Background
As part of their efforts to streamline their HR system and services, a medical research foundation wanted to replace its existing HR system with Workday. The rollout would enable both HR and payroll systems to be combined and help reduce the amount of dual information being processed, improve governance of payroll and ultimately reduce payroll and business risk. The company planned to deploy several features of Workday in the first phase of the rollout, including Core HR, Absence and Workday Payroll.
Solution
The finance team led the rollout of Workday Payroll. The deployment occurred in tandem with the rollout of the HCM elements of Workday, which in turn was led by HR.
The team recognised that additional support from an external specialist advisor to ensure a smooth and successful implementation of Workday Payroll across the business and contracted Joe Ales to support the finance team with the rollout. Joe’s role was to provide practical support in validating Payroll configuration and helping the business put in place a plan that allowed the company to effectively test the system and ensure the team were operationally ready to operate and support the system in production.
Challenges
The project was faced with number of challenges, 3 months to fully test and get operationally ready, the payroll manager had limited Workday system knowledge, payroll integrations as well as the complexity of other modules of Workday hitting the payroll system such as Core HR, Compensation & Absence.
These challenges were the main drivers behind partnering with Underscore; the Programme Lead had worked with Joe Ales who led the largest ever UK payroll rollout (16,500 employees) in a previous role. Underscore, and the company were able to leverage lessons learned from that previous experience, to develop a comprehensive deployment plan for their rollout.
Feedback and Outcomes
The plan and approach led to a successful payroll go live, and the implementation lead of Workday at the business shared some feedback on her experienced of working with Underscore and the outcomes of the rollout.
“Ultimately, we had an excellent go-live, payroll go-live went really smoothly, we had no queries coming through.”
“It was a good style in terms of fitting into the business and working alongside people. For me, Joe felt like part of the internal team – he builds those relationships quickly. He established a good level of trust with senior leadership and he brings a lot of skills and experience of Workday.”
“I knew I didn’t have to worry about payroll if I had Joe on side, it was a big weight off my mind and for the payroll manager as well.”
Underscore have since been contracted to support the team with phase II of their Workday deployment, with Joe managing the initiative.