Hey there! Mia here, with our second Well Built Solutions newsletter.

Around 70% of your Workday custom reports are likely built on Worker data sources (i.e. worker is the primary business object). Understandable! A wealth of information exists on the Worker business object, making it a top choice for reporting. BUT, with nearly 2,700 🤯 data sources in Workday (run the “Data Sources” standard report in your tenant to explore them all), there is so much more reporting power to harness.

In today’s newsletter, please welcome the underrated and underutilized All Positions data source—featuring the lesser known Position - Position Management primary business object—to the stage 💃 It’s a powerhouse for displaying clear, summarized insights into your staffing pipeline.

Why is position-level data needed here? Let’s get into it…

In Workday, positions can be Filled or Unfilled. To understand the state of your organization’s staffing efforts, worker data alone isn’t going to cut it. You need a clear view of both your Filled and Unfilled positions—that is, what roles are already filled at your organization, and which roles you need to recruit for.

Quick refresher on positions in Workday…

Positions are the seats at your organization that workers fill. Each position in Workday is associated with job details such as job profile, job level, management level, FTE, and more. These position-level attributes often drive important business and system functions, such as security, business processes, absence, payroll, etc.

Assigned job attributes live on a position whether it’s filled or not. That is, job attributes live on the position business object independently of the worker who fills the position. This is helpful to keep in mind when reporting on positions.

Okay, back to business…

Your Filled positions (i.e. your current, active headcount) are only one part of your staffing story—the other part is Unfilled positions. Workday categorizes your Unfilled positions into delivered position staffing statuses.

Let’s discuss these statuses…

Unfilled positions will always be in one of three Workday-delivered statuses: Open, Frozen, or Closed.

The Open 🪑 status typically means the position is either…

a) an intended, net new addition to your headcount, or
b) a backfill for a recent termination

In both cases, your organization is usually actively recruiting to fill this open seat.

The Frozen 🧊 status means that recruiting for the unfilled position is paused.

Freezing a position is the right step to take when your organization initiates a hiring freeze or plans to wait many months before actively recruiting for the position.

The Closed ❌ status means the position is no longer needed.

Organizations manage their use of this status differently. Some organizations close a terminated worker’s position regardless of whether it will be backfilled, opting to create a new position if needed. Other organizations keep the position open upon a worker’s exit, opting to hire a backfill into the existing position to maintain the position’s history (i.e. a record of who entered/exited the position and when).

There’s no right or wrong here—just pros and cons to consider carefully before selecting a standard process. The best practice is to nail down a method for your organization and train your end users to stick to it.

Now, onward to the fun stuff—reporting! 📊

The custom report we’re sharing with you today visualizes position pipeline activity. It doesn’t report on Unfilled positions that are Frozen or Closed, as these statuses imply zero activity from a recruitment and current headcount perspective (your Frozen and Closed positions can live on a different custom report, perhaps neighboring a Position Pipeline report on a Staffing dashboard).

This Position Management Pipeline report provides a snapshot of how employees are filling and vacating your existing positions. It focuses on Filled and Unfilled positions as they move from an Unfilled status of “Open” or “Future Fill”, to a Filled status of “Current Employee” or “Future Leaver” (we’ll talk about these custom-labeled statuses shortly, don’t worry!).

Here’s a preview of the report chart. Again, you’re counting positions with this report, not workers.

Are you getting excited yet!? 😄

Before you start configuring, let’s discuss the value of these 4 custom-labeled statuses (Open Positions, Future Fill, Current Employees, Future Leaver), which are built into the backend of the report via calculated fields…

🔆 This report organizes all Open Unfilled positions into the custom labels of “Open Positions” and “Future Fills”.

Here, we’re categorizing Open Positions as positions that are actively being recruited for and don’t yet have an accepted offer.

In the context of this report, Future Fill includes all positions for which a worker has accepted an offer (either a new hire or an internal transfer) but hasn’t officially started yet. Recruiting has stopped for the position because there’s a planned fill with a future start date.

Seeing Open Unfilled positions broken down into these sub-statuses helps your talent acquisition team understand which positions are still being recruited for vs. what hiring has already been accomplished.

🔆 On this report, Filled positions are organized into custom labels of “Current Employees” and “Future Leavers”.

Here, the Current Employees label includes all positions for which a worker is staffed in the position and is actively fulfilling its roles and responsibilities.

Future Leaver includes all positions that are staffed with an active worker who has an upcoming exit date (most often a termination, but could also be an internal transfer). A backfill may or may not be needed for the soon-to-be-vacated position. This particular report will focus on terminations as opposed to internal transfers.

