The Time Improvement Project Plans for Campus Needs

The Time and Absence Improvement Project kicked off in 2020 with a series of discovery sessions hosted by eBITS in coordination with Human Resources. During each of these sessions, representatives from Colleges, Schools, Units (CSUs) across campus provided valuable feedback on their experiences using Time and Absence processes in Workday. This feedback came from different perspectives, including the experiences of UT employees (workers), Timekeepers, Absence Partners, and other local HR roles who support the employees in their units. By engaging directly with campus, eBITS learned about areas of concern in existing processes and discussed specific proposals for improving them. Session feedback, along with input from a follow-up survey, allowed for the prioritization of improvements and creation of project plans that centered the importance placed on each proposal by those campus representatives who participated in the discovery sessions. This method produced a project plan based more directly on the real-world needs expressed by campus, rather than a plan which campus might see as not being based on their day-to-day experience using Workday. eBITS then delivered improvements in phases over the 2020-21 timeframe.

Early phases included enhancing time and absence reports in Workday to assist Timekeepers and Absence Partners in finding the information they need more efficiently. Another improvement involved updating help and warning text within Workday to reduce confusion during time entry. Later phases included a series of new Workday notifications to alert workers, managers, and Timekeepers to time-related situations which might require their attention. For workers, these situations include unsubmitted timesheets or vacation hours projected to roll over at fiscal-year crossover. Managers also receive notifications when there are timesheets that need their approval.

Along with assisting workers and managers with monitoring time entry and submission, these notifications can also help the university achieve time approval goals, as set out by HR, and reduce the burden on Timekeepers to intervene when timesheets go unapproved at the end of a pay period. Timekeepers also now receive notifications about timesheet issues that involve terminated or transferred workers, which may require their intervention, while Absence Partners are alerted to payable time-off balances in similar situations. Being an ongoing project, there are still future improvements planned for implementation. This model of working directly with campus, developed during the Time Improvement Project to scope and plan projects, is now institutionalized within eBITS for future projects. Under this model, eBITS will partner with campus to determine needs and then work with Business Process Owners (BPOs) as necessary to create solutions to meet these needs.