Newired and HCM platforms

Written by Natalia

Human Capital Management is a category of software to manage every aspect of a company’s human assets. These platforms are becoming increasingly more adopted, as companies want to optimize the time spent on these tasks and manage many different aspects using the same software: from an employee’s contract and personal information to their leave and vacation requests.

As examples of platforms in this category, we find Workday, Bamboo HR, Cornerstone, Dayforce, SAP Success Factors and many more.

But as happens with many complex platforms, with several modules and covering different processes, HCM platforms can pose many challenges to its users.

What are the most common challenges of Workday?

In this article, we will mention some of the challenges presented by Workday and what companies can do about them.

Limited adoption of its potential and features

Workday has been criticized for poorly connecting its applications and thus impacting software adoption and even the company’s ROI. Intrasee software explains this challenge quite well: “Unfortunately, the human brain is not wired to process complex and poorly connected applications (unless you’re Stephen Hawking). Which leads to massive under-utilization of the true potential that Enterprise systems could provide (which thus creates an under-realization of ROI).”

Usability problems

Workday reviewers have said:” The main user interface can feel a little clunky.” and “

The way you choose options from the drop-down boxes is a little confusing”. “Be more user-friendly. Example direct deposit set up is extremely burdensome. The system is not intuitive.” Well, this is certainly not exclusive about Workday, but of course it makes user adoption and process accuracy harder to achieve. This has a direct impact on employee performance and again, on ROI. Especially if the company ends up having to spend greatly to provide support on the platform.

Customizations

As each customer adopting Workday will have their own HR processes, finding proper documentation and getting appropriate Workday support can be challenging. Ideally, each company should put a customized support channel in place to assist their own users on the company’s Workday interface and processes. This is, however, quite an investment, of both time and resources, which are not always an option for companies, as they’ve already invested much to implement Workday.

Even when support channels are in place…

Putting a dedicated and competent support department into place is a way to optimize Workday adoption and to help employees successfully use the platform, but it is not a guarantee of success. If your support department is overwhelmed, things might not run as smoothly as you planned. Requests might take long to be handled, employees might put their tasks into a halt until they receive instructions for their tickets… Moreover, the support department often has to explain things with screenshots or on the phone, which is not very practical. Depending on the size of the company and the volume of requests, your support employees may feel really overwhelmed. We can bet that they would love it if you made their job a little easier, as they often feel the impact of tools with poor usability intensely, directly into their job.

How to improve all this?

Were four reasons enough to understand the challenges that a complex solution such as Workday can bring? Surely all of this would improve considerably if only users could be more self-sufficient and could find their way when they face difficulties. Adding a Digital Adoption Solution or Platform, such as Newired, as an overlay to your Workday environment is a great way to make this happen!

By adding a Newired overlay, the above challenges can be handled one by one. With step-by-step guidance, “mysterious” Workday features will become accessible to all levels of users, from the most basic to more advanced ones. And not only: you can add Journeys to guide users even in the most trivial processes, giving them reassurance that they are doing the right thing, whenever they need.

If the problem lies on Workday’s UI, Newired can also help your users. They will no longer get lost and wonder where they have to click or what they have to do next, Newired Journeys will tell them. Or even, Newired Tip will help users understand what that ugly button on the upper right is for!

Tricky customizations will no longer be an issue if you add Newired on your Workday. Your company’s taylored processes will be available for you with Journeys, which will take users to do the correct thing. No need to hope for some accurate Workday documentation to cover your specific use case!

Finally, if your users still need to contact the support department after implementing Newired, things will become much simpler. If a user calls support to ask for instructions, your support staff no longer will have to dictate instructions or send screenshots: they can simply send the user a Journey link, and now the user can simply follow instructions as they show up on the screen, in-app, while they actually perform the task they’re supposed to.

Let’s have a look on this demo video, showing two example Journeys on Workday: