Levande, which operates 58 retirement living villages purchased from Stockland, stood up new D365, Salesforce and Dayforce core systems in 10 months to complete the separation of the business from its former owner.
Amanda Tober (centre) speaks at the Dayforce Daybreak conference.
Stockland sold its retirement living business to EQT Infrastructure in 2022 for $987 million, which went on to rebrand the business as Levande.
Speaking at the recent Dayforce Daybreak conference, chief people officer Amanda Tober described in detail the migration of HR systems to Dayforce, but also the broader separation process.
“A lot of the support functions didn’t come across from Stockland, so that was one of the many challenges we had with the separation project that we embarked on,” Tober said.
“From the day of Levande, we had 12 months to separate from Stockland.
“We had 12 months to stand up pretty much all the support functions across the business, to build all new programs, practices, policies, and processes.
“Every system and platform across the organisation had to be new; we had to do D365, Salesforce, Dayforce, everything all at the same time, and we had no flex in our go live.”
The first core modules of Dayforce – an all-in-one people management platform previously known as Ceridian – were configured and deployed within seven months.
“We decided to go live in two phases,” Tober said.
“We literally signed the contract in February last year and went live in September, so a very aggressive go-live timeframe.
“We went live with phase one in September [2023], which was most of the modules, and then we did a phase two go-live in June this year for the remaining modules, which were performance, compensation, talent, and succession.”
Tober said that Stockland had used separate systems to run different aspects of HR, notably SAP, but the teams at Levande had no access to the existing environment and little visibility into how it was configured.
“We had to make lots of very fast decisions and back ourselves,” she said. “We had to make sure that we surround ourselves with great resources and great expertise around that.”
The company worked closely with internal partners, with Dayforce and an integrator, Pinpoint HRM, to stand the Dayforce platform up.
“You need internal partners, your IT team, your finance team, and I had to build a whole new P&C [people and culture] team, so I had to get them [all] on the journey pretty quickly as well,” Tober said.
Partnership with internal IT was particularly important because, with multiple systems being stood up simultaneously, different parts of Levande were all competing for the attention of the same internal resource.
“We were all fighting for D&T [digital and technology] resources and we were all fighting for transformation resources because we were all doing system implementations at the same time,” Tober said.
“It’s about building great relationships with those key stakeholders and influencing them as much as you can.”
She also brought in outside help in the form of Pinpoint HRM, having previously worked with the company on Oracle implementations.
“Within a week of making that first phone call, [Pinpoint HRM’s] CEO Craig [Aunger] and a couple of his consultants were sitting in the boardroom with our new CIO, who was new and had no team, our new chief transformation officer who was new had no team, and myself who was new and had no team, and we had a very open and honest conversation about ‘can we do this?’ in what, by that time, would’ve been 10 months.
“We all agreed that we could, and we kicked off the program very fast and furiously from there. Within a week we were doing a full day discovery session trying to understand what we thought we needed from the system.”
Tober said the implementation of Dayforce has been successful, and the right choice, but noted that she would have pushed for better visibility of Stockland’s systems if there had been more time built into the transition period.
“If we had more time, I would’ve taken more time to understand the configuration and setup in Stockland and what we needed to build into the future,” she said.
“I also – and I say this, but I don’t know whether I would’ve got it – would have almost demanded a secondment from Stockland into our organisation, because we felt like we were pretty blind during the whole process.
“So, if anyone operates under a TSA [transitional service agreement] and separates a business, try to get some secondees into your new organisation from the existing organisation.
“That would’ve been hugely helpful, and probably the one thing I would’ve really liked to have pushed for.
“Everything else would’ve been really nice to do, but in the end, we had a very good outcome.”
Tober also described cultural change activities that Levande ran simultaneously to standing up the new systems, with some of that work aimed at getting the 350 staff that came across from Stockland comfortable and familiar with a completely new suite of systems.
“Our people had to learn all new systems, all at the same time,” she said.
“To help with that change, we prioritised building a new culture that had a nod in respect to Stockland but had a focus on the future, and that focus on the future was the commitment to independent living of our retirees, the care and excellence we provide, and the trust that we provide across the sector.”
Tober said a group of “culture connectors” were assembled to drive the cultural change across the business.
“We made a deliberate decision to do that at the same time as all the other things, even though it would’ve been really easy to leave that and do it 12 months later, because we knew if we built the culture, that would help drive the change across the organisation,” she said.
“We had a ‘burning platform’ so it’s a little bit easier, but we used that ‘burning platform’ to be really clear about why we had to do what we had to do, and talk about how future state would look different to current state, and try and draw on some of those pain points like having different systems – one to do your timesheet, one to put your leave in etc. – and using those as the reasons for change and getting everybody on board.”
Tober said that there are also village change agent networks, or VCANs, in the 58 retirement villages “that got highly involved in all of our projects and transformation and separation work.”
She added, “These aren’t quite groundbreaking strategies, but I think really important things to put in place if you’re driving quite a big transformation.”
Ry Crozier attended Dayforce’s Daybreak conference in Sydney as a guest of Dayforce.