Hey there! Ceci here, with our first Well Built Solutions newsletter.

We all know that Workday’s robust reporting and analytics is one of the ERP software’s biggest selling points. There are valuable insights hidden in your HR data, and with the right Workday reporting know-how, this value can be realized.

While the reporting possibilities in Workday are endless, throughout my years of helping Workday customers understand the stories that their data reveal, here’s one big takeaway:

Nothing puts a smile on your executive stakeholders’ faces as readily as trended worker reports 😏

So, for those new to trended data in Workday, let’s start with a super simple question—what is a trend?

A trend assesses how a single data point changes over time. With enough data, a trend helps you identify what’s the norm, what’s a deviation, and what’s a pattern.

For example, let’s say you create a trended chart of Terminations by Month. With this view, over time, you build an expectation that around 10 employees voluntarily leave your organization each month.

Then, you may notice something out of the ordinary—20 employees voluntarily left your organization in May! That’s 2x more than every other month! 🤔 With this visual cue, you can investigate May’s termination data to understand why it deviated from the norm.

The following year, you find that May had the most terminations AGAIN. Now, it’s a pattern, and in your third year, you can anticipate it. You’re now armed with data insights and can get proactive with your retention strategies 💪

Are you convinced that Workday’s Trended Workers data source can be of use to you?

Awesome! Let’s set it up…

There's some initial setup required to utilize the Trended Workers data source within Workday.

First, run the task Edit Tenant Setup – Reporting and Analytics. Check the box for Enable Worker Trending.

Next, confirm that a security group you belong to has Modify access on the domain security policy Set Up: Tenant Setup - Reporting and Analytics.

Once this is established, you now have access to run the task, Maintain Trended Workers. Run it!

Route to the configuration tab. Here, you’ll see 3 main inputs: Trending Start Date, Number of Retroactive Periods, and Trending Period. Let’s discuss each…

The Trending Start Date marks the beginning of your trended data. This date should typically be set to the effective date of the earliest staffing history that exists in your Workday tenant. If your staffing data starts as far back as the beginning of 2015, for instance, you can set your Trending Start Date to 01/01/2015.

The Trending Period tells Workday how often to take a snapshot of your organization’s headcount. The standard Trending Period is Year-Month. Note that Workday automatically purges trended worker data older than 36 periods. So, a Trending Period set to “Year-Month” means you can report on up to 3 years of data (36 periods / 12 months = 3 years). While you should typically set your Trending Start Date to when your staffing data begins, with the standard Trending Period, due to the aforementioned purging feature, only up to 3 years of data from the current date will be reportable. With the standard Trending Period, at the end of each month, you can expect Workday to remove the oldest month and add the newest month from your trended worker dataset—your data is refreshed each month on a rolling 36-month basis.

There are times when your data needs to be adjusted. Perhaps you processed a recent hire with an incorrect hire date; the retroactive periods ensure that recent corrections are reflected in your data. Workday will review and refresh transactions that occurred in the retroactive period on a daily basis. You can set the number of retroactive periods to be between 1-6, equating to 1-6 months if your Trending Period is “Year-Month”.

We typically recommend 3 retroactive periods to give you wiggle room without piling too heavy a daily background process workload on your tenant. If a transaction is corrected, added, or rescinded that goes further back than the number of retroactive periods you specified, as a fail-safe, you can always refresh ALL of your trended worker data by re-running the task, Create Worker Trending Data…

With the setup complete on Maintain Trended Workers, you’re now ready to generate your trending data! Run the task Create Worker Trending Data. Then, return to the task Maintain Trended Workers and view the Status tab to monitor your dataset creation progress.

Once your dataset has been created, congratulations—you’re up and running! Success! 🎉

Now, the moment you’ve all been waiting for—CUSTOM REPORTING 📈

Before we dive in, I’ll note that setting up the Trended Workers data source automatically allows you to run around 70 Workday-delivered trending reports. While these are certainly worth exploring, most organizations end up needing more custom, flexible views of their data. So, on to custom reporting…

In a typical report built on a Worker data source, you generate one headcount value for one point in time. With the Trended Workers data source, you’ll generate many headcount values for multiple points in time.

To kick us off, let’s create a matrix report that uses basic Trended Workers data source functionality: Ending Headcount by Month.

First, you need to create a calculated field to display the Record Date (the date Workday generated a snapshot) in a rolled-up format. In this case, you’ll use Year-Month.

Run the task, Create Calculated Field. Select “Trended Workers” for Business Object and “Format Date” for Function.

