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Administrator Guide
Last Updated: 2023-06-23
Setup Considerations: Workday Benchmarking

Setup Considerations: Workday Benchmarking

You must subscribe to Innovation Services to use this feature. Contact your Customer Success Manager to request the Innovation Services Addendum (ISA), or see Workday Innovation Services in the Workday Community for more information.
You can use this topic to help make decisions when planning your configuration and use of Workday Benchmarking. It explains:
  • Why to set it up.
  • How it fits into the rest of Workday.
  • Downstream impacts and cross-product interactions.
  • Security requirements and business process configurations.
  • Questions and limitations to consider before implementation.
Refer to detailed task instructions for full configuration details.

What It Is

When you opt in to Workday Benchmarking, you contribute your tenant data for the benchmark categories and subcategories you select. Workday uses this data to calculate benchmark percentiles for your industry.
Workday Benchmarking is available through the Workday Benchmarking Innovation Service. Workday Benchmarking includes these benchmarking groups:
  • Human Capital Management.
  • Recruiting.
  • Time, Absence, and Payroll.
  • Workday Usage.

Business Benefits

Workday Benchmarking enables you to compare data for your company with peers in your industry. Workday Benchmarking provides on-demand benchmarks that your stakeholders can use to make informed decisions about your business.

Use Cases

You can use Workday Benchmarking to:
  • Compare your actuals data to benchmark data.
  • Build custom reports based on benchmark report data sources (RDS).
  • Create scorecards that include benchmark data.

Questions to Consider

Questions
Considerations
Which benchmarks do you want access to?
Certain benchmarks require you to configure your tenant in a specific way. The amount of effort required to set up Workday Benchmarking will depend on which benchmarks you opt in to.
What are your internal company policies and local government regulations around sharing data?
Workday de-identifies your data and uses contribution thresholds so you can access benchmarks while still meeting internal and government privacy regulations.
Who needs to view benchmark values and actuals?
Segment-based security is available for specific benchmark categories and subcategories.
Who administers the Workday Benchmarking feature for your company?
You can enable notifications on the
Edit Tenant Setup - Notifications
task to notify your administrators when changes to your tenant might impact benchmark results.

Recommendations

Workday recommends you update your worker trending data after any changes to ensure that your data contributions are accurate. Consider the impact on performance when updating trended worker data. Workday recommends running this task during nonpeak hours.

Requirements

Workday requires you to contribute data in order to access benchmark values.
For your actuals to display correctly, your trending period on the
Maintain Trended Workers
task must align with a standard monthly schedule. That is, your periods must begin on the first day of a month and end on the last day of a month.
For Absence Policy benchmarks, you must map time off plans in your tenant to Workday time off plans.
For these benchmarks, you must correctly map your tenant values to standard values to receive accurate benchmark data:
  • Military Status.
  • U.S. Diversity and Inclusion.
  • Workforce Diversity and Leadership.

Limitations

Workday displays benchmark percentiles based on the number of participants who contribute data for that benchmark. If the number of participants falls beneath certain thresholds, you can view only limited or no data for that benchmark.

Tenant Setup

Enable trended worker data on the
Edit Tenant Setup - Reporting and Analytics
task to access HCM and Absence benchmarks. You can also use this task to enable scorecarding, which enables you to view benchmark data on your scorecards.
You can access the
Edit Tenant Setup - Notifications
task to enable notifications for the Benchmark notification type.

Security

These security domains enable you to opt in to benchmarks and access benchmark values:
Domain
Considerations
Benchmark Management
Can opt in to benchmarks on the
Benchmarking Opt-In
task.
Benchmark Values
Can access benchmark percentiles for all benchmarking groups.
Actual Values for Benchmarking
Can access the
Actual Values
report field on the Benchmark Value business object to create custom benchmark reports.
These domains enable you to set up your tenant for Workday Benchmarking:
Domain
Considerations
Manage: Innovation Services
Can opt in to the Workday Benchmarking Innovation Service on the
Innovation Services Opt-In
task.
Benchmark Management
Can map absence policy types on the
Maintain Dimension Mappings for Workday Benchmarking
task for Absence benchmarks.
Security Configuration
Can access the
Maintain Functional Areas
task to enable functional areas for benchmarking.
Set Up: Contact Info, IDs, and Personal Data
Can map tenant values to standard values on these tasks:
  • Maintain Ethnicities
  • Maintain Genders
  • Maintain Military Status
Set Up: Tenant Setup - Reporting and Analytics
Can enable worker trending and scorecarding on the
Edit Tenant Setup - Reporting and Analytics
task.
Custom Report Administration
Can run the
Create Worker Trending Data
task.
Set Up: Tenant Setup - BP and Notifications
Can enable benchmark notifications on the
Edit Tenant Setup - Notifications
task.

Business Processes

No impact.

Reporting

Reports
Considerations
Benchmark Definitions
Enables you to view details about each benchmark, including:
  • The equation used to calculate the benchmark value.
  • Available dimensions.
  • Your opt-in status.
Benchmark vs. Actual
Enables you to view your company actuals alongside benchmark percentiles.
Benchmark vs. Actual by Period Range
Enables you to view benchmark values over a period of up to 12 months.
Benchmark Values as a Source for Scorecard
Enables you to create a scorecard that displays benchmark values.

Integrations

No impact.

Connections and Touchpoints

Feature
Considerations
Scorecards
You can create a scorecard report that displays benchmark data.
Workday offers a Touchpoints Kit with resources to help you understand configuration relationships in your tenant. Learn more about the Workday Touchpoints Kit on Workday Community.