APP in your phone.
PS – Views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in the text belong solely to the author, and not necessarily to the author’s employer, organization, committee or other group or individuals.