Miami University’s transition to Workday creates issues for employees

Miami University’s campuses underwent a change that hadn’t been made in nearly 25 years. This summer, roughly 4,000 Miami employees had to change pay and funding systems to Workday, a software used for finance, human resources and student information, just a few months before more than 20,000 students returned to Miami’s Oxford, Hamilton and Middletown campuses.

Miami pivoted from using Ellucian Banner and Buyway to Workday, which Miami Senior Vice President for Finance and Business Services and Treasurer David Creamer said featured a “more robust” system.

“Workday is a leading product,” Creamer said. “It's constantly being improved. So besides what it will do for us today, we'll see enhancements in the future as well.”

Workday replaced multiple systems as one system every department can use.

Other Ohio universities, including Ohio State University and Akron University, have also switched to Workday in recent years. Creamer said this led to the system being improved by the time Miami made the change.

Although Creamer said the new system will be able to “do everything,” there have been growing pains among Miami’s staff.

Workday creates work issues

Theresa Kulbaga, a professor of English at Miami’s Oxford and Hamilton campuses and a member of the Faculty Alliance of Miami (FAM), said the transition caused issues with pay dispersions and human resource functions. Kulbaga said the university told some faculty they wouldn’t be paid on time in June because of the transition. However, FAM leaders rectified this when they went to the negotiation table to guarantee the university would follow preset pay schedules.

Kulbaga said when faculty asked about these issues, university representatives said the transition to the new system caused them.

“We were told [the issues] were because of Workday,” Kulbaga said. “We still don't have a clear answer from the administration on what's going to happen with summer and winter pay in the future, which has always been under contract.”

Although issues have been prevalent since the summer installation date, Creamer said the $38 million transition is not done yet. He said he expects problems will arise because of how they implemented training.

As part of choosing Workday, Miami has a dedicated staff that works with the university to answer questions and advise on training. Creamer said this staff suggested a start date in July because of how people retain information. Nevertheless, not every Miami employee who would use Workday was available to take the training before coming to campus in August.

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“[The training staff] said if you train staff too early, they would lose [the knowledge],” Creamer said. “The problem though, when you're coming up on a July transition, we got people on vacation, and so while that was going on, a lot of the faculty are gone for the summer. There are a lot of people that didn't get to fully participate in that.”

With more than 4,000 employees, there are areas of campus that Workday has affected that don’t appear at first glance. Pay issues are at the forefront of the change, but what happens when Workday affects someone’s everyday job?

Ripple effect

King Library sits at the edge of Miami’s Oxford campus. Students use the library as a place to study, eat between classes and refine their skills for the future. One section of King is trying to help students with everything writing-related, but some workers are having trouble since Workday found its way into their lives.

The Howe Writing Center and Howe Center for Writing Excellence experienced roadblocks they didn’t expect when trying to access funds for supplies and pay more than 40 students who work at the center.

Photo by Kasey Turman | The Miami Student
Kate Francis, the manager of the Howe Writing Center works the front desk of the center in King Library.

Loretta Parker, an administrative assistant at the Howe Center for Writing Excellence said she experienced a steep learning curve.

“In the beginning, I was a little nervous,” Parker said. “It was a scary situation to think about completely transitioning into something brand new. I feel like once we dove in, it's getting easier. There are little pebbles along the road and there are glitches in the system.”

So far this semester, Parker said she has had issues with accessing funds in specific accounts, paying guest speakers and purchasing items for the center because of new changes that haven’t been streamlined. She said the training ses

sions didn’t always help because they were not always interactive, so she would have to do it for the first time alone afterward.

Parker said there are still “a lot of issues,” but she has been working through them with a support staff that has shown nothing but patience.

Kate Francis, the manager of the Howe Writing Center, said she used Workday before every student made it to campus to pay three student workers. Now that the semester has started, she has to organize pay for 43 students.

Francis said there have been problems with getting students into the system, but said she believes they will get paid on time no matter what.

“I have every faith that Workday is going to figure out how to pay these kids,” Francis said. “But if I mean, God forbid, if they don't, I can only do so much. That would be awful. But, I will say they make it a priority for people to get paid.”

Francis said the center is one of the smaller areas on campus in terms of the number of students employed. Although the pair had issues in their respective areas, both were hopeful for the system’s future.

“We're hoping that six months from now, things will be different,” Francis said. “But I'm not going to lie, it was a little nerve-wracking.”

How students are affected

Not only have student workers been affected, but student organizations have seen challenges with the new program.

Jeffrey Koch, the secretary of the treasury of Miami’s Associated Student Government (ASG), has been learning the system to help student organizations’ treasurers. ASG approves funds for organization activities twice a year and will now allocate them through Workday.

Koch said the system confused him at first, but he has learned it without seeing major problems, despite some “kinks.”

“It's been a learning curve learning something completely new, but I feel like that's with anything,” Koch said. “I feel like in the end, it'll be okay.”

Koch said students can access funding submissions through the Hub while also taking training sessions through ASG, which can be found on the organization’s website.

Although Koch said there are changes in the new program, he said they won’t stop ASG from giving out needed funding to every student organization.

turmankd@miamioh.edu