Workday Functional Lead

Key Responsibilities

Functional Leadership

• Lead the Workday Payroll, Time Tracking, and Absence workstream within the ERP harmonization program.
• Serve as the primary functional advisor, providing guidance on Workday best practices and process optimization.
• Drive solution design decisions, identify risks, and recommend scalable solutions aligned with the organization's existing Workday environment.
• Facilitate workshops, discovery sessions, and requirements-gathering activities with key stakeholders and subject matter experts.
• Document business requirements, design decisions, assumptions, dependencies, risks, and open action items.

Solution Design & Configuration

• Assess current Payroll, Time Tracking, and Absence configurations and identify opportunities for reuse and optimization.
• Evaluate configuration changes required to support integration with Oracle Fusion.
• Lead future-state process design discussions and provide configuration recommendations.
• Partner with HRIS and technical teams to ensure solutions align with business requirements, compliance obligations, and operational needs.

Testing & Validation

• Support the development of testing strategies, test plans, and business scenarios for Payroll, Time Tracking, and Absence.
• Lead System Integration Testing (SIT), payroll parallel testing, User Acceptance Testing (UAT), and payroll validation activities.
• Coordinate defect management, triage, and resolution efforts.
• Ensure all payroll, time, and absence-related scenarios are thoroughly tested and formally approved by business stakeholders.

Integrations & Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Partner with integration teams to assess impacts across upstream and downstream systems.
• Review payroll, time, and absence-related integrations, interfaces, and data flows.
• Collaborate closely with HR, Payroll, Finance, Benefits, Digital, and project teams to align dependencies and project deliverables.
• Provide functional expertise related to reporting, security, data validation, and change management activities.

Deployment & Hypercare

• Support cutover planning, payroll readiness assessments, and deployment activities.
• Provide functional leadership during hypercare and stabilization periods.
• Facilitate knowledge transfer and transition activities for internal HRIS, HR, and Payroll teams.

Required Qualifications

• 8+ years of functional Workday experience with deep expertise in Payroll, Time Tracking, and Absence.
• Strong knowledge of Workday best practices, process optimization, configuration strategy, and scalable solution design.
• Experience supporting Workday workstreams as part of large-scale ERP implementations, business transformation initiatives, or system harmonization programs.
• Proven success leading requirements gathering, solution design, testing, deployment, and post-go-live stabilization activities.
• Experience assessing the impact of integrations, supporting systems, and business processes across a complex enterprise landscape.
• Demonstrated ability to collaborate effectively with HRIS, Payroll, business stakeholders, Digital teams, integration resources, and external implementation partners.
• Strong understanding of payroll operations, time management, absence administration, and related business processes.
• Experience working within complex, multi-stakeholder environments with competing priorities and interdependencies.
• Exceptional communication, facilitation, stakeholder management, and decision-making skills, with the ability to influence both technical and business audiences.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience implementing Workday Payroll within acquisition, merger, legal entity consolidation, or employee migration projects.
• Experience migrating employee populations into an existing Workday tenant, rather than supporting a net-new deployment.
• Knowledge of unionized workforce environments, complex pay practices, and workforce compliance requirements.
• Familiarity with Canadian payroll legislation, regulatory requirements, and payroll processes.
• Industry experience within energy, utilities, manufacturing, or other industrial sectors.