Workday has announced that the International Schools Partnership (ISP), a leading global network of schools committed to providing transformative education, has deployed and gone live on Workday Human Capital Management (HCM).
ISP is a community of 92 schools following the addition of 4 schools in India from the Indian Public Schools Group. Currently, 88 schools are live on Workday HCM. With these four set to go live in the near future, according to Workday.
ISP is a global community dedicated to growing the world’s most curious and confident minds. It provides learning, coaching and career paths that enable colleagues to progress in their professional careers.
With the adoption of Workday, it will bring more than a 12,000 workforce spread across 24 countries closer together. Workday will provide the technology backbone for the Schools to attract, develop and retain exceptional educators and staff. Workday will help it by enabling a better collaborative environment and supporting the championing of wellbeing worldwide.
As ISP expands internationally, new Schools and their educators can be brought onto the global system seamlessly. Thus taking advantage of the enterprise functionality that Workday provides. In the same way that ISP members look to nurture the skills of their pupils, Workday will help to nurture the employees of those Schools.
Jo Pertwee, Group Head of People Operations, International Schools Partnership, commented, “At ISP, we know that investing in our people is investing in the future of education. Workday will help us to both unify our HR processes and create a seamless and supportive employee experience, enabling our educators to focus on what they do best: inspiring students and fostering a love of learning. This is just the start of our journey with Workday and we’re excited at what the future holds.”
Enabling Global Thinking and Mobility with Workday
For a community of International schools the idea to deploy Workday HCM across its members is inspirational. While ISP appears to be a confederation of independent schools, it will benefit hugely from a common HCM platform. It will give the organisation a view of the global workforce. And enable schools to have a rich ecosystem to select teachers with experience teaching internationally. Every school will gain from having better operational processes nuanced for the regulatory and reporting environment that is found in each nation.
With the standardisation of HR processes, ISP can focus on attracting, retaining and developing top educators. Thus, providing them opportunities for career growth and a broader experience than may not have been possible before.
ISP has deployed the Workday Talent Optimisation module. This will help foster a collaborative environment where each individual has access to a tool to help track career skills and objectives to further their career. Feedback and recognition are baked into the system to propel each school’s staffing support to new heights.
Daniel Pell, CEO of UKI, Workday, commented, “Our solutions are purpose-built to help organisations like ISP navigate the complexities of managing a global workforce while maintaining a culture of learning and innovation. Workday will provide ISP with the insights and agility they need to achieve their ambitious growth plans and continue delivering exceptional educational experiences.”
Enterprise Times: What does this mean?
This is an interesting and brave choice by ISP to provide its members with an enterprise-level HCM solution. The potential benefits are huge, with each school having a solution that by itself it would never have considered deploying. Workday is well suited to an international organisation of this nature. It will be interesting to see how successful the deployment has been in a few years. Employee adoption will be crucial, though it will be interesting to see how ISP measures the success of this deployment.
Other international federations and communities might consider their approach to HRM systems. These organisations often want to nurture the global mobility of people within the organisation. Each member organisation may have the cost of supporting a local HRM solution. Workday (or other global HCM solutions) might provide a global and more effective solution for the organisation’s members as a whole.
One of the key questions around this announcement is how ISP gained the buy-in for individual members to make the decision. Second, what is next for ISP on its journey with Workday? Does it intend to implement more modules from Workday? Would it be possible to consider a Finance deployment for such a distributed organisation? Finally, could Workday work with ISP to internationalise its Student Management platform?
