Workforce Insights / Blog / VISION 2024: Ignite Conference—Day 1 Recap

VISION 2024: Ignite Conference—Day 1 Recap

Welcome to VISION 2024: Ignite!

The energy was on fire as VISION 2024: Ignite kicked off today in Hollywood, Florida. This year’s conference promises to be our most transformative yet, bringing together a powerhouse community of industry experts, Human Capital Management (HCM) thought leaders, and our passionate team — all united by a common goal: igniting the future of work.

WorkForce Software leaders, Jeff Moses, Chief Executive Officer, Sanda Moran, Chief Marketing and Customer Experience Officer, and Nicole Neumarker, Chief Operating Officer kicked off VISION 2024: Ignite with thought-provoking opening remarks that set the stage for the day.

“This year’s theme is an homage to what it takes to ignite change.”

Sandra Moran | Chief Marketing and Customer Experience Officer at WorkForce Software

Here’s a peek at a day packed with insights, practical tools, and inspiring discussions.

The Future of Work is Not a Place

Our keynote speaker, Heather McGowan, Future of Work Strategist, explored a context of work that’s more encompassing than the remote vs office conversation. She dug into what we do, how we do it, why we do it, and who does it. Heather explained the swift societal, cultural, and technological shifts that propelled us into an era where we can humanize work to create higher performance. She says we need to reframe our perspectives on talent, culture, engagement, and, notably, leadership to accomplish this.

“Trust is how we build engagement; trust is how we build performance.”

Heather McGowan | Future of Work Strategist

Session Highlights

Pilots to Performance: WestRock’s Implementation Journey to Achieving Milestones, Results, and Sustainability

Taryn Emerson, Director IT, HR Strategy & Portfolio, and Jonathan Neff, Sr. Program Manager, Human Resources at WestRock, along with Dave Melody, Director, Services from WorkForce Software, recounted WestRock’s comprehensive approach to trade union engagement, financial management, and site engagement, which was pivotal in expanding from 19 to 230 sites.

They discussed the challenges, lessons learned, and strategic considerations that have shaped their journey, including adopting a hybrid model for post-production support and continuous management. They also covered the importance of a solid partnership with business and HR to drive engagement, the evolution of the hypercare model, and the transition to cloud-based solutions, emphasizing the balance between business and IT ownership and the strategic role of Application Management Services (AMS) in achieving financial and operational goals.

“[Implementation success] is your ability to align people, processes, an technology. Your true value lies in your ability to have strong adoption.”

Taryn Emerson | Director IT, HR Strategy & Portfolio at Westrock

Novartis’ Journey to Smart Automation in Workforce Management

Soumen Chowdhury, Global Head of Time Service Delivery at Novartis, shared their vision for the future, focusing on technology automation to prepare the workforce for upcoming challenges, particularly in production plants. Soumen covered their exploration of smart automation, the role of change management, and the unique aspects of their journey, including the global blueprint design. He talked through the strategies Novartis implemented to automate processes, including the benefits realised from increased efficiency and productivity that positioned Novartis for success.

“We are looking to enrich the entire journey of our associates, empower them so they can do things like shift substitutions from their mobile device.”

Soumen Chowdhury | Global Head of Time Service Delivery at Novartis

Sun Chemical’s Global Workforce Unification: Panel Discussion with Sun Chemical and Accenture

Kathy Bailey, HR Specialist, Time and Attendance ATY of Sun Chemical and Inna Bolotina from a team from Accenture lead participated in a panel about their path through international compliance, intricate parallel testing, and uniting disparate locations under a single strategy. Sun Chemical’s partnership with Accenture’s WorkForce Software practice demonstrated significant success in navigating hurdles to create a more efficient and cohesive global workforce environment. Several learnings were shared including this:

“Having front-line supervisors and operations teams involved in requirements sessions was very helpful.”

Kathy Bailey | HR Specialist, Time and Attendance at Sun Chemical

Autoliv Presented Optimizing Time Off Requests: A Mobile & Hybrid Approach to Internal Processes

Kya Hadley, Payroll Supervisor at Autoliv, dove into the practical implementation of a mobile option for time off requests, addressing the unique challenges of clock systems and internal communications. Kya covered the journey toward a live system, emphasizing the importance of internal training, overcoming communication hurdles, and navigating the approval process with multiple supervisors and managers. She also discussed adopting a hybrid model for system maintenance, balancing self-sufficiency with the support of Application Management Services (AMS), and the critical role of system training in project management and operational success.

“This process saves about 20 minutes per annual leave report. We pull the report 6 times per day. This is a total savings of about two hours daily.”

Kya Hadley | Production Shift Lead at Autoliv

New Entity HCM: Igniting Your WorkForce Implementation with the Power of Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence is the biggest buzzword in technology recently so Lou Alicegary, Managing Partner and Ayden Hodgins, Principal Solution Architect at New Entity HCM, explored the possible ways AI tools could be applied to a WorkForce implementation.

“Roughly 70% of our partners and clients have introduced language into MSA’s to tackle the use of AI.”

Ayden Hodgins | Principal Solution Architect at New Entity HCM

New This Year: Industry Roundtables

VISION 2024 hosted the following industry roundtables. The discussions were an inclusive and collaborative opportunity for participations to meet with others in their industry.

Manufacturing (Sponsored by Hackett Group)

This informative discussion spanned aerospace to wireless technologies and offered a unique opportunity for manufacturing leaders to connect. This discussion largely centred on the employee experience including how companies think about it, prioritise it, and how to develop initiatives and digital technology to improve things like rostering flexibility, and supervisor enablement.

“You have to think about your frontline workers. They don’t have desktop computers.”

Roundtable Participant

Natural Resources (Sponsored by Accenture)

This conversation connected leaders from energy production, mining, petrochemicals, refining, and energy distribution to collaborate on best practices, discuss shared solutions, and strengthen their global network. Participants who are live with WorkForce Software solutions also shared advice for a successful implementation like:

Partner with key stakeholders
Document knowledge and processes from your subject matter experts
Document changes in a consolidated searchable location and tool
Work with a strong System Integrator or the WorkForce Software team
Grant yourself enough time to implement
Account for complex rules to support things like Collective Bargaining Agreement
Have dedicated resources to work on the implementation

“One of our biggest learnings was to include everybody involved. Bringing people in from the field to define requirements and do testing was very important.”

Roundtable Participant