Launching a New HR, Finance, and Payroll System with Faculty and Staff

Process

Analysis

My first task was to learn enough about Workday to determine what tasks employees would need to perform on day one in the system. I knew there would be more skills for different groups to learn down the road, but given the possible scope of it all, I chose to minimize the cognitive load on my learners as much as possible for the initial launch.

Learning the system involved independently sorting through what we came to call the “firehose” of information Workday had provided us, including an Adoption Kit with generic training resources. These resources, while useful, were not all relevant to day one tasks, and even for those that were, Workday had not suggested any particular sequencing of these training materials for go-live.

In collaboration with the project manager, I tracked all possible training topics that I saw a need for in a SharePoint list. Here, I was able to indicate which training topics were relevant to particular groups of stakeholders.

Image description: A SharePoint list titled Training Topics Tracker. It has columns for Course Title, Course Number, Course Description, Category, and Topic. The rows displayed include Workday Basics for Student Workers, Time Reporting Self-Service for Employees, and Payroll Self-Service for Employees.

During this time, I also strove to better understand the needs and preferences of my audience, which included diverse stakeholder groups like faculty, staff, and student workers; union and non-union employees; employees who worked in a hybrid role and those who worked on-campus; and employees who worked a standard 9 to 5 week and those who could be called in at any hour, like the Facilities or Police Departments.

Leveraging the institutional knowledge of the project manager was key here. I didn’t hesitate to ask what felt like even the most basic questions to build my understanding of these groups and what they would need to know on day one.

Training Program Design

Now armed with a baseline understanding of Workday and the various stakeholder groups, I began to group and sequence the training topics in a logical order, based on what prior knowledge of the system learners would need to perform the task.

For example, I grouped related tasks like requesting time off and clocking in and out into a single course, WD102: Time Reporting Self-Service for Employees. But before employees would be ready to use their Time and Absence apps, they’d first need to know how to navigate to different apps. So they would first need to complete WD100A: Workday Basics for Employees, which addressed basic navigation.

Eventually I arrived at a core set of seven “Workday Essentials” courses, which would be required for all staff and faculty. We would offer these as both asynchronous eLearnings and instructor-led trainings, primarily to accommodate our learners’ diverse schedules.

But offering the curriculum in both modalities would have other benefits, like empowering our learners with choice and agency; they could mix and match modalities and complete them at a convenient time.

Developing the curriculum as a series of eLearnings would also make the program more scalable, both in the short-and long-term. In the short-term, it would have been difficult for our small team, on which I was the only instructional designer and trainer, to provide ILTs for the entire campus in the relatively short training period. And it would also serve as a part of the university onboarding process for new hires going forward.

It was important to me that the curriculum emphasized application of the required functionality, rather than, say, creating a series of demo videos. My mantra over the course of the project became, “The best way for people to learn how to use the new system is to use the new system.” Hands-on practice of new skills is crucial for adult learners.

And both modalities, the eLearnings and the ILTs, would approximate the authentic environment of Workday, even though the production environment wouldn’t have launched for our end users during the training window. 

Image description: An excerpt from the training plan, displaying the overarching training goal/ learning objective as “Students will be able to (SWBAT) utilize the necessary functions of Workday to perform their job.” Further pedagogical implications of that learning objective are detailed below.

For the eLearnings, I would take a series of screenshots to which I would add interactivity for the learner to move through the real workflow. And in the ILTs, I arranged for the creation of a specific training environment for learners to log into, using their own credentials.

I presented all of this to project team leaders, who endorsed this approach and agreed to serve as subject matter experts (SMEs) as needed for validation.

From there, I began producing course design documents for each course. These were general enough to include both the eLearning and ILT versions of the course. I validated each design document with my project team SMEs and received their signoff.

Image description: Two pages from the course design document for the course WD102: Time Reporting Self-Service for Employees. The first page displays a section titled Course Overview, listing out the course level objectives, prerequisites, instructional approach, and platforms and environments. The second page displays a more detailed course outline, identifying the sequenced modules and how the course level objectives are broken down into module level objectives, with accompanying learning activities and assessments.

Development

With the course design documents approved, I began developing the courses as both eLearnings and instructor-led trainings.

eLearnings

To meet my aggressive deadline for the eLearnings, I leveraged the use of templates to expedite development. For example, I wrote an eLearning storyboard template, which provided a structure for writing all the courses and clearly established guidelines for elements like player settings.

I also designed a few key template slides, such as the title and conclusion slides, making sure to use the university’s branding for font, colors, and images, and referenced other university content and publications for design ideas, like the use of shapes and lines.

From there, I developed the courses in Storyline. At times, I discovered that something I had written in the storyboard needed to be changed—for instance, to make the language more conversational. 

Other times, I needed to re-develop slides based on configuration updates to the system.

Image description: The first page of the eLearning storyboard template. A table lays out some guidelines for eLearning design, including story size, colors, font family, font size, player settings, and publication settings.

Image description: Story View of WD102: Time Reporting Self-Service for Employees. There are five sections, including a branch representing two possible learning paths by role.

ILTs

Similar to the eLearnings, I produced a template for a trainer guide, which I then used to develop all the ILT versions. Since the ILTs would be facilitated by me as well as some others on my team, I included a variety of sections in the template that my fellow trainers might find helpful. They included sections on training preparation, a quick bulleted overview of the training at a glance, and a more detailed training script.

Image description: The Training at a Glance page of the ILT version of WD101: Updating Your Personal Information. It displays a table with all of the course modules, identifying how long each will take to complete, and a bulleted description of the functionality the trainer should coach learners on.

