As recession looms, Workday warns that legacy HR systems need updating

HR and financial management platform provider Workday reckons that despite the uncertain economic climate, now more than ever businesses will need to overhaul legacy systems to manage changes ahead. The California-based SaaS biz talked up its services when last night rolling out results for its Q3 of fiscal 2023 ended 31 …

[elsergiovolador]

PAYE

I wonder when HMRC is going to fix their systems.

When people change jobs often, their system don't always register that they move jobs and so the tax projection assume one has multiple fulltime jobs running concurrently eventually making them pay higher tax rates than they should. Then they have to spend hours on the helpline to get it sorted - that of course if they manage to get someone pick up the phone and then wait for the tax refund cheque

Truly 2022 Britain.

[SloppyJesse]

Re: PAYE

I had 4 different employers last tax year and 2 of them had not ended the employment so the HMRC portal showed I had 3 active employments. I found the option to update the employment and say which ones had ended. It's not fully online, but a week later it had updated and then my actual current employer was allocated a proper tax code. All sorted by the next months payslip.

The navigation is still as confusing as ever, but the functionality is improving.

[elsergiovolador]

Re: PAYE

It's not fun when HMRC suddenly thinks you underpaid thousands of tax and you get so much taken out of payslip you barely can pay rent and then you have to wait until they sort it out.

"All sorted by the next months payslip" does not always cut it.

[Battsmn]

Workday is perfect for inHumane Resources

I work for a large multinational. Workday was brought in under the guise of how it would save big MONEY via centralized HR. So what do we have now? An HR support desk in a low-cost region of the world that provides bad directions when queried (since the rules vary by country, business unit, etc.). Traditional HR resources are now spread even thinner across the global business. AND more critically, you have your direct/middle managers doing all the work (in WD) that HR was supposed to do but doing it BADLY & INEFFICIENTLY! Why? Because instead of having an HR professional, who does a given HR activity all the time, you have a manager who performs that given HR task very, very infrequently and now has to figure out how to do it in a horribly unintuitive interface - multiplied across the entire global business.

I'm a mid-level manager and I can tell you that I'm often scratching my head on how we're supposed to do something in WD and/or to coach the managers below me on how they are supposed to do something. But hey - go ask the support desk, right? Except at least 1 in 3 times they direct you incorrectly and when you finally are able to talk to a traditional HR resource about the particular activity required, they helpfully suggest that you should reach out to the support desk if you're unsure how to do something. (I do take some small pleasure in telling such helpful HR resources - well, in fact I did ask them and followed their ultra-helpful instructions to arrive here in this steaming pile of carp that I'm now laying in front of you...

Plus - oh great and hallowed purveyors of Workday who believe they are our saviors - maybe do a little more research and spend a little more effort on your keyword search implementation... Seriously it's utter and complete rubbish. The results that come back are astoundingly bad. You should be embarrassed at how bollocks they are.

[mdava]

Re: Workday is perfect for inHumane Resources

I can't upvote this post enough. Fellow Workday sufferer here - it must be the single least intuitive piece of software that I have ever had the misfortune to deal with.

[Alumoi]

Re: Workday is perfect for inHumane Resources

Click start to shutdown?

[elsergiovolador]

Re: Workday is perfect for inHumane Resources

These things like seem to be done on purpose to avoid responsibilities. Like when the worker has an issue with bullying, they get to call someone far away in Asia who has bad command of English and for the most part doesn't understand the problem due to cultural differences, but also not knowing the law and local customs. So poorly paid worker is facing a wall and unable to exercise their rights, while corporation likely will get a slap on the wrist if ever found to have done any wrongdoing.

Bringing a case to Employment Tribunal here in the UK is a substantial cost often out of reach for a typical worker, who can unlikely find £3k-10k on the back of the sofa to pay for solicitors when they may give slim chance of winning given the road blocks set by the company.

Truly awful state of affairs, but hey we voted those "globalists" in (actually you can't use that word anymore, it is no longer politically correct) and so we get to enjoy fruits of their work now.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Workday is perfect for inHumane Resources

Either this or the company will pay for an online councelling service you can send questions to or call, someone on the end of the phone who simply nods and agrees with you when you're stressed to the hilt about stuff they cannot possibly understand. When I get stressed I want to talk about a) I'm stressed and b) how can I stem the actual problem and deal with it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Workday is perfect for inHumane Resources

But, but, but... look! Workday let's a worker build a profile of themselves! You can upload your picture! You can "follow" people! It's just like bookface, but for your business. The millennials will just love it and will clamor to work for your company because you're obviously a cool place to work!

[JimboSmith]

Re: Workday is perfect for inHumane Resources

The only picture of me that graces the internet is on Workday. I was told that as a condition of my employment I had to provide a picture for my ID card. Well I say picture of me but my ex boss described what I uploaded as looking nothing like me in the slightest. Unsurprising really, as I manipulated it in Photoshop so much that I no longer look like Rab C Nesbit and resemble closer to Pierce Brosnan instead.

[Youngone]

Re: Workday is perfect for inHumane Resources

Hi Battsmn, do you work at the same company as me?

Every system we have works exactly as you've described, to the point that when a manager employs a new staff member (which for most of them is maybe once a year or so) a colleague and I who have nothing whatsoever to do with HR are now the go-to people to get all the paperwork in order because we've managed to figure it all out for ourselves.

It doesn't help that our local HR manager is completely disengaged from her job and doesn't understand how any of it works herself, but every procedure not directly related to manufacturing or selling the product we supply has been outsourced to low-cost parts of the world, and we are now getting what we paid for.

Yes, I am looking for a new job actually.

[Intractable Potsherd]

Re: Workday is perfect for inHumane Resources

That's not a bug, it's a feature.

[david1024]

Re: Workday is perfect for inHumane Resources

Saves you a lot of HR budget.... by loading HR tasks onto your talent resources that are supposed to be running your business and paying the bills with production work....

Which get paid at much higher rates... and have to individually research how the broken interface botches things... so you get less technical work, that pays the bills, and more low level managers researching the same issues in parallel.... and parallel is good, right? cheers to increasing shadow overhead.

[thejoelr]

In the face of reduced business spending, Workday recommends you spend money on them.. now is the perfect time!

[firstnamebunchofnumbers]

Workday warning people to not use Workday?

I was at a place that had outsourced their people processing to workday and using it felt like the very definition of legacy! You could practically hear the JBoss apps clunking away as each HTML 4 table loaded in various iframes... felt like using a web app from 1998.