Updates to Workday, Graduate Student Funding, and Job Family Redesign Discussed at Leadership Team Meeting

The IT Leadership Team met on November 17 to review the following topics:

The New Workday Experience

Alex Barreuther, HCMS Solutions Junior Architect, announced a forthcoming update to Workday called Workday Today. With this enhancement, Yale community members will benefit from an updated homepage, search features, and the Workday Assistant–a digital chatbot to help users find what they are looking for. All of the features in Workday Today are designed to offer an improved people experience (aka PEX), using machine learning technologies. Following a pilot ending in March 2022, these features will be available community-wide.

Magger Galvan, HCMS Solutions Architect, provided a demo of Workday Assistant. “Workday Assistant is one of my favorite enhancements because it’s so versatile” she shared. The Assistant can answer questions about time off and provide time off balances. It can respond to key phrases, such as “payment election,” and help you quickly make changes to direct deposit. With Assistant, if you type in “find job” or “open positions,” it will direct you to the place where you can search and apply for jobs at Yale. “Not only is Assistant useful to our users, by empowering them to find answers to their questions, it will also reduce the number of ESC inquiries,” she added.

In support of this transition, HRISS is collecting feedback and questions from pilot participants and is partnering with Workday to meet Yale’s needs. Change Management will also support the community-wide launch in the Spring.

Graduate Student Funding Project (GSFP) Update

Sara Estrom, Director of Financial Aid at the Yale Graduate School, provided an update on the Graduate Student Funding Project (GSFP), including its vision: to “deliver a solution that provides the functionality required for graduate student funding transaction and execution reporting.” According to Sara, the new solution will more effectively utilize the student ERP (Banner), the HR and Finance ERP system (Workday), and a newly developed data mart. The project is set to launch in June 2022.

Tedd Darash, Student Information Systems Senior Project Manager, provided insight into how they are tracking their progress. Despite using a waterfall methodology, nothing is finished before the next task begins. This approach has allowed them to make swift progress, including finalizing requirements and design around key areas as well as completing a funding matrix—a big accomplishment for the project. In addition, Tedd stressed the role of communicating with the steering committee, including sharing a list of project risks, to anticipate and avoid roadblocks.

Next up, the project team will partner with Change Management to encourage community-wide adoption.

Job Family Redesign Update

John Barden and Blanche Temple, IT’s HRG, offered an update on the Job Family Redesign Project–a project that has been underway for a few years and responds to feedback from the last Workplace Survey. The Redesign has been supported by members of the IT SLT and will provide a matrix, job descriptions, communications, and training for use in the 2022 merit cycle.
Drivers that gave rise to the Job Family Redesign included the need to:

1. Clarify progression and establish expectations by level, in simple tracks.
2. Acknowledge that technologists do not have to transition to managerial roles to be fairly compensated for expertise.
3. Establish a market-driven equity model, grouping similar skills to more fairly compare compensation, and underpin equity practices.
4. Reduce variability by simplifying titles and job descriptions, so people know what each other do.
5. Set a framework for all IT job roles at Yale, regardless of their reporting relationship (a longer-term goal).

IT’s Job Family Redesign will ultimately serve as a model for other Operations units. To ensure that the project continues to move forward, John said that “there is a lot to be said about keeping this process simple—we do ourselves a disservice by writing more specific descriptions, which may have a negative impact on diversity.”

The Redesign is currently focused on M&P roles, but bargaining unit roles (which require the partnership of the union to modify) may at some point be incorporated into the effort.

Ask John Anything

John reminded everyone that the goal of MIM is to help support those who are facing issues, to decide if a P1 needs to be declared, and to rally those who need help. He encouraged individuals to be willing to raise their hands when problems happen. He reinforced that “there is a need to communicate issues and partner to fix problems.” Lisa Sawin added that process improvements are coming, but may not be coming fast enough, and there may be an opportunity to fix something easy that would make a big difference. She invited feedback by saying that “if there is something we could do to support you, now is the time to raise your hand to let us know.”

John also acknowledged Paul Rivers and Sandra Germenis for their service to Yale and extended well wishes on the next step in their career journeys.

The next IT Leadership Team meeting will be held on December 15.