Case study: How Aurecon's CFO and CHRO delivered better employee experience

Long considered a transaction necessity, the digitalisation of human resources is dramatically transforming the HR function from a historically administrative role, to a key enabler of business growth.

Digital Nation spoke to Liam Hayes, global chief people officer at Aurecon, and Andrew Muller, chief financial officer at Aurecon to discuss how their partnership and the implementation of an HCM platform by Workday delivers better employee experience and more nimble decision making.

“We’ve been on a transformation journey as a business since 2015, and that has included the HR team,” he says.

“When I first stepped into this role in 2015, [we identified that] we needed to go on a digital HR transformation journey, some of the basic things for us around a common HR system, data sources, and to be able to understand who are the skills and talents that we have within the organisation?”

Hayes believes that Aurecon differentiates itself through the skill sets of its employees, allowing it to bring ideas to life with clients and navigate its digital transformation process.

Digital Transformation

Aurecon’s first stage of its digital transformation journey was a human capital management platform, which has since evolved to incorporate finance, information and HR – providing the company with what they call a single source of truth.

“I think having that system across finance and HR means that particularly for a business like ours, which is predominantly people-based organisation means that we have got confidence that we've got all the right data in front of our people at the right time,” says Hayes.

“That means that you should be able to make quicker, more nimble decisions and know that you're making decisions based on the right information.”

Aurecon’s HR transformation has driven collaboration across HR, Finance and IT, allowing the HR function to generate and demonstrate tangible business value.

Andrew Muller, chief financial officer at Aurecon

Muller says the company will be able to free up capacity in HR and shift the department towards a role that drives performance and growth.

The business’ focus on a seamless and simple employee experience, is a key component of the business strategy, says Muller.

“I think it's really important that the HR strategy isn’t seen as a separate strategy to business strategy. It's got to be seen as an enabler to the business strategy. We’ll continue to focus on digital transformation and continue to look for opportunities to digitise more of what we do within the Workday platform.” 

The video was produced by Josh Lundberg, Matthew Ryan and Tejas Bhat.