Names can have a mind -- and a sound -- of their own. Consider Tonya. Some with that spelling prefer "TONE-yuh," others "TAWN-yuh." Or, maybe Snowdown looks pretty obvious, but its owner goes by "SNOW-done." Is that a hard G or soft G to start Gilley? Workday offers a task that lets employees and students submit an audio clip, a phonetic spelling or both for the accurate pronunciation of their name. If you own one that's prone to miscues, consider taking two minutes to add a pronunciation guide to your Workday profile. Your colleagues, who want to be respectful, might be grateful for the guidance.
To date, just over a hundred faculty and staff have used at least one piece of the voluntary feature, said Lukas Miller, assistant director, human resources. Students also may set up a pronunciation guide for their name in Workday. Here's a summary of a help article on using the pronunciation feature in Workday:
- In the top search bar in Workday, enter name pronunciation and select the change task that appears.
- (Make sure you've allowed microphone access to the myworkday website in your browser security settings). Click on the blue microphone icon to audio record your name pronunciation. If you opt to redo it, click on the trash icon to first delete the audio file you don't want to use.
- In the text field, type the phonetic pronunciation of your name. UPPERCASE LETTERS indicate which syllable(s) receive the emphasis.
- If you use both features, make sure the audio and phonetic pronunciations match each other -- and represent how you want your name to be pronounced.
- Hit the submit button to save your pronunciation(s).
To find this information on an employee or student's Workday profile, simply type their name in the Workday top search bar and navigate to find their record. If they've provided a pronunciation tip, you'll see the phonetic pronunciation and/or the sound icon under their name.
