Building the foundations of a digital HR organisation

Digitising its people data and processes is allowing HR at Cerebral Palsy Alliance (CPA) to transform how it delivers services to the business, with the aim of being a valued business partner.

Reduced admin burden from digitised processes

Efficient, accurate experience and mobile self-service

100% certification compliance

Reduced time to onboard employees by 50%

CPA has a diverse, mobile workforce that delivers frontline services to people and families living with cerebral palsy and other physical and neurological disabilities.  

Having doubled in size between 2018 and 2020, CPA needed its HR function to transition from being administration and compliance focused, to becoming a value-adding business partner.

A critical part of achieving this was digitisation – CPA still had the paper-based processes and legacy system of a smaller business.

“We had disparate people systems, with multiple paper-based processes and employee data in numerous places, making good people decisions very challenging,” explains HR Transformation Manager, Jay Richardson.

“The conversation around investing in a new HR system began with the need to automate our performance management processes. With the existing systems flawed and complex, and struggling to keep pace with the rapid growth of the organisation, we recognised the need for a digital solution that could support the whole employee lifecycle. We chose Workday as the best Tier 1 solution that could continue to evolve and grow with the business into the future.”

This is really the beginning of the transformation journey for CPA. I see Workday providing the platform to support the managers and staff as they move to becoming a better informed and more productive workforce.

Frank Sedmak
General Manager, People & Culture

Freeing HR to begin transformation.

Before Workday, CPA’s HR team was overwhelmed with transactional tasks, often working with out-of-date or incorrect information using fragmented systems. 

“The team was caught up in administration rather than focusing attention on critical attraction, retention and engagement priorities,” says Jay.

Without Workday, the CPA HR team wouldn’t have been able to embark on its transformational journey – they would have needed a team double the size to support the growing business.

Jessica Wilson
Senior Manager, Business Systems

Improving talent retention, optimisation and learning.

Workday is helping CPA deliver a positive employee experience by supporting automation and self-service. 

“Retention is critical for us,” says Jay. “To deliver great outcomes for our workforce, we have to be efficient in managing HR processes so they don’t impact people's engagement and satisfaction levels.”

She says Workday provides CPA with critical data to support recruitment, enabling it to be more responsive to the changing needs of the business. She’s looking forward to building on the HCM foundations and getting to what she calls ‘the magic’. 

“Our next step is to use Workday for talent optimisation and learning. It’s exciting stuff. It will really support us in managing our talent so we can develop and retain critical personnel.”

We’ve had great feedback from candidates about their user experience with Workday Recruiting.

Jay Richardson
HR Transformation Manager

Extending analytics to support data-driven decisions.

CPA is currently in the process of building manager dashboards and extending the use of the data analytics available in Workday. Senior Manager Business Systems, Jess Wilson, says Workday will help managers in the business to understand workforce trends, see what's going on in their departments, take remedial actions and make better informed decisions. 

“We're consolidating key reports that managers need to have at their fingertips into a dashboard for them to see in one view. Through training, we’re showing managers how to get valuable insights out of the data and find the answers they need.”

Employees like being able to apply for leave on their mobile. Managers find it useful to view their absence dashboard to see who’s away and when they are returning.

Jessica Wilson
Senior Manager, Business Systems

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