Broken org structures in Workday are one of the most painful problems to fix because they touch everything: security, reporting, business processes, time tracking and approvals. When supervisory orgs are too granular, too flat or misaligned with how the business actually runs, every downstream process becomes harder. The good news: Workday provides flexible tools—Supervisory Organizations, Matrix Organizations and Custom Organization Hierarchies—to model complex structures. The challenge is using them intentionally, not accidentally.
This guide walks through practical patterns for designing, fixing and maintaining org structures that work.
Understand the three org types in Workday
Workday supports three main organization constructs, each with different purposes:
- Supervisory Organizations (Sup Orgs)
- The foundational org structure representing direct manager-employee relationships.
- Drives security (manager self-service roles), business processes (approvals, hires), and primary reporting lines.
- Matrix Organizations
- Freestanding orgs that capture secondary reporting relationships (dotted-line managers, project leads, functional heads).
- Enable workers to have multiple managers with different responsibilities (for example, functional manager + project manager).
- Custom Organization Hierarchies
- Flexible groupings for analytics, cost roll-ups or special views (for example, geographic regions, product lines, client portfolios).
- Used primarily for reporting and cost allocation, not transactional security or approvals.
The key is to use Supervisory Orgs for primary hierarchy and transactions, Matrix Orgs for secondary relationships, and Custom Hierarchies for analytics—not mixing them up.
Common supervisory org design mistakes (and how to fix them)
Many tenants struggle with supervisory org design because they either overcomplicate it or oversimplify it.
Pitfall 1: Too many layers and micro-orgs
- Creating a supervisory org for every team, product or project leads to hundreds of orgs with minimal membership.
- Impact: Security role assignment becomes unmanageable, reporting is cluttered, and reorgs are painful.
- Fix: Use a 1:1 manager-to-sup-org model where each direct people manager has one supervisory org containing their direct reports. Keep it simple and aligned with actual management lines.
Pitfall 2: Too flat or generic
- Creating one giant supervisory org (for example, “All Employees”) or only two levels (CEO → everyone).
- Impact: Managers cannot see their teams in self-service, approvals do not route correctly, and security becomes all-or-nothing.
- Fix: Build a clear hierarchy reflecting actual management structure (for example, CEO → VPs → Directors → Managers → Individual Contributors).
Pitfall 3: Mixing positions and jobs inconsistently
- Using Position Management in some orgs and Job Management in others without a clear strategy.
- Impact: Hiring, budgeting and position control become confusing and inconsistent.
- Fix: Pick one staffing model per business unit or tenant and document the reasoning; avoid mixing unless there is a compelling business case.
Pitfall 4: Not using reorganization events
- Making ad-hoc changes to supervisory orgs without coordinated reorg events.
- Impact: Reporting breaks, analytics show jumbled histories, and downstream systems receive inconsistent data.
- Fix: Use Workday’s Reorganize Supervisory Organization event to group all related changes (manager moves, org merges, renaming) with a single effective date.
Fixing these issues often requires a supervisory org redesign project: map current state, design future state with stakeholders, then execute the reorg in a controlled way.
When and how to use matrix organizations
Matrix orgs solve the “I have two bosses” problem without forcing Workday into unnatural supervisory structures.
Good use cases:
- Employees with a functional manager (for example, Engineering Manager) and a project manager (for example, Product X Lead).
- Sales or consulting roles reporting to a geographic leader and a practice/industry leader.
- Professional services where consultants report to a home office manager but work for multiple client engagement managers.
How to design matrix orgs effectively:
- Keep the primary reporting line in supervisory orgs for security, approvals and compensation processes.
- Use matrix orgs for secondary relationships that need visibility (dashboards, talent reviews, project reporting) but do not drive transactional workflows.
- Assign matrix managers appropriate security so they can see their matrix members’ data (performance, goals, compensation if needed) without conflicting with primary manager permissions.
- Use custom org hierarchies to roll up matrix orgs if you need aggregated views (for example, all Project X members across functional areas).
Matrix orgs are powerful but can become confusing if overused; reserve them for genuine dual-reporting scenarios, not every dotted-line relationship.
Custom organization hierarchies: the analytics layer
Custom orgs are the most flexible: you define the grouping logic, membership and hierarchy to support specific business needs.
Common patterns:
- Geographic or regional rollups
- Group workers by country, region or market for talent analytics and cost reporting.
- Product, client or business line hierarchies
- Track workers aligned to product lines, client accounts or business segments for revenue and utilization reporting.
- Functional or capability views
- Group by function (Sales, Engineering, Finance) even if supervisory structure is organized differently (for example, by region).
Best practices:
- Use custom orgs for reporting and analytics only, not for transactional security or business process routing.
- Keep custom org hierarchies aligned with actual business structures so they remain relevant and trusted.
- Document the purpose and maintenance owner for each custom org hierarchy so it does not drift into irrelevance.
Custom orgs are a powerful tool when used intentionally; they become clutter when created ad-hoc without clear purpose.
Practical steps to fix a broken org structure
If your tenant has a broken or overly complex org design, here is how to approach the fix:
- Assess current state
- Map the existing supervisory org structure, matrix orgs and custom hierarchies.
- Identify pain points: where do approvals break? Where do reports show the wrong hierarchy? Where do reorgs cause chaos?
- Engage stakeholders
- Work with HR, Finance, business leaders and IT to define the desired future state: how should the org actually look?
- Get agreement on principles: simplicity, alignment with real management lines, and scalability.
- Design the target org model
- Use Org Studio to visualize and validate the new hierarchy before making changes.
- Plan for supervisory orgs (primary hierarchy), matrix orgs (secondary relationships) and custom hierarchies (analytics views).
- Execute via reorganization events
- Use Reorganize Supervisory Organization to implement changes in a controlled, effective-dated way.
- Batch related changes together to minimize disruption and maintain clean historical data.
- Test and validate
- Test security, business processes, reports and dashboards against the new org structure before going live.
- Run parallel reporting to ensure analytics and history remain consistent.
- Maintain discipline going forward
- Establish governance for org changes: who can request, who approves, and how reorgs are executed.
- Regularly review org structures to catch drift and keep them aligned with the business.
Fixing broken orgs is not a quick task, but with a methodical approach and strong stakeholder engagement, it is possible to move from chaos to clarity.
When supervisory, matrix and custom organizations are used correctly and maintained intentionally, Workday’s org structures become a strength: they reflect how the business actually works, enable the right people to see and do the right things, and provide trusted views for analytics and decision-making.
