Mastering Change: The Dual Power of Training and Change Management

Learn how PSECU (Pennsylvania State Employees Credit Union) leveraged innovative training methods, gamification, and change champions to help team members across the organization navigate and embrace change. Jeff Fetterman, Director of Talent Development, and Sandra Holzgen, Chief Human Resources Officer at PSECU, share their journey of implementing Workday, a new enterprise resource planning system.

Show Notes:

PSECU’s Jeff Fetterman and Sandra Holzgen share these innovative and people-focused strategies that defined PSECU's successful Workday rollout.

• Effective Change Management Strategies: PSECU's success in implementing Workday stemmed from an early focus on change management, utilizing the ADCAR model and appreciative inquiry to build awareness, desire, and engagement across all levels of the organization
• Training and Engagement Excellence: The team employed hands-on, interactive training methods like gamification, escape rooms, and micro-learning to ensure employees were equipped to use Workday effectively, training over 900 employees in just one week
• The Role of Change Champions: PSECU mobilized a team of 80 change champions and agents who acted as key influencers and facilitators, offering real-time support and ensuring widespread adoption of the new system.
• Tailored Support for Success: By implementing a "white glove" service, including live Teams support channels and in-person assistance, PSECU ensured employees could navigate the transition with confidence, minimizing resistance and post-implementation challenges.
• Lessons in Large-Scale Implementation: Emphasizing early engagement, cross-functional collaboration, and iterative feedback, PSECU not only delivered their project on time but also set a foundation for continued optimization and success in future phases.

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Transcript

Susan Cort: [00:00:00] Whether you're navigating a large-scale rollout or building a change management strategy, success depends on people and planning. 

Jeff Fetterman: The idea of including all levels of the organization and then having those people be those change champions so that during the testing, during development of the training, you know, during the training itself and then following up, those were the people that helped.

Susan Cort: That's Jeff Fetterman, Director of Talent Development at PSECU, the Pennsylvania State Employees Credit Union. Jeff and Chief Human Resources Officer Sandra Holzgen join us to share their journey implementing Workday and offer advice for learning professionals responsible for implementing change, next on Powered by Learning.

Announcer: Powered by Learning is brought to you by d’Vinci Interactive. d’Vinci's approach to learning is grounded in 30 [00:01:00] years of innovation and expertise. We use proven strategies and leading technology to develop solutions that empower learners to improve quality and boost performance. Learn more at d’Vinci.com. 

Susan Cort: Rolling out change in an organization requires a carefully crafted approach that integrates both training and change management. Today, Jenny Fedullo and I are joined by Jeff Fetterman, Director of Talent Development, and Sandra Holzgen, Chief Human Resources Officer at PSECU. They're going to share their experiences implementing Workday.

Susan Cort: They're going to walk us through how they trained their teams to adopt the change. Manage the transition and ensure the success of such a large-scale implementation. Welcome, Jeff and Sandra. 

Jenny Fedullo: Hi, Sandra. Hi, Jeff. 

Jeff Fetterman: Hi, great to be here. Thanks for having us. 

Susan Cort: Thank you so much for having us. Thank you both for joining us.

Susan Cort: Let's start out by sharing a little bit about your backgrounds [00:02:00] and your current roles at PSECU. 

Jeff Fetterman: Yeah. So, uh, so I'm Jeff Fetterman. Um, as you said, director of Talent Development. Uh, and my role in this project, um, myself and my team were responsible for helping to roll out all the training across the organization to make sure that everybody knew how to use, uh, the new system on the day that it launched.

Sandra Holzgen: Yeah. And good afternoon. I am, um, Sandra Holzgen and I'm the Chief Human Resource Officer at PSECU. And, um, really came to the organization in March of 2020, uh, during the pandemic and had the opportunity to do, uh, an RFP for a new HRIS system where we, um, invited, um, many partners across the organization to come in and help us select this new system.

Sandra Holzgen: So, first time ever in our company history, we had, um, people from the lowest level to the highest level of the organization go through an RFP and we, uh, chose Workday and, um, that's how we decided to [00:03:00] implement that system. 

Susan Cort: That was the beginning of the journey. 

Jenny Fedullo: Awesome. So give us a little bit more detail, a little bit more background on the implementation.

