St. Joe’s new management system for human resources and finances, Workday, has introduced challenges for student workers and supervisors as they adjust to new features such as clocking in, geolocation tracking and difficulties with onboarding student employees.
While University of the Sciences employees, including student workers, previously used Workday, St. Joe’s used a different e-system accessed through The Nest prior to the merger. Workday combines multiple functions into one program, compared to St. Joe’s previous system which did not. Before, employee processes were split among various systems such as Banner HCM, Bridge and PeopleAdmin.
After the merger, St. Joe’s aligned all student workers on the same system. Workday went live for student workers on June 1 and is accessible through The Nest and through the Workday mobile app.
The decision to switch to Workday immediately after the merger was to prevent using different systems on the two campuses, according to Alison Dougherty, interim chief human resources officer.
“Workday quickly emerged as the clear path forward for the enterprise management system,” Dougherty said in response to written questions from The Hawk. “In order to facilitate normal operations like payroll and hiring, it was critical to have Workday Human Capital Management [HCM] live on June 1. This prevented us from working in two systems for each campus.”
According to Dougherty, employees can currently use Workday for workforce management, and hiring new student workers, two activities that were previously located in Banner HCM. Employees can also use Workday to request time off and view pay stubs.
Student employment through Workday was the first phase of implementation for the new system, with further processes being added later, according to St. Joe’s TeamDynamix page “Table of Contents: Learning to Use Workday.” The next two phases are set to be implemented in 2023, adding processes such as Workday Finance in phase two and non-student employee recruitment and hiring in phase three.
Currently, finances remain in Banner and employee recruitment remains in PeopleAdmin. According to Dougherty, talent management will remain in Bridge, but “there is an opportunity to replace Bridge with features of Workday.”
When transitioning both campuses to the same system, St. Joe’s decided to “onboard all employees and students transitioning from USciences as new employees,” Dougherty said.
Alanna Durkin, Ph.D., lab coordinator on the University City campus, said the process of rehiring lab teaching assistants (TAs) for the fall 2022 semester delayed students being able to work.
“Before, [the TAs] had been hired by USciences, and they’d been cleared for employment,” Durkin said. “Now, as St. Joe’s employees, they had to go through that process again, of verifying their identity. It was a problem for some TAs who were like, ‘I don’t have those original documents here. They’re at home, and I can’t get them in time for the start of the semester.’”
For Kathleen Donaher, administrative assistant for the health sciences department and the educational leadership department, Workday has been very difficult to use and seems like it is overcomplicating a system that already worked.
“I feel like we’re trying to reinvent a wheel, and doing so with an additional gazillion steps,” Donaher said. “It definitely created a lot of stress at the beginning of the semester. And for me and for people who hire work study [students], you want to get them onboarded because they can alleviate some of the things you’re doing.”
Agnes Blisard, administrative assistant for the modern and classical languages department and the theology and religious studies department, also said that the main problems she faced with Workday were at the beginning of the process as student workers were onboarded.
“It was a little bumpy, getting the onboarding part completed,” Blisard said. “There’s a lot of behind the scenes and navigating through all the different pages.”
New for all student workers is the requirement to clock in and clock out of every shift. Previously, USciences and St. Joe’s students were able to input their hours at the end of every week using their respective systems.
Adjusting to the new procedure has been difficult for both workers and supervisors managing their time, said Sam Garber ’23, a student worker on the UCity campus.
“Sometimes people forget and then it makes the hiring managers’ jobs a little bit more difficult because then they have to enter in the hours and then everybody just gets frustrated,” Garber said. “So the checking in and checking out is difficult if you don’t remember.”
Rachel Ackerman, administrative assistant for the department of biology, said that it has been a struggle when students forget to clock their hours because as a supervisor, she is the only one who is able to fix students’ hours. However, she has been working to find a solution.
“I created a Google form for people to fill out when they miss a clock in or clock out,” Ackerman said. “That way we have an automatic system so they don’t worry that they missed it and I can make sure I grab their time. ”
John Cawley ’23, a Hawk Hill student worker, said that while clocking in and out means that students don’t have to go back to put in their hours, it can still be difficult if there’s a system glitch or someone is forgetful.
“I like doing it myself because just keeping track of your own hours is, I think, easier,” Cawley said.
The system of clocking in and out also introduced a geolocation feature in the Workday mobile app so that employees can only clock in or out when they are in physical range of their workplace. This feature is not present if Workday is accessed through The Nest.
For Mayra Rosales ’24, a UCity student worker, geolocation is something she is very aware of as she adapts to the updated system.
“I have to go between building to building, and there are times where I’ll see that Workday is tracking my location, which it never did before,” Rosales said. “It’s now that factor of, ‘oh, I need to know where you are at all times.’”
Rachel Callahan, Human Resources campus partner, told students and supervisors at a Sept. 7 Workday training that this feature was introduced in order to prevent clocking in while on the way to work.
“We value our community’s privacy and it is at each individual’s discretion to use the Workday mobile application,” Dougherty said “It is not required to use their mobile application. Workday’s mobile application does not store any location data.”
As the St. Joe’s community continues to adapt to Workday, challenges are “normal and anticipated with a system transition of this magnitude,” Dougherty said.
“The process is ongoing and will be for some time. There will be time for debriefing further down the road.”
For further information on and assistance with Workday, see St. Joe’s TeamDynamix pages on Workday or submit a ticket for additional assistance here: https://sju.teamdynamix.com/TDClient/1942/Portal/KB/?CategoryID=21968.