Then, search and select “Record Date” as your Date Field, and “Year-Month” as your Format. Create this same calculated field for Year-Quarter as well (💡make a copy of your Year-Month calculated field and simply change the Format to save time).

ℹ️ You could alternatively build this calculated field as a Lookup Date Rollup field type—either works!

Now you’re ready to create the custom report.

Run the task, Create Custom Report. Select “Matrix” as the Report Type and “Trended Workers” as the Data Source. Click OK.

Under the Row Column section, add your newly created calculated field. Retitle the Label Override to “Year-Month” so your end user will see a clean label instead of your calculated field nomenclature.

Next, scroll down to the Define Field(s) to Summarize section. Swap out Count Type for “Sum” in the Summarization Type input, then search and select “Ending Headcount” in the Summarization Field input. Type “Ending Headcount” in the Label Override column, otherwise Workday will display “Sum of Ending Headcount” on the resulting table and chart—this default label is confusing if not misleading for your end users.

Check the box “Populate Undefined Prompt Defaults”. This will trigger all of the delivered prompts from the Trended Workers data source and filter to appear! We love a little Workday magic ✨

Use the little 🔼 and 🔽 arrows to reorder the prompts so the fields Organization, Include Subordinate Organizations, Time Series Start Date, and Time Series End Date are at the top.

Then, select the Employee Types that make up your headcount (it’s common to exclude interns), specify “Snapshot” as your Record Type, and check “Do Not Prompt at Runtime” for all of the prompts except the top 4.

This way, your end user running the report has the flexibility to generate report results for whatever organization chain and date range they want, without seeing the noise of the other available (but in this case, irrelevant) prompts.

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

For this report, you have only one metric—Ending Headcount.

Lastly, expand the Top N Field section and select “Metric 1”.

HOORAY! YOU DID IT! 🥳 Click OK, and run the report to view a beautiful chart of your organization’s Ending Headcount by Month.

Ready for level two? Scroll on…

Welcome to Level 2. You get to build on what you did in Level 1 by creating one of my favorite charts: Growth Rate by Year-Quarter. It’s a beautiful visual with a double axis. The right axis shows Ending Headcount as a column cluster while the left axis shows Growth Rate as a line overlaid on top.

Remember, Workday only takes an Ending Headcount snapshot at the end of each month. But, the Growth Rate calculation is:

How do you get your Starting Headcount? Let’s discuss…

Well, the Ending Headcount of one month is the Starting Headcount of the next! All you need to do is create a summarization calculation leveraging Ending Headcount with a “period offset”.

Here are your steps:

When you’re done, it should look just like this👇

Now that you have both your Starting and Ending Headcount variables, your next step is to create the Growth Rate 📈 summarization calculation. Go through the same exercise of creating a System-Wide Summarization Calculation, except this time, you’ll choose “Summarization Calculation” as the Function instead of “Lookup Prior Value”.

In the next screen, build out your Growth Rate formula. You’ll have 3 line items with parentheses grouping the first two lines. The first line item is “Sum” in the Summarization Type input, followed by the Workday-delivered “Ending Headcount” in the Field input. The next two line items will incorporate your new Starting Headcount calculation! Make sure your mathematical operators are correct between each line item: - (subtract) then / (divide).

The end result should look like this👇

Voila! Now that you have these summarization calculations created, let’s finish the custom report setup.

Under the Row Column section, add your Record Date (Year-Quarter) calculated field. Retitle the Label Override to “Year-Quarter”.

Next, scroll down to the Define the Field(s) to Summarize section. Enter “Sum” in the Summarization Type input, then search and select “Ending Headcount” in the Summarization Field input. Again, type “Ending Headcount” in the Label Override column.

Click the + button to add a line item. Select “Calculation” as your Summarization Type and your new “Growth Rate” calculation as your Summarization Field. Retitle the Label Override and format the field to be a percent. Lastly, reorder the metrics 🔽 so the Growth Rate is on top (corresponding to metric one) and Ending Headcount is below it (corresponding to metric two).

🔁 Repeat all the steps described in the Ending Headcount by Month custom report directions!

This is where visualization magic happens 🪄 Route to the Output tab. Switch 🔀 the Output Type to “Chart and Table”. Then, expand the Chart Options section, and select “Line” for the Chart Type. Confirm that the “Row Grouping” and “Metrics” populate for the Horizontal Axis and Legend, respectively. Select “Metric 1” for the Metrics to Include. Congratulations! 👏 You just set up Growth Rate as a line chart for Year-Quarter on the left vertical axis.

Now, check the box for "Add Secondary Axis", select "Metric 2", and set the chart type to "Column - Clustered". This adds Ending Headcount to the chart on the right vertical axis.

BONUS: Scroll down a little further and expand the Advanced section. Under Options, check the box for “Show Marker”. This will add markers 🔸 to your Growth Rate line.

That’s it! Save the report and run this bad boy. Bask in the glory of uncovering your organization’s Growth Rate! 😎

Ready for Level 3??? 🫣

There are many ways to track Turnover Rate within Workday. My personal favorite is by Year-Quarter with an Area Overlay chart 🥰

The quarter isn’t your thing? You can switch out the timeframe, for sure. But I find a quarter to be a perfect measurement—long enough to generate non-zero data yet short enough to compare to other quarters and take action when the turnover rate deviates from expectations.

Let’s familiarize ourselves with the Turnover Rate calculation:

The Termination Count setup is similar to Ending Headcount—it’s Workday delivered.

But, you do need to create another Summarization Calculation for Average Headcount.

Creating this summarization calculation should be a piece of cake 🍰 for you now!

Using your Starting and Ending Headcount variables, build out your “Average Headcount” field. You’ll have 3 line items with parentheses around the first two. On the first line, select “Calculation” for your Summarization Type and “Starting Headcount” for Field. On the next line, select “Sum” for Summarization Type followed by the Workday-delivered “Ending Headcount” for Field. For the last line, select “Constant” for Summarization Type and enter a numerical value of “2” in the Field input. Confirm that your mathematical operators are correct between each line item: + (add) then / (divide).

Your end result should look like this👇

Bravo! 🙌 You now have your Turnover Rate denominator. Now onto the Turnover Rate itself…

Name the field “Overall Turnover Rate”. On the first line, select “Sum” as the Summarization Type. Then, search and select “Termination Count” (this is Workday-delivered) for Field. Next, add a line item, choose “Calculation” as the Summarization Type, and search and select your brand new “Average Headcount” field. Put a / (divide) Operator between these two line items and check the box for Return Zero on Error.

❗Now, repeat this calculation setup for Involuntary and Voluntary Turnover Rates. They are built in the same way, with one quick change—for the “Field”, use Involuntary Termination Count and Voluntary Termination Count instead, respectively.

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

Now you’re ready to set up the rest of the custom report…

Under the Row Column section, add your Record Date (Year-Quarter) calculated field. Retitle the Label Override to “Year-Quarter”.

Next, scroll down to the Define the Field(s) to Summarize section. Add 3 rows. In the first row, enter “Calculation” for Summarization Type and input your “Voluntary Turnover Rate” calculation for Summarization Field. Set the next 2 lines up in the same way, simply switching the Summarization Field for “Involuntary Turnover Rate” and “Overall Turnover Rate” respectively. Format all 3 lines as a percent with two decimal digits (0.00%).

The Filter tab setup is what makes this our Level 3 report. By calculating Turnover Rate, you’re mixing both Snapshot data (Ending Headcount to Average Headcount) and Activity data (Termination Count).

To ensure you don’t get funky duplicates, add 5 line items to the Filter tab. In the first set of parentheses, specify a Record Type of “Activity”, the Business Process Type as “Termination”, and the Employee Type to be whichever types of employees you want to include.

Close the parentheses, then change the And/Or setting to OR in line 4.

In the last 2 line items, specify a Record Type of “Snapshot” and match your Employee Type selection from line 3 for consistent data.

With these filters, you’re telling Workday to pull Activity data for regular terminations and Snapshot data for regular employees who are active at each time period’s close (in this case, the close of the Year-Quarter).

🔁 Repeat all Prompts Tab steps described in the Level 1: Ending Headcount by Month instructions, EXCEPT ⛔ don’t make any selections for the Record Type and Employee Type—this was taken care of with filters here.

Route to the Output tab. Switch 🔀 the Output Type to “Chart and Table”. Then, expand the Chart Options section and select “Area Overlay” for the Chart Type. Confirm that the “Row Grouping” and “Metrics” populate for the Horizontal Axis and Legend, respectively. Select all 3 metrics under Metrics.

YOU ACHIEVED LEVEL 3!!! Now you have trended Turnover Rate data to show your executives. Let’s toast to that! 🍾🥂

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

P.S. Loving the newsletter? Leave us a testimonial here 🥰