NZAA is a brand deeply embedded in the lives of New Zealanders. But even long-standing organizations must evolve. “We've been around for more than 120 years,” says Tom Stimpson, Head of People Operations. “Now we’re working to make sure we're relevant for another 120 years.”
For HR, that meant streamlining its fragmented stack, comprising 27 legacy systems. Previously, responding to information requests from the business required HR looking in three or four different places, and manually consolidating everything—a process that could take days.
NZAA chose Workday to bring everything together on a single, integrated platform designed for data integrity, insight, and intelligence.
“Now we can get to the information we need quickly, rather than piecing it together from multiple places,” Stimpson explains.
The move has also delivered a significant uplift in data quality. “With one source of truth, our insights are more reliable than ever. Leaders can act with confidence knowing the data is accurate and up to date.”
Significant productivity gains.
Having trusted, easily accessible data has transformed how NZAA operates. Employees no longer need to know which team to contact for support—payroll, HR, or business partners. Instead, they can find what they need themselves. Leave balances, payslips, org charts, and job changes are just a few clicks away.
“We’ve freed up time for everyone by taking away a lot of the difficulty and doing the heavy lifting for them,” says Stimpson.
Reporting has also been revolutionized. With accurate, shareable data that once took days to assemble in Power BI now takes minutes.
Workday frees up HR so we can help solve more business problems.
Head of People Operations
Robust onboarding compliance.
Before Workday, onboarding splintered across multiple workflows managed by different teams.
“Compliance was really hard,” Stimpson explains. “Updates in one workflow wouldn’t always flow through to others. You had to know which was which, and you’d always miss things.”
Now, a single streamlined onboarding process guides every new hire. Divisional checklists keep tasks relevant to each role, and Workday enforces completion—employees can’t progress until each step is done.
Previously, people could skip things. Now, with Workday, we know compliance steps get completed all the way through.
Head of People Operations
Better understanding of employee priorities.
With Workday Peakon Employee Voice, NZAA can run deeper, more meaningful engagement surveys. Stimpson says the confidential format gives people a genuine voice. “People can share their honest feedback. It’s helping to strengthen us as an organization.”
Survey insights are more than a temperature check—they actively shape priorities and decision-making. Executives review findings, set action plans, and track improvements. Engagement scores are now part of enterprise-level goals, with NZAA aiming to rank in the top 10% of comparable organizations.
Future gains as AI capabilities come online.
Stimpson is looking ahead to Workday’s AI-driven process tools. He’s particularly enthusiastic about the Business Process Review tool, which analyzes how processes are used and identifies opportunities to improve.
“You might design a process one way, but once people start using it, you realize there are opportunities to tweak it. Having a tool that can pinpoint bottlenecks, and combine that with real feedback, will be incredibly helpful.”
Another priority for Stimpson is the Business Process Creation tool. In a recent demo, he watched as an entire performance review process was generated from just a few paragraphs of text.
I think we’ll see a new level of productivity improvements when the business starts using these AI tools.
Head of People Operations