In a report released Thursday, Denver Auditor Timothy O’Brien found that city employees feel under-trained and in some cases underwhelmed with the $10 million computer system to manage finances and personnel.

The accounting firm BKD, LLP used 500 survey responses from city workers — 81% of whom said they used the Workday Inc. system at least once per week — to determine that the overall satisfaction rate on a scale of one to five averaged nearly a 3.2, just above “neutral.”

Employees expressed slightly lower levels of satisfaction with their training on the financial system — on average, 2.73, or below neutral — and “neutral” feelings toward the human resources training.

“If city employees have such mixed reviews of the Workday software and some legitimate concerns about its usefulness, I must question whether we could have pursued a cheaper option that would have achieved the same results,” O’Brien said.

The city debuted the system from Workday in 2017, and it currently handles payroll, purchasing, accounting and financial information across multiple agencies. Over 40% of survey respondents said they would like to see video training for various topics and agency-specific training.

A minority of respondents, 41%, deemed Workday either essential or “important and highly desirable” to doing their jobs. The remainder described the system as “interesting,” “incomplete” or “unnecessary.”

BKD concluded that users are “fairly satisfied” with Workday and “the majority of the frustration for users appears to be related to training, interfaces with other existing systems, perceived redundancies or cumbersome Workday steps, and possible concerns around what information is accurate or helpful” in their jobs.

O’Brien said that the city controller’s office, which is responsible for accounting, payroll and financial reporting, agrees with the audit’s recommendations.