There’s no question – Workday is rightly revolutionising the HR, Finance, and Cloud ERP space. European adoption increased more than 100% in the last 18 months alone, with both midmarket and enterprise businesses benefiting from how practical and intuitive it is.
But there’s a catch. To maximise your return on investment and minimise whole life costs, you need to implement Workday correctly. And that means you need the right people to help with implementation, training and management. When your organisation has those skills in place, you can achieve the holy grail – a seamless software implementation and digital transformation initiative.
However, too many businesses are making mistakes with their Workday recruitment – and aren’t getting the right value as a result.
We have more than 60 years’ combined Workday-specific recruitment. Here are common mistakes we see companies make.
Mistake 1: Hiring people from outside of Workday
Yes, there are lots of ERP solutions on the market, many of which come from big global software houses. But one reason Workday is disrupting the space is that it’s so different from the competition.
Lots of companies I speak to have recruited people with other SaaS ERP experience but not Workday experience. Why? Because Workday is comparatively new, and the job market is small, niche and candidate-driven. Compare this to other solutions, which have had 20 to 30 years to build a large network of certified specialists.
But this approach leads to a false economy, because without the right skills you lose time and money on your deployment.
Mistake 2: Using standard recruitment processes for Workday specialists
I just said that the Workday market is small, niche and candidate-driven. And that means finding the right person isn’t as easy as posting an advert on an online job site and waiting for CVs to flood in. Nor can you go to a general recruiter and expect them to find you top talent in the often tight timescales Workday implementations require.
The Workday candidate pool can be as small as 5 people for a specific skill in a given country. And those 5 people are in demand, not sitting on job boards or generalist recruiter databases.
You can’t wait for the right people to come to you – you need to be proactive about finding candidates with the right skills. Otherwise, you could be waiting weeks or months, and dealt with the inevitable timeline slips as a result.
Mistake 3: Selling the company, not the project
This is a common mistake at enterprise level. Because the brand name carries cachet when recruiting for standard positions, companies use this approach ‘sell’ a Workday role during interview.
But having a big brand name on their CV isn’t the draw for Workday experts – it’s the project complexity. The more interesting the project, the more appealing it will be. And big doesn’t necessarily mean complex. In fact, smaller deployments can often be more enticing because the companies are embryonic with fewer established processes.
So don’t waste time going through your company’s vital statistics. Give candidates juicy project details and emphasise the intricate nature of the challenges ahead.
Mistake 4: Taking too long to decide
The Workday recruitment market moves quickly. I was speaking to a solutions architect the other week, and he’d had 5 calls in that one day. The best people – the ones who will deliver the most value and insulate your project from overrun and delays – are in demand.
So don’t take a week deciding whether to extend an offer. Think about the success factors before the interview. Have the contracts drawn up and ready to send out. And act the same day, if not within hours. Otherwise, you’ll miss out on who you want.
Mistake 5: Not considering how you’ll resource your support model
We often find that companies focus on the skills needed to get through to go-live. That includes pre-planning, planning, architecture, configuration, prototyping, testing and deployment. But their recruitment falls off after that – and then don’t have the resource to support and develop the software. This means they have trouble maximising ongoing value.
So ask yourself – what are your plans for after your certified partner leaves? Who will be helping staff with ongoing training and troubleshooting? Who will be planning future add-ons and upgrades? Who will ensure the system stays aligned with the business’ strategy?
These are different skills to those required during implementation, but they’re vital. So plan your resources, keeping in mind likely internal permanent staff turnover after go-live.
After all, Workday is about long-term digital transformation. So make sure you have the medium- to long-term outlook when it comes to recruitment.
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Credit - Lloyd Gordon - CEO | Focus Cloud