Workday Oregon Newsletter: Spring

Less myth, more legend

By Twyla Lawson, Business Change Manager and Legacy HR Systems Manager, Workday Oregon

With a software launch of this scale, the rumor mill is sure to churn! We would like to take the opportunity to bust some myths Workday Oregon has recently heard.

Myth: Limited Duration positions will automatically end at the end of the fiscal year because of Workday.

• Truth: Absolutely not. Only the budgets for LD positions will expire at the end of the biennium, just like they did in the previous HR system (PPDB). If an employee is in an LD position and has questions regarding their position, the best person for the employee to speak to is their immediate supervisor or their HR office. The Workday Oregon team is working to provide further clarity to HR and budget professionals over the next few weeks.

Myth: Agencies cannot fill positions that have not been budgeted/approved in Workday.

• Truth: If you do not have an approved budgeted position in Workday yet or have another reason to fill a position that is non-budgeted, the position can be filled by creating and using a non-budgeted position within Workday. (Remember, PICS is still the system of record for determining whether or not a position has been budgeted.) –The Workday team is working on improving the process to pull information out of PICS and load it into Workday in the most effective way possible. The process is much like the previous PICS roll process. We appreciate your patience as we refine this part of the process.

Myth: RDCs are going away.

• Truth: Report Distribution Codes (RDC) and Payroll Distribution Codes (PDCs) are not going away!  Please continue to use these codes the same way you used them in PPDB.  These codes are needed for reporting and for payroll.  If you have questions about the RDC or PDC codes, contact your HR office.

Myth: Workday only processes 1,500 records a day.

• Truth: The record processing parameters set around the payroll interface during implementation were conservatively restricted to run for no longer than two hours. Now that we are live, Workday Oregon has adjusted to these parameters and implemented an enhancement that greatly increases the record processing volume for the payroll interface. Please note: Not all actions performed in Workday will go to payroll. Agencies should not be concerned about completing too many transactions in one day and should complete the actions needed.

Myth: The Workday Oregon team keeps taking Workday functionality away from agencies.

• Truth: As soon as Workday Oregon discovered that certain actions were not sending correctly through our payroll integration, the Workday team put in protective measures for those actions. Most items, for which we put in place special controls, have now reverted back to agency users to manage. For example, benefits codes (known as Union/Representation in Workday) and labor cost code changes. In short, the Workday Oregon team is working hard to ensure the actions keyed in Workday flow correctly to our payroll system.

NEOGOV and Workday: Two systems, one goal

By Anna King, Communications Coordinator, Workday Project

Workday now serves as the internal and external system for recruitment. The program team has received many inquiries regarding the transition from NEOGOV to Workday. Your NEOGOV profile and previously submitted applications are still viewable through www.governmentjobs.com with your NEOGOV credentials. You may still receive email notifications for jobs posted in NEOGOV before February 19 that are finalizing their selection process. However, you must go directly to www.governmentjobs.com to complete the recruitment process for all NEOGOV job postings.

Internal applicants should apply for state government positions through their employee Workday portal. When preparing to apply for an opening, the employee should review and update the information in the Career section of their profile. The job history and education tabs allow for resume parsing to easily complete this task from an existing document. If an existing employee on-boards as an external candidate account, it will associate the same identifying information with two separate Workday profiles. Should this occur, it will need to be corrected to ensure only one profile exists within Workday for the individual. 

In Workday, once an external applicant’s initial profile has been created, the next time they apply they are given the option of using their last application or uploading a new resume or CV. By using their last application, all contact information remains in the system. Workday's resume parsing functionality aims to quickly place information from your resume into the most appropriate fields within the application. For optimal resume parsing, Workday Oregon recommends applicants upload a basic PDF or Word document without fancy headers, footers, bullet points, etc.

For questions regarding specific job postings, candidates may want to contact the recruiter/recruiting team responsible for the opening.

As was the case with NEOGOV, Oregon state government is excited to recruit and maintain top notch talent through Workday!

Did you know?

By Jenn Schierling, Organizational Change Manager, Workday Oregon

• Payroll is still the system of record for timekeeping, while Workday is the new tool for requesting leave. Payroll sends updated time balances to Workday on a monthly basis. In essence, Workday captures the act of requesting leave, regardless of your work schedule. Workday defaults to 8-hour days, but as long as you adjust the quantity of hours captured in your leave request to reflect the proper amount of hours, this functionality will work for you. 
• The Workday Project was only phase I of the enterprise system modernization effort! The plan for phase II is a modern time tracking and payroll system that will be integrated with Workday. This will allow employees to submit leave requests and enter time simultaneously.
• Comments are necessary for requesting leave in Workday. Before you can click "Submit" for a leave request, you must include a comment in the comment box next to the cloud icon above the "Submit" button. Submitting an additional comment in the pop-up dialogue box through which you can adjust the quantity of hours for the leave request is not necessary in order to submit a leave request. Beginning May 1, 2019, Workday will provide fields in absence requests for start/stop time, which will be great for partial day absences.