Preparing for your upcoming annual compensation review in Workday

PARIS 

This article in this week's The Economist on the pitfalls of badly designed bonuses is a timely reminder that annual compensation reviews are right around the corner. Having spent half of my 12-years' Workday experience implementing the module dedicated to salary review, bonus and stock awards, here are some useful tips:

•  If it’s your first time implementing Workday Advanced Compensation, it pays not to be overly ambitious: Try not to go big bang with bonus, stock and merit. If your salary review scheme is relatively simple (e.g., few items in your matrix) but bonus has a lot of complex scorecards, then start just with Merit and wait for the following cycle to add Bonus.
  
  
  
• Try to anticipate your Advanced Compensation needs when designing and implementing your Core model. There is nothing worse, after having spending time designing, implementing, deploying and training your workforce on one version of Core HR or Core Compensation, than to have to revisit it at the last moment because, say, the way you defined FTE in Core HR is a big No Go in Advanced Compensation.
  
  
  
• Make sure you plan enough time and resources for a dry run in your Sandbox tenant.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• If it’s your second year running the module, then go back to your notes as to what went wrong (despite careful planning, things inevitably go wrong – believe you me, I was there) and make sure you fix those issues for 2025. Check Workday's recent releases: Something that was not possible last year may now have become a standard Workday feature.
  
  
• Clean up your data: A major part of your support during the several months that your review will run will be dedicated to adding employees who were left out of the review when you launched it because they were missing, for instance, a stock plan. Or, conversely, having to remove some employees from your bonus review because you forgot to update their base salary and their bonus payout comes out wrong.
  
  
• Last but certainly not least, test thoroughly your participation rules for parallel events and watch out for those innocent-looking configuration decisions which can translate into major costs for the company. I remember that at one of my clients we were puzzled by the unanimity managers from various latitudes displayed when terminating their employees, until we realized that using that very date and not one earlier, allowed managers to increase their budget (after all, there’s little sense in raising the salary of a departing employee, is there?) Managers from all around the world weren’t necessarily in cahoots but like many other users when they find an opportunity to game the system, they rarely pass up on it.
  
  

 I could go on for thousands of additional pixels, but if you follow the above, chances are that you will mitigate your issues and maximize your chances of success. 

(This is the latest in a long series of blog posts dedicated to Workday and Compensation. Just check the chronological list of posts in the Blog Archive to find articles on these two topics: separately or together.)

Retiring Shared Demo Tenant: Workday's still correctable blunder

PARIS 

As my blog followers have known for quite some time, I am a great admirer of Workday: the company, its people, its products, its culture, its customer service. Many of my posts are testimony to this admiration, as is my decision to spend most of my working time implementing the product for my clients. This being said, my blog followers also know that I am no blind vendor cheerleader: When deemed necessary, I would not shy away from criticizing Workday as I did in my Open Letter to Dave Duffield and Aneel Bhusri about their approach to Europe. 

Now has come the time to point the finger at Workday again. In exactly one month, as per the below notice, Workday will retire its Shared Demonstration Tenants, usually known in the Workday family of users as GMS, and offer a paid version. This is a Very Bad Idea and before I expostulate on it, let me first explain to the layman what GMS is and why it is so important. 

GMS - A unique demo environment
GMS was one of the great innovations that Workday brought. For someone like me whose experience of an HR vendor's demo environment was limited to the dreadful ADS by Oracle, this felt like heaven when I first sampled it. At long last here was a system which you could go to 24x7 to check, demo with minimal preparation, learn any feature you were interested in. And it rarely let you down as it was bug-free. Actually, for one my first global Workday implementations, then a wall-to-wall 20-year SAP shop with more 140,000 employees, I was tasked with traveling the length and breadth of planet Earth to visit the major subsidiaries to convince them to give Workday a try.

Without GMS, I doubt I would have been able to pull it off. I wanted to demo what Workday could provide but since our tenant had not yet been fed with setup and worker data, I couldn't rely on it. So, I decided to enlist the help of GMS, hiring employees in Spain, Romania, Brazil, Korea, Morocco, Argentina - etc. in a way that made sense to those companies. I made it obvious to my stakeholders that this was a shared environment, that it didn't include all their specific data and processes but it could give them a sense of what was possible with Workday. 

LOGAN FOR PRESIDENT!

And it worked! All the subsidiaries agreed to greenlight the project and we started on implementation. The rest, as they say, is history.

Critical for SMEs

If my example is a good one to show how useful GMS is for a large, global multinational able to throw millions at its Workday implementation, think then how vital it is for an SME company struggling with limited resources and a shoestring budget. These companies cannot afford the multiplicity of tenants that Workday would readily charge them for. And I'm not speaking here of the complexity to manage several tenants, which in and of itself is not an issue except when you don't have the resources to do that. In addition, without GMS the learning curve for talent becomes steeper. 

More than a marketing blunder, this is a sales disaster-in-waiting. After targeting the mid-market for a while, it is counter-intuitive for Workday to remove one of its major selling points to this very market segment. I don't know what Carl Eschenbach is up to, but I can't see Dave Duffield, Aneel Bhusri or Chano Fernandez signing off on this. 

Rationale for the paywall
Although some detractors are lambasting Workday for this grab for customer dollars, there are some good reasons for it which have to do with Workday's amazing success. Quarter after quarter the customer base grows, which means that what used to be a few hundred concurrent users of GMS has now evolved into thousands and thousands of users from customers and partners. This in turn has made accessing GMS ever more difficult with the below message one of the greatest sources of frustration of customer administrators and project consultants. 

 Hence Workday's offer to its customers: "Rather than have a free demo tenant which you can rarely use, why not have a paid one which will always be at your disposal?"

Unacceptable policy change
Well, as we all know, there's no such thing as a free lunch - and certainly not a free tenant. The current shared GMS is included in customers' subscription. It is therefore disingenuous, not to say dishonest, from Workday to claim that they're just putting an end to a free goodie. We all know that Workday comes with a premium price tag, which is justified by the second-to-none quality of its products, consultants and resources. So, this "free" GMS is actually NOT free. Customers are paying for it, and expensively so.

If Workday feels that time has come to charge those who want to use GMS, then it should be consistent and reduce the subscription rate by as much. Those who feel they cannot do with GMS will then pay the new tenant price which means that at the end of the day they will be paying basically the same they were paying before for exactly the same service. And those who didn't use GMS (not many companies but they exist) and who resented having to pay for a service they weren't using will actually enjoy the new policy because they'll be paying less for a similar service level. Win-win for all.

Of course, I can hear you say, "Not so fast. Those who pay separately but at the same rate as before are getting a better service because the tenant is theirs and it'll be working without the access issues we've been experiencing of late." Well, that argument is a poor one because Workday always boasted of how scalable its system is. So, why is GMS now having concurrent access issues? And what guarantees do we have that even with a private GMS if our user base grows we won't suddenly be faced with this infamous "maximum number of users reached" message? 

