“We’ll care for you so you can care for others.” That’s the employee value proposition (EVP) St John of God Health Care offers the doctors and nurses who work in its healthcare facilities.
When Chief People Officer Carla Bonev talked to her CEO about how to live up to this promise, Bonev’s starting point was to improve service delivery by replacing antiquated people processes with a modern, intuitive, and employee-friendly system. “We also needed to improve the quality of data insights so we knew who needed what kind of support,” says Bonev. “From that perspective, investing in a product like Workday became absolutely essential.”
Bonev says the choice of Workday came down to three factors: “Really understanding the health sector, very strong credentials in Australia, and the great experience we knew busy nurses on a ward would have interacting with the Workday system.”
Improving the candidate experience.
In a sector with major skills shortages, getting new people in place quickly is vital. Since St John of God Health Care deployed Workday, the time to issue a contract and onboard a new candidate has dropped significantly.
The organization has also benefited from a clear view of its workforce. “At the start, just being able to visualize our structure through user-friendly charts was huge for us,” says Bonev. The organization then began looking for opportunities to improve other interactions. “Now, armed with data insights from Workday, we are constantly streamlining and improving the experience people have with our organization.”
Bonev is looking forward to conducting employee engagement surveys to gather individual feedback and measure satisfaction when the Workday Talent Management module is rolled out.
We’re getting lots of great feedback about the candidate experience with Workday.
Chief People Officer
Streamlining HR processes.
Less visible to employees, but just as important to Bonev, Workday has transformed HR administration. St John of God Health Care processes up to 25,000 contract changes a year, previously requiring an enormous manual effort. Automation has removed the bulk of this burden from the HR organization, freeing people to focus on responding to the data insights that Workday surfaces.
Having a well-set-up, well-governed, and automated system like Workday has been a game changer.
Chief People Officer
Empowering leaders with data.
After deployment, leaders quickly started to search for data in Workday to find out how best to support their caregivers. Now Bonev is setting up a new raft of reports to put additional information into the hands of people managers, where it’s most valuable. The organization will soon receive detailed talent information, trends around sick leave and annual leave, and data from performance and development systems. “These will all be key inputs to help drive organizational outcomes,” Bonev explains.
Achieving organizational goals.
St John of God Health Care partnered with KPMG to support the Workday deployment. Bonev is pleased by the open and collaborative nature of the joint Workday/KPMG team. “From the get-go there was an absolute focus on making sure that we achieved the goals we set ourselves before deploying the system,” Bonev says.