Employee reporting hierarchy sets foundation for Workday

WorkCyte updates

The WorkCyte website tracks the implementation progress for Workday and other enterprise systems, and provides monthly updates. Questions and comments can be submitted online.

One of the primary building blocks of the Workday enterprise software system is its supervisory organization, which shows the reporting lines for positions and employees. Although full implementation of Workday is more than a year away, that supervisory building block is being created to ensure it's ready to go live.

"This is the fundamental part of the foundation that will be laid in the system," said Cara Roesch, a member of the WorkCyte change network team. "The whole reason for this exercise is to clearly document the hierarchy of the university."

Roesch said establishing an employee reporting hierarchy is essential for future business processes and transactions that will be completed in Workday, such as approving travel expenses, making purchases and hiring staff.

"It allows managers to view activities and take action with one or two simple clicks," Roesch said.

Data collection

University human resources (UHR) and information technology staff collaborated on an online tool to collect the data for what essentially is a university-wide interactive organizational chart. About 160 human resource liaisons and department administrative staff collect and update the data, which includes the positions of all employees (faculty, staff and students) and their supervisory reporting lines.

About 12,000 records were verified (updated or confirmed) during a 10-day span last month, said Diane Muncrief, UHR director of human capital capabilities.

To ensure that the supervisory organization is accurate and complete, data will be collected multiple times before Workday goes live next year. After that, the supervisory organization will be updated automatically through human resources business processes in the system.