Other Training Materials

In addition to the Workday Essentials courses, I also guided my colleagues in the development of a library of self-service job aids, for when users needed quick, specific guidance on a particular task (rather than an entire course).

This was the one area of development to which other colleagues, with experience in writing technical documentation, contributed. Again, I provided them with a template to standardize the learner experience, and I reviewed and edited their drafts to ensure the quality of the instructional text.

During this phase, I prioritized the creation of job aids that would benefit a general audience, like how to submit your timesheet and update your preferred name.

Image description: On the left, the Workday job aid template, providing guidance for other team members on formatting and content. On the right, an example of a completed job aid using the template for the Create Supplier Invoice Request task.

Communications and Change Management

As a complement to my instructional design and facilitation work on this project, I also took over the related communications responsibilities.

This was a complex and multifaceted undertaking that involved outreach to multiple groups of stakeholders across multiple channels. But in general, our goals, as identified in the original communications plan before I joined the team, were to build awareness of and excitement for the new system and drive training participation.

My immediate job was to update the existing communications plan for the period leading up to the system launch, detailing specific messages, audiences, channels, and target dates.

Image description: The Workday@Wentworth Fall 2023 communications tactics, organized in an Excel spreadsheet. Each row identifies a different communication, including its stakeholders, the channel, the message, the project team member responsible for producing it, the target date, and the communication’s status. The current screen shows examples like “Calendar reminder in The W” for all faculty and staff about the implementation timeline.

To reach a large, general audience, I wrote copy and designed graphics for internal communications, delivered a university-wide presentation, and attended university events like the HR Benefits Fair to talk about the project.

Image description: At left, an internal communication for students alerting them to the new HR system they will use as student workers. It is organized into several short articles that prompt the reader to “read more,” along with accompanying graphics in university branded colors. At right, a slide from the deck I presented at the Community Forum to the entire university; this slide identifies the benefits of Workday as “Streamline. Simplify. Save Time” in a process graphic with related icons.

To reach more narrow audiences, such as managers and budget administrators, I hosted targeted events like virtual and in-person information sessions, where I could conduct a product demonstration of workflows specific to them—so they would have a clearer picture of what they could expect, even before the training period.

I also sought opportunities to integrate communications into existing channels maintained by these groups, like when I recorded a screencast to include in the usual opening days presentation for faculty.

Implementation

I had planned for users to participate in training immediately before the system launch. This was necessary for two reasons; logistically, the project team was still actively configuring the system behind the scenes right until launch, so I was concerned that if the training window was too early, employees would learn workflows that would soon be outdated and need retraining.

Pedagogically, keeping training as close to launch as possible would also be beneficial by showing learners the training’s immediate relevance (necessary for engagement) and minimizing the forgetting curve.

But this approach posed one major challenge: without Workday being live, learners had no way to complete their courses. For the ILTs, learners had no access to the system at that time to practice workflows, while for the eLearnings, learners couldn’t access our LMS which was also in Workday.

To provide live system access for the ILTs, I advocated for and was allocated a specific training environment, where learners could log in as themselves to learn to use the system. I also arranged for the creation of several training users, as a backup for new hires whose account hadn’t been created yet.

As for the eLearnings, my colleague suggested creating a course catalog using an Airtable interface. From there, learners could access either a link to the eLearnings or to Microsoft Bookings to enroll in an ILT. My colleague built the interface and I subsequently managed the data behind it.

Image description: The Workday Essentials catalog hosted on an Airtable interface. All courses are displayed in a list at left, with a more detailed course description for each at right.

Without an available LMS, I published the eLearning courses for the web and a colleague tracked completion data manually.

Once this plan was in place, I prepared other members of my team to facilitate some of the ILTs by conducting a train-the-trainer session, sharing the trainer guides, and creating an introductory slide deck for all trainers to use.

Of course, I facilitated most of the ILTs myself, both in-person and virtually, about twice a week for the duration of the training period. These were open to any employees. I also facilitated several trainings by department, an option we had publicized in many previous communications.

One final support mechanism that we put in place was 1:1 calls, scheduled through Microsoft Bookings. In the early days after system launch, I met virtually with school operations personnel, athletics staff, and leadership like deans to walk them through a particular workflow.

Optimization

It’s important to note that although the system has gone live for all employees, there is still a significant need for training and communications during the optimization period.

This has involved maintaining all training content in the Workday Learning LMS—helping HR build onboarding programs and manage Help articles. I’ve also published new job aids to meet more timely needs that have arisen since launch, like one for budget administrators on reviewing your departmental budget in advance of the end of fiscal year (FY).

But sometimes learners need help with a task that I haven’t created training documentation for yet, or just a quick answer to a quick question. I’ve been filling that gap by creating short screencasts (less than five minutes each) walking them through it.

Image description: A few instructional videos from my Loom library on topics including “How to Update Your Personal Contact Information,” “Editing an Approved Time Off Request,” and more.

Recognizing the importance of in-the-moment performance support, I’ve found ways to provide it directly within Workday. For example, I’ve written and edited help text, which appears next to a task, guiding the user as they perform it.

Image description: At the left, the Create Expense Report task in Workday, with blank fields ready for the user to complete. At the right, help text provides in-the-moment support with reminders about university policy and links to the relevant training resources.

On the communications side, I’ve prioritized maintaining transparency with employees about known issues we’re working to solve via an internal SharePoint site and the weekly university newsletter.