Following the launch of Workday, the College’s new online human resources (HR) system, on June 16, students have reported delays in the hiring process for their on-campus jobs and in receiving their paychecks. According to College administrators, most issues have now been resolved, and the software’s functionality will continue to improve as the Office of Information Technology (OIT) implements updates.
The College first announced an HR system replacement project — titled Collaboratively Optimizing Williams — in 2022. Over two years, overlapping teams of College staff conducted research, solicited input from various community members, and decided on a new HR software vendor to replace PeopleSoft, which the College has used for more than two decades.
According to Jessie Mandel, director of project and change management at OIT, the College transitioned from PeopleSoft to Workday both because of its changing needs and because Oracle, the company that manages PeopleSoft, was phasing out the software.
“This transition is a massive undertaking, and given the scope and timeline of the change, it has gone remarkably well,” Mandel wrote in an email to the Record.
But according to Doug Schiazza, senior associate dean of campus life, the Office of Campus Life had to wait until the transition was complete to post job listings on the new site to fill two vacant roles.
In interviews with the Record, students described waiting days or weeks to be hired to their on-campus jobs on Workday and receive their first paychecks.
Francesca Castellanos ’26, the events manager at Goodrich Coffee Bar, said the initial transition at the student-run business went smoothly and that she was able to log hours worked over the summer — until all Goodrich employees, including Castellanos, had to be rehired into the system at the start of the fall semester.
Although some of Castellanos’ colleagues were quickly hired as Goodrich employees on Workday, she had to wait several weeks. Castellanos had to track the hours she was working manually until her hiring was completed.
“This was a really frustrating thing for me … as someone who is on financial aid,” she said. “I love doing it for the community, but at the same time, it’s my job, and I get money from that job, and I need that money.”
“I was just really frustrated because it seemed like we were being told that we just had to wait,” she continued. Eventually, Castellanos contacted Associate Director for Student Centers and Events Sam Boyden, the College contact for Goodrich, and was hired in the system, but she said she thinks she may have lost money due to the delay. “There will probably be hours that I will have forgotten that I won’t get money for,” she said.
Castellanos said other Goodrich baristas experienced similar delays.
Maddy Andersen ’25 told the Record that she also experienced delays being hired on Workday, but that she appreciated the continued support of her managers at her various campus jobs. Andersen works multiple jobs at the College, and was only hired for one job at a time, waiting days in between.
Despite the delays, Andersen said that she felt supported and that she was confident she would receive her paychecks. “It was my managers at all my jobs who took care of it,” she said. “It wasn’t on me at all.”
“[Workday] has had some minor bumps along the way, many of which have already been addressed thanks to the patience and partnership of our user community,” Mandel wrote. “The teams supporting the HR and Finance implementation continue to actively work to make improvements and support the community as we all learn new ways to do our work.”
Austina Xu ’27, who has used Workday at both the College and a summer research program at the University of Pennsylvania, had a more positive view of the platform. “I think overall the interface is a lot cleaner and easier to navigate [than PeopleSoft],” she said. Xu also noted that Workday allows users to use one calendar for multiple jobs, making timesheets easier to manage.
“I do feel a little bit like a boomer when new technology comes out, and they’re like, ‘Oh, this is so difficult. Why can’t we just keep things the way they were?’” said Rachel Schmidt ’25, who works several campus jobs. “I know that [PeopleSoft] was hard to use, but I had memorized the really unintuitive steps to log my hours.”
Schmidt noted that, in her view, adapting to change will always come with challenges.
“I’m trying to be pro-Workday,” she said.
