Deakin University has continued their commitment to enhance the PeopleSoft user experience by selectively adopting a number of new features in PeopleSoft HCM

In 2019, Deakin has continued our commitment to enhance the DeakinPeople (PeopleSoft) user experience. We have selectively adopted a number of new features such as the mobile payslip, export org chart option for administrators and announcements tile. The announcements tile has not only been a great tool to communicate upcoming upgrades and new features, but also provided a quick and easy way to broadcast key messages to our users.

In conjunction with a recent major upgrade to PeopleTools 8.57, PUM 31, Deakin has also implemented major process improvements by re-purposing delivered PeopleSoft frameworks to meet our business requirements.

Delivered activity guide functionality was used to automate Deakin’s contract expiry management process for fixed term staff. Replacing the highly manual process, previously consisting of emails and excel spreadsheets, user friendly activity guides now enable both managers and administrators to initiate either a non-renewal or reappointment process.

This automated functionality has provided many benefits including:

• A centralised repository for contract expiry management – removing the need for email approvals, manual spreadsheets and constant back and forth between our Human Resources (HR) Division and area administrators across the organisation
• Visibility of end-to-end approval workflow including online acceptance from the employee
• System-generated HTML emails providing consistency in communications
• Reduced processing times due to the automated update of job and position data.

The adoption of this new process was immediate with areas across the University choosing to use the new functionality on the day of implementation. In the first three weeks after go live, 195 fixed term employees have been through the renewal/non-renewal process via the contract management process in DeakinPeople.

Another crucial business need was enabling access for managers and supervisors to view and download reports for their staff. To deliver this requirement, Deakin leveraged the PeopleSoft fluid WorkCentre framework to develop a new Manager Reporting WorkCentre.

The WorkCentre (accessed via a new tile under Manager Home) contains a suite of commonly requested reports from managers and supervisors. Managers can now easily access reports, such as staff profile, leave balances, timesheets paid and training enrolments, for their team with the ability to set filters or export the data to excel.

The solution is highly configurable, allowing us to easily add or update reports as the needs of our managers evolve. The feedback from staff has been extremely positive as it’s given our managers easy access to information to help in their decision making - something they would have previously had to request from an administrator or HR.

Deakin has demonstrated that you can easily overcome business challenges by using PeopleSoft functionality in innovative ways. Re-purposing delivered frameworks such as activity guides and WorkCentre’s has enabled us to significantly improve integral HR business processes. All development was completed in house which was both cost effective and enabled express implementation. This has resulted in many benefits including:

• Utilising existing functionality and frameworks removes the need for complex customisations
• An improved user experience for managers, administrators and staff
• Process efficiencies and significant time savings
• Increased access to information and improved decision making
• Increased business ownership and reduced reliance on HR