A new batch of students is joining the ranks of University of Louisville alumni. At its Dec. 15, 2022, committee meeting, the UofL Board of Trustees approved a measure to confer degrees to approximately 2,300 students at the December 2022 commencement exercises. Several graduate success stories have been published in UofL News. More details about December 2022 commencement are available on the .

Intentional wellness

Mary Elizabeth Miles, vice president for university human resources, provided an update on UofL’s many new and ongoing wellness initiatives. Among the 2022 successes are enhancements to the Get Healthy Now incentive program, Wellness Wednesday sessions, a new Wellness Resource Guide and health advocate services. Miles describes these and the other wellness initiatives as “intentional wellness” initiatives, which account for the physical, mental and emotional wellbeing of UofL’s more than 7,000 employees.

Compensation and Total Rewards Study

Miles also shared an update about the university’s . For the past two years, UofL has been conducting the study in partnership with Segal, an HR consulting firm with expertise in higher education, to provide fair and equitable faculty (nonclinical) and staff compensation programs as identified in the 2019 – 2022 strategic plan. The university will use the results of this study to provide opportunities for career development and advancement, provide a comprehensive and competitive compensation and benefits package, follow “best practice” philosophy and align the university’s job and pay structure with the market.

To date, committees of faculty, staff and senior administrators have established guiding principles for compensation and total rewards issues and assessed the university’s current job architecture, looking for opportunities to create synergy among professional titles and responsibilities. Efforts currently focus on a salary market assessment. Final results of the Compensation & Rewards Study will be presented in the second quarter of 2023.

Workday

Also about two years in the making is the university-wide transition from the PeopleSoft human resources (HR) management software to the new system. Workday will go live the week of Jan. 9, 2023, and will improve several university operations including payroll processing, employee management, hiring and benefits among others. More than 120 training sessions for university employees have been completed to date with several more scheduled after implementation.

Stable finances

Dan Durbin, vice president for finance and administration/CFO, reported that the university’s general fund is still performing well although fiscal year-to-date activity is approximately $25 million less compared to this time last year. Durbin said that the deficit can be attributed to such factors as revenue lost due to one less home football game and the ticket payment due date for men’s basketball tickets (ULAA); timing of the IGT match payment (ULRF); and lower than anticipated graduate level enrollments. Durbin said that mitigation plans are underway to counter shortfalls and is confident that trends will continue toward a balanced budget in the spring.

The next regular meeting of the University of Louisville Board of Trustees is Thursday, Jan. 19, 2023. Meeting minutes and other information is available on the .

In regard to this necessary change, President Bendapudi stated, “a university can only be a great place to work if it is able to provide the resources necessary for its people to be most effective.”

PeopleSoft, an enterprise management system developed nearly 30 years ago, has several inefficiencies that contributed to increasing costs and a poor user experience. In addition to these problems, the parent platform service, Oracle, recently announced that they will stop supporting the PeopleSoft HR software by 2031. Given these challenges, the university began the search for a new and improved enterprise management system.  

When tasked to find a replacement for PeopleSoft, the Information Technology Services team worked diligently to identify the system that would best address the needs of employees, as well as the great place to work goals of the . After working with various members of the campus community and engaging over 77 stakeholders across 20 departments for feedback over the last year, the Workday software was selected as the best system for the university and its employees.

Workday is an industry leader that provides a unified system for Human Capital Management (HCM). The implementation of the modern cloud-based system will offer timely and cost-effective functionality to employees while simplifying and standardizing numerous HR processes across the university. The functionality of the software will improve hiring processes, reduce payroll calculation and processing errors, upgrade security and provide users with a more positive overall HR and payroll experience.

While introducing the Workday software to Staff Senators in November of 2020, Mary Alexander-Conte, director of disbursement services, stated, “it’s going to make our lives a lot easier, both internal to payroll and external to all of our departments.”

In addition to its user-friendly dashboards, Workday also includes mobile-friendly technology that will allow employees to access and change personal information, view paystubs, find business directories and access various HR polices and information all from their personal mobile devices. The intuitive mobile interface will provide users with immediate access to time entry and approvals, and Workday’s bi-annual system updates will ensure that employees always have access to the most efficient and reliable HCM system available.

Other leading educational institutions and organizations have already taken advantage of the host of benefits offered by Workday, and now UofL has begun the phased transition to the software. Over the next six years, Workday will be integrated across several areas of the university in phases. First, Workday’s HR software will be used to replace our Peoplesoft HR system. After Workday HR is implemented then the university will start the Workday Finance journey. 

Starting in July of 2022, all units and departments will utilize Workday HR. In the coming months, readiness and development sessions will be conducted along with the university’s software implementation partner, Huron. To get the campus ready for the Workday HR system, the project team will leverage the , training sessions, video guides and step-by-step aids to assist employees during the transition.

Employees are also encouraged to share questions and feedback with representatives of UofL’s . The Change Ambassador Network kicked off in April under the leadership of Melissa Shuter, executive director of operation support services. The 50 employees serving as change ambassadors in this network act as representatives for every unit and department across the university, and also include representatives from the Faculty and Staff Senates, Commissions, and lead fiscal officers. The feedback collected through the change ambassadors, as well as town halls, will be used to refine and improve the system moving forward. Additional information including the current implementation timeline, the list of change ambassadors and FAQS can be found on the website.

As part of the Great Place Journey campaign kicked off by President Bendapudi to keep the campus community informed about each of the major projects and initiatives happening in the university, regular updates about the implementation of Workday and other major university initiatives will be regularly provided to the campus community via UofL News, the UofL Today employee newsletter and the Student News and Events newsletter.