Workday Podcast: How the CFO of Orlando Helps the City Grow

Rich McKay: Orlando is one of the fastest growing metro areas in the United States. All that growth requires new government services and infrastructure like roads, police stations, and parks. And it means the government must scale and change with it. 

I’m Rich McKay from Workday and I’m here with Michelle McCrimmon, the CFO of the City of Orlando. We’ll be talking about how she manages the city’s finances to help it prepare for the future.

Welcome to the podcast, Michelle. And thank you for joining us today.

Michelle McCrimmon: Sure. Thank you for having me.

McKay: So you were also recently appointed CFO by Mayor Dyer. Congrats.

McCrimmon: Thank you.

McKay: And could you share more about your journey in the role?

McCrimmon: Sure. Yeah. I mean, my journey isn't probably unique. Came out of public accounting, came into a high-level controller role here, and then promoted through the ranks and everything, so probably not so unique to other folks that are sitting in a CFO role. But what I will say is kind of no matter what position I've been in, whether it was kind of a staff right out of college or my role today, I think I've always tried to-- maybe it's because I had really hardworking parents that taught me a really strong work ethic. But I've always been very hardworking, curious. I ask a lot of questions.

I try and be helpful. So other departments, if they need something, if I can point them in the right direction, I will, if I can help them directly. So I always try and be helpful to whoever I'm reporting to or helpful to people that are reporting to me. And trying to find solutions. So if somebody needs something and we can't do it, "Well, we can't do that, but what can we do?" rather than just kind of a hard no. And then accepting mistakes. Mistakes are going to happen. And so if something has happened on my team, "Okay, this happened. Well, what are we going to do to make sure it doesn't happen again?" Right? And then finally, just being decisive. So there's a time where you got to stop asking questions. You've got all the information you're going to get. You've got to make a decision. And it may not always be the right decision. It may be wrong. But you can't just not make a decision and not move on. So I think those are kind of all the philosophies I think I've practiced over my career. But I think it's kind of helped get me where I am today.

McKay: Okay. That's awesome. Yeah. Thank you. Because you're asking the questions. You're getting to the decision. But you may not have all the answers, but you just got to make a choice because you got to move the team in a direction.

McCrimmon: Yeah. And at some point, too, you look around and you go, "Yeah, who's going to make that decision?" And you go, "Uh oh, that's me."

McKay: Is this why you kind of got into government, to kind of have this impact and to kind of make this difference in your local government? Is that why it's kind of exciting as well?

McCrimmon: So yeah, when you work at a local government, you're certainly able to help make the community that you live in better, right? But also, you get to cheat a little bit because you're doing really interesting work, exciting work. I've worked at the city since 2010 and can honestly say I've never been bored. And I mean, I came from a very high-paced-- lots of work, lots of interesting challenges. And I've had the same thing coming into the city in each role that I've held. 

And so kind of diving a little bit different, but that's some of the challenge with recruiting people in government, is a lot of times governments aren't necessarily the employer of choice, per se. If you talk to somebody graduating from college, they're not necessarily saying, "Oh, and I'm looking at the city's website to see what kind of jobs they have." Sometimes they're not even on the radar. They're looking at bigger companies that are in the area versus the local government. But there's so much you can do here. There's interesting work, challenging work, but yet you can really make a difference. So I'm really hoping we can kind of do a better job of marketing ourselves out there. We've got competitive pay. We've got competitive benefits. And the people that you work with are really bright, innovative, hardworking. So it's a great place to work.

McKay: So that's super interesting. I mean, in addition to that, are you noticing a demographic shift in people who are of retiring age compared to attracting maybe a younger demographic of people coming in, are you seeing that as well?

McCrimmon: Sure. We are seeing, certainly, younger folks coming into the city, whether they're new college graduates or just been working for a few years. We're definitely seeing a new shift, which is really exciting. Lots of new ideas, lots of energy. We're seeing folks that have been at the city for many, many years that are retiring. So lots of changes in leadership at all different levels of leadership. So we're certainly seeing a lot of shifting right now. And it's exciting because you think about all this kind of new people coming in, new ideas and everything. So it really becomes very, I think, critical to recognize kind of the future leaders and the future talent. And not just within your own area, so not just folks within my area, but there may be some folks that are future leaders that work in different departments that I want to get to know because maybe they would be a great fit in my department.

So one of the things that we're doing right now is we're implementing Workday's recruiting, and one of the things that the HR team has told me is that people will be able to kind of mark job interests. And so internal people can say, "Oh, you know what? If that job comes open, I want to be notified about it." And so they can mark that. And then if the job does come open, they'll get notified about it. But what I love the idea of is if somebody is interested in a job within my department, I want to know that somebody outside-- I want to know what they're interested in so we can have a conversation even before all of that happens. Because I think it's just important to, again, kind of identify that future talent and create that excitement, I think, within the city.

Mckay: Okay. Awesome. So what challenges have you experienced in government finance? And how has that kind of impacted your role?