Can you anticipate the value of this report yet?

It answers questions like…

If you’re anything like us, you like having data at your fingertips to drive proactive action! This report is a helpful tool you can run for just that.

So, let’s get to configuring 😎

The crux of this report is a nested calculated field (think dream within a dream, calc field within a calc field…) that you’ll need to build from scratch. Let’s start there!

Why do you need a nested calculated field?

The 4 custom labels that we discussed earlier aren’t Workday-delivered. This means you need to create them with logic available to you in Workday. To build a field that returns the correct label for each position, you’ll create an Evaluate Expression Band calculated field type with nested True/False Conditions within it.

Quick sidenote…

We’ve been posting breakdowns of the different calculated field types on LinkedIn for the past 5 weeks. Check out this post for a breakdown of True/False Conditions, and keep an eye out for a breakdown of Evaluate Expression Band coming this Thursday. We’re making our way through all 34 calc field types!

Run the task Create Calculated Field. Name the calculated field, “zCF TF - Future Fill on Open Position”. Select “Position - Position Management” as the business object and “True/False Condition” as the Function. Click OK.

On the next page, add two line items to the field.

In the first line item, search and select the field, “Has Future Position Fill”. This is a boolean field type (i.e. True/False, Yes/No), so you can set the criteria to Yes or No by checking the box or leaving it unchecked, respectively. In this case, set the Operator to “equal to” and check the box in the Comparison Value input to indicate a value of “Yes”.

In the second line item, search and select the field, “Staffing Status”. Choose an Operator of “in the selection list” and select “Open” as the Comparison Value.

This is how it should look👇

Click OK.

Congratulations! You just built a True/False Condition that will return “True” if the position is both Open AND Has a Future Fill.

Onto the next…

The calculated field for our Future Leaver label is a bit trickier. It involves creating 4 calculated fields to produce our one Future Leave True/False Condition—nothing you can’t handle! Let’s do it…

To determine if the worker who is currently filling the position has a future-dated termination (i.e. they will be leaving the position on a known future date), you’ll need to build a bridge from the Position business object to the Worker business object and sort through the worker’s termination event history. We’ll walk you through it from the inside, out…

Run the task Create Calculated Field. Name the calculated field, “zCF ESI - Most Recent Termination Including Future”. Select “Worker” as the business object and “Extract Single Instance” as the Function.

Search and select “Termination History - Approved” as the Source Field. Set the Condition to “Any is True” and the Sort Field to “Effective Date”. Then, set the Sort Direction to “Descending (Z to A)” and the Instance to be Returned to “First occurrence”. Click OK.

🥳 Great job! You just isolated the worker’s most recent, approved termination event. Your calculated field should look like this👇

Next, you’ll build a calculated field that pulls the Effective Date of the Most Recent Termination Event that you just isolated in the previous step (in this case, note that the Effective Date of the Termination Event is simply the Termination Date).

Run the task Create Calculated Field. Name the calculated field, “zCF LRV - Most Recent Termination Date (Including Future)”. Select “Worker” as the business object and “Lookup Related Value” as the Function.

In the Lookup Field, search and select the ESI field you just created, “zCF ESI - Most Recent Termination Including Future”. In the Return Value, search and select “Effective Date”. Click OK.

When you’re done, it will look like this👇

Next, you’ll create another Lookup Related Value calculated field to pull the Effective Date of the Termination Event onto the Position - Position Management business object. We’re doing this so that we can incorporate this Effective Date into our upcoming True/False Condition that will identify Future Leaver positions.

Run the task Create Calculated Field. Name the calculated field, “zCF LRV - Worker’s Most Recent Termination Effective Date (Including Future)”. Select “Position - Position Management” as the business object and “Lookup Related Value” as the Function.

In the Lookup Field, search and select “Worker”. In the Return Value, search and select the Lookup Related Value #1 field that we just created, “zCF LRV - Most Recent Termination Date (Including Future)”. Click OK.

Compare your field to this screenshot to check your work!👇

YOU MADE IT! This is the outermost layer of our Future Leaver calculated field.

Run the task Create Calculated Field. Name the calculated field, “zCF TF - Future Term on a Filled Position”. Select “Position - Position Management” as the business object and “True/False Condition” as the Function. Click OK.

On the next page, add two line items to the field.

In the first line item, search and select the Lookup Related Value #2 field you created in the previous step, “zCF LRV - Worker’s Most Recent Termination Effective Date (Including Future)”.

