Guzman y Gomez continues to deploy Workday as core people platform

Guzman y Gomez Mexican Kitchen is a year into using Workday as the technology foundation for people services, with two modules still on the roadmap for rollout and a broader efficiency drive that is likely to result in AI use.

The quick service restaurant chain has more than 200 locations and over 12,000 employees across Australia, and is opening “around 40 new restaurants every year”, its head of people services Tianna Walton told a recent Workday summit.

Walton said that GYG’s workforce in the restaurants is young, often in their first job.

The expectation was for internal systems to be digital, mobile-first and user experience friendly, requirements which were front-of-mind when designing a HR system.

The company implemented Workday mid-last year, coinciding with its initial public offering, Walton said.

“At the time we deployed Workday at GYG, we also listed publicly on the ASX, which was a very exciting milestone for us as a business – and, of course, having access to our people data through Workday made that pre-IPO journey very smooth,” she said.

So far, GYG has gone live with core human capital management (HCM), learning and absence management modules.

“We’ve got advanced compensation and talent optimisation [modules] still to come,” Walton said.

Advanced compensation is used to track merit-based wage increases, bonuses and other awards; while talent optimisation is used to make data-driven decisions about the employee mix and how to develop and build capability in the existing workforce.

Like a number of organisations in service industries, Walton said GYG wanted to provide career pathways for its staff to keep them in the business.

“It’s all about building internal capability through really clear and practical pathways for our team members,” she said.

“We want to make sure our team members can see the opportunities to go from a crew member position – say it’s their first ever job in the workplace – all the way through to a restaurant leadership role and then into a potentially support office position as well.

“It’s about giving them the visibility and the practical pathways – these are the skills that are needed at each stage of that journey to progress further – and making sure that they’re aware that they can actually have a really long term and lasting career with GYG as a business, rather than maybe thinking of this industry or this role as somewhat transient.”

Walton said that internal usage of Workday had been enhanced by focusing “design decisions specifically [around the needs of] our restaurant workers and not for our workforce in our support office.”

“A lot of workers are not sitting behind a computer – they are on the line rolling burritos, speaking with guests in the restaurant,” she said.

“I think that we did a fantastic job of making [the people system] a mobile-first experience through the design phase.”

Walton indicated that GYG would continue to build as a business “over the next two to three years”.

During this period, she said, “We’ll be looking for opportunities across all areas of our business to really drive efficiencies.”

Artificial intelligence could be key to unlocking efficiency gains by taking over administrative or repetitive tasks that took restaurant staff away from what GYG wanted them to do.

“Our mission as a business is to reinvent fast food and change the way that the masses eat,” she said.

“We know that we can only achieve that by leaning into this next technological revolution.”

However, given its digital-savvy workforce, Walton said there was pressure to ensure that any AI introduction lived up to expectations.

“For us at GYG, when it comes to AI, the biggest challenge is that our workforce is so excited about this space, and with that comes an expectation that we do it really well — to actually match the experience of these digital natives that are working at GYG,” Walton said.

“If it ends up being a clunky experience or not very smooth, or not the most user-friendly, there will be pushback and the workforce could potentially even reject the solutions.”