Finding the Right Recipe: How to Support Workday Effectively

While implementing Workday can feel like a journey in itself, it is only the beginning. To truly realize the value of the system, organizations must invest in the right kinds of ongoing support—technical, functional, strategic, and organizational.

It’s far more than the occasional bug fix or end-user navigation request. There are multiple tiers and categories of support that each organization must be prepared to handle. At Kognitiv, we've worked with over 500 clients and logged hundreds of thousands of consulting hours. From small firms to Fortune 500 enterprises, the message is consistent: Workday support must be strategic, multi-layered, and adaptable. Your Workday system is a reflection of your business, and all businesses are ever-changing, so Workday will never be a static, ‘set it and forget it’ environment. As you go live, or as you rethink your support strategy, it’s important to understand what all needs to be supported, how it can be supported, and who owns the process for support. To start, let’s review what supporting Workday entails.

What It Really Means to Support Workday

Workday support spans across several categories—each critical to system performance, user adoption, and long-term ROI. No matter industry, size, location, etc., no one is exempt from requiring a solution to support all areas. 

• Tier 1 - Password resets, login issues, and navigation help—basic user support to ensure daily usability.
• Break Fix - Troubleshooting when something doesn’t work: integrations, reports, authentication, or process flows, etc.-- very simply, when something isn’t working as expected.
• Enhancements - Rolling out new modules, reports, or dashboards, integrating acquisitions, or expanding the platform.
• Advisory Support - Strategic input on how to set up new areas, best practices, and governance approaches.
• Roadmapping - Planning the future: what to prioritize, when, and how to align internal goals with Workday’s capabilities. Without a roadmap, maintaining Workday becomes a reactionary activity and becomes difficult to operate strategically. 
• Release Planning - Twice-a-year reviews of Workday’s updates—analysis of new and required features, regression testing, documentation, and deployment.
• Cyclical & Annual Processes - Handling merit cycles, open enrollment, performance reviews, integration tokens and schedules, annual close, etc.
• Change Management & Training - Without ongoing enablement, users lag behind the system. Supporting Workday means creating a culture of learning and driving confident usage across teams.

Defining the “How”: Support Models Explained

Once you understand what needs supporting, the next question is: How should support be structured, and who is going to do the work?

There’s no one-size-fits-all answer. Supporting Workday isn’t a job for one person or even one group—it requires a balance of expertise, strategy, and governance. Workday is an expansive system, and as you’ll hear very often, no one knows everything there is to know about Workday. As such, there are many different options for support available:

• Staff Augmentation/Contractors – Single individuals providing specialized support in specific functional areas/for specific projects. Provides easy access to temporary resources but may lack long-term vision.
• Consulting Partners – Either team or queue-based, on-demand or committed dollar support. Provide access to deep expertise and strategy, ideal for specialized needs, but can come with resource constraints and high rates.
• Offshore Teams – Lower cost but may present communication, quality, or timing challenges when working through complex issues.
• Internal Teams – Using your internal, existing team members. Know your business best, but might face bandwidth or knowledge limitations.
• Workday “Teams” – Building out an internal team with dedicated resources trained specifically in Workday. Immediate availability and expertise, but multiple resources are necessary to cover all modules.
• Hybrid Model – Strategically combining internal team members and external resources. Provides the most flexibility but requires governance and coordination.

Why the Hybrid Model Often Wins

Hybrid models are uniquely suited for the dynamic Workday environment. Every organization must have some level of ownership in-house. Depending on size and footprint, this can consist of an additional job responsibility for an existing team member or hiring a Workday-specific owner or team. This internal approach, paired with a 3rd party option, allows organizations to:

1. Reduce costs associated with multiple full-time headcounts (to achieve coverage of all functional areas).
2. Provide access to expert consultants for complex needs, business changes, new module implementation, and advisory support.
3. Enables scalability as your Workday footprint grows, allowing scaling up and down of external support needs.
4. Allow internal teams to build and retain valuable knowledge, as someone in-house should always understand how and why features were built.

This flexible approach allows organizations to stay nimble while meeting both short-term support needs and long-term strategic goals. In addition to the correct team in place, Workday will always require a governance model and coordination of support resources. With that, one of the questions we are always asked is, “Who Owns Workday?”.

Unfortunately, there’s no universal answer and no ‘one-size fits all’ solution. Ownership often shifts based on organization size, complexity, and culture. What we see as the most common customer make-up​:

• Smaller Firms: HR leads functional support with either one in-house resource or an HRIS lead, while IT handles integrations, leveraging external support as an additional ‘team member’
• Large Firms: Centralized HRIS function under CHRO or CIO, handling the entire footprint of Workday with external support for complex projects and questions.

That being said, the most important part of any Workday support program is to establish a centralized steering committee with all system owners represented. If your footprint expands across HCM, Payroll, Financials, Adaptive, etc., all of these area owners should be represented, as all areas of Workday are interconnected and system strategy needs to be consistent. A steering committee should be used to set priorities, increase visibility in system directions, and resolve conflicts or system issues.

Here are some examples from real Kognitiv clients to help paint the picture:

E-Commerce Company (17,000 employees)
Model: Hybrid with boutique firm
Focus: Integrations, Absence, Payroll
Support Hours/year: 4,500
Note: Internal team drives core support while boutique firm provides enhancement

Software Firm (3,500 employees)
Model: Hybrid with staff augmentation
Focus: Global Absence, Core backlog
Support Hours/year: 200
Note: Small, agile HRIS team leans on external consultant when extra capacity as needed

Financial Services (2,200 employees)
Model: Hybrid using boutique + big firm
Focus: Adaptive, Prism, Core
Support Hours/year: 700
Note: Split ownership across HR and IT for broader coverage, using boutique consulting for day-to-day support and big firm consulting for overall infrastructure envisioning.

Small E-Commerce Firm (650 employees)
Model: Hybrid with boutique firm
Focus: Broad knowledge across all areas
Support Hours/year: 100
Note: Lean team taps experts in a "phone-a-friend" model

Final Thoughts: Build a Model That Grows With You

Workday needs ongoing support, there is no way around that. The platform grows as your business does, and your footprint will expand. When establishing a support model, build for scalability, not just today’s needs. As my colleague loves to say, “You bought a Ferrari, you should drive it like one”. It takes time to get the system to a Ferrari-esque level, but with the right team and a solid plan, every organization can get there. When determining what team to put in place, there is no one right model. A hybrid strategy is often the most resilient and cost-effective, but any combination of support strategies will work effectively, as long as there’s clarity, visibility, a plan, and bandwidth to execute.

Contact us today if you’d like our help with building the right model for your organization!