In November 2024, Ohio State business sponsors collaborated with Institutional Research and Planning (IRP) to design and launch a Workday survey. The survey’s purpose was to collect faculty and staff opinions and perceptions about Workday and the available resources that support it. The survey’s end goal was to obtain results that can be used to improve Workday change management processes and communications.
IRP curated a random sample of 5,000 Ohio State faculty and staff to use as the survey audience. To ensure the results were statistically significant, the survey was open from November 2024 until February 2025, until a 21% response rate was achieved. With an appropriate number of results secured, a subgroup of the Workday Support and Governance team set out to analyze the data.
Demographics:
The data shown in the sections below indicate that most respondents are staff members and non-managers, largely from the university side of the house, using Workday once a week or more, with an equal likelihood of supporting research, a hospital, or a college.
Respondent Affiliation Breakdown
- Faculty 38%, Staff 62%
- Manager 31%, Non-Manager 69%
- Campus 60%, Health System 40%
Frequency of Workday Use
- 6% of responses - Once or twice a year or semester
- 22% of responses - Once or twice a month
- 39% of responses - At least once a week
- 33% of responses - At least once a day
Supporting Area
- Research - 21%
- A hospital - 20%
- A college - 19%
- Other area - 17.9%
- A specific campus or health system administrative unit - 11.8%
- A clinical practice - 11.6%
How Things Are Going:
Administrative systems like Workday are designed to get work done as efficiently as possible and in accordance with the processes and policies established by the university. With that in mind, neutral responses, where users did not have a specifically negative opinion, were considered a desirable result. Below are the top-level survey results from our respondents.
A noteworthy highlight from the list of results below is that 63% of respondents are satisfied overall with Workday, which is a huge win.
Top-level Survey Results - Neutral through Satisfied Responses
- 63% Overall satisfaction with Workday
- 70.1% Find Workday easy to use
- 69.2% Comfortable using Workday
- 67.2% Are satisfied with the level of support they are receiving
- 65.3% Believe Workday helps them do their job
- 59.4% Are satisfied with the amount of training they’ve received
- 51.6% Would like more information on new Workday features
- 50.6% Find Workday easy to navigate
While the high percentages of neutral through satisfied responses is good to hear, it’s important to dig deeper into the survey results to learn more about the dissatisfied responses.
Faculty and Staff:
As shown in the top-level results above, 70% of respondents felt either neutral or positive about Workday being easy to use, while 51% were neutral or positive about ease of navigating Workday.
Digging deeper into the data using demographic information supplied by IRP revealed that faculty respondents are least satisfied with using and navigating Workday.
Level of difficulty Using and Navigating Workday (Faculty and Staff)
- Faculty:
- Using Workday:
- 48% Neutral to Very Easy
- 52% Difficult or Very Difficult
- Navigating Workday:
- 30% Neutral to Very Easy
- 70% Difficult or Very Difficult
- Using Workday:
- Staff:
- Using Workday:
- 84% Neutral to Very Easy
- 16% Difficult or Very Difficult
- Navigating Workday:
- 63% Neutral to Very Easy
- 37% Difficult or Very Difficult
- Using Workday:
Summarizing overall Workday satisfaction of faculty and staff, the survey responses showed that 77% of staff are satisfied with Workday, while 41% of faculty are satisfied with Workday.
Workday and Managers:
In addition to highlighting how faculty and staff differ when it comes to Workday satisfaction, the response data indicated that having a manager role also led to a significant decrease in user satisfaction. There is even more of a difference when the manager is also a faculty member.
Management Role Affects Satisfaction
- Managers are less satisfied overall with Workday than non-managers:
- 48% of managers are neutral to satisfied
- 71% of non-managers are neutral to satisfied
- The faculty manager - staff manager difference is significant:
- 28% of managers who are faculty are neutral to satisfied
- 70% of managers who are staff are neutral to satisfied
Change Management:
In addition to satisfaction with the system, there were questions in the survey included to help gauge the level of satisfaction respondents have with communications about new Workday features and changes, the amount of available Workday user support and training, and their preferred learning methods.
New Feature and Change Communications
- Amount:
- 51.6% - Less than I would like
- 44.7% - About right
- 3.8% - More than I would like
- Quality:
- 61% - Neutral to Very Satisfied
- 39% - Dissatisfied to Very Dissatisfied
Workday Support and Training
- Amount of Workday Support:
- 67% Neutral to Very Satisfied
- 33% Dissatisfied or Very Dissatisfied
- Amount of Workday Training
- 59% Neutral to Very Satisfied
- 41% Dissatisfied or Very Dissatisfied
Still, 30-40% of respondents being dissatisfied with the quality of Workday communications and the amount of support and training was reason to look to open-ended comments for clarification.
Many of the open-ended comments pointed to a lack of in-system help that users could tap into while they were performing Workday transactions. There were also mentions of frustration about help materials not seeming to match the experience of their daily jobs.
Regarding the preferred learning method metric, in the expanding section below, it is positive to see that the respondent’s preferences do align with how Workday support and training is currently provided, with recorded demos and step-by-step job aids leading.
Preferred Learning Methods
- Short demonstration videos - 52.8%
- Step-by-step job aids - 48.4%
- Watching and learning from a colleague - 41.2%
- BuckeyeLearn eLearning - 28.6%
- Attending a class - 14.4%
- Other - 7.7%
What’s Next:
The “Ohio State Workday Survey” responses support that the continuous process improvement work is serving the user community well, but adding a focus on faculty and navigation – getting people where they need to be - will help elevate user satisfaction.
With that in mind, the Workday Support and Governance team’s change management strategy for the coming year will focus on:
- Increasing communication of new features and changes with particular attention to serving faculty
- Providing more navigation help to get people where they need to be in Workday
- Prioritizing system changes that provide broad benefits for users, particularly in relation to navigation
Thank you!
If you were one of the many responders to this survey, thank you for your valuable and candid feedback. While online surveying is a convenient means of gathering a lot of data quickly, it is understandable that survey fatigue is real, and it is easy to put off responding to a survey until later or skipping a survey altogether. Your time and attention are much appreciated. If you have additional questions about the survey, feel free to reach out to otdi@osu.edu.