NSHE’s Workday Training Approach
Workday’s unofficial user experience slogan could be, ‘if you can Google, you can Workday.’ Their goal is to be so simple to use and so logically organized that users just naturally understand how to accomplish most tasks. Navigation doesn’t require knowledge of complex screen codes, and error messages are clear and insightful. Indeed, a quick look at Workday’s interface will confirm that minimal training is required for the ordinary functions everyone will use, like to request time off or update benefits. Complex tasks also benefit from Workday’s more intuitive approach. Rather than teaching Workday power users how to navigate through screens, training is free to focus on the important aspects of teaching them how to accomplish processes.
The Project’s approach embraces Workday’s intuitiveness and its training philosophy. For most basic tasks, training requires little more than a job aid—a set of step-by-step instructions for how to accomplish a particular task. Face-to-face training sessions will be created for the handful of advanced functions and processes. The Project also believes that everyone learns differently, so they are developing a range of delivery options that are appropriate to the training topic—from job aids to face-to-face classroom learning and webinars.
Where We Are With Training Right Now
Workday is highly configurable, which is great. The Team can create a system that will be most effective for all institutions when it goes live in October 2017. It does take time to configure and test processes, though, and developing training materials necessarily waits until processes perform close to how they’ll be used at go-live. Currently, NSHE’s second Workday prototype (P2) is about 80% configured. That’s enough for the Team to begin creating some of the simpler training materials. Training for more complex processes that are not yet fully configured will be developed when those processes are completed.
Right now, the Training Liaison Group, composed of representatives from each institution appointed to lead training efforts on their campuses and NSHE-wide, are gaining experience with Workday processes and the basics of user training. The Team is also busy, developing NSHE’s Workday Curriculum Plan, a complex document that maps out the appropriate training for each Workday business process, then groups those processes by Workday roles.
NSHE and its institutions are on schedule to roll out training to campuses between July and September 2017. Currently, training is slightly ahead of schedule.
For further information on training, please contact your Training Liaison Group Representative listed here: www.integrate2.nevada.edu/
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