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Last Updated: 2026-07-10
Setup Considerations: Job Changes

Setup Considerations: Job Changes

This topic is relevant to the enhanced change job experience. The new change job experience is available to all customers at this time.
You can use this topic to help make decisions when planning your configuration and use of the
Change Job
 business process. 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

You can set up job change workflows by configuring and combining tasks and business processes. Example: Transferring a worker initiates a change in benefits and requires the approval of an HR administrator.
The main process to consider is the
Change Job
 business process, which controls most job changes between a worker's
Hire
 and
Termination
 events, including:
  • Demotions.
  • Job data changes.
  • Lateral moves.
  • Location changes.
  • Promotions.
  • Transfers between managers and organizations.
You can enable the
Change Job
 business process to use machine learning to provide recommendations for common fields when a user is completing a job change.

Business Benefits

Change Job
 is intuitive and configurable, enabling you to:
  • Minimize manual error.
  • Limit the training required for users to perform job changes.
  • Configure related events as subprocesses.
You can modify the overall process to suit the needs of your organization. Example: Requiring specific tasks or skipping unnecessary fields based on the job change reason. You can also add a range of nonstaffing tasks as subprocesses that can display and route differently based on many factors, including:
  • Who initiates
  • How users initiate
  • Location
  • Organization or manager
  • Reason
  • Worker type
Once you set up the
Change Job
 business process, Workday enables the appropriate users to access and complete the steps.

Use Cases

  • Converting individual contributors into managers by assigning other workers to their supervisory organizations.
  • Creating and managing internal job requisitions and applications.
  • Initiating processes such as compensation changes, location changes, and onboarding new hires.
  • Changing an employee's job to a domestic assignment.
  • Moving managers or whole teams between organizations.
  • Moving workers from 1 manager to another.
  • Changing the details for a contingent worker.

Questions to Consider

Question
Considerations
How do you want to customize your change job workflow?
You can configure separate Change Job business process definitions for different organizations. Examples:
  • You can create a definition for U.S.-based workers and a separate definition for workers based in the UK.
  • You can create a definition for managers that includes the Approval step and a separate definition for HR Administrator roles that skips the
    Approval
    step.
You can also use condition rules to modify the workflow for each definition. Rule-based definitions are more efficient for high-volume transactions than definitions with the same condition repeated for multiple steps. Example: You can create a rule-based definition that evaluates workers for full-time status, instead of creating multiple steps requiring workers to be full-time employees.
You can also configure rule-based consolidated templates to enable initiators to complete some subprocesses during a job change based on condition rules.
What other tasks or subprocesses do you want to include when you make job changes?
You can add tasks as steps on the Change Job business process, such as:
  • Assign Pay Group
  • Change Benefit Elections
  • Onboarding
  • Generate Document
Access the
Business Process Configuration Options
 report to find a full list of tasks that you can add to initiate subprocesses on the
Change Job
 business process.
You can also configure some subprocesses as a consolidated template, which enables the initiator to access them when completing a change job.
What should your users be able to see and do when completing job changes?
You need to create simplified job changes for initiators, reviewers, and approvers using the
Maintain Change Job Templates
 task. These templates enable you to control what information is visible and editable when users access the initiation, review, and approval steps of a job change.
Workday recommends setting up a separate template for out of order insertions that exposes all fields. See:
Concept: Out of Order Insertions for Job Changes
You can also configure a variety of tools to help people complete job changes, such as:
  • QuickTips that you can configure using Guidance Workspace.
  • Custom validation rules that ensure users enter data accurately.
  • Configuring optional fields that are hidden, required, or view-only.
  • Dynamically updating default values for certain fields based on changes users make to other fields.
  • Embedded analytics worklets to display additional data.
Do you want to provide machine learning recommendations for users when they complete job changes?
You can opt in to share data categories with Workday. Once you opt in, it takes approximately 2 weeks for Workday to process your data and present recommendations. To use the most relevant data, we recommend that you enable this feature in your production tenant.
The recommendations depend on the volume of your contributed data. We recommend that you have historical data before you use this feature.

Recommendations

  • Plan for all possible job change scenarios. Consider what you want job changes to look like within your organization and what scenarios you want to prevent.
  • The
    Change Job
     default definition includes all required steps in the correct order. Modify the default definition only as much as necessary to accomplish your business needs. Test often during configuration to reduce errors.
  • Revisit your job change configurations whenever you implement new tools and business processes in Workday
  • If you have pay groups configured, you can select the next pay period to align the start date with your pay cycle.

Requirements

You might need to take additional steps to enable this feature depending on your organization's subscription service agreement. For more information, see this Community article.
You need to set up the
Change Job
 business process to manage workers in Workday. You must add
Change Organization Assignment
 and
Propose Compensation Change
 as subprocesses on the
Change Job
 business process definition.
In order to use these initiating actions, you need to set up templates for them on the
Maintain Change Job Templates
 task:
  • Start Job Change
  • Change Job
  • Change Location
  • Request Transfer
  • Change Contingent Worker Details

Limitations

No impact.

