What's different about Workday change

In most organizations, buying an ERP is a once-in-a-decade decision (or longer). So when these opportunities come up to overhaul existing business processes and technology, it's high stakes and high pressure for leaders.

The technology is the easy part. It's the people side that most projects struggle with.

I have led organizational change support for eight Workday deployments (HCM, Payroll, Comp/Exec comp Financials, Learning, and Adaptive). One particularly challenging project included global audiences in nearly 20 countries.

Along the way, I worked alongside four different system implementation partners. I've observed differences and similarities from a neutral perspective as an independent change advisor.

When it comes to Workday, some behind-the-scenes factors have made planning for and implementing organizational change in these deployments easier:

1. The Workday deployment methodology. It doesn't matter who the system implementation partner is, they will consistently follow the Workday deployment methodology (including the streamlined launch version with less custom configuration). This is a significant "win" for change practitioners who can align change deliverables to the set methodology. It also ensures adequate governance and customer assurance through built-in project structures and QA reviews. This helps teams be effective and efficient quickly. The use of individual workstream leads for reviewing design decisions during the Configure & Prototype phase also eliminates confusion within project teams, which can lead to overall stakeholder resistance.
2. The Workday Adoption Toolkit. Clients will have access to standard communication and training templates through the Workday Adoption Toolkit. This is standard amongst most platforms/applications, but the Workday Adoption Toolkit has a level of professionalism higher than most. It greatly accelerates the training development tasks. HOWEVER, clients should expect they will need to customize templates and supplement communications before, during, and after the deployment phase. 
3. Workday support and release rhythms. Following go-live, Workday is more involved in customer support than many applications. I've observed how early the conversations start about maintenance and support needs (pre-deployment) so that clients can budget appropriately. The semi-annual release rhythms also help clients get into a rinse-and-repeat mindset about continual updates of the technology. For many who are leaping from paper, this is important to establish the expectation of ongoing improvement. This supports sustaining the change and continuing forward progress.

After deploying many other types of technology, these factors make Workday change easier. The consistency across deployments, regardless of the system implementor, allows the change practitioner to focus on the uniqueness of the client organization and the specific change impacts.

Workday HCM is ideally suited for using targeted approaches to organizational change that help HR teams grow through on-the-job learning and savvy stakeholder involvement techniques that build support for the deployment before go-live.

Explore my full-service Workday organizational change consulting.