Workday HCM Lead /Consutlant in Salisbury

Location: Hybrid working with office-based at Swindon, Stockton and Newport, with flexibility depending on business needs, UK

Duration: Permanent

Role Overview: Workday HCM Lead is a senior specialist role providing technical leadership and subject matter expertise across Workday Human Capital Management within a complex government shared services environment. Working as part of a multi-disciplinary delivery team, you will provide hands-on configuration expertise alongside technical leadership, design assurance and supervisory support. You will act as a senior trusted adviser and escalation point, ensuring solutions are robust, scalable, compliant and aligned to Client and wider government standards.

Key Responsibilities:

• Act as a senior Workday HCM authority, providing functional and technical leadership across areas such as:
• Core HCM
• Organisations, Staffing Models and Job Architecture
• Business Process Framework
• Compensation, Absence, Talent and/or Performance (depending on scope)
• Oversee ticket queue management across the AMS team, ensuring workload is prioritised effectively, and resources are aligned to demand.
• Enforce SLA/KPI frameworks, proactively monitoring performance against response and resolution targets and driving continuous improvement where breaches occur.
• Ensure effective communication with business stakeholders, providing timely updates on incidents, service performance, and changes impacting operations.
• Define, promote and assure best practice for Workday HCM configuration, design and support across the team.
• Provide technical assurance and peer review of designs, configurations and changes delivered by colleagues, system integrators and third-party suppliers.
• Lead and facilitate complex requirements-gathering and design workshops, translating business needs into clear functional designs and configuration decisions.
• Drive business process improvement, standardisation and optimisation in line with shared services and government best practice and reduce incident volumes.
• Oversee enhancements, releases and regulatory changes, ensuring quality, compliance and auditability.
• Provide oversight of testing activities including system testing, integration testing and user acceptance testing, acting as an escalation point for complex defects and issues.
• Build and maintain effective working relationships with senior HR stakeholders, programme leadership, architects and suppliers.
• Provide clear and timely communication of risks, options and recommendations to support decision-making.
• Support transition to service and ongoing operational support, including knowledge transfer, documentation and handover to support teams.
• Provide day-to-day technical supervision, coaching and mentoring to Band D/E colleagues and contractors.
• Contribute to capability development, knowledge-sharing and succession planning within the Workday team.

Essential Skills, Knowledge and Experience:

• Significant experience working with Workday HCM in a senior configuration, implementation or support role.
• Deep understanding of end-to-end HR processes within large, complex organisations.
• Proven experience providing technical leadership, assurance or oversight within ERP or SaaS environments.
• Experience supervising, mentoring or coaching other consultants, analysts or partners.
• Strong experience gathering, validating and translating complex business requirements into functional designs.
• Excellent stakeholder management and communication skills, with the ability to influence at senior levels.
• Experience working within a structured delivery environment, such as Agile, SAFe or hybrid methodologies.

Desirable Experience:

• Experience working within a government, public sector or shared services environment.
• Exposure to Workday Payroll and integrations with third-party payroll providers.
• Experience supporting Workday integrations, reporting and analytics.
• Previous experience with other ERP solutions (e.g. Oracle e-Business Suite or Fusion) to support transformation, data migration or operating model design.
• Relevant Workday or professional certifications.