The Sightline program is accelerating the design and build of Workday for Johns Hopkins–work that will continue until April 2026. The team already hit major milestones by July 2025, including standing up the first version of the Johns Hopkins’ Workday platform, gaining consensus on some services included in Workday, and establishing new pathways for engaging local Johns Hopkins groups.
First version of Workday, and 50 admin processes designed
The Sightline technical team established the first version of the Workday environment for Johns Hopkins, marking a milestone in the Sightline program’s journey to modernize administrative systems across the university and health system. The team successfully transferred most existing administrative data into an early version of the new Johns Hopkins Workday platform. In parallel, Sightline functional teams developed early drafts of streamlined administrative processes, providing a foundation for Workday’s design. Since launching the Design and Build phase in April 2025, these teams engaged over 150 subject matter experts to reimagine how core functions—human resources, finance, supply chain, and sponsored projects—will operate in Workday. With more than 260 workshop sessions completed, the team has configured 50 administrative processes–with more to come.
What’s coming with Workday
Recent Sightline team collaboration and governance engagements led to decisions about what features Johns Hopkins will use in Workday. Many decisions consolidate key administrative tasks that once spanned multiple systems. As a result, Workday will become the one-stop platform for self-service and administrative tasks such as recruiting, accessing pay slips, effort reporting on grants, expense reimbursements, and more.
Workday Expenses represents one way the health system and university will streamline processes and share one, versatile reimbursement tool. Julie Phillips, a Sightline senior business systems analyst, said that Workday Expenses offers a modern user experience to end users. “Workday Expenses will drive efficiency and compliance and enable greater visibility into expense spend across the Hopkins enterprise,” says Phillips.
Additionally, JHU leaders have decided that Workday will be the university’s singular timekeeping system and that Workday will be the platform for grant effort reporting. JHHS leaders have decided that Workday will serve as the health system’s benefit administration platform. More of what’s coming with Workday will be shared by Fall 2025.
Designing for the End User
At the heart of the Sightline program is a commitment to the people who will use Workday regularly. Design decisions are made with the end user in mind, ensuring that when employees log in to Workday, they’ll find their information intuitively organized in a single profile that makes details easy to access.
This user-first approach is also reflected in the program’s engagement strategy. Approximately 90 Workday Transition Teams will help connect Sightline to local teams across Johns Hopkins to make local implementation a success. In addition to transition teams, the program is planning to release a year-long learning series, introducing Johns Hopkins to Workday’s look and feel as well as upcoming process changes across HR, supply chain, sponsored projects, and finance.
For more information on these engagement moments and program progress, visit the Sightline website.