Macquarie University is undergoing a human resources system transformation with the help of Accenture, moving to a new Workday platform and offering more self-service capabilities.

People and services VP Nicole Gower told Workday’s Elevate summit last month the university’s “HR system” until now was made up of “patchwork” of smaller systems, though much of the complexity was shielded from users.

Gower said – “We don’t actually have one HR system. We have a payroll system, we have a talent and recruitment management system, we had multiple timekeeping systems, we’ve had learning management systems – and that patchwork approach created some real challenges for us.

Alongside better integration, Gower said the existing environment had capability gaps, particularly in areas such as talent management and workforce planning, that the university hoped to now address.

Gower further stated that despite the backend challenges, the university’s HR service delivery model – that is, what users saw – “is actually quite mature and is very well respected across the university.”

“We’ve got great HR advice, we’ve got great HR strategic services, and we’ve got high levels of credibility across the university, so we’re starting from a really good platform,” she added.

The desire to transform led Macquarie University to consolidate HR onto Workday, with Accenture brought in to assist. Chief information officer Tim Hume saw full transformation of the IT platform as necessary.

Gower said that implementing Workday came with a commitment to continuously improve the technology underpinning HR. Having all of HR run out of one system will also lead to a consolidation of the university’s ‘people data’, which can then be used in more “data-informed decision-making”.