Facilitating a Smooth Workday Transformation

A leading cloud software company struggled to manage HR processes and employee data using an outdated, heavily customized Workday system. The limitations of this clunky HR system forced the company to rely on supplementary tools to fill Workday's functionality gaps, making HR management inefficient.

On top of technology challenges, the company faced inconsistent and siloed workforce planning and hiring processes that hindered strategic talent decisions and growth. 

To address these obstacles, the company decided on a full Workday reimplementation with new capabilities like Position Management and Workforce Planning. This would provide the visibility and control needed to optimize their 70,000+ workforce.

However, such a major overhaul required substantial changes to processes and manager behaviors across the organization. The company needed an experienced partner to guide this monumental shift.

Pioneer's change management approach focused on three key areas:

First, we conducted comprehensive planning. This included stakeholder analysis to identify over 700 change impacts. We defined key persona groups based on degree of change impact.

Second, we engaged leadership at all levels. We partnered with executives, managers, and frontline supervisors to develop tailored engagement plans.

Third, we tailored communications. We identified the most impactful channels for each stakeholder group, such as Slack, email, meetings, and intranet updates.  

To bring this strategy to life, our implementation focused on:

• Developing a communications plan with over 250 touchpoints in two years. This reached global employees from different persona groups.
• Establishing and managing two dedicated change networks to support key HR and business teams.
• Designing, developing and delivering training programs such as: a business learning series with org-specific deep dives, a dedicated people leader course, and simple, action-based job guides.

Our change management strategy enabled a smooth and successful launch of the new Workday system:

• On launch day, only 23 of 1,300 IT tickets were Workday-related, indicating minimal disruption to business operations. This positive trend continued in the following days.
• The creation of 15 persona impact cards enabled key functional groups to clearly understand how the change affected them. This drove adoption by minimizing confusion and resistance.
• Over 22,000 unique users logged into the new Workday system on day one, demonstrating high adoption rates.

• Prevent leadership misalignment — establish consistent expectations around usage.
• Clearly outline end state processes — enable employees to visualize future workflows.
• Ensure adequate project team staffing — include change management professionals change management professionals, communicators, instructional designers, project managers, business and subject matter experts
• Concentrate on tactical training details — cater to the specific needs of each user group.
• Avoid declaring success too soon — essential elements may be absent from the desired end state.

Key Results

• Strategic Communication Plan
• Strategic Change Plan
• Change Agent Playbook
• Training Sessions
• Day-One Checklists