UVA_HRMeet The Workday Team
Meet Bill Birchler, who was recently integral in ensuring the University Physicians Group's transition to Open Enrollment in Workday was smooth.
How long have you been at UVA?
12 years
Have you had other roles at UVA prior to the Workday Team?
For the past two years, I was part of the Ufirst project. Prior to that, I was a Senior ERP Analyst in the UVA Medical Center, with responsibility for benefits and payroll in People Soft.
What is your current role on the Workday Team?
I am the Workday Administrator for Benefits, meaning that I’m responsible for the configuration and management of the benefits portion of Workday and I’m the second level of support for our benefits partners.
You were heavily involved in transitioning UPG’s Open Enrollment process to Workday. Can you share some of your thoughts on that project?
The rollout went smoothly and successfully! We benefitted from having a good design and good support from both UPG and from our consultants. UPG employees understood what they needed to do and were able to do it. This process wouldn’t have been possible without the support of UPG staff Lory Raines, Amy Downey, and Christine Rudge.
Were there any considerable hurdles you all had to face during the project?
It was extremely important for us to stay agile while we learned about what the configuration needed to look like in order to fully leverage Workday’s capabilities. We had to readdress our plan and adapt as we learned, while still ensuring we were being compliant with the way plans were designed.
Do you have a favorite function in Workday?
Every system is different, each with strengths and weaknesses. There is one particular process I think Workday designed really well. Workday has really great built-in functionality to track the employee’s requests for an increase in life insurance – so we know how much and how long ago they requested it – even though the vendor still has to approve the request. This wasn’t the case in our old system, PeopleSoft – everything was handled outside of the system.
“I look forward to seeing what Workday continues to deliver and how we can continue to leverage new functionality for users.” – Bill Birchler