Reshaping HR at Circle Health Group

Circle Health Group operates the UK’s largest network of private hospitals, with more than 6,500 specialists including 4,000 consultants. It provides a wide range of medical treatments and receives more than two million patient visits every year.

Serving millions of patients 

As Circle Health Group expanded through organic growth and acquisitions, it developed a complex IT landscape, including disparate legacy systems for payroll, recruitment and HR. This meant that business processes were disjointed and cumbersome.

Furthermore, the HR team had to spend significant time helping hospital directors ensure they had the right number of clinical, non-clinical and administrative staff with the right skill sets to deliver the care required by patients. This was challenging, because the legacy systems provided limited visibility. HR needed to access multiple systems to check time and attendance, review job roles and assess future candidates. Furthermore, when staff worked across several locations and sites, multiple systems needed to be updated manually. This amounted to a high degree of manual work, requiring various checks and balances to ensure accuracy.

Translating objectives into a robust plan

Circle Health Group decided to work with PwC in partnership with Workday, due to our experience in the healthcare industry, our reputation and our status as a Workday Partner.

During the discovery phase, we developed an open, honest and collaborative relationship with the Circle Health Group team to understand current processes with an eye to providing an opportunity to streamline those processes using the Workday technology.

Next, we worked closely with the client to translate their objectives into a detailed plan. This included automating critical HR processes and replacing the legacy payroll, recruitment and HR systems with a single Workday solution that delivers broad functionality, real-time insights and a more inclusive employee experience.

Unlocking massive productivity gains

The Workday solution enables Circle Health Group to dramatically improve productivity in its HR team. For example, the company aims to transform employee onboarding from a four-week process involving significant manual work across several systems, to an automated process completed in days using a single, mobile-first app.

Additionally, Circle Health Group has built the capability to replace its manual, ad-hoc reporting with centralised, automated, self-service, real-time reporting powered by the Workday solution. This will shape a far better experience for hospital directors. The HR team expects huge time savings once the reporting is fully rolled out and training complete.

Furthermore, the reporting process will be far more efficient and less error-prone because the legacy payroll, recruitment and HR systems have been decommissioned and replaced with a single solution.

Employees now enjoy easy, self-service access to information about their work and performance. They can complete simple tasks, like submitting and approving expenses, on their mobile phones.

The Workday solution delivers a consumer-grade experience, which ultimately improves staff satisfaction and productivity. This is important, because cutting down on admin helps employees focus on what truly matters: delivering excellent patient care.

We collaborated closely with Workday to ensure that the solution would act as a one-stop-shop that meets the HR needs of Circle Health Group. As part of the engagement, we challenged each other to ensure the design would fully deliver on the client’s requirements, and we completed regular delivery assurance checkpoints to ensure the programme went to plan.

The Workday implementation includes several modules, including core HR, payroll and time tracking. We helped Circle Health Group connect Workday to its other applications, including the PeopleSoft ERP system, and Microsoft Active Directory to enable single sign-on for employees. We also built an interface with HM Revenue & Customs for submitting payroll.

The transformation has been a tremendous success. The new Workday solution achieved 90% adoption within the first week after go-live. Immediately, staff recognised that the new solution gave them far greater insights and autonomy.

The programme’s outstanding results are a testament to the strong partnership between Circle Health Group and PwC. By being open from the start about the challenges the client was likely to face, we earned their trust and helped anticipate and avoid potential pitfalls.

We’re continuing to provide Circle Health Group with application management services for its Workday solution as well as support with payroll. In parallel, we’re also working with Circle Health Group to explore other potential improvements to Workday. We hope this is the start of another successful chapter in our close partnership with Circle Health Group.