In the world of Workday administration and support, we often find ourselves explaining complex concepts to various stakeholders. In a recent podcast episode, Christian Delcid and Keith discuss phrases that help distill these complexities into easily digestible insights. I want to share some of these powerful phrases that can help you communicate more effectively with your teams.
One of my most impactful phrases, which was one of my first LinkedIn posts and had over 40,000 viewers on LinkedIn, is: “The blessing of Workday is it’s configurable. The challenge (or curse) of Workday is it’s configurable.” This simple statement captures a fundamental truth about Workday – while its configurability gives us incredible flexibility, it also means we can create solutions so complex that they become difficult to support.
As my cohost Christian Delcid shared from his compensation leader, “Job profiles are the heartbeat of Workday.” This phrase isn’t just about admiring job profiles; it’s about recognizing their fundamental importance in the system. When you’re working with job profiles, you need to tread carefully because they touch and impact almost everything in Workday.
A crucial reminder for any Workday implementation or optimization: “Don’t configure the limitations of your old system into the new system.” Too often, teams unconsciously recreate the constraints of their legacy systems in Workday, simply because “that’s how we’ve always done it.” Remember, Workday offers new possibilities – take advantage of them!
“There’s a new spreadsheet around every corner.” This phrase reminds us to actively seek out and identify HR data that might be living in various spreadsheets across the organization. Whether it’s Google Sheets or files on personal laptops, this scattered data needs to be properly integrated into Workday for better security and accessibility.
One of the most valuable practices in Workday administration is asking, “What’s your definition of that?” Whether discussing turnover rates, headcount reports, or other metrics, it’s crucial to ensure everyone is working from the same definitions. What seems obvious to one person might mean something completely different to another.
These phrases aren’t just clever sayings – they’re tools that help us communicate more effectively, make better decisions, and build more sustainable solutions in Workday.
Want to learn more? Connect with Keith Bitikofer and Christian Delcid on LinkedIn for ongoing insights about Workday support and team management.
You can also listen to this content and more in my podcast: Workday Gold Podcast
Workday® is the registered trademark of Workday, Inc. KeithBitikofer.com is not an affiliate and not endorsed by Workday, Inc.