Tenant Setup

You can view tenant setup options that impact
Change Job
 in these sections of the
Edit Tenant Setup - HCM
 task:
  • Staffing
  • Job Requisitions
  • Leave of Absence

Security

The Change Job business process uses a combination of the following to determine the change job information displayed to a user:
  • Business process security policy for the relevant business processes.
  • Domain security policy for the relevant domains, including view and modify access.
  • Template configuration.
  • Access to proposed supervisory organization.
  • Configuration of optional fields.
  • Localization settings.
The initiator’s access to a proposed Supervisory Organization determines the visibility of many Change Job fields. As a result, Workday might dynamically hide fields and sections from a user.
Security
Considerations
Business Process Administration
Manage: Business Process Definitions
Enables you to set up the
Change Job
 business process definition.
Change Job
 business process security policy.
The security groups you configure here can access the
Change Job
 business process.
View and modify access to the Staffing Actions: Change Job Date and Reason domain.
Enables you to access the Change Job step and initiating action.
Change Organization Assignments
 business process security policy.
View and modify access to the
Staffing Organizations: Header
 domain.
Enables you to access the
Change Organization Assignments
 business process, including when it’s a subprocess on Change Job.
Users with access to this domain can see any organization fields configured on the Change Job template. Example: Company, Cost Center, and Business Unit.
Assign Collective Agreement
 business process security policy.
View and modify access to the
Worker Data: Collective Agreements
 domain.
Enables you to access the
Assign Collective Agreement
 business process, including when it’s a subprocess on Change Job.
Users with access to this domain can see all collective agreement fields on the Change Job template.
Propose Compensation
 business process security policy.
View and modify access to these domains:
  • Core Compensation functional area:
    • Add Compensation
    • Compensation Change
  • Advanced Compensation functional area:
    • Add Compensation Management Plans
    • Change Compensation Management Plans
Enables you to access the
Propose Compensation
 business process, including when it’s a subprocess on Change Job.
Users with access to these domains can see compensation fields on the Change Job template.

Business Processes

Your job change setup can affect downstream events, such as the:
  • Assign Pay Group
     business process.
  • Change Benefit Elections
     business process.
  • Change Organization Assignments for Worker
     business process.
  • Employee Contract
     business process.
  • Onboarding
     business process.
  • Propose Compensation Change
     business process.
  • Third-party integrations.
In-progress
Change Job
 events can block a worker's processes from initiating or completing.
Some business processes initiate
Change Job
 and might require specific business process definitions to function. Example:
Swap Positions
.

Reporting

Add the
Change Job
 task to the My Team Management dashboard to help managers track and manage job changes and time-sensitive tasks for their teams.
Add the
Start Job Change
 report to the worker profile to enable users to launch relevant job changes for a specific worker.
You can use the
View Document Template Details
 report to view document templates created with Workday Docs.
You can use the
Out of Order Job Changes
 report to audit out of order changes and their downstream impacts.

Integrations

  • You can use the
    jobChanges
     REST API to start and submit job changes. You can update worker information, such as:
    • Location.
    • Business Title.
    • Job Profile.
    • Position.
    • Job Classification.
  • You can use the
    Change Job
     EIB to perform a job change on an employee or contingent worker. This can include changing worker-related information such as organization assignments, compensation changes, pay groups and locations. When you view a change job event created by the EIB, the event displays based on your configuration on the Change Job template with the Change Job initiating action.

Connections and Touchpoints

Change Job
 events can touch many other functional areas in Workday, including:
Features
Consideration
Benefits
Changes to a worker’s position could trigger the
Change Benefit Elections
 business process.
Compensation
Changes to a worker's position, location, job profile, or other position attributes may impact compensation. This includes modifications to Compensation Grade, Grade Profile, or the addition or update of Compensation Plans.
Onboarding
You can initiate internal onboarding events when you make a job change to a worker’s position attributes, such as location or company.
Payroll
Job changes enable you to change a worker's information which can affect their payroll and benefits processing. Some examples of job changes that impact payroll include position, location, organization, and compensation changes.
Time Tracking
When you change the worker's position using the
Change Job
 business process, Workday adds the new position to time blocks from the effective date of the change.
Recruiting
Recruiting transactions for internal candidates route to Change Job once the worker reaches the
Ready to Hire
phase.
If an internal candidate is moving to a:
  • Different supervisory organization, Workday uses the template with Request Transfer as the initiating action.
  • Within their own supervisory organization, Workday uses the template with Change Job as the initiating action.
Workday Docs
You can create document templates in Workday Docs to include on generate document steps for Change Job.
A Change Job event can impact multiple functional areas at once. Example: When you transfer a worker to another country, the location change can affect their benefits, compensation, and onboarding information.
Workday offers a Touchpoints Kit with resources to help you understand configuration relationships across your tenant. Learn more about the Workday Touchpoints Kit on Workday Community.