Sydney Water is implementing Dayforce to underpin a workforce transformation, coinciding with the “dawn of a new era” at the utility that is driving investment in backend technology systems.
Lynda McClelland, far left, on a panel at Dayforce Daybreak.
Head of people experience programs Lynda McClelland told the Dayforce Daybreak conference that the water and wastewater treatment services provider drafted its current workforce strategy four years ago when she joined.
Through that effort, McClelland noted that it “became really clear” that some “base technology” would be needed to start to transform the workforce, in addition to culture change and other elements.
The results of a payroll audit around the same time led to some initial funding, and McClelland said the transformation slowly took shape as additional investment requests were tied to milestones in the workforce strategy.
McClelland said that Sydney Water spent considerable time planning, and defining objectives and requirements as part of the procurement process,
“By the time we finally came to choose a product and a systems integrator, we were really clear on what we did and didn’t need,” she said.
“It means that we’ve 1726520148 sped through the design phase because we did so much work upfront. That was a really good investment.”
That work took between two and four years and covered a significant effort to standardise and simplify business architecture and process ownership in preparation for the re-platforming of people systems.
It culminated in the decision to use Dayforce as the people management technology platform, and Deloitte as the systems integrator. Deloitte said it had started work on the project earlier this year.
Aside from a new technology platform being seen as necessary to achieving its workforce strategy and transformation objectives, McClelland noted that the investment coincided with an internal shift at Sydney Water around technology project funding.
“We’ve done a lot of investment in the past 10 years into core services and the technology that supports the go-to-market and customer facing asset, so things like digital intelligence and automation in our water and wastewater treatment plants,” she said.
“[At the same time], there’s [been] underinvestment in our backoffice.
“About two years ago we realised that enabling functions are equally as important as the customer-facing functions, so we’re now in this ‘dawn of a new era’ where there’s investment in backend systems at the moment, which has been fantastic”.
McClelland said that investment in enabling systems had flow-on impacts to the frontline.
“It can create value and connect to the delivery of customer services,” she said.
“You can be more efficient, your people are happier because they’re more enabled, and they can spend more time delivering services.
“We’ve been trying to keep the narrative around transformation in the HR domain [linked] with transformation of customer service and customer-led results.”
In addition to securing funding for the deployment of Dayforce, McClelland highlighted the importance of having some money set aside for continuous improvement once the system is in place.
“The transformation doesn’t stop once the project goes live,” she said.
“There’s going to be a product backlog, there’s going to be stuff you didn’t know existed until you got your hands on it, [and] people are going to be excited at the potential when you launch something big like this, so have to bake money into your budget [on an] ongoing [basis].”
Ry Crozier attended Dayforce’s Daybreak conference in Sydney as a guest of Dayforce.