Paradigm pioneers — leading the way to a full-service HR platform

Before launching the effort to transform its HR system, managers in Oregon’s Department of Administrative Services (DAS) took stock of the many challenges ahead. The biggest factor was the sheer scope of the project and meeting the needs of so many stakeholders, including 41,000 employees, 18 labor organizations and over 90 agencies representing all three branches of government. The state also mandated that any new HR system had to meet over 800 requirements and manage more than 40 critical business processes.

“Our legacy tool was not something I would call an HR system. It was really a database that had personnel information in it,” says Zike. “The HR information was scattered and incomplete. It was very difficult to do the core business functions that you would do as a large employer. It was also a nightmare to get public records produced and have consistency around our practice.”

“We had no flexibility and putting in new processes was impossible,” says Joyce Martinez, Project Manager for the state of Oregon DAS. “Only a few people had access to it and there wasn’t any more real estate left on the screens to put in more fields. At that point, most HR processes were paper-driven across the agencies.”

“It was a regular occasion for us to be asked to provide data at an enterprise level that we could not answer,” says Lawson. “Lawmakers would ask for information and reports and we could only say ‘we can tell you this, but we don’t have that.’ Meeting the need for timely information was a huge driver for change.”

As soon as the state appropriated a system transformation budget, DAS managers began looking for a cloud-based HR platform that could meet current requirements and scale up for future growth. “The state of Oregon has a very robust procurement process, and we brought in many people to evaluate the many alternatives presented to us,” says Zike. “We also talked with other state governments and got references. That’s how Workday was chosen.”

Oregon’s DAS team recognized that being part of the Workday user community would also offer key operational advantages. “Being able to talk with other entities and explore best practices was a big plus,” says Zike. “And having a system that is regularly updated with regulatory changes is much better than having to figure out how we are going to need to program our own system to make the changes.”

When choosing a partner to integrate the Workday HR solution into Oregon’s complex systems environment, DAS looked for a firm that had a track record with the state and was also committed to a collaborative working relationship. “We knew that the IBMers would be the smartest people in the room and that they were experts,” says Martinez. “But they made it clear that they would listen to us and we would do this together. That was very appealing to us.”

Another factor leading to IBM’s selection as the systems integration partner was its experience in working with governmental organizations. “Having that foundational understanding of how the system could support government was very helpful,” says Zike. “There was also clarity in the proposal and in the direction we should take.”

Prior to deployment, IBM conducted Design Thinking workshops to help ensure that the new HR platform would meet the needs of specific customers. Kanban methods were used to visualize and plan processes and personas were created and tested to orient development around real-world user experiences. “We had a diverse team coming from different agencies and types of work,” says Lawson. “Design Thinking helped us understand their perspectives and it was a helpful tool to use.”

Migrating from manual processes to an automated system represented a significant challenge to the work culture. “Many of our managers had never been required to do anything in an automated system and they relied on paper for personnel actions,” says Zike. “Requiring them to go into a system like Workday and be engaged with technology was really different for them, and that’s where we had a lot of need for change management.”

“We had a dedicated change management person from IBM and it was a big help,” says Martinez. “This project was a huge paradigm shift for the state of Oregon. Before this, we were a transactional system and we’ve now moved to a whole business process system.”

DAS deployed Workday modules in phases, starting with Core HR, Compensation, Recruiting, Absence Management, Talent Suite and most recently, Learning. “When we rolled out Workday Learning, that was the easiest implementation I’ve ever had in my career,” says Zike. “I was waiting for something to go awry, and nothing did. It has been very well received.”

“Oregon’s done a very good job of leveraging Workday for everything it can offer the state,” says Chad Duffy, Workday’s Regional Sales Manager. “The three of us—Workday, IBM and DAS—worked jointly to determine who needs to be engaged, how this addresses their needs, and make sure the state sees value.”

When the COVID-19 pandemic struck Oregon in March 2020, several Workday HR modules had been up and running for almost a year. This enabled DAS to support a large population of state employees working remotely. “If we didn’t have a system where people could communicate and process transactions, we would have been in a heck of a pickle with all those paper forms going back and forth,” says Zike. “Workday has been a great tool, especially because so many of us are still stationed at home.”

As the result of the teamwork between DAS, Workday and IBM, the initial phases of Workday deployment came in under budget. And when the state needed to fill 1,000 open positions during 2020 and 2021, the Workday platform helped the HR department to onboard new employees approximately 50% faster than the paper-based systems that were previously used.

“Leadership and management have been pleasantly surprised when they need data or they need a report to see what’s happening with their workforce,” says Zike. “We can tell them where to click or we can build them a quick report. Something which would have taken two weeks with the old system now takes 20 minutes, so these are the places where we’re having lots of success.”

After the first three months of system deployment, DAS conducted a snapshot survey to measure how state employees were using Workday. “The results were very good,” says Lawson. “We’re having 40,000 employees log in most months, many of them multiple times. The proof is in the data.”

In December 2022, DAS plans to complete its final phase of HR system transformation by implementing Workday’s Payroll and Time Tracking modules. “We are still connected to a 30-year-old employee compensation system, which is the last function to be migrated,” says Lawson. “I am really looking forward to improving our time-to-hire process once our onboarding process is fully integrated into Payroll.”

“Oregon was the first state in the US to do a full-suite HR enterprise-wide Workday solution,” says Duffy. “When I hear from a spectrum of people across the state, they tell me that what was best about this project is the value they get across the board from it.”

Because of Oregon’s pioneering efforts in HR system transformation, other state governments are calling DAS for advice. “We know how hard it is to get big projects off the ground with state governments and how important it is to get it right,” says Martinez. “We’re happy to talk with other states and help them along the way.”

Looking back at the Workday implementation effort, Zike reflects on working with IBM. “Partnership was key in being able to bring Workday up and continuing to enhance it as we move forward,” she says. “IBM always worked with us and never said ‘this is too thorny of a problem’ or ‘this is yours to solve.’ It was a partnership of them coming up with options for us. They took this on because they wanted us to be successful.”

DAS (link resides outside of ibm.com) is the central administrative agency of Oregon’s state government and implements policy and financial decisions made by the Governor and Legislature. DAS supports state agencies by providing a strong and stable management infrastructure and sets high standards of accountability to ensure the state of Oregon uses tax dollars productively.

IBM Business Partner, Workday (link resides outside of ibm.com) is a leading provider of enterprise cloud applications for HR and finance, helping customers adapt and thrive in a changing world. Workday applications for financial management, HR, planning, spend management and analytics have been adopted by thousands of organizations around the world and across industries, from medium-sized businesses to more than 50% of the Fortune 500.