What's next? Charging for the use of EIB? Of Customer Central? 

What Workday should do
Based on the previous, there are only two acceptable options for Workday:

(a) Reconsider its position, admitting it has erred and just scrap this new policy (Workday has backtracked in the past on some controversial decisions as soon as enough noise comes from their customer base);

(b) Stick with it but then revisit its pricing policy along the lines of what I described in the previous paragraphs.

What should customers do
Two situations here:
1. Net new customer considering Workday:  Do NOT sign the purchase order. Put the decision on hold while waiting for Workday's final decision.

2. Current Workday customer considering a scope extension: Do NOT license any new product until Workday does either of the two options I mentioned earlier (and make them know in no uncertain terms what you think that option should be - after all, Workday always claimed it listens to the "Voice of the Customer"), so let them know that without GMS you cannot prove the ROI for a new product. Also, check whether one of your current modules or one you're considering (such as Extend) doesn't come with GMS.

Workday, like all software vendors, will take into account customer demands when they hit the bottom line. When Workday sees that its next quarter isn't as good as what it expected, then it will have second thoughts and will become amenable to its customers' views. But customers should not accept that Workday just turn into another Oracle or SAP fleecing its customers whenever it feels it has an opportunity. 

Workday already took a leaf out of its competitors' book when it started growing its product line via acquisitions and not organically, even though it always said it abhorred such an approach. It is high time the similarities stopped. 

(This is the latest in a Workday series of posts by the blogger. The most popular ones can be found on the right-hand panel. For a full list, scroll down to the list of all posts by year)  

Spain's Pedro Sánchez: Europe's most despicable leader

BARCELONA

Soap opera Spanish-style

 

 

  

For someone like me who has known Spain intimately for a couple of decades (read my blog on my 20-year love affair with Spain - my 5th most popular blogpost) and has followed its evolution and politics since the 1990s, it is disheartening to see how low its politics has stooped - and all due to one man, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, who now wins hands down the award for worst political leader in Europe - and probably in Spain's history, tied with Ferdinand VII, known as the Felon King. 

And yet, it was not meant to be like that. Sánchez started out as a star. Well, a falling star when barely two years as Socialist party leader he had to resign in 2016 after two inconclusive elections. Any other politician would have thrown in the towel. Not him. He traveled the length and breadth of the country, bringing his message, if not to the masses, at least to the party militants, who several months later, and against party leaders, voted him back into office. Pedro's first gamble had paid off.

His second stroke of luck was just around the corner: A no-confidence vote was called in 2018 against Conservative Prime Minister  Mariano Rajoy, following a court ruling in which it was mentioned that he must have know about some of the corruption in his party. This was later rescinded but the harm was already done, the no-confidence vote was passed against him and Sánchez managed this incredible feat: The first time since democracy was reestablished in Spain that a government came to power, not through an election, but through a no-confidence motion. 

In the following elections eyebrows were raised when, Sánchez, unable to win an outright majority, increasingly had to rely on far-left and Basque and Catalan separatist parties to come to, and stay in, power. Under him Spain experienced its first coalition government, with far-left Podemos. Further eyebrows were raised when, in the run-up to the 2019 election, Pedro Sánchez,who had always promised that fugitive Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont would face Spanish justice sooner or later and serve his sentence for his illegal attempt to make Catalonia break away from Spain, also promised that no pardon would be forthcoming for jailed separatists.

Well, that noble principle went out the door as soon as election returns showed Sanchez had no majority. The only way he could stay in power was to get the votes of Catalan separatists and the price was: Pardon for their leaders. And a reform of the criminal code to make those crimes disappear. A shocked nation saw Sánchez make an about-face and accept these demands. Nothing new about a politician promising one thing during an election campaign and, once elected, do something different, but here the stakes were quite high and the meaning of what Sanchez was doing unheard of: In the political Gospel according to Sánchez, if you commit a crime, you go to jail - unless you're a friend of Sanchez's: In which case we remove the crime as a punishable offense so that you can't be prosecuted, and for those who have already been condemned and are serving their sentence, I'll pardon you.

From then on, things took a turn for the worse and started going horribly wrong. In 2023, after regional elections dealt a devastating blow to the Socialists, Sánchez made one of his trademark bold moves, calling a snap election which he lost again, and not only did he not get an outright majority but the Conservative PP party came in first (also without a majority.) During the campaign, Sánchez was asked whether he would go further in acceding to Catalan separatists and grant them an amnesty: he consistently said that, unless a pardon, an amnesty was impossible because unconstitutional and therefore he's never do it. There are red lines that can't be crossed, he added.

At this stage, the reasonable thing would have been for the two parties to come to a gentlemen's agreement: To avoid becoming captive to smaller parties (the PP also had two center- and far-right parties yapping at its heels): Whoever comes up first gets to govern (with the other party abstaining during the vote in Parliament.) But that would have meant for Sanchez handing power over, albeit temporarily, to someone else, and by then it was becoming clear to most of us that Sanchez was enjoying the high life, the palaces and Falcon jet and being fêted and toasted as Spain's head of government. Like a Latin American left-wing leader, Sánchez is becoming ensconced on his throne - and enjoying it.

So, the red lines mysteriously disappeared. Amnesty was no longer unconstitutional: "After all," would Sánchez glibly say, "only the Constitutional Court (Spain's equivalent to the US Supreme Court) can decide what is constitutional and what is not. The man of no convictions showed that he had turned into a fully hypocritical and cynical politician negotiating with "Putsch-Demon", the man he had vowed would face Spanish justice. Catalan separatists, with a tiny number of deputies, became kingmakers because Sanchez needed each one of their votes since a couple of votes would make him lose power. Spain started looking like a banana republic where laws are made no for the benefit of the many, but for the benefit of the few - and especially the one: Sánchez, to ensure his stay in power.

"And I will call you Pedro Sánchez..."

 Whatever absurd demand Catalan separatists would make, Sánchez would accede to them, such as the renewed demand to make regional languages as official languages at the Spanish Parliament. The demand had been rejected, and rightly so, by Sánchez himself just one year early as absurd since it would involve additional costs and was superfluous since every single deputy, even Catalans and Basques, spoke Spanish, anyway. Now that he needed their votes, this demand made more sense. Separatists' glee was on obvious display when they added a further demand: We also want our languages (accounting for something like 0.01% of Europe's population) to also become official languages at ...the European Parliament!. No issue, this is a very reasonable demand, Sánchez agreed, and instructed his Foreign Minister to make this happen. (So far other European countries are refusing seeing this as a domestic ploy that should remain circumscribed to Spain.)

Famous American comedian Groucho Marx once said, "These are my principles. If you don't like them, well, I have others." Sanchez is taking this principle, or lack thereof, to new heights - or, rather, new lows.

