And no surprise, most of the event focused on the new recruiting module, presented by Leiganne Levensaler and balanced out by the rest of Workday 22, presented by Mike Frandsen.
The new kid on the block – Recruiting
As to be expected when a software vendor has plenty of time to get something right, they get it right. Workday is no exception and the nearly two year spent with design partners and applying design thinking principles to interview and observing users, conducting usability tests, working with early adopters etc. has culminated in a good first release of recruiting. Special credit in my view goes to the development team for really looking at the key constituents in the recruitment automation space, the applicant, the recruiter, the hiring manager and the interviewers. Workday used a persona driven approach to build recruiting – and as expected – that approach delivers complete functionality for each of the personae / roles.
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| Screenshot from Workday website |
Moreover Workday has taken the opportunity that every good enterprise software developer should take, to not rebuild one to one what has been built in this area of automation before – but to address a number of newer integration and best practice areas that are quickly becoming standard, like for instance:
- Continuously looking for talent and organizing them into talent pools – both internally and externally comes to mind, regardless of an open hiring requisition.
- Seamless processes across Workforce Planning, Sourcing, Hiring and Onboarding.
- Managing the candidate experience, including providing candidates access to a company's branded career site, where they can apply or share to their social networks.
- Leveraging social networks both for job referral as for application completion.
- Using smartphones and tablets to enable both the application as well as the interview process, including interview collaboration across the hiring team.
- And so on.
Listen to Levensaler present Recruiting
Needless to say, Workday has done the (usually) good job with the user interface, it is consistent with the rest of the applications and looks easy to use. A quick comparison with the mobile solution shown back at Workday Rising shows that the development team has not been idling, but worked to expand both usability and solution further.
And always good to see when things are driven to closure, or re-used, so pushing recruiting information in the Notebook functionality of Update 20 and allowing Notebooks to be shared makes that an even more powerful tool.
Finally Workday sees onboarding as part of recruiting, a sensible and logical decision, that is more or less part of the functional offering for most of the suite vendors, but nonetheless worth mentioning.
One of the more interesting insights Workday shared, was how the need of the recruiting process has repercussions all the way down to the underlying application platform capabilities. Due to the dynamic nature of recruiting that cannot be scripted in a number of finite steps Workday had to make its Business Process Framework more flexible, in order to accommodate Recruiting. The company did that and the good news now is, that other business automation needs that are equally non deterministic (e.g. promotions, general planning, sales, contract negotiations etc.) will soon benefit from the new capabilities in the framework.
What else is in Update 22
As usual I will exclude the enhancements for Financials – you can find them here. But the new customer portal looks nice.
Update 15 | Update 16 | Update 17 | Update 18 | Update 19 | Update 20 | Update 21 | Update 22 |
October 2011 | April 2012 | August 2012 | November 2012 | April 2013 | September 2013 | January 2014 | May 2014 |
User Experience - Outlook Integration - Chatter Integration | Mobility HTML5 Support for non IOS devices | Mobility - New modules - Global Support | Workforce Engagement: Team Profile Professional Profile | Headcount Planning | Big Data Analytics | New User Interface for browser | New Dynamic Business Process Framework Reporting Enhancements |
Talent Management - Talent Reviews - Career Interests - Cornerstone Integration | Onboarding | Time Tracking | Performance Management Enhancements | Android Native Support & iOS Mobile Enhancements | User Experience - Configurable Grids for Compensation | Performance Management across browser and mobile | Recruiting Travel Connector Collaboration on Mobile |
Payroll - Payroll for Canada - Payroll Connector | Usability Enhancements | Custom Fields | More custom fields | Mobility - Notbooks for iPad | Legislative support - Report for ACA / RUP | Employee Classification in Collective Agreements | |
Higher Education Functionality | 170 Enhancements | 207 Features / 80 Brainstorm Items | 246 Features / 67 Brainstorm Items | 347 Features / 68 Customer Requests across Workday 22 |
And as usual I will try to evaluate the functional richness of the release – and with Recruiting Workday has – since a long time, Update 17 (with Time Tracking) to be precise, provided a major building stone to the HCM automation puzzle. Granted, enhancement is not equal to enhancement but without a better metric, this was a good and rich release for Workday, with for the first time over 350 enhancements. And the number should be up, as Workday has a larger customer base and a larger functional footprint.
Nonetheless congratulations to the Workday team for one of the most functional rich releases – maybe ever. And with that I do not mean that other releases have been small – I am sure Update 21 getting all to work snuggly with the new UI – was a lot of work, too. But it did not move the functional needle from a HCM automation perspective.
MyPOV
Workday has taken its time to build Recruiting and it shows – it is a well-rounded integrated first release with a lot of benefits on the not so traditional recruiting roles of the hiring manager, the candidate and the hiring team. Accounting for mobile needs in the recruiting process right from the get go and not as an afterthought deserves credit – as much as it is a tables take today to support mobile devices. Workday must now map out and communicate the next steps for recruiting. I am sure they are Identified (pun intended). But there is more to that on which Workday needs to communicate. It’s great to have 70 customers signed up, but many more have to follow and they want certainty of what is to come.
It’s also good to see that Workday 22 was a functionally richer release than previous Updates – which is the direction customers want Workday to take. Looking at the missing pieces of HCM automation functionality, Workday now needs to start thinking and communicating around Learning (partnering right now), Workforce Management (partnering right now for shift planning, clocks, etc) and more global Payroll (beyond US, Canada, UK 2015 and France in 2016) support (you guessed it – partnering). To really make the story of an integrated system fly – these are the next steps Workday needs to address…
But for now – congrats to Workday to a good start with Recruiting and a functionally very rich Update 22.
More on Workday
- First Take - Why Workday acquired Identified - (real) Analytics matter - read here
- Workday Update 21 - All about the user experience and some more - read here
- Workday Update 20 - Mostly a technology release - read here
- Takeaways from the Salesforce.com and Workday parnership - read here
- Workday powers on - adds more to its plate - read here
- What I would like Workday to address this Rising - read here
- Workday Update 19 - you need to slow down to hurry up - read here
- I am worried about... Workday - read here
More on Recruiting
