NTU Singapore is ranked among the top universities in the world. It is also Asia’s top research university. One of its strategic goals is to foster interdisciplinary collaboration across its colleges, schools and research centres. To sustain its top performance, NTU aims to attract some of the world’s most brilliant minds to its faculty by offering a superior employee experience.
People matter anytime, anywhere.
Harnessing advanced technologies is key to driving NTU’s ambition to be among Singapore’s best employers. In an effort to nurture a people-centred culture enabled by technology, in 2018, NTU began moving from an aging infrastructure to a modern, cloud-first, mobile-enabled, data-driven platform with security by design. NTU wanted an integrated, stakeholder-driven infrastructure that would benefit the entire university by providing easy-to-use, smart digital tools for 6,000 faculty and research staff and 3,000 admin staff.
When it came to people functions, Workday was chosen because it fit into NTU’s digital roadmap: a cloud-native, mobile-enabled, software-as-a-service application. NTU’s focus was on making the university a place for exceptional people. That means faculty and non-faculty roles needed access to a common set of HR standards and processes. In Workday, NTU found a single technology platform that would be easy to deploy, user-friendly and meet the university’s stringent requirements in academic appointments and retention.
NTU became Asia’s first Institute of Higher Learning to implement Workday, bringing together: workforce planning, faculty recruitment, appointment and reappointment, talent management, performance management, learning and rewards. Today, 65 in-house HR applications are streamlined into one integrated system where employees can access live HR data and take action anywhere, anytime, and on any device.
Workday has helped us put people at the heart of what we do and continue to empower them.
Chief Human Resource Officer
Improving employee experience.
While some NTU faculty and staff were initially hesitant about the move from the legacy in-house system, they soon discovered Workday’s new employee experience supports every person on their individual path, using machine learning to provide relevant insights, recommendations and assistance along the way. Workday led to a step change in the way faculty and staff work, communicate and interact, supporting inter-departmental collaboration.
The pandemic further validated the choice of Workday. NTU was able to easily pay its faculty and staff during the two months of lockdown in 2020. Workday also supported NTU in virtual collaborations, including performance appraisals and calibration, and moving thousands of courses online.
Workday is more than a technology investment, it’s a new employee interface for our HR needs.
Chief Human Resource Officer
Central data repository.
Workday gives all staff access to the same data in one place. The ability to share employee records from a central repository has changed the way NTU faculty and staff work, communicate and collaborate.
At the same time, Workday’s dashboards, with insights and data, are empowering and accelerating decision-making. For example, Workday Adaptive Planning integrates NTU’s HR and finance data, allowing HR to work with finance to optimise manpower cost and be forward-looking in headcount planning to support NTU’s goals.
Workday has changed the way I work, giving me instant access to employee information.
Chief Information Officer
Efficiency and productivity gains.
NTU is reaping the benefits of having a central repository of HR documents, streamlined processes and reduced paperwork. Workday’s user-friendly interface supports self-service, freeing HR from admin tasks while improving the employee experience. Now, staff have access to their personal records and can update their information in seconds – without completing a form – or apply for leave simply by talking to Workday Assistant.
HR efficiency has also soared. Payroll administration for NTU’s 600 part time lecturers used to be a two- to three-week manual process that relied on timesheets submissions from different schools. With manual data entry, accuracy was difficult to verify and track, and any delay in paperwork meant missing the payment cycle. With Workday, part-time lecturers can submit their timesheets online 24x7, track their submission and are always paid on time.