The latest sad episode in what is increasingly becoming a bad chapter in Spain's history came this week. Actually, it started last week when a judge accepted to investigated Sánchez's wife for corruption, after a denunciation by a civil organization. Sánchez went up in arms that this denunciation was unacceptable, that it was a ploy by the Conservative camp to hurt him. Somebody explain to me why the Prime Minister's wife can't be investigated? After all, a member of the Spanish Royal Family was investigated, prosecuted, sentenced to jail and served a couple of years in jail. If a royal can be sent to jail, why can't be the Prime Minister's wife be merely investigated? (At this stage she's not even being prosecuted?) Is she a goddess? Is he a god? Well, his behavior shows that he believes this to be so. And what about the judge who launched this investigation? A puppet of the right-wing and far-right folks, claims Sánchez. OK, so when judges send other people to jail, they are doing a great job, they are unbiased. But as soon as they do the same for left-wing politicians or their friends, they become corrupt and biased? This sounds more and more redolent of a banana republic.

Sánchez then made yet another of his bold moves: Announcing that he was taking five days off to consider whether he was going to resign to protect his family, he claimed. (As if a judge would rescind his wife's investigation because he has resigned!) Most observers, including I, knew there was no way a man so addicted to power as he was would resign on such a flimsy pretext. It was clearly a ploy to drum up more support for him in the run-up to the Catalan elections (2 weeks from now) and to the European elections (next month.) And on Monday, as expected, the circus came to an end when Prime Minister Sánchez went to meet the Spanish King to announce his "decision" which was  a non-decision since he wasn't resigning. Seeing the thousands who had been bused in to acclaim their Dear Leader "Pedro, Pedro, please stay" sent shivers down my spine, reminding me of the adulation of the North Korean leader or former Soviet/Easter European Communist leaders.  Sánchez announced that he was staying and would take measures against the press and judges who damage democracy.

Reminiscent of Chávez and Maduro in Venezuela? Remember that the Socialist Old Guard, especially the historic leader Felipe González, have denounced Sánchez's policies, especially regarding the concessions to regional separatists - except for one: Zapatero, who is a stalwart supporter of the Venezuela strongman. Are we surprised?

How many Spaniards see Socialist leader Sánchez's policies

It is too early to say that under Sánchez Spain is moving inevitably towards a Bolivarian model. But everything I have described so far, along with some of his policies, however, point towards it. What was the point in removing Franco from his Valle de los Caidos  graveyard when nobody cared a fig about a long-dead dictator?  - If not to mobilize the far-left masses and divide the country further. 

Only twice have I been very worried about Spain: When the 2008 financial crisis hit and 40% of young people found themselves out of a job. And now that the political crisis has reached unprecedented level of polarization under the stewardship of Sánchez.

And yet, as I said at the beginning, it was not supposed to be like that. When "Pedro" became Prime Minster he was this rare find: Handsome, smart, bold, amazingly lucky, English-speaking. He was  a model leader. How sad that he has degenerated into this obsessively ambitious, power-hungry, unscrupulous, lying, cynical, mafia-like don whose future actions are becoming increasingly worrisome. Small wonder many Spaniards have taken to referring to him now as "Perro" Sanchez.*

*Perro means "dog" in Spanish.

 (DISCLOSURE: The blogger is not affiliated with any political party, whether left- or right-wing or in between or beyond. Actually I NEVER cast a vote. But as a citizen I carefully watch how we are misgoverned in order to be able to should out loud: "Not In My Name." I described my model political system a couple of years ago in this post on DirDem or Direct Democracy.)

Workday Compensation: What every Comp & Ben person should know

PARIS

Anyone implementing Workday, either its HR offering (Workday HCM) or the Financials suite, will inevitably come across the compensation bit. And that's when challenges start and questions fly. What is involved? How easy is it to implement? How good are the products?

Having implemented Workday for the past 11 years for an exact number of 11 companies (talk of some symmetry!), here are a few tips on how to go about all things Compensation , organized along four pillars.

I. CORE COMPENSATION
It is a safe bet that if you're thinking about implementing Workday, chances are that you will be implementing Workday HCM and starting with the foundation product Core HR. Another safe bet is that as you plan on implementing all data, processes, security and reports involved with hiring, moving, promoting and terminating employees you'll have to implement the basics of Compensation. That is a foregone conclusion since no employee record is complete without at least some compensation components: salary and allowances that are committed to the employee when they are hired and onboarded. 

With this module you can track all types of gross compensation (for net compensation, see Payroll below) usually set up via Compensation Plans. Those plans determine if an employee gets a monthly salary, some 13th- or 14th-month pay, some seniority, housing or transportation allowance or a one-time payment (for instance, a welcome bonus or severance payment.)

To decide how these plans are assigned to an employee Workday provides Eligibility Rules which can be fiendishly complex - if that's what you want. There's beauty in simplicity, so before you start making highly sophisticated rules to decide who gets what (belonging to company X, with a management level of Director but not part of Location Z etc.) do yourself a favor and think about the cost to the maintenance team. One thing I strongly advise against: Do not add employee ID in these eligibility rules. It's akin to making a law for just one citizen. 

How thorough should your compensation be in Workday? It really depends on what your objectives are and how integrated your HRIS is. Some companies only track base salary and leave the rest in local systems. Others decide to have a full-fledged compensation system in Workday as a reflection of their rewards policy: In which case you'll have all types of Compensation Plans (not only Salary but Period plans, Allowances, One-time Payments) including, for the more complex ones, Calculated Plans. This way, especially for global companies, your compensation policies can migrate from local payroll systems (often the only HR system of record for those local subsidiaries) and become part and parcel of you global system. What is then left in Payroll is discussed in the next section.

II. WORKDAY PAYROLL
To help make a decision on what to keep in local payrolls and what is best handled in Workday, I have developed an analysis which I first shared with United Nations agencies when they started implementing Workday (In my distant past I worked 5 years for the UN: 2 in New York and 3 in Madrid.) Below is the framework I developed and then fine-tune for every customer. Since it is my intellectual property and proprietary analytical tool, contact me directly if you are interested.

I developed this multi-criteria analysis based on different combinations of criteria depending on company size, geography, scope, industry and management complexity. Although in its simplest expression payroll deals with gross-to-net calculation, the challenge is to reach agreement on what gross items needs to be part of the global Workday system and which ones can safely be left in local systems. I have spent an inordinate number of workshop hours with various companies trying to reconcile different stakeholders' positions on this topic. Note that some companies for some cases use net data in Workday Compensation (not Payroll) using a feature called Eligible Earnings Override.

Adding to the challenge is that some subsidiaries of multinationals may be willing to move to Workday Payroll while others would rather stick (for the time being, at least) to their current vendor. Even more challenging is the case, which I was recently involved with, where a global company had the US subsidiary already using Workday. It was quite complex to convince them that they had to re-implement the tool but in a different way, because what was acceptable when you only had to deal with North America Comp & Ben policies no longer holds true when you become part of a new global design. And even if none of your subsidiaries are using Workday at the outset, which probably from an implementation makes it easier, half way through implementation you may acquire a major company which is already live on Workday with their own compensation approach and suddenly the painfully reached agreements with the other business lines and countries is thrown up in the air. Although this may affect any implementation of an HR system, when it comes to compensation people tend to be very touchy and jittery about change.

One of the criteria to take into account is whether/to what an extent you want to make use of Workday payroll. Unlike other compensation products (or other modules from other product families), you usually license Workday Payroll for the countries you're interested in...if those countries are available. Unlike its predecessor product, PeopleSoft, where I was Product Manager in the early 2000s and where in a period of 18 months we added payrolls for 10 countries, Workday's payroll approach has been of the drip-feeding variety. For its first decade, the vendor only focused on its North American turf and released US Payroll and Canadian Payroll. Only recently have UK and French Payroll been released with Australia even more recently. Unless you're particularly lucky to be operating in only these countries, you'll have to make do with your current vendors for non-covered countries. But if you can implement Workday Payroll along with your Core Compensation from the same system, then you'll benefit from the advantages of having a single integrated system (same data model, security, reporting etc.)

And just because a country payroll is available doesn't mean it makes sense for you. Again, another differentiator with PeopleSoft (a.k.a. Workday 1.0):  In France, for instance, the first PeopleSoft French Payroll customers were major companies (such as banking giant Société Générale); for Workday, large French companies which have taken to Workday HCM enthusiastically, have been strangely reluctant to test the payroll waters. So far, only mid-size companies like well-known retailer Franprix have adopted Workday Payroll whose implementation in France has been, shall we say, challenging. And I'm being charitable here. 

Finally, if you wonder what Workday Payroll UN agencies use, be apprised that they are the only customers who don't need a country payroll to implement payroll because as an intergovernmental organization they are not subject to local rules and regulations. To put in another way, they make their own labor laws meaning that they can implement Workday Compensation/Payroll/Benefits in a very tight manner to meet their quite complex requirements (UN member states' rule creativity is on a  par with national governments' legislative innovation -  if you get my drift 😊)

III. WORKDAY ADVANCED COMPENSATION
Disclosure: This is my favorite of all 4 Workday compensation products - half of my decade-long Workday experience has been spent implementing it and providing support on it when it goes live. Unlike Talent/Performance, which can be implemented with a limited Core HR (not something recommended by Workday, although one of my first clients infamously did just that as they moved from SAP to Workday); Advanced Compensation not only requires that you already have in place a robust Core Compensation but also Core HR - without them, the exercise is largely pointless.

So, what is Advanced Compensation about? It is about organizing a structured conversation between various stakeholders at the beginning of a new year to make decisions as to who should be rewarded for their work through a salary increase, promotion, stock or bonus awards. Both Core Compensation and Advanced Compensation (henceforward CC & AC) are based on compensation plans (AC plans are Merit, Bonus and Stock plans) but here the similarities end. 

If you see in an employee's file that they have been assigned a Salary plan or an Allowance plan (both CC) it means that the amounts at hand are guaranteed to be collected by the employee; however seeing that an employee was assigned a Stock plan or a Bonus plan (both AC plans) doesn't mean at all that they will receive company shares or a bonus. For that to happen, two more developments need to take place:               

-First, a specific process (called a Compensation Review) needs to be launched. Until and unless such a review cycle has been launched, those Merit, Bonus & Stock plans in the employee's file (Worker Profile in Workdayese) are merely decorative. Just because you have a 5% target in your merit plan doesn't mean that you will be inevitably get a salary increase the following year. After a review cycle has been launched, another development needs to take place.

-Second, through various stakeholders (usually managers, HR, Comp & Ben team) agreeing on it, a decision is made and confirmed that your salary will be increased with, maybe, a few company shares and lump sum thrown in as well if you have been deemed worthy of the attention. 

 

               Where it all happens: The Compensation Review Grid  

 

Please note that I mentioned earlier that AC needs two other modules to  have been implemented: Core HR and CC. A third product, Talent/Performance, is not necessary but an increasing number of companies have found it useful to link AC to Talent & Performance so that a compensation review process follows a performance review cycle and feeds it through an automation of the proposed guidelines. Thus, if an employee has achieved 100% of their objectives they get, say, a 3% salary increase, but if they exceed their objectives then the increase goes up to 4%. Other criteria may also be included such as equity or market position, but as you may suspect I could rant for hours on the AC module and I still won't have enough time and space to do justice to it. I therefore better stop here and move to the last piece in the Workday Compensation puzzle.

IV. WORKDAY BENEFITS
Just as any HRIS implementation will require an analysis and decision of what should stay in local payroll/HR systems and what should migrate to Workday/Compensation, the same thing applies to Compensation vs Benefits. Since practice, culture and regulations vary from region to region or even with a group of countries, any strategy will be different.

For instance, in the United States, Health, Retirement, Life and Disability can be provided to employees on a flexible basis, via an overall package whereby they pick what combination they are interested in. In continental Europe, on the other hand, most of these benefits are mandated by law and/or company/union agreements. This means that for US/UK employees, you may need strong self service benefits features, whereas in Europe these are not needed. 

Below are some criteria of an analysis framework that I developed for my clients when implementing Workday in order to decide what should be implemented for what features. As an example, a Dental Plan may need to be set up as part of the Benefits module in the US since coverage, eligibility and elections need to be tracked from employee to employee where they can differ. In Europe, on the other hand, all a company may want to track is that as part of your overall compensation package (Total Rewards in Workday jargon) employees are provided with a Dental Plan. If which case no need to use the Benefits module for that (which, remember, comes with a separate license): You can use some appropriate compensation plan to track the same type of data. 

 

Since obviously any approach has to be tailored depending on the specific situation of any company, for further information please reach out to me directly.

V. INTERFACE
Since most of what happens within CC and AC is irrelevant if it doesn't find itself paid to the employee, getting the data from Workday CC & AC is therefore key. This can be done in several ways.

-The basic way is to extract data via a report and, after having transformed it in the right format, feed it into the local payroll being used.

-Use the various Cloud Connect/Payroll Interface tools using specific protocols like PECI or PICOF that Workday offers. EIB (mentioned earlier) can be used as well (see below diagram.)

-You may also want to interface Workday Benefits to the various third-party vendors a company uses -> Cloud Connect for Benefits is probably your best friend especially for Cobra integrations int he United States. 

 Since this post is only about the four Compensation pillars within Workday, and Interface/ Integration warrants a separate post, I'll leave it at that for the time being.

(The blogger/consultant, after having spent most of 2023 implementing Advanced Compensation, is now providing operational support on a compensation review cycle launched this month for a global group with a 70,000+ headcount.)

Happy one-year anniversary, ChatGPT! If only you could get it right.

PARIS

It was exactly a year ago that what was to become the world's most famous AI tool was published taking the world by storm. In just 2 months, it had reached the 100-million-user mark.

Compare this with ubiquitous WhatsApp which took 2.5 years to reach the same number of users.

Internet took 7 years. Nextflix 10 years. Smartphones which nobody remembers ever living without took...16 years to reach 100 million users. 

 I was among the first to test it and like most was blown away by its magic-like qualities: providing mostly OK answers to every question asked. But, careful, ask the same question in a language other than English and you may well get a different answer. Or none. One example: Most, if not all, Danish scientists conduct and publish their research in English since they are all fluent in the language. Ask a very specific question on one such topic in Danish and since no research has been published in Danish ChatGPT will draw a blank. So, yes, it is available in a zillion languages, but its practical uses are quite limited.

Since so much has already been written on ChatGPT, no need for me to pontificate here on its pros and cons. I will just mention two things.

First, in my area, HR technology, there's little doubt that the AI potential is huge. So much of what HR does is repetitive that an AI-based tool could, for instance, provide users with lightning-speed answers to their queries, a step up over traditional FAQ or emailing somebody in HR.

Second, hoping I won't come across as too narcissistic, I asked ChatGPT who wrote my best-selling book, "High-Tech Planet: Secrets of an IT Road Warrior". To my utter surprise this was ChatGPT 's answer:

 

 

 

Hurt, I hit "Regenerate" to see whether ChatGPT will get it right the second time round (at least the description of the book was correct.) This time I got another author.

 

I wondered whether, in spite of my title being quite specific, there wasn't another, possibly two, books with the same title. So, I just searched the traditional way: I googled it and saw that only one book was published with this title and it was the one by yours truly. Sigh of relief.

Feeling much better, I remembered that Bing now comes with Microsoft's own IA tool, so I asked Bing.
And this is what I got:

So, here you go. All the hoopla may be about OpenAI's ChatGPT, but for me Bing is the most reliable of the two.

Tax Freedom Day: France's National Day of Shame

PARIS
A couple of day ago, July 14,  we celebrated our National Day of Glory: Bastille Day, that commemorates the day we shook off the shackles of an absolutist monarchy. Today, July 17, is a sad day as it is the first day in the year when French citizens can keep the result of their hard-earned income. Yes, from January 1 until July 16, every single penny a Frenchman makes goes straight to the government via income tax, VAT, payroll taxes and a myriad other levies French lawmakers show so much creativity for.

No other European or developed country has to wait so late in the year to be freed from the weight of such quasi-confiscatory tax policy. But then no other government inflicts such a punishing tax burden on its citizens the way the French government does. As the below map shows, on average the French government takes away 54.1 % of an employee's full salary (including the employer's share.) Austria is number 2 with 53.4%; followed by Germany. The UK only taxes a reasonable 35.2%, meaning that the UK Tax Freedom Day comes much earlier than for France: on May 9. Even Spaniards are better treated: They are freed of their government obligations almost a month and a half earlier than their French neighbors: on June 8. And this, despite having had to endure 5 years of a Socialist-led coalition government  with the radical left.

Now, nothing intrinsically wrong with living in a Communist society. If that's what the French want, they're entitled to it. Except that something is clearly not right. Having the government tax you more and more in order to fund better quality public services is a perfectly legitimate choice. Except that the quality of public services in France has been heading south for the past decades:

-Healthcare is no longer what it used to be: Two decades ago, you didn't have to pay anything when you went to see your GP or presented a prescription at your local drugstore. Now, Social Security only pays a fraction of your healthcare and medicine, and the percentage is decreasing year after year. And that's if you're lucky to find a doctor: Seeing a specialist make require you to wait 2 or 3 months, some operations have longer wait lists. 

-Education is going down the drain with an increasing number of  French students leaving high school unable to write a French sentence correctly.

-Recently we went through weeks of mass protest because pensions are getting miserly and you have to work longer to get them.

-And as for law and order, just as the dreadful riots we saw two weeks ago are proof enough, that is not something that our high taxes are able to guarantee. Justice isn't faring any better: File a lawsuit in any court of law and you'll be lucky if you get a resolution within one year. 

A book every French citizen
should read

I could go on and on, but you get my drift: We French citizens are paying more and more in taxes and getting less and less in public services. Shouldn't it be the other way round? 

 Why do we put with this? Are we masochists? Or mere fools? 

On that Bastille Day I mentioned earlier in my post, King Louis XVI wrote in his diary: Nothing. The possibility that his family, having ruled the country for almost a millennium, could be out of a job just couldn't cross his mind. After all, for centuries French citizens would put up with all sorts of injustice and vexation and discrimination and high taxes (then paid only by the poor, the rich being exempted!) But then, one day, the people said "Enough is enough" and rose up.

Just as with Communist regimes in Eastern Europe. As a teenager vacationing in my mother's hometown in Romania, I would tell her, "Mom, I really don't think that people will put up with this for ever." And my mother would answer with a fatalistic sigh, "Well, look around. No country that embraced Communism has gotten rid of it." She was right...and wrong, since a few years later all Communist regimes tumbled one after the other, when people just said, "Enough is enough."

That is why I have every confidence that the Second French Revolution is on its way, and may arrive faster than we think. We will finally get rid of this discredited political class and its incompetent civil service partner in crime.

My 10th anniversary as a global Workday expert: Ready for the next 10 years

PARIS

 In that distant summer of 2013 when I spent ten intense days in London going through the highly demanding Workday certification process, I wondered whether that was time well spent. After all, few people in continental Europe could spell Workday then - actually, the only place to go through the certification course and exam was in London, nothing in Paris or Amsterdam. Apart from the UK, there were few customers in Europe, and most were just subsidiaries of US companies. Many of my friends and professional contacts questioned my sanity as it made more sense to continue as a system selection consultant dabbling in several tools like Oracle, SAP, Cornerstone and the myriad other HRIS systems available on the market rather than getting associated with just one. 

 Rewind a couple of years. I was presenting at the HR Technology Conference in Chicago and one late afternoon as I walked back to the hotel, whom did I see walking in the same direction? None other than Dave Duffield, the legendary founder of PeopleSoft and Workday. Many people will remember that his fight to protect PeopleSoft from Oracle's clutches are now the stuff of legend (I recounted that epic fight in my book High-Tech Planets: Secrets of an IT Road Warrior). I went up to him, introduced myself as a former PeopleSoft product manager in Sandy Riser's global team. "Great team," Dave was gracious enough to say, "you guys built an amazing number of payrolls in just a year and a half." I then asked him the burning question that has been on my (and many people's) mind: "After PeopleSoft, why didn't you just retire rather than embark on such a difficult project? After all, you revolutionized the HR technology space with PeopleSoft. Isn't it time to relax and enjoy a job well done?" I still remember his reply as if it were yesterday: "Two reasons. One, at age 60 I am too young to retire. Two, having lost PeopleSoft was a blessing in disguise because unencumbered by a legacy system we can focus on building an entirely modern system that would fix the limitations of the older generation of HR systems and be a native 21st century tool." 

My 12 clients made it happen

 I couldn't agree more as I had reached the same conclusion that our profession and industry needed a true cloud-based system. And since I did not want to be a mere gawker the way many analysts from Garther & Co are (pontificating on systems they have no idea how they are built or implemented), there was no other choice: I had to get my hands dirty and what better way to do that than on a new system with the potential to disrupt the market? So, after joining Wipro, then a Workday partner, I got my certification, started working on the first implementation in France and other countries. A year later, I went solo making a second strategic decision: to give a wider array of customers the benefit of my two decades of HRIS experience and now with the added benefit of being able to implement the most sophisticated HR system on the market. 

 We all make mistakes in life (business and otherwise) and I've had my share of those, but when it comes to investing in Workday and becoming a well-known expert in this system in addition to overall HRIS, that was one of the best decisions I ever made. Fast forwarding to June 2023, the exact month when 10 years earlier I became the first person in France to get certified on Workday, when I look at all that I have accomplished, I need to pinch myself to make sure I am not dreaming. I have been involved in 12 Workday implementations, many starting with Core HR as the foundation module, others on specialized modules, especially my favorite, Compensation: today more than one million employees are managed in Workday thanks to yours truly's modest efforts (in conjunction with others, of course). 

 Having my base in France, my clients have been logically Europe-based, but my international outlook means that most of them are global and in pre-Covid times I visited more countries around the world than many people have had hot dinners, in order to organize workshops, demo the system as we go through various iterations: design - build -test - training and deployment. I have partnered with hundreds of heads of HR, HR managers, Comp & Ben experts, HR Business partners, IT professionals as part of a client's resources along with dozens more of consultants and managers with Workday and the myriad implementation outfits part of such projects. A cast of thousands, literally. Just one round of Workday testing (End to End or User Acceptance) can easily bring me in contact with 100 people between individual testers, test leaders, system consultants and various managers involved in the process. 

The blogger with a Workday partner

 So, what's next? I'll answer with another question: Why change a winning combination? I may dedicate some time to helping a company re-engineer its HR processes, search for  a new system (where I keep a strict neutrality), even implement another system (always good to look at what others do - as I did recently with an Oracle implementation.) But most of my time will be spent on bringing my expertise to companies helping them make the most of their Workday investment, especially in my favorite areas:
-Core HR
-Compensation (both Core and Advanced - but also Payroll with the number of countries covered increasing)
-Security
-EIB (mass loads)
-Reporting.

(The last three running across all modules as I think no Workday expert can afford not to be cognizant of these three features as they are key to any implementation, be it Financials, HR, Recruiting or Learning.)

More modules/products/features around the above but also Extend and AI will appear which will keep me busy in the foreseeable future. Even current features will become more sophisticated to the point that most consultants will have to decide what their areas of expertise are, and these will become more and more limited in numbers as they specialize. 10 years ago, one could have a good command of most of Workday's modules. It is now nigh impossible. The future looks therefore quite bright, especially when no serious alternative to Workday is appearing on the horizon.

Workday vs Oracle: A comparison of two cloud HR systems

PARIS
If Workday is the belle of HR systems, Oracle is undoubtedly her ugly sister. Having implemented both, let me share some examples to prove my point. (The Oracle system here is the one that Oracle actively sells, Fusion HCM Cloud, having retired its shoddy predecessor, EBS, and putting PeopleSoft on life support.)

OVERALL SYSTEM USER FRIENDLINESS
In the 20 years I've known Oracle, one thing has not changed: its scant regard for customers and the most obvious consequence, poor user friendliness, reinforced by a technology that seems always a generation behind others. Key example: In most consumer-grade platforms you can get further details and actions from a given object you're looking at by clicking on the dots that can be found around that object, usually at the upper-right corner (just check any Google page) which in addition you can check by opening another tab.

As expected from a modern HR system like Workday, if you're looking at an org chart and wonder who a specific employee is, all you have to do is right click with the mouse on the dots and that employee record opens in a separate tab for you to peruse their data. Once your curiosity has been satisfied, just close that tab and go back to where you were, the org chart, to continue the work you were doing there.

No such luck if you're using Oracle Fusion. This supposedly latest-generation tool will display a pretty average org chart (see below) and should you want to see the details of a given employee there's no capability to open a tab with that employee's file. You'll have to go back to the landing page, search for that employee and then open their record. And then if you want to go back to where you were (that is, if you still remember what you were doing) you'll have to start all over again, go to the org chart, enter the team you're looking for and the system will display the page you were on eons ago.

As for the search bar, Oracle technology is still stuck in a time warp: it is case and accent sensitive. So if you have an employee called Pénélope (in French) or Penélope (Spanish), and you enter "Penelope" you'll get no results. Obviously, no Oracle developer has ever used Google and other similarly ubiquitous internet tools. 

Menu jumbo-mambo
 

In Workday, action menus are organized alphabetically, which is the logical way to go about things on Planet Earth. The five most frequently used actions appear first, which is a great time saver. On Planet Oracle, actions appear randomly, making you waste quite some time going up and down and across the the screen in hot pursuit of the action you need. Nobody ever told Oracle that making life easier for the customer should be top priority.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

SYNC ISSUE
We all know that "integrated" systems are rarely so, but what is amazing is that with Oracle even within a single module or feature thereof you still run into synchronization issues. Let's say that as a manager you perform an action in Workday (e.g., move an employee from your team to another) and this action requires an approval from another role (say, HR.) You log in as that HR person and here's the approval task awaiting you. Try and do the same in Oracle: you'll have a 3 to 5-minute time lag before the action travels from Manager to HR. In real life it doesn't really matter, but in project mode when you're constantly testing system setup and configuration it soon becomes bothersome and frustrating. 

Language enablement is another area where Oracle's sync'ing prowess is, shall I say, sinking? If you need to turn on a certain number of languages to go with your global deployments, with Workday it can be done in a couple of clicks and you see the results instantly. If you are unfortunate to have selected Oracle Fusion, you need to request language activation with Oracle Support. If you happen to do this on Monday, too bad, since this is done over the weekend. And since it takes half a day per language, your global implementation may have to wait an additional couple of weeks before you can go in and start checking translations.

SECURITY AND WORKFLOW
Whereas Workday can handle complex security requirements via domain and business process security, Oracle is very limited, often offering only global roles with no possibility to restrict per country/company or other criteria. In addition, whereas Workday proposes role names that are meaningful (Compensation Partner, HR Partner etc.) Oracle suggests roles with inordinately long names to remind users what that role can do (HRWithCompensationNoNotification). Can't get uglier than that.

Managing role conflicts is always an issue the more complex system implementation is. Whereas Workday has its own challenges, business process conditions work pretty well.  (Glossary: business conditions which allow you to decide how a specific role at a  specific step in a given workflow should behave.) Oracle, on the other hand, doesn't manage role conflict satisfactorily. A user case I struggled with during an implementation of Fusion  is the typical case of an HR user who is manager of an employee for whom he also plays the role of HR. If this manager initiates an action as manager and this action requires HR approval, you'd think since this manager is also this employee's HR they don't need to approve themselves. You'd be wrong! Oracle will make you do exactly that, which is absurd. You won't have this issue with Workday because its workflow configuration includes the possibility to exclude someone from approving a task if they are the initiator.

In summary, Oracle's  workflow capability can't hold a candle to Workday's which is extremely rich and allows for a level of granularity and sophistication Oracle customers can only dream of.

HALF-BAKED SYSTEM
Both Workday and Oracle provide various seniority dates to be used where relevant depending on whether one is interested in a hire date, or a company date, or time in a position etc. The similarities  end here: whereas Workday offers straight out of the box all these dates (as a user just go to an employee's record file and you'll see all the dates for that employee), Oracle will ask the user to launch a calculation for the dates they are interested in, otherwise they just remain empty not because some data is missing but because you haven't requested its calculation!!! Use case: You launch a promotion action on an employee and in order to help you make up your mind you need to know how long they have been in their current position.
In Workday, the data display effortlessly so you can continue with your promotion task.
In Oracle, you'll probably be met with an empty field, so you'll have to abort the task (remember you can't have two tabs or pages open at the same time in Oracle), go to the Seniority Dates screen in Quick Actions,  request a calculation, and then start the promotion task all over again. Awful user experience. Got forbid that at that moment you need to check another piece of information (say, compensation). You'll have to exit the promotion task one more time, go to Compensation, view the data and, if you still have not slit your throat in despair, launch a THIRD time the promotion task. One of the nuttier design decisions I've ever seen in my quarter-century experience of HR systems. 

Simple and available - the Workday way

DATA LOAD/MIGRATION
I could rant for days on how complicated data management is with Oracle, but suffice it to give one example: data inactivation. Let's say that you created a contract type which is becoming obsolete. To inactivate it you will need two rows: Start and End Dates of the period when the contract was valid and another row with the Start and End Dates when it is no longer valid. Now, since the End Date of Inactive is till the end of time Oracle requires you to put something like 4532. Why this date and not 9999 the way they do it at SAP? And why do we even need to put an End Date? Because Oracle is still run by the same people who created the relational database and keep on thinking along the lines of this technology that harks back to the last millennium. 

QUESTIONABLE DATA MODEL
Every vendor has their own data model which has been a perennial issue in system-to-system integration. None is worse than the manager data model as pursued by Oracle versus Workday. With Workday, a manager is appointed on an organization (or team) and any employee part of that team will share the same manager. Clear and straightforward - even if some first-time Workday users may be taken aback at the logical consequence of this choice: a manager will always sit in an organization above the one holding his/her team.  An employee is hired into an organization. With Oracle, things are illogical and a source of endless confusion to users: a department with 3 employees can have 3 different managers since employees are linked directly to a manager, and in this case each can have a different manager. A department manager can be assigned (as a system admin task) but only employees without a directly assigned manager will inherit that departmental head as manager. You can easily see how ugly this can turn with different employees having different managers, some sharing the same or having none whatsoever.

Calculated Fields vs FastFormulas
In short, both are ways to write custom rules such as a calculation of a compensation element or a condition/eligibility rule to apply to who should get that compensation component. And that's where the resemblance between the two stops. Whereas Workday has innovated with an easy-to-use feature whereby you assemble your rules from different objects Lego-like, Oracle is still stuck in last millennium's technology -hardly surprising when you know that FastFormulas are a transplant from Oracle's much-hated EBS HR system which only a database nerd can make sense of. See below screenshot from the two to get a sense of  how Workday has managed to become the default tool of HR users. 

Today's tool vs yesterday's

Custom Objects vs Flexfields

Here again, we have similar objects aiming at extending a system's capabilities beyond what was initially supplied by the vendor. But whereas Workday makes it easy to build, use and maintain such objects, Oracle's Flexfields have serious limitations. One of the most egregious being that on any screen it is linked to, a Flexfield appears systematically at the bottom. To give you an example, let's suppose that in a Hire screen in addition to the standard "Business Title" field, you want to add a related field called "Local Business Title". Since Oracle doesn't offer a second such field you'll have to create it via Flexields. So be it, except that being a Flexfield it appears all the way at the bottom of the screen, probably next to a data section on addresses or blood type which have nothing to do with it. Very confusing to the user. Worse, if the Flexfield is to be filled with a value depending on what you entered in the standard field, you'll have to scroll all the way up to remind yourself what you entered and, having duly taken note of it, scroll all the way back down to enter a value for the second, related, object. In terms of customer experience, it's simply awful, but on a par with Oracle's products.

DOCUMENTATION
The differences between the two vendors couldn't be starker: whereas Workday has a flourishing Community where you can find an easy answer to set-up documents, share best practice ideas with other customers, suggest enhancements to the tool (and track its status), Oracle is...well, Oracle. Its Help Center is anything but helpful. All you get is some marketing PowerPoint presentations, fluffy documents, links to attend Events and that's it. If men are from Mars and women from Venus, well Workday is clearly from Planet Customer and Oracle is still stuck in its Planet Larry Ellison - or Technology: the two are interchangeable.

So, why do some companies buy it?
I could go on for hours and inflict thousands of additional pixels on your retina, but I think you get my drift. Which prompts the following question: with Workday being manifestly so superior to Oracle in every way, why do some customers still buy Oracle for their HR needs? 

First, you have to realize that only current customers (those who are using Oracle database or middleware or Financials or legacy EBS system) have any interest in envisioning the possibility of purchasing Oracle's Fusion system. 

Second, a majority of Oracle customers (both PeopleSoft and EBS) moving their HR system to the cloud do it not with Oracle Fusion, but with...Workday, proof enough of what they really think of their current vendor.

Third, as for the minority who decides to stick with Oracle, you may still wonder that only masochists would spend good money on bad technology. And here you'd be more right than you may think. When I referred to these customers as buying Oracle Fusion HR, actually I wasn't being accurate because one of Oracle's (many) dirty little secrets is that these customers actually don't buy Oracle HR because ...they get it for free! Oracle just tells them that if they take Fusion Financials, they'll get HR for free. Most customers make the decision that sure it looks ugly but you don't look a gift horse in the mouth, do you? So, they decide to plod on and make the best out of a bad situation.

It's not dissimilar to those millions of consumers  who have a regular meal at McDonald's knowing it's not good for their health (or their palate) but that consideration is outweighed by price and convenience. 

So, my advice to Oracle customers as they head to Oracle CloudWorld is to remind them of that old phrase: you get what you pay for. And as you've seen it in this analysis, there's no denying it: Workday blows Oracle out of the water.

The longest reign: Musings on 11 remarkable days

PARIS
For someone who lived in the UK in his late teens, and have ever since visited the country for business and leisure over the decades, I have always looked at the British monarchy quizzically and at times uncomprehendingly. 

And yet like most Planet Earth residents I spent an inordinate amount of time last Monday and the previous weeks watching on TV, streaming or reading the press: debates, parades, processions, tributes, national anthems, religious services, that at times felt as long as her 70-year-long reign.

What impressed me and remained with me is the following.

First, not the sheer number of people who lined up  to file past the Queen's coffin in Westminster Hall, but the fact that they were willing to wait for over 12 hours or more for the honor. President Nasser's death drew throngs of people and fired up the whole Arab world,  but I doubt that anybody would have waited that long for him. I still can't wrap around my head what made hundreds of thousands of Britons (and foreigners) go through what must have been at times a painful wait just to see a coffin, illustrious as its contents must have been. This will remain as one of those mysteries of the British psyche I may never unfold. 

Second, the craze wasn't limited to the UK, or the Commonwealth, but was basically global. I would switch from one TV channel to another, or read the online press from around the world and for days and days they carried only one major topic; "The funeral of the century", as the tagline went. Has the world gone mad? Aren't there more important things to focus on? An increasingly scary war in the Ukraine? Global warning? Runaway inflation? Immigration crisis?

Third, in spite of billions of pixels and gallons of ink spent  on the Queen's passing away and the rites associated with it, one topic was simply never mentioned. What did she die of? Sure, it's not particularly shocking that a 96 year-old would die, and sure she looked increasingly frail, but on Tuesday last week we saw her bidding farewell to Boris Johnson and greeting incoming uncurtsying Prime Minister Liz Truss with both of whom she spent a couple of hours (more below on that curtsy - or lack thereof.). And the next day she didn't feel well and then ...she was gone. She can't have been missing BoJo that much, already, can she?

The blogger appearing on a postcard

with the Queen when she visited his 

Central Paris neighborhood in 2004

 

 

Fourth, the British are (in)famous for their quasi-total lack of skills when it comes to major infrastructure projects but when it comes to large spectacles, especially involving the military and extolling the monarchy, they are unbeatable. In just a matter of days they put in place a dazzling show involving complex logistics and organizational excellence that was astonishing. Cecil B. DeMille, the legendary Hollywood film-maker known for his lavish epics, wouldn't have been able to pull it off so spectacularly. And Mr. DeMille had the advantage of countless rehearsals and takes, something unavailable to the organizers: if you make mistakes it's in full view of the whole world. I was also amazed at the punctuality of the various events, despite so many unknowns and the large number of people involved. Probably explains how a tiny island lost in the mists of northern Europe managed to conquer one-third of mankind and build the largest empire the world has ever known and whose remnants the late sovereign represented. 

Fifth, no one would dare make a prediction of what the new King's reign will be like, but two things are certain. One, he won't reign half as long as his august mother. Second, the road is bound to be bumpy when you see the tantrums he threw before a global TV audience just because his pen was leaking. Seriously? There's something definitely wrong with a man who goes berserk on such a mundane issue. With his predecessor, we wouldn't even have noticed that something was amiss.

Sixth, the press was the major broker in getting the show over to us and I was hugely entertained by the crass incompetence of some of the reporters or self-proclaimed specialists pontificating on various TV shows. In France, it was cocorico! as our Sun King, Louis XIV's record as longest reigning monarch in mankind's history still holds: 72 years over Elizabeth II's 70 years (she's still the longest reigning female monarch and longest living monarch ever.) However, a not insignificant detail that French TV and press overlooked is that of Louis XIV's 72 years on the throne, 10 were spent as part of a regency since he was a minor. Meaning that he exercized his full royal prerogatives for only 62 years, whereas the British queen enjoyed all the trappings of power on Day 1. In that respect she does hold the record for longest effective reign in recorded history. 

The press also got it wrong when they often predicted that the Commonwealth would shrink as some countries inevitably ditched the monarchy. Actually there's no direct link between the two. Even if, say, Jamaica took the lead of Barbados and became a republic, they would still remain in the Commonwealth. Remember that Elizabeth II was queen of South Africa until 1961 and of Malta until 1974. Both are still part of the Commonwealth. Even New Zealand's Prime Minister, Jacinda Arden, was largely misquoted as saying she wished her country would become a republic in her lifetime. She never said that. I saw her interview on the Beeb and while she predicted such a thing, she never expressed such a wish, and clearly stated that she wouldn't instigate a move (like a referendum) in that direction. I found it very interesting to see her (and the NZ Governor-General) take a deep curtsy before the Queen's coffin, when the UK's own Prime Minister, Liz Truss, wasn't seen once curtsying to either the Queen on her last days or when she met Charles III. Maybe that Tory Liz is secretly planning a move towards a Republic with Boris Johnson as first president.

 

The blogger in his teens while he lived in Britain.
Visiting Glamis Castle in the Scottish Highlands,
ancestral home of the Queen Mother's family
and where the late Queen's sister, Margaret, was born

 

Seventh, a constant in my long acquaintance with the country has been the lousy, soggy, wet weather I had to endure as a price to pay to live in the UK or visit it. And yet, during those 11 days, without almost no exception, it was either flawlessly blue skies or at least lack of rain, as if the gods had decided to do their bit on the historical moment. If anything, we'll remember it for that.

Eighth, at times, especially at the end, the whole thing felt a bit protracted. Two lying-in-states were a bit much (thank God they didn't decide to drag the coffin around Wales and Northern Ireland or the 14 other "Realms" or countries where the queen was monarch!) and as we got to the end, the endless processions and ceremonies and religious services felt like stretching the point. On the 11th day, Monday, the funeral included several processions, and after the service at Westminster Hall, arriving at Windsor Castle for yet another one, with many of the same attendees, and then a third service, blissfully, for family only, it was clearly overkill. 

Ninth, reflecting on the meaning of it all, it was even more astonishing that it was to honor someone who in eight decades of public service never said anything memorable. Elizabeth II must be the only head of state who never gave a single press interview (Charles and William both have - let's see whether they keep their mother's and grandmother's tradition alive once they start reigning.) 

Tenth, why did Elizabeth II's popularity trump that of her predecessors, current peers and other politicians? My explanation is that rarely has a leader so much identified with her country the way she has. One revealing example that nobody seems to have noticed: She never went on vacation abroad. Not for her, skiing in Gstaad or St Moritz (as Diana was wont to) or frolicking  in the Caribbean (like her own sister, Margaret). Year in and year out, it was Norfolk and Scotland, and Scotland and Norfolk.

Well, it sure was a one-of-a-kind moment and here's one prediction I can safely make: I am unlikely to witness something similar in my lifetime.