Jenny Fedullo: Overall timeline, how many employees were impacted, you know, key milestones along the way. 

Sandra Holzgen: Yeah, I can take that question. We did a, we absolutely, um, we dove both, And with both feet forward, and we did a rapid deployment with Workday, which means that we implemented the system out of the box, per se, and we implemented Workday in seven and a half months.

Sandra Holzgen: So that is very fast, and it was a lot of work and a lot of effort by many resources across the organization. Especially the HR team, and we have about 27 people on our team that are fully dedicated to this. This impacted 900 employees across the organization, so it was a forced change on every single employee to show up on September 16th [00:04:00] and use a new HRIS system.

Sandra Holzgen: And, you know, during that process, we had to complete 400 test scenarios. So, um, we went through a lot of different foundational builds, and we had to test along the way to make sure that everything that we were setting up was the way in which we wanted it to be set up, as well as, um, compliance. HR is a very compliance driven system, and there's a lot of regulatory components to human resources.

Sandra Holzgen: It's people's pay. It's the most important thing that we do, um, you know, in their minds and our employees minds. And so we really had to make sure those test scenarios were carried out and we had cross functional teams set up within HR to make sure that, um, we could get those test scenarios completed.

Jenny Fedullo: Wow. So seven and a half months, 900 employees. Wow. That's, that's, that's no easy feat. I know a prior job that I had, I did the same role. We implemented an out learning management [00:05:00] system, and then we also replaced our CRM tool. So again, same huge, huge initiative. So I know it's, it's not easy. And I know how important training and change management approaches have to work together.

Jenny Fedullo: Can you both share how you crafted your strategies for the implementation? So thinking about the training side, how did you, you know, ensure that knowledge retention and, you know, on the change management side, how did you ensure, you know, did you use champions assistance, all of that? So kind of just walk through your overall strategy.

Jenny Fedullo: Make sure it's gonna work. 

Jeff Fetterman: Yeah, so one of the things that we did was we talked about it from the beginning of the project. So we knew that we wanted to engage change management and think about training very early on. So it was part of the RFP. You're just thinking about, like, how are we going to incorporate all these things throughout?

Jeff Fetterman: So, uh, yeah. You know, Jenny, I've also been on some of those projects where three quarters of the way through like, Oh, yeah, we're gonna need some training on this. Like, Oh, yeah, we probably have [00:06:00] to think about how we communicate this. And this was something that was done very early on, which, which was super helpful.

Jeff Fetterman: And I will say that, you know, the, the idea of including, like Sandra said, all levels of the organization, and then having those people be those change champions, so that During the testing, during development of the training, you know, during the training itself, and then following up, those were the people that helped make that happen.

Jeff Fetterman: So that was also part of the plan very early on. So Sandra, I don't know if you want to add anything to that as well. 

Sandra Holzgen: Yeah, so I worked at a larger organization prior to coming to PSECU and change was a major focus for any major initiative. So change is really important to me. And I know that's a differentiator when you're implementing a project this large of a scale.

Sandra Holzgen: So these change champions and change agents were about 80 strong, 80 employees [00:07:00] strong. And we, yeah. We infused them from, like I said, the beginning of the RFP. We, we converted those individuals to change champions and change agents, but then we recruited more, and we recruited a certain number per line of business, and we had a change, um, project plan.

Sandra Holzgen: We had a change strategy, and we also met on a weekly basis. And, um, we had a kickoff meeting, a launch meeting, where one of the first questions I asked is, did you volunteer for this project or were you voluntold? And I think that's critically important, right? Because you need, you need to know who on your team, really.

Sandra Holzgen: Embrace this change and get them excited about if they were voluntold, why they were there, and how important they were to this process. And, um, we did some amazing things with this change team. We, it, we, um, changed our project plan as we moved forward. So, assumptions we made at the beginning, we, uh, changed those along [00:08:00] the way, but very successful.

Sandra Holzgen: We added, um, change resources and we, um, we were implementing our project over that seven and a half months. And unfortunately, one of our other friends in another department had a project that was supposed to go live in July that, um. Their, their, um, go live date got pushed and it, um, aligned smack dab with, um, our project.

Sandra Holzgen: So what we did is we partnered with that project and we, um, offered them the change resources. So we, we helped the organization overall with two major changes for a lot of the same employee base that had to go through those changes. So change, Teams, I think, I know are instrumental in success. And again, it's a, it's a muscle that we haven't had in this organization that we activated through this HR project.

