Aurecon is bringing ideas to life in more than a dozen markets and locations worldwide, working on ground-breaking projects, from the Square Kilometre Array to a solar-powered, modular water treatment plant bringing clean water to remote communities. But its leaders were aware the company had a disconnect between the incredible work being done in the field and employees’ experience back in the office.
“We had people doing these amazing feats of engineering, working with our clients using really cool digital tools. And then they came back and did time sheets on a clunky, outdated system and struggled with multiple Excel spreadsheets to report on their projects”, explains CFO Andrew Muller. Aurecon’s aim was to offer its people an inspiring, nurturing environment where they could put all their energy into bringing their clients’ ideas to life. Core priorities were to create a modern workplace, with a world-class employee experience – and to integrate and open up data to support fact-based decisions.
The one key message that keeps coming back from our employees is that we made the right decision.
Chief Information Officer
A truly agile workforce.
By deploying Workday through HR, finance and projects, Aurecon has gone from a complex network of systems to being able to drive simplification at scale. “It allows our people more time to spend on their projects and with their clients, rather than trying to grapple with a complex system environment”, says Andrew.
“What stands out for our people has been the simplicity. Our systems are intuitive and easy to use – you’re not fighting the system. People are also enjoying the mobile aspect. The fact that you can do your admin on your phone has been a major plus.”
Aurecon teams work in very complex data environments. Now Workday means all that data is in one place. “We’ve been able to drive better decision-making now we’ve got a single, simplified source of truth throughout the business. It helps to be able to look at all the various metrics together. That’s so useful from a project planning perspective, helping us drive greater efficiency.”
- Reduced the chart of accounts by 90 percent
- Improved process governance and standardised master data
- Consolidated and integrated multiple legacy applications
Employees can use our systems and access data from anywhere on any device at any time.
Chief Financial Officer
Working flexibly and in a networked way.
Aurecon has been using Workday for five years, starting with Workday Human Capital Management. Chief People Officer Liam Hayes sees Workday as a massive enabler of agile working. “Workday automated and streamlined our manual HR processes and made them very easy to navigate. People expect those intuitive systems they use in their personal lives. I remember getting early feedback from our leaders about how easy it was to do performance reviews and goal setting.”
CIO Carl Duckinson recalls that within days of turning on Workday, life became so much easier: “It wasn’t just about the speed of doing my timesheets and expenses in the system. I could automatically delegate tasks to my team and go in and instantly find answers to questions where, previously, I’d have had to ask other departments.”
Our company has just gone through and implemented this system with no face-to-face training whatsoever.
Chief Information Officer
Actively listening to employees during lockdown.
Aurecon went live with the Workday Peakon Employee Voice in March 2020. For Liam Hayes, the timing couldn’t have been better.
“Workday Peakon Employee Voice came online just as we were moving to a fully remote workforce. There couldn’t have been a more critical moment to amplify our people’s voice. We were able to ask what we should stop, start and continue to help people thrive during lockdown. We received more than 2,000 comments, which all fed into our strategy around the new world of work. Workday Peakon Employee Voice stops us from making assumptions and helps us prioritise. It gives incredible insight into what our people are feeling and thinking – prompting important discussions around our executive table.”
What I love about Workday is how intuitive it is.
Chief People Officer
Harnessing data to improve performance.
Aurecon has been able to integrate all of its data across people, projects and finance, enabling nimble decision-making. “Workday puts the client or the project in the centre of our business, capturing all the data we need to achieve better outcomes for our clients”, says Andrew Muller. “We’ve always had plenty of data, especially now we’re getting more involved with digital engineering. Now we can use that data to support quality, fact-based decisions.”
Aurecon not only drills down into project costs to make efficiency decisions, but also sees aggregate data to establish where and why best practice is working. For an engineering company, this is gold. At the same time, integration with human capital data has enabled Aurecon to optimise project resourcing.
What I love about Workday is that I don’t have to worry about keeping it current.
Chief Information Officer
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