Meet Our Sponsors: Marcia Buchholz

As Vice-President, Human Resources, Marcia Buchholz provides strategic leadership of the department, as well as the broader human resources professional community of UBC to accomplish the vision, commitments, goals and actions set out by the UBC Strategic Plan related to Great People, including equity & inclusion, leadership development, and health & wellbeing. As an IRP Executive Sponsor, Marcia shares her thoughts on how Workday will enhance the workplace experience for UBC faculty and staff.

Tell us about your history with UBC, your current role and your connection with the IRP.

My history with UBC is relatively short at one year. The role I was hired into as a Managing Director, had me acting as a Sponsor, and I was early on involved with getting the Integrated Service Centre set up. However, when I moved into the Vice President role, my responsibilities on IRP shifted to Executive Sponsor. As an Executive Sponsor, but also as a user of Workday HR, I am involved with the project on many fronts.

What excites you about the changes being implemented with Workday?

One of the reasons I was drawn to UBC, was the fact that the university made such a significant investment into its HR and Finance systems. Part of my past work experience was in HR Product Development and HRIS systems, and I was impressed with Workday’s intuitiveness and user-friendly benefits. Particularly in post-secondary, having systems that are easy to use and integrated helps to -encourage the kind of adoption that can really drive efficiencies for UBC. I’m excited that we have an engaged and enthusiastic cadre of faculty and staff who will embrace this change and help shape UBC’s future.

The UBC community has faced many changes over the last six months due to COVID-19. What are some of the challenges and achievements you’ve encountered as we move towards the Workday implementation?

Yes, UBC certainly has faced this COVID crisis head-on. I think we’ve been able to adapt quickly and well to a constantly evolving situation. This speaks to the commitment and resourcefulness of our talented faculty and staff at UBC. In particular, there have been a couple of situations where there was concern as to whether we could resolve the issue or make up the time slippage to get us back on track. As an Executive Sponsor, I am always concerned about issues that could potentially affect IRP, however in all of these situations we’ve been able to collaborate on a way forward. This demonstrates the true commitment and the resolve to see this project through to successful completion.

What do you think success looks like when it comes to implementing Workday? What is your vision of success?

Having been involved in a major transformation such as this at another university, I’m aware of the time it takes for faculty and staff to get familiar and comfortable with a new application. However, after a few months it will become routine and we’ll wonder how we ever worked differently. As soon as we go live, we’ll be planning for the next iteration, which will include many of the enhancements that could not be included in the first iteration. My vision of success will be for faculty and staff to recognize the ease by which they’re able to use Workday as well as save time and effort. I would also expect UBC to realize the benefits of the new system overall. Workday not only supports our position to lead as a first-choice place to learn and work, it also supports UBC’s strategic goal to transform university-level systems and processes to facilitate collaboration, innovation and agility.

With the HR and Finance implementation only a few weeks away, how would you encourage the UBC community to prepare for Workday?

Embrace this change! We are so fortunate at UBC to be able to make the types of changes that not only shift behaviours, but also propel us into the future. We are capable of really advancing the organization and how work is performed. For me, there is nothing more exciting, and this is what makes me proud to be part of the IRP project, as well as UBC.

Any last words or thoughts?

I’d like to take this opportunity to sincerely thank all those people who made IRP a part of their working lives for the past -three years. The commitment has been remarkable and the legacy of this work will live on. There are so many to say thank you to, however I will leave with this thought: In three years, or five years, or ten years, you will look back on these moments and this work, and proudly say “I was a part of that!”