Set the Operator to “greater than”. Set the Comparison Type to “Value from another field”. In the Comparison Value, search and select the dynamic field of “Today”.

In the second line item, search and select the field “Staffing Status”. Set the Operator to “in the selection list” and select “Filled” as the Comparison Value.

Click OK. Compare it to this screenshot here👇

🥴 Are you feeling dizzy yet?

Nested calculated fields can make your head spin. Whether you’re following along easily or digesting the concept of nested calculated fields for the first time, you’ve made it this far and you’re doing GREAT! Let’s summarize what we’ve done…

With this series of nested calculated fields, you isolated the worker that sits in a position and pulled their most recent termination date, including any termination events in the future. You then built a True/False Condition to evaluate whether this termination date (if it exists) is in the future (greater than today). Essentially, you’ve instructed Workday to return TRUE if these conditions are met: the position is indeed filled with a worker AND that worker will be terminated on a known future date.

Onward we go! 🚀

This is the last calculated field! 🎉 This is the top-level field that you’ll actually use in your custom report. All of the other fields you built feed into this field.

Run the task Create Calculated Field. Name the field something that makes sense for your organization using your standard calculated field nomenclature. We chose “zCF EEB - Staffing Sub-Status”. Select “Position - Position Management” as the business object and “Evaluate Expression Band” as the Function.

TIP: You can type “EEB" + Enter” in the Function input as a shortcut instead of manually sorting through the list of options. Here’s our full list of calc field shortcuts.

Add 3 line items to your field.

In the first line item, pull in the Future Fill True/False Condition you created above, “zCF TF - Future Fill on Open Position”. In the Return Value, type “Future Fill”.

In the second line item, pull in the Future Termination on Filled Position True/Condition you created above, “zCF TF - Future Term on Filled Position”. In the Return Value, type “Future Leaver”.

In the third line item, search and select the Workday-delivered field, “Staffing Status Open”. In the Return Value, type “Open Positions”.

Lastly, in the Default Value, type “Current Employees”.

When you’re done, the field should look like this!👇

You may be wondering if the order of the line items matters…

YES, it does! The order is important here.

Workday evaluates the logic in an Evaluate Expression Band field from top to bottom. It will first assess whether the position meets the criteria for Future Fill. If TRUE, it will assign the label of “Future Fill” to that position. If not, it will move on to assess the next line of logic. If it moves through all 3 line items without a TRUE, then Workday assigns the default label of “Current Employees”.

It’s important to build logic that is mutually exclusive and completely exhaustive (MECE), otherwise, positions may be incorrectly assigned a default label of “Current Employees”.

HOORAY! 🙌 You have now completed the calculated field setup for this report! Now let’s configure the rest of the report. This will be quick compared to what you just accomplished…

Under the Row Column section, add your newly created top-level calculated field, “zCF EEB - Staffing Sub-Status”. Retitle the Label Override to Position Pipeline so your end user will see a clean label as opposed to your calculated field nomenclature.

Under the sort rows, swap out the default “Row total - Descending” for “Sequence Defined in Field Values Group”. Then, click into Options > Create Field Values Group.

Name the Field Values Group, “Position Pipeline”, and add 4 line items. Select each of your custom labels by following this pathway: By Type > Evaluate Expression Band Calculated Field Related Content. Put them in this chronological order: Open Positions, Future Fill, Current Employees, Future Leaver. This “chronological” order outlines the typical life cycle of a position.

It should look like this when you’re finished👇

Under the Define the Field(s) to Summarize section, keep the default Summarization Type of “Count”. Simply add a Label Override of “Positions”.

Route to the Output tab. Switch 🔀 the Output Type to “Chart and Table”. Then, expand the Chart Options section, and select “Column - Stacked” for Chart Type. Confirm that the “Row Grouping” and “Metrics” populate for the Horizontal Axis and Legend, respectively. Select “Metric 1” in the Metrics to Include input.

Here’s what the setup should look like👇

💥 Boom! You DID it!

Share this custom report with your talent acquisition team and executive leaders. We hope they love it! 😄

One last note…

You may want to add filters and prompts to narrow your results or give your end users more data query flexibility. You may also want to build out the Drill Down tab of the report settings, where you can add a ton of super valuable, granular data about the positions in each category. We’ll save these topics for another newsletter. In the meantime, enjoy your data, and experiment further if you feel inspired!

Report Definition .PDF 📝

Video Demonstration 📹

As always, thank you for being a reader!

We’re celebrating you and your pursuit of a Well Built Workday 🥳

Until next time!

Ceci & Mia

Co-Founders of Well Built Solutions

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