7-Eleven was a 43-year-old business with 43-year-old people systems and processes. Everything was manual and paper based. Its systems didn’t connect to each other. There was no single source of employee data to make more insightful business decisions. Data was often incomplete, and reporting was limited and time-consuming.
“We faced challenges to quickly ascertain how many permanent, maximum term, agency or contingent workers we had in our network. I couldn’t easily tell you where they were, their tenure, gender, capability, qualifications, diversity attributes, career aspirations or work experience. When someone in our store network changed locations or hours, people had to complete numerous paper-based forms and there was major duplication of activity.”
Challenges.
To continue leading the convenience space and reach its goal of a billion customer transactions by 2030, 7-Eleven needed a different way to manage and engage its people.
7-Eleven wanted to bring real insight into the business and empower people to take action from it. Its need was bigger than transforming HR. The goal was to transform the entire business, with HR as a key player in that process. 7-Eleven wanted to become more productive, make smarter decisions and have an incredible employee experience.
Workday aligns very strongly to our company values. They’re bold, they care about the customer and they’re innovative. We also knew Workday would push us to embrace continuous improvement.
Head of HR Performance, People and Communications
Why Workday.
7-Eleven was looking for a proven, seamless cloud-based, end-to-end solution with proven integration with its payroll system, and an ability to integrate to its Mulesoft middleware. It needed to offer an exceptional, intuitive user experience and support real-time data and mobility.
“We were looking for a partner that strives to continually improve its solution and pushes our business to improve, one that has the right data security capabilities, advanced analytics and scalability to fit our business,” says Christine.
“The main reason we chose Workday was because they approached the tender process trying to understand our business. They weren’t just trying to sell us a product. They were humble, insightful and customer centric. Workday also had a really premium end-to-end product with proven integrations to other systems that we knew would help us achieve our strategy and drive our business forward.”
Better people experience.
Only four months since they went live with the system, 7-Eleven has seen exceptional uptake from users, predominantly on mobile, thanks to an enhanced user experience. Recruitment, onboarding, performance/goal setting and ESS business processes are all being used frequently.
“We’re doing innovative things in the digital space for our customers, and now we can provide that same experience for employees as well. We don’t want our employees to fill out a paper form or a manual spreadsheet, we want them to experience digital change in the tools that they use from onboarding to training to development. We believe that if we create a good experience, people will stay with the company longer,” says Christine.
We recognised Workday as an innovative people technology solution partner. The agile and continuous improvement mindset fostered at Workday complements our people strategy with the end user front of mind.
Head of HR Performance, People and Communications
Improved performance.
Workday’s solution gives 7-Eleven’s managers and directors access to a new reporting, analytics, learning, performance and talent module. Housed in one system, the newly available data is helping 7-Eleven to uplift capability by providing team members with access to development opportunities and clarity on performance objectives. Leaders are using the performance module strongly to ensure team members are clear on the goals they need to achieve.
From a store manager perspective, Workday takes the unnecessary administration out of managing their teams. “Store managers are able to focus more of their time on their employees’ experience and specifically the management of performance and talent,” says Christine.
Value for money.
“I think a lot of HR people struggle with the cost of the license. What they don’t realise is you have to consider the full cost of life,” says Christine. “Some providers come in low and then hit you later with add-ons. It’s not just about the license fee but it’s about, once you’ve deployed, how many people are you going to have internally to support the solution? And how much of that is ongoing? How easily can processes be reconfigured and enhanced as business needs inevitably change? How much is it going to cost to do additional patches to other IT systems? How difficult will it be to complete regression testing? Will this investment stand the test of time and continue to interface with other key systems like workforce planning or finance solutions? It’s like buying a car and then finding out you’ll be charged extra for hubcaps.”
Value-added decisions.
One of the most critical benefits is 7-Eleven’s opportunity to make insightful, data-driven decisions.
“Already we’re seeing real cash flow benefits for example in the way we manage leave liability and leave leakage. During our Christmas shutdown, we were able to quickly ascertain leave booked. Whereas, in the past, our legacy systems didn’t provide this quick and reliable snapshot,” says Christine.
“Before Workday, it would have taken my team weeks to view our absenteeism figures and look at our employee spread by state. Now, I’ve got the data at my fingertips with an ability to provide accurate reports to our C-Suite team within minutes.”
“Previously, our staffing was reactive and was solely focused on putting someone into a store and filling a shift. We’ve shifted our strategy to be more proactive. We’re now constantly thinking about things like: Do we have people with the right skills that this particular store needs? Are our employees engaged? Are we looking at our employees for the long term rather than just expecting them to stay with us for a short stint and leave us to build a career elsewhere?” says Christine.
I think the future for our business is limitless with Workday—it’s a dream partnership. I truly believe it will transform our business and help us maintain our lead as a convenience business in the Australian market.
Head of HR Performance, People and Communications
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- Blog: How 7-Eleven Is Driving Digital Innovation