Sandra Holzgen: Very proud of that tool and how that helped us be successful and launch on [00:09:00] time. Uh, we, we hit the date we set, set out with, so we launched on time and I think that had a lot to do with it. 

Jenny Fedullo: That's great. So tell me a little bit more about the, the changes. I know companies today are kind of changing them, calling them influencers now, right?

Jenny Fedullo: Like thinking about social media, you know, influencers, but prescriptive were you in, okay, so now you're a champion. This is your role. These are your responsibilities. Or was it more just organic? Hey, we need your support. Do it in whatever you feel, you know, natural, that's appropriate for your group or your team.

Sandra Holzgen: That's a great question. We actually built a change project team that was a smaller team, about six people, and then we actually built job descriptions. So we built out job descriptions for the change champion, which were leaders across the organization. So these were the individuals that lead teams for us today in their real job, and then the change agents were individual contributors.

Sandra Holzgen: And we had job descriptions for both. We, [00:10:00] we tried to really define their roles. And got them involved, as Jeff said, in all the testing scenarios, but also we had them on all of our, um, training calls and had them there for support to answer questions and to learn more about the system, um, than the average employee.

Sandra Holzgen: So it was very prescriptive. It was very detailed. We had weekly meetings with the change champions, and then they had the change agents underneath them. That they kind of reported into them and then they had uh meetings or Teams channel chats In order to um answer any questions or really help keep them abreast of what we needed them to do 

Jenny Fedullo: Great for the change.

Jenny Fedullo: That's a great approach. Yeah, so Jeff I have a question for you knowing that I went through this, you know years and years ago just the sheer you know math of it, right the number of Employees 900 that have to get through the training How many weeks prior to go live? [00:11:00] Um, how did you ensure retention? And I guess, what were the delivery methods too?

Jenny Fedullo: Were you herding them in a classroom? Were there some online? You know, so kind of what was the, I guess, delivery approach? And how did you ensure that they retained it? So that if they were one of the first ones through the training, that they didn't, that they didn't lose it. 

Jeff Fetterman: Yeah, so, uh, we did have to pivot a little bit on that.

Jeff Fetterman: So our original design. Um, wasn't what we ended up with the day that we launched, um, but we did have the instructional design team be part of that change champion team. So, so the change champions were incorporated into the design, so we knew we were going to leverage that team in, in the programs. So, what our plan was, was we wanted to have, Live, hands on training the week before launch, so that people would know the basic, the most important stuff, which was how do you, you know, do your time cards, how do you [00:12:00] submit, you know, for absence, like some of the key things that we knew on day one people were going to have to know And we ended up not having access to the live system, um, for a lot of reasons.

Jeff Fetterman: So our, we had to pivot pretty quickly the week before, um, but we still wanted to make sure that the week before go live date, people got training and we trained 878 people. In a week. Um, and so, and so that retention that we wanted to get it as close as possible to doing that. So we had so much communication with all of our, especially our operational areas, because we knew we couldn't take hundreds of people off of the phones or, you know, away from their jobs.

Jeff Fetterman: So we had, uh, the change champions and other people in HR were part of the delivery. So. Those are all live sessions. Um, none of it, we, we decided we didn't want to have self paced recorded demos because we knew people are going to have questions. And we wanted to encourage people to ask questions. So we scheduled [00:13:00] really short classes with very focused objectives.

Jeff Fetterman: And so we're only going to do two things. We're going to focus on how do you do your time and how do you schedule for, um, you know, time away. Um, we're going to focus on those. We made sure that we had the job aids built and they were available to people. So literally on day one, um, they would have the training pretty fresh, and they could go and use those resources.

Jeff Fetterman: Then the second week, which is the week that we actually were live, everything there was hands on. Um, so those sessions were a little bit longer, uh, and we Worked really hard to not just have it be Death by PowerPoint and tons of demos. We wanted it to be very interactive. So we had uh, you know, we did breakout rooms where we gave each group something they had to solve.

