Sample testing found incorrect payments and delays after college system adopted new HR platform
UPDATED A Workday-based HR platform rollout at Minnesota State universities and colleges left faculty and staff with payroll errors.
According to a report [PDF] from the Office of the Legislative Auditor (OLA), a test sample of 202 faculty members showed 19 had been inaccurately paid. Additional testing identified another 38 faculty members who Minnesota State paid inaccurately. The auditors' report also found issues with late pay.
Minnesota State is the fourth-largest system of state colleges and universities in the US, working across 54 campuses. It serves around 270,000 students and employs more than 14,200 faculty and staff.
In 2019, Minnesota State began the procurement to replace its legacy ERP system, Integrated Statewide Record System (ISRS), with new software that combines finance, HR/payroll, and student components, and "streamlines processes and procedures across all campuses," according to the audit document.
However, the state realized "it might not be able to find one system that could provide all of the desired functionality."
"Consequently, one of the functions that was not incorporated into the Workday system was the capability to calculate faculty payroll," the document states.
As a result, Minnesota State continues to use a combination of Workday, its legacy payroll system, and a Statewide Employee Management (SEMA4) system to create pay distribution records and paychecks.
The OLA's report is based on a sample assessed between July 2021 and December 2024. The Workday implementation was live for the final six months of the auditors’ work.
The auditors claim Minnesota State had been aware of faculty payroll issues before the implementation of Workday. However, the issues actually "increased" after the new software was introduced.
"For instance, there were interface issues with transferring data between ISRS and Workday," the report says.
The initial project budget for the integration and implementation was $151.1 million. Following the contract award to Workday in 2020, Minnesota State increased that to $242.7 million. The plan was for HR and payroll to go live in July 2023 with the student component arriving in fall 2026.
"Due to additions to the scope of the project, extended timeline costs, and additional contingency funds, Minnesota State increased the total project budget to $290.4 million as of November 2024. Minnesota State also moved the implementation dates to July 2024 for the finance and HR/payroll components and fall 2029 for the full implementation of the student component," the report states.
In its response to the auditors in the report, Minnesota State said it was standardizing practices as well as expanding training and validation to avoid and correct errors.
The State said its director of academic workforce technology regularly presents at cross-functional forums to explain how data flows between systems and how specific inputs drive workload and payments.
The Register has asked Minnesota State and Workday for comment.
Other state and college Workday projects in the US and Canada have hit setbacks. In 2024, Iowa decided to end its contract with Workday to provide finance software, but continues to use the vendor's HR system. It delayed introducing the Workday finance system after finding "implementation issues" that could impact a number of business processes. Instead the state opted to extend its existing contract with CGI to upgrade its legacy system, an official statement said.
In 2021, Maine accused Workday of showing "no accountability" for its part in a flawed process to replace the US state's HR system. It shared correspondence that alleged "significant gaps in configuration and testing, as well as best practices and methodology that had not been followed" after missing two go-live dates. Workday was contacted for comment at the time.
Following an official review of the $54.6 million project, the state government suspended the project and laid off contractors. Maine now runs an HR system called PRISM, "built using Workday and other software as needed to meet our complex requirements," according to its website.
The cost of a Washington University project has also risen to $266 million, or around $16,000 per student, over a seven-year rollout, replacing 80 legacy systems.
In December 2024, then-CEO Carl Eschenbach told The Register more than 90 percent of the vendor's rollouts are a success.
"You can always find a couple of stories like that but if you look at Workday, 95 or 90 percent of our implementations are on-time and on-budget," he said. "When you think about the size of these implementations, the scope of them and the transformation that's required, that statistic is unheard of in our industry. We're always looking to learn from implementations that maybe have had issues or challenges in the past."
Eschenbach left his position in February and was replaced by co-founder Aneel Bhusri following a round of job cuts and share price volatility. ®
Updated at 07.29 on April 9, 2026, to add:
A spokesperson at Workday made contact following publication of this article to say it has worked with "hundreds of institutions around the world" to deploy cloud-based services.
"Like any large technology project, the transformation from outdated or end-of-life systems to a centralized, modern solution is complex. These multi-year projects also frequently see additions and subtractions to scope during the deployment which can affect total cost and schedule. It's routine to work through unanticipated needs on any project of this scale."