For more than 120 years, FMG has supported New Zealand’s rural communities when times are hardest. Founded by farmers for farmers, the mutual organization is focused on delivering a better deal for rural New Zealand, with its people at the center of that work.
When FMG’s workforce grew to nearly 1,000 employees, its technology struggled to keep up. It had been relying on a highly fragmented technology environment, with employee data spread across multiple systems and heavy manual intervention required to support core HR processes. This complexity created challenges for the employee experience, workforce planning, regulatory reporting and data security.
“The need to upgrade our systems really came back to the fact that we had a team of people that were operating in multiple different systems,” says Nicki Mackay, chief people officer at FMG. “Those systems didn't talk to each other. Our people were forever embedded in working on processes. We had human glue everywhere.”
FMG needed a single human capital management system that could address its immediate operational needs and support its future growth.
“When it came to selecting a new HCM, our considerations were really around who was going to be able to partner with us long term, who was going to be able to deliver on the things that were really important to us,” says Mackay. “At the end of the day, Workday very much stood out as the one that was going to take us into the future.”
Employee adoption from day one.
On the day Workday went live, more than 90% of FMG’s workforce engaged with the platform. Employees found it easy to navigate, helping FMG introduce a new way of working across the business.
Reporting also became faster and simpler. Instead of pulling data from up to six systems and combining it manually, FMG’s People and Culture team can now access the information they need in Workday.
“The speed of reporting in Workday is incredible,” says Mackay. “What used to take days to pull together now takes minutes, giving our team back hours of their day to focus on adding real value.”
Putting information in the right hands.
With Workday, FMG’s people leaders can now access workforce information directly rather than relying on the People and Culture team to provide it. They can view information such as leave data, HR documents, and team structures, helping them make faster, more informed decisions.
“They would normally have had to come to our People and Culture team to get that information. Now they have it at their fingertips,” says Mackay. “That's enabling them to take responsibility and accountability for that information and make better decisions on the ground, which to me is where that empowerment belongs.”
The difference shows up in even the most everyday tasks. Org charts, which once took a month to compile manually, are now available in Workday, giving leaders and their teams clear, real-time visibility of team structures as FMG continues to grow.
With Workday, it’s intuitive and simple. Our people can use it on the road, and our leaders have access to immense data they previously had to come to my team to get.
Chief People Officer
Laying the foundation for future growth and innovation.
With its core people processes on one platform, FMG has a clearer foundation for its next Workday priorities: recruitment, learning & development, and succession planning.
“Workday gives us a clear path forward to better understand and support our people,” says Mackay. “We have five generations operating inside our organization, and we need to be able to understand them, know them, grow them, develop them. And that's exactly what Workday will do for us over time.”
As AI reshapes the future of work, FMG views Workday's embedded AI capabilities as key to staying ahead. By automating routine processes and surfacing insights faster, the platform frees the People and Culture team to focus on what matters most - human connection.
Workday offers us the ability to automate the things we don't like doing, so we can spend a lot more time at that human level doing the stuff we love and know makes a difference.
Chief People Officer
