Practical Guidance for Navigating Workday with Confidence
This week’s focus: To tie in with September’s What’s Up Workday session, we are exploring key Workday terms related to navigation and Employee Self-Service.
- Employee Self-Service (ESS) – ESS lets you take care of many HR and payroll tasks yourself—anytime, anywhere without the need for extra forms or emails. From a computer or mobile device, you can:
- View/update personal details (address, phone, emergency contacts, pronouns)
- Manage pay and tax information (view paystubs, update direct deposit, change withholdings)
- Track time and request time off
- View benefits
- Complete training and compliance tasks
- Review job details (title, compensation, employee ID, hire date, service dates) history, and performance
- Application – An application is an icon on your Workday home page that organizes related tasks, reports, and tools for a specific area, like Pay, Absence, Benefits, or Time.
- Inbox – Your Inbox is the place for tasks, approvals, and reviews that require your action—keeping work moving forward. Examples include:
- Approvals (time-off requests, expense reports).
- Reviews (compensation changes, evaluations).
- Tasks (onboarding forms, personal info updates).
- To-dos (reminders that may involve actions outside Workday).
- Notifications – Notifications are “FYI” alerts letting you know something happened or was completed—like a time-off request being approved. Unlike Inbox items, they don’t require action.
- Worker – In Workday, all employees—including faculty, staff, and student workers—are referred to as Workers.
- Worker Profile – Your Worker Profile is a central, real-time record of your personal, job, and organizational details—such as contact info, job title, manager, location, work history, compensation, benefits, and time-off balances (visible details depend on your security access).
In summary, understanding these Workday terms will help you navigate the system with confidence and take full advantage of its self-service features. Whether you’re checking your pay, requesting time off, or completing a task in your Inbox, knowing where to go—and what each feature does—will make your Workday experience smoother and more efficient.