McCrimmon: Sure. So Orlando is a growing city and not just kind of within the city limits, but the whole central Florida area is growing. We have a ton of new people moving here. We've got new businesses coming in. So we have just growing needs from operational needs. We've got more needs for public safety, more services that are being demanded. We've got infrastructure needs, not just new fire stations, new parks, new roads, but we've got to maintain all of our existing infrastructure as well. So lots of challenges just managing all of those needs with-- we've got a growing tax base, but your needs are always going to outweigh your finances, basically. So it's just kind of trying to find that balance each year and kind of building for the future as well.

McKay: That's great. So you've worked for the City of Orlando since 2010. So first, starting in a controller position, now as the CFO. So how has that finance department evolved since you've started there? And how has kind of Workday maybe helped as a sub-question?

McCrimmon: Yeah. So when I started as controller, we were not on Workday. We implemented Workday. We went live with Workday in 2014, so just shy of four years after I started. So really, I guess we started that project just a couple of years into my role. 

So before, we were completely dependent on IT to maintain the system. If we needed reports, they had to create the reports. If we had any upgrades, they kind of managed that piece. 

And so when we implemented Workday, it kind of put more control into the hands of our finance team, which has been great. So if we want to enhance something, if we want to create reports, we can do that. If we want to look up information, we can do that. So I think that's been a really key change for us.

McKay: Exactly, So what are your transformation goals in the coming year? And how do you manage change and ensure large projects succeed?

McCrimmon: From an operational perspective, there's so much growth in technology and AI. We keep hearing about AI and the impact to government. And so it's really, I think, balancing the needs and demands that our departments have for more IT, more technology, and then trying to kind of figure out this AI thing. How is that really going to help us versus it just kind of being a buzzword?  But at the same time, we have to balance kind of our growing technology needs but keeping our environment safe as well, so it's certainly a balance there. And then we talked a little bit about just kind of our recruiting and retention. That's critical. People are our biggest assets here. And if we don't get that right, we're not going to continue to be successful. So just making sure we can recruit top talent here, pay them well, give them challenging work, and then retain the great talent that we do have today by continuing to give them challenging work and continuing to develop them and train them. So I think those are kind of my biggest goals over the next few years.

McKay: Yeah. It's so interesting. It is all about the people, even with technology. So how do you prepare your organization or your people for change and knowing when to implement technology or adopt new technology and preparing your team for that change so they don't go, "Oh, it's just another tool. I'm busy. I already have this, and that shift is going to be a lot of work"? So how do you get people ready once you've kind of made that decision?

McCrimmon: So most of that is department-initiated. And so really, it becomes more of a resource issue, just prioritizing all of these needs and vetting them as well because-- making sure that, again, our environment is safe. But as far as kind of pushing things out, when we implemented Workday, that was probably the biggest kind of push, so to speak, when we implemented. We went live with HCM and financials, and so that really was pushed out to our employees as the new system that they need to interact with. And so really, when we implemented in 2014, a big kind of communication that we made to folks is that it was going to be easy to use, but there was going to be change. There's some things that-- they filled out papers, and they dropped them off to our payroll team, they dropped them off to our HR team, and now they're going in themselves. And so when we implemented Workday, one of our kind of slogans that we had on posters and everything around the city was, "If you can Google, you can Workday" to try and send the message that, "Hey, it's going to be easy to use. We gotcha." Because we have a lot of different folks. Not all of them are sitting at a computer all day. Some of them are out there in the fields working. But probably 99% of our folks have some kind of smartphone, so we know they've used technology. So it's just making sure they understand that, "Hey, if you use your technology on your phone, you're going to be able to use the system as well." And that was successful, I think.

Mckay: Can you talk about the challenges of tracking and reporting on funds, allocating cash flows to the right projects, financial planning, etc., and how Workday helps with that?

McCrimmon: Sure. Reporting with Workday has been great. We can easily analyze and research the spending and reviewing details on different transactions. So that's been really helpful, not only operational transactions, but even the many capital projects that we have. So Workday has been a critical role for monitoring our budget and then, of course, our financial reporting that we have to do with our ACFR. So I think just that transparency and ease of use has been fantastic, not only for kind of the core accounting budget folks, but even folks in the department. So I think that's been great. We also just kind of did a partial implementation of Adaptive Planning as our budgeting tool. So I think Workday's just been a-- it's been a great tool, I think, for everybody in digging in and quickly being able to get to the information we need.

McKay: So any advice about attracting and retaining talent? And what do you look for when building finance teams?

McCrimmon: Yeah. It's a tough question, and I wish I had all the answers. But a couple simple things that I've found over my time as a leader is-- and this is kind of a basic one, but be timely with your recruiting. So if you post a job and people apply for it and you get that list from HR, go through that list and contact those people that you're interested in and do it timely. Do it quickly. Because for one thing, I think you can lose good candidates quickly. If they're in the market looking for a job and they're that good, somebody's going to call and interview them and they're going to get scooped up. But another thing is I think it sets a good impression to people that they see the importance that job is. If they bother to apply for the job and you timely reach out to them, they're saying, "Wow, they really want to get this position filled." And I think it also says a lot about just your overall responsiveness if you set something up and quickly, and follow up, and if you say you're going to call them, you call them. So I think there's some basics that we can do because I think a lot of times we shoot ourselves in the foot in local government with the recruiting. You may get these great candidates, but if you don't follow up with them for two months, you're not going to get them in the door because they're already gone.

