Keeping Payroll Moving Through a Complex Workday + UKG Transition

2 hours ago

5 min read

How Tamazari Helped Prepare a 1,600-Person Public-Safety Workforce for a New Scheduling and Timekeeping Platform

SUMMARY

Moving timekeeping out of an enterprise HR platform sounds straightforward until payroll, security, benefits, job changes, leave rules and union requirements all still depend on the system being left behind.

Tamazari supported a large municipal government as one of its public-safety departments prepared to move approximately 1,600 employees from Workday Time and Absence to UKG for workforce scheduling and time capture. Workday would remain the system supporting core HR functions and payroll, which meant the two environments had to operate together without disrupting how employees were hired, managed or paid.

Tamazari helped redesign the Workday-side configuration, coordinate integration requirements, prepare the environment for testing and document the work so the organization could move forward with a clear path—even after the broader implementation was paused.

CLIENT BACKGROUND

The client is a large municipal government operating a complex public-sector HR environment across multiple departments. For this initiative, Tamazari supported a public-safety workforce of approximately 1,600 employees. The organization relied on Workday for core HR processes including hiring, job changes, benefits, security and payroll, while seeking more specialized scheduling capabilities through UKG.

The environment was also highly role-based and unionized, with workforce rules affecting overtime, shift differentials, holiday pay, leave and other payroll-critical processes.

CHALLENGE

The department wanted the scheduling flexibility of UKG without disconnecting the HR and payroll processes that still depended on Workday. Employees needed to move away from Workday for time and absence while continuing to move through Workday for hiring, termination, job changes, benefits, security and payroll. Time captured externally would need to flow back correctly so payroll calculations could continue as expected.

That created a tightly connected integration challenge. Tamazari needed to determine what should change in Workday, what should remain untouched and how to preserve existing processes while introducing a new departmental time-capture system.

The project also required coordination between municipal IT, department stakeholders and the UKG implementation team. Earlier planning between the department and UKG had not fully addressed the changes required inside Workday, creating an important execution gap Tamazari was brought in to solve.

SUCCESS CRITERIA

Prepare approximately 1,600 employees to use UKG for scheduling and time capture
Preserve Workday as the system supporting core HCM, benefits, security and payroll processes
Ensure overtime, regular time, shift differentials, holiday pay and other payroll inputs continued to calculate correctly
Maintain accurate data exchange between Workday and UKG
Validate the solution through integration and payroll testing
Document configuration, decisions and testing so the implementation could be resumed without starting over

SOLUTION

Tamazari approached the initiative by first understanding how the existing Workday environment operated before recommending changes. Rather than redesigning every dependent process, the team identified where existing departmental time-capture functionality could be used to support the new operating model. This allowed Tamazari to minimize unnecessary configuration changes while preserving the processes that still needed to run through Workday.

The work covered several interconnected areas, including HCM configuration, security roles, timekeeping, leave dependencies and payroll inputs. Tamazari also worked directly with UKG to provide the employee and job data required to establish the workforce within the new platform. The result was a practical integration design built around one principle: change what needed to change without destabilizing what was already working.

IMPLEMENTATION

Tamazari worked across multiple Workday business areas and stakeholder groups to translate the future-state operating model into system configuration. That included validating how employees would become eligible for the external departmental time-capture process, preserving HCM functionality, adjusting time-related security and roles, and confirming how payroll-critical information such as overtime, regular time, shift differentials and holiday pay would flow through the new model.

As configuration progressed, Tamazari documented findings and decisions with the individual business owners responsible for HCM, security, time and leave.

Testing then began across the redesigned environment, with the team progressing into payroll validation before the broader UKG implementation was paused because of issues outside Tamazari's scope.

Rather than leave the client with an unfinished project and fragmented knowledge, Tamazari consolidated configuration documentation, testing results and remaining work into a clear package the organization could use when the program resumed.

RESULTS

Although the public-safety implementation was paused before production go-live, Tamazari substantially advanced the organization’s readiness to continue.

Established the Workday configuration approach needed to support external time capture
Preserved critical HCM, security and payroll dependencies
Prepared employee and job data required by UKG
Advanced the solution into testing and payroll validation
Documented the current-state environment, configuration decisions and completed testing
Created a forward-looking work plan so the organization could restart from a known baseline rather than recreate months of analysis

Because HR environments continue to change through benefits updates, bargaining agreements and other business activity, Tamazari clearly positioned the documentation as a point-in-time baseline rather than a static blueprint. Even so, it provided the organization with a significant head start for restarting the initiative. Tamazari also supported a related UKG transition for another municipal public-safety department, completing UKG-to-Workday integration testing, end-to-end payroll validation and audit-report testing.

LONG-TERM VALUE

The value of complex modernization work is not limited to whether a program reaches go-live on its original timeline. By documenting how Workday, departmental timekeeping and payroll processes fit together, Tamazari gave the organization a clearer technical foundation for continuing the program when funding and implementation conditions allowed.

The work also reduced one of the biggest risks associated with paused enterprise initiatives: losing the knowledge behind past decisions. Instead of starting over, future teams can return to a documented baseline, reassess what has changed and move forward with greater confidence.

KEY LEARNINGS

Understand the current environment before designing the future one. Complex HR and payroll systems contain dependencies that are easy to disrupt if configuration begins before the full operating model is understood.
Modernization does not always mean replacing everything. Reusing existing Workday capabilities helped reduce unnecessary configuration and preserve proven processes.
Payroll must be tested end to end. A scheduling platform cannot be treated as an isolated application when its data ultimately determines whether employees are paid correctly.
Documentation is part of the deliverable. When budgets, vendors or priorities change, strong documentation prevents institutional knowledge from disappearing with the project timeline.
Integration work is business-process work. HCM, security, scheduling, leave, payroll and labor rules have to be considered together—not as separate technical workstreams.

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