Jeff Fetterman: So go into the system and see if you can do this and then come back and tell us how you How you did it. So we did a lot of teach back. Yeah, which for a lot of people is the first time they'd ever used a breakout room in Teams because we used Microsoft Teams as [00:14:00] the, as the tool for all of that. Um, then the second week we used an escape room and we said, okay, so you're going to find, you know, so we had this great escape room and we said, alright, so here are the clues along the way.

Jeff Fetterman: How do you go into workday and solve the clue? And then, you know, as soon as you find it, put it into the team. To the chat. So people were engaged and, and we made it kind of fun and interesting. Um, and then the third or the fourth week of training, uh, we made it, uh, a little bit of a competition, so who can go first?

Jeff Fetterman: So we had, you know, a lot of gamification in that. So whoever finds this thing first gets double points. The second person gets straight points and whoever gets, you know, and we had each of them use, um, like fun, like little emojis in teams. And again, for a lot of people, they hadn't played in teams, if you will.

Jeff Fetterman: And so, um, getting them to have fun, be engaged. Um, I mean, it, it sounds like pretty basic, you know, instructional design, uh, thinking, [00:15:00] but for a lot of people they were expecting Powerpoints, demos, click here, click here, click here, and instead we made it very experiential, um, and, and gave them the ability to just explore workday without structure, because we knew the job aides would be there, we knew that people could look at that stuff up later, um, so we made the training I say a lot of fun.

Jenny Fedullo: Yeah, no, that's great, because I think probably a lot of our listeners, right, you get stuck in that mindset, this is what training is supposed to be, right, where you guys, you tried it a little differently, and they had fun, they were engaged, you had some gamification, they learned, they were, they were motivated, um, so that's, that's great.

Jenny Fedullo: That's really great. Yeah, good for you. Yeah, 

Jeff Fetterman: I will say we've we were doing surveys now to to get some feedback from people and we're getting a lot of people saying This was a lot of fun. This was really interesting. And then of course, there's some people are saying Yeah, I just show me the fact like I just wanted to show [00:16:00] me.

Jeff Fetterman: Yeah, I didn't need the escape room I didn't need all this right. Um, so we tried to balance that out and we really tried to to find Um, you know some something that was going to work for most but we knew it wasn't necessarily going to work for everyone 

Susan Cort: Yeah, Jeff, it does sound like so much fun. And I wonder if that you made a Workday and teams fun at the same time.

Susan Cort: But did you do you do those kinds of things for your other training initiatives, and you just implemented it into this? Or have you now done this for this implementation and want to kind of use that as an inspiration for future training? 

Jeff Fetterman: Yeah, t's a little bit of both. We've we have over the last couple years.

Jeff Fetterman: Try to do more and more, because when I joined PSCC, there wasn't a lot of that, and we knew that we could do more on the instructional side. Um, and honestly, we've built a team, and I will give all the credit in the world to my team who built. Uh, these classes, so the answer is yes, we've been doing more and more of that, but this was a time [00:17:00] when we knew we were going to have every single employee participate, and so it was a kind of a time to showcase some of the instructional design skills that we've brought into the organization.

Jeff Fetterman: A lot of the other training that we've done, you know, it's for a smaller, you know, audience, so this was This was, I think, for us, uh, time to kind of strut our stuff a little bit. 

Susan Cort: It was your Superbowl. 

Jeff Fetterman: Yeah, exactly. 

Jenny Fedullo: So, um, you said you did, uh, was it Zoom or Microsoft Teams where you did, you know, breakout rooms and things like that?

Jenny Fedullo: What about folks that were going to use the system differently? Did you Schedule it that way, different audiences, or was it kind of, you chose the primary tasks that everyone was going to do. Kind of, what was your approach on how did you address the different audiences and the different ways they were going to use the system?

Jeff Fetterman: Yes, I think we were fortunate in that pretty much all employees were going to use a lot of the same thing. So everyone was going to be. Putting in for PTO. Everyone was going to want to search for their benefits. Everyone was going to want us to, [00:18:00] um, but there is a, you know, our supervisors, our, our, you know, managers were an audience that needed something a little different because now they were not only employees, but they were, you know, approving time for employees or approving pace vacation.

Jeff Fetterman: So we did some separate training for them that was just for supervisors. And we were a little bit lucky in that. We have a regular monthly meeting of all supervisors in the organization. Um, usually it's the second Tuesday of the month. We pushed it to the third Tuesday, or Thursday of the month, