Higher Ed’s Hidden HCM Challenge: The Story After Go-Live

The launch date was circled on every calendar. After months of late-night testing, training sessions, and endless meetings, the university’s new HCM and Payroll system finally went live in January.

For a moment, it felt like a victory. The system was online. Paychecks were still moving. The project team could finally breathe.

But then, the questions started rolling in.

The First Weeks: A Flood of Questions

Within days, HR inboxes were full. Student workers were unsure how to clock in on their new devices. Dining hall staff couldn’t figure out how to check their PTO balances. Supervisors across departments sent urgent emails asking why their timecards weren’t displaying the way they expected.

IT was pulled in, too. Devices weren’t syncing. Access issues were piling up. The help desk, already stretched thin, had become a revolving door for questions that weren’t really technical at all—they were functional.

It wasn’t that the system was broken. It was working exactly as designed. But for employees, especially those on the frontlines, the design wasn’t intuitive enough. They needed support at the moment of use. Without it, every little roadblock became a ticket.

The Reality: Hypercare Lasts Longer Than Planned

The university had planned for a 60-day hypercare period. The reality? Stabilization stretched on for months. HR leaders found themselves spending most of their days answering the same handful of questions:

• How do I view my schedule?

• What happens if I miss a punch?

• Can I change my direct deposit myself?

• Where do I see my accrual balances?

Each question took only a few minutes to answer. But multiplied across thousands of employees and student workers, those minutes added up to hours, then days, then entire weeks of staff time.

What was supposed to be a smooth transition quickly turned into a burden that never seemed to end.

The Frontline Disconnect

Nowhere was the frustration more evident than on the frontlines. Dining services, facilities, recreation, and library staff—along with thousands of student workers—were the most frequent users of the system.

Yet many of them didn’t have regular access to computers. Others had never been given proper training. And because their shifts often happened at night or on weekends, they couldn’t always reach HR for answers.

It wasn’t that these employees didn’t want to use the system. They simply didn’t have the right tools or the right support. For them, every small hurdle was a reminder that the system wasn’t designed with them in mind.

Data Doesn’t Lie

As the weeks went on, the consequences became harder to ignore. Timecards weren’t always accurate. Break attestations were missed. Labor allocations weren’t coded correctly.

Payroll teams spent extra hours cleaning up data before each pay run. Reports for leadership were delayed or incomplete. What looked like a technical success at launch was quietly becoming an operational headache.

The Turnover Cycle

Then came the turnover. As every university knows, student workers rotate in and out constantly. Every new hire meant retraining, re-explaining, and re-onboarding them into the system.

HR staff were stuck in a loop—answering the same questions over and over again for every new wave of student workers. And the cycle never stopped.

The Lesson

This story isn’t unique. Across higher education, institutions spend years preparing for go-live, but far less time planning for what comes after.

The truth is, go-live isn’t the end of the journey. It’s the beginning of a new one. And unless the experience of employees—especially frontline staff and student workers—is prioritized, the strain on HR and IT teams doesn’t go away. It grows.

What Needs to Change

This story isn’t unique. Across higher education, institutions spend years preparing for go-live, but far less time planning for what comes after.

The truth is, go-live isn’t the end of the journey. It’s the beginning of a new one. And unless the experience of employees especially frontline staff and student workers—is prioritized, the strain on HR and IT teams doesn’t go away. It grows.

This is exactly the gap CloudApper hrPad is built to close.

• For frontline employees, hrPad provides intuitive, tablet-based self-service so they can clock in, view schedules, request PTO, or check accruals without waiting on HR.

• For student workers, hrPad delivers a simple, repeatable onboarding and support process that reduces repetitive training and questions.

• For HR teams, hrPad’s 24/7 AI assistant handles routine inquiries, freeing staff to focus on higher-value work instead of endless tickets.

• For compliance and payroll, hrPad captures attestations, enforces breaks, and prevents buddy punching with biometric authentication—keeping data accurate and payroll clean.

Instead of hypercare dragging on for months, hrPad helps universities stabilize faster, reduce support demands, and build trust in the system from day one.

Because in the end, a system is only as strong as the people using it. And when employees feel supported, adoption rises, trust grows, and the real value of your HCM investment can finally be realized.