And then once you do start meeting with folks, I think really looking for people that have those soft skills and that are trainable. You want somebody that's hardworking, that's curious. Obviously, you want somebody with the experience you're looking for, but sometimes you may not find that perfect person that kind of fits exactly. They're doing the exact same thing you're looking for. Maybe not, but it may be something close, and it may be that you've got somebody that you know is going to hunger to learn, and they're going to be hardworking. So I think that's important.

And then I also think it's important to develop tomorrow's leaders as well. So I do think-- and that's one of my goals with my team, is to make sure we're developing training plans for our team. I think it sends a great message to employees that you're willing to invest in their development. I think it gives them confidence. Maybe there's some leadership classes that they can take. I've talked to people that they never really thought of themselves as someone who could be a leader, and all it takes is just a little bit of conversation and some encouragement, and they're ready to go. And it keeps them interested as well, I think, in the city, in their job, and maybe opens up other opportunities in the city as well. I'm always sad if-- if people leave because of a better opportunity, I mean, I'm sad to see them go, but I always say I'd rather see them stay with the city and go with another department. So at least the city is still continuing to keep a good person rather than losing them altogether. So those are some of my thoughts on the issue of recruiting and retention.

McKay: So many governments struggle with harnessing data and gleaning valuable insights to fuel decision-making and better serve their citizens. How do you build a robust data strategy and use Workday?

McCrimmon: Well, I mentioned we closely use Workday to monitor our finances. And we produce quarterly budget reports that are available to the public at any time, and we utilize Workday to put that together. One thing is we use a lot of third-party systems at the city to track more operational-type data that maybe wouldn't be something native for Workday to track. But I would love to create some use cases to be able to pull some of that data in and to leverage that operational data with the Workday financial data and some of the HR data as well to kind of run some KPIs that we use for our budget book. And so I'd love to see us kind of utilize all of the information together in one robust system. So at some point, that's kind of a future, I think, project for us.

But another challenge that we have that is kind of-- we've developed an executive dashboard. We haven't necessarily rolled it out just yet. But one of the challenges that we have is we know that all of our super users get into Workday and do everything they need to do transactionally, reports, all of that. But a lot of the higher executives at the city, they don't necessarily use Workday to get information that they need. They'll ask somebody who they know knows how to get the information for that, but they won't necessarily go into Workday themselves and look for that. So we're trying to really kind of set this executive dashboard up so that at least somebody can look-- if they look at anything, they can at least go in and look at that. And maybe that gets them curious about like, "Okay. Well, this is nice, but what really would help me is this," but kind of engaging them more. 

McKay: We get out the crystal balls a little bit. But what do you see as the future of government, tech trends, etc.? And you mentioned AI before and how you're starting to bring out use cases for that and how to better use that. So what do you see as the future of government?

McCrimmon: Yeah. I mean, I guess I keep going back to recruiting and retention. But I mean, I would love to see government as the future kind of employer of choice. We've got everything the private sector has in terms of interesting work, technology. And then we talked about, it enables you to serve the community that you live in and to really make a difference by doing the job you love, whether it's in finance or planning or whatever the case may be. 

I also think we need to do a better job of communication with the public. And especially, I think, in finance, I think it's key to building trust. It's important to be transparent with the public, but not necessarily just throwing a bunch of data online and going, "Well, here it is. Here's this big Excel spreadsheet. You can flip through the thousands of lines of data. We're giving you everything. Here it is." But really making sure there's meaningful information for them to see so that if we have to raise fees, they understand that it's because of inflation, because of rising costs, because of growing needs, not the assumption that it's mismanagement, right, because they're comfortable with what we've communicated, and they feel like they've got enough information to kind of trust us.

And I present to our commissioners. I present to the public at different events. And I always love when I can get in front of a group of folks and kind of break things down a little bit so that they see that it's kind of not as complex as they think it is when you kind of break down everything into bite sizes and explaining what each of these lines are and why we do some of the things we do. And so every time I do that and I kind of see people actually not falling asleep when I'm talking about government finance, they're actually kind of leaning in and are interested, it reiterates the point that we just need to do a really good job of better communicating with our folks.

And then, just in local government, you have the challenge that you are trying to be-- a lot of times your residents are looking for you to solve everything, so. And just like many other cities, we've got affordable housing and homeless issues, and it's a big issue. We're not going to be able to solve either one of them, but we can certainly partner with and leverage our resources with other organizations to really make some real changes in those areas, so. I could go on and on, but that's probably the main things I see with our future.

McKay: Okay, excellent. And thank you so much for this conversation today. It's been really wonderful and, yeah, thanks for joining us.

McCrimmon: Yeah, thank you so much. Appreciate it.

McKay: We've been talking with Michelle McCrimmon from the City of Orlando. Be sure to follow us wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. And remember, you can find our entire podcast catalog at Workday.com/podcast. I'm your host, Rich McKay, and I hope you have a great workday.