People and Change: Enrolment Services

Enrolment Services (ES) supports an enriched academic experience for UBC students on the Vancouver and Okanagan campuses. At UBC Vancouver (UBCV), the ES team offers student services through its six units, including Student Recruitment & Undergraduate Admissions, Student Financial Management, and Senate and Curriculum Services.

To prepare for the Workday human resources (HR) and finance implementation in November 2020, the ES change management team is busy readying their colleagues for the shift to the new platform. HR Business Partner, Ashley Elchuk, and Associate Director, Student Financial Management, Cicy Guimond, are part of the team facilitating this change.

From an HR perspective, Elchuk is looking forward to Workday’s intuitive and mobile-friendly interface, including improved access to information. The self-serve options of the new system allow users to complete tasks on mobile, without the Virtual Private Network (VPN) requirement. In addition, managers who currently rely on HR departments to retrieve staff information, including salaries and start dates, will be able to access this data directly through Workday.

Workday will also modernize finance and procurement procedures by shifting away from paper-based processes and hard copy records.

“It’s really great that we’ll have a system we can virtually access anywhere, such as on your phone, and it’ll be more convenient,” says Guimond. “We’re looking forward to it.”

The ES change strategy for Workday includes leveraging existing meetings and channels. Elchuk and Guimond deliver regular updates to the monthly ES stand-up meeting, smaller staff meetings within the various units, and the ES Leadership Team (which includes all ES managers) to help them prepare their teams for Workday. Further, acting as a central hub for Workday information, the ‘ES Learning Centre’ course on Canvas will soon host resources like training and business processes.

Elchuk and Guimond are enabling a smooth transition to the new system by providing training for their respective groups. In HR, communicating the expectations for managers and staff in the system is key, while showcasing the value Workday will bring when completing day-to-day tasks.

“We’ll start with identifying the most important pieces and the biggest changes, making sure we connect with staff in a way that is meaningful and useful to them,” says Elchuk. “We’ll then develop a timeline that makes sense for go-live.”

For finance, training teams with the tools and information they need to fulfil processes and transactions is the focus from now until November. Staff are participating in IRP activities like online training and webinars, finance call-ins, and user confirmation sessions.  

“We are trying to disperse roles so everyone understands what Workday looks like and starts to familiarize themselves with the new terminology,” says Guimond. “As a team, one of the things finance is doing is accessing the Workday sandbox and mimicking the tasks we currently perform on a regular basis.”

As a trainer for ES, Elchuk has completed advanced training sessions and understands how Workday’s increased functionality will improve day-to-day processes.

“I was already pretty excited about having Workday because I recognized early on that there’s a lot of functionality which will improve capacity to do my job,” says Elchuk. “Having seen the system, it really is quite intuitive and easy to use, so I’m even more excited now to have Workday in place.”