In this edition, we bring you stories about how business leaders across multiple industries are addressing some of today’s most pressing challenges. We also showcase takeaways from a session on how organizations can move beyond the status quo with their diversity and inclusion initiatives.
Welcome back to the Workday Rising Daily! It’s been a busy couple of days here at our customer conference in Orlando, Florida, with dozens of sessions focused on issues that are important to finance, human resources, and information technology professionals across various industries, and some opportunities for fun and relaxation, too.
Today we’ll take you deeper into the content of some of our sessions. Topics included improving employee retention in financial services, managing supply chain disruption in healthcare, and modernizing technology in government.
And in a session that addressed how organizations can move beyond the status quo in their belonging and diversity efforts, our Chief Diversity Officer Carin Taylor introduced a new acronym as a guide: PEACE (psychological safety, empathy, acceptance, connection, embrace). Keep reading to learn about these topics and more.
The quit rate for professional and business services in 2022 is double what it was in 2009—the year with the lowest quit rate for this industry in the last two decades. That stat, highlighted by Indy Bains, vice president of industry and oCFO solution marketing at Workday, kickstarted the industry keynote, “Future of Professional and Business Services: Adapt, Innovate, and Thrive.”
For people-based industries like professional services, a tighter labor market may hamper revenue growth. So what can professional services leaders do? Dan Priest, cloud and digital managing partner at PwC, explained that with the intense competition for talent, companies that offer differentiated employee experiences and “cool projects” that are matched with an employee’s skills will set themselves apart. To achieve this, organizations need the right combination of talent, technology, and data.
“Leveraging Workday’s technology will allow us to first get the basics right, which will simplify things for employees and put data into the fingertips of managers,” said Maryjo Charbonnier, Kyndryl CHRO. “That data will help Kyndryl with decision-making across the organization and more strategically managing its talent.”
And for successful transformation, collaboration is critical. “We’re bringing HR and finance together with IT to optimize services delivery,” said Joseph Fanutti, chief integration officer, Bill Gosling Outsourcing Corp. To help with this organizational collaboration, Fanutti is focused on “building the right people in the right skill sets to build a championship team.” He explained that this alignment will improve employee experience, which impacts revenue and helps ensure a thriving business in the long term.
If necessity is the mother of invention, then opportunity is its father. For the public sector, employee expectations about work, and citizen expectations about how they experience government services, sparked the need for innovative technology and services. This drive to reimagine the public sector coincided with an influx of federal funding for state and local governments.
“For the first time, federal funds exceeded general funds in 2021,” said Shelby Kerns, executive director of the National Association of State Budget Officers at the Workday Rising session, “Finance in the Public Sector: Future-Proofing Financial Management.” According to Kerns, those funds helped drive an estimated spending growth of 13.6%, the highest annual increase in more than 40 years.
And while these funds are a great opportunity to update legacy systems and reinvent government, the challenge for public sector finance leaders is building consensus on how to best use the newfound windfall while meeting the demands of the federal government. This requires collaboration across all levels of government, easy access to the right data, and streamlining the creation of audit reports.
“Most of our issues were around reporting,” said Michael Willis, county clerk of Tulsa County. “Having all the data at our fingertips at any given time has made a major difference.”
According to Cat Lamb, first deputy finance director of the City of Philadelphia, modernizing technology can help governments be more flexible. “Investment in technology is really an investment in an organization,” said Lamb. “When changes happen, they can be more nimble and adaptable.”
Building that foundation of flexibility through Workday also helps with attracting and retaining top-tier talent. “We have to be really timely when hiring people,” said Michelle McCrimmon, deputy chief financial officer of the City of Orlando. “People are not sitting around and waiting for governments to call about a job. They’re moving on to the next thing.”
The work of belonging and diversity has come to mean more than ensuring broader representation, said Carin Taylor, chief diversity officer at Workday, during the session, “Belonging and Diversity: Moving Beyond the Status Quo.”
“Our work is really about connection,” said Taylor. “How do we think about connection to people? How do we think about connection to process? How do we think about connection to technology? And how do we think about all the data and access that we have out there, and what do we actually do with it? How do we bring that all together and do better for our world?”
Thinking more broadly about representation, belonging, and diversity requires recognizing the diversity of everyone in the room and expanding the definition of diversity so that every single person can benefit, Taylor said.
She introduced an acronym, PEACE, as a way to foster the conditions where everyone can feel like they belong:
Psychological safety is creating trust, safety, and curiosity.
Empathy is showing care and compassion.
Acceptance is welcoming others’ authentic self.
Connection is helping people feel connected to their teams and their purpose.
Embrace the feeling of being valued, respected, and appreciated.
“When we think about these things beyond just this notion of representation and hiring for diverse talent, we get to a different place,” Taylor said.
Also at the panel, Michelle Marshall, head of diversity, equity, and inclusion at PUMA North America, shared the company’s belonging and diversity strategy called “reform the workplace.”
“I know that’s a bold thing to say that we are here to reform the workplace, but that’s what we truly wanted to do,” Marshall said. “We wanted to be intentional by ensuring that employees knew that we were going to do everything possible to make sure they have a true sense of belonging.”
Leaders from John Muir Health and Sharp HealthCare took the stage during the “Finance In Healthcare: How Finance and Supply Chain Drive Impact and Financial Stability” session at Workday Rising to share their insights on navigating lingering financial and supply chain disruptions due to the pandemic. Supply shortages over the last two-plus years have pushed prices up and have strained budgets and operating margins across the industry.
How can healthcare executives drive bottom-line impact while supporting their clinicians? Collaboration. To stay in lock-step, Chris Pass, CFO at John Muir Health, and Ryan Koos, chief supply chain officer at Sharp HealthCare, rely on Workday to drive automation and increase visibility between teams. This tight collaboration helped Sharp HealthCare drive $4.5 million in savings in just six months, while John Muir Health reported it significantly shortened the time it takes to close its books.
For Koos, building a resilient supply chain involves looking at near-shore suppliers to cut down on shipping costs as well as drilling down into the suppliers’ suppliers to identify any gaps in the end-to-end value chain. Pass highlighted the importance of being able to do more with less by empowering accounting teams with automation as John Muir Health continues to expand. Both executives agreed that technology will play a pivotal role in the future of healthcare, helping to connect finance with supply chain and ultimately improve both the clinician and patient experience.
That’s a wrap for today’s Workday Rising Daily. Join us back on the Workday Blog tomorrow for more stories on shared learnings at Workday Rising.
We’re excited to welcome customers, partners, and others in our community back to Workday Rising, our marquee customer event. Learn what we announced on the eve of the conference, including our plan to donate $1 million to organizations that reskill people for in-demand jobs in a low-carbon economy.
Learn what Workday leaders shared in our Innovation Keynote at Workday Rising, including new solutions for our customers. You’ll also find recaps from conference sessions on the challenges and opportunities facing finance, HR, and IT leaders in our changing world. Read more in the Workday Rising Daily.
At Workday Rising, we’re creating experiences aligned with our pillars of sustainability: measuring carbon impact, partnering with sustainable supply chains, waste reduction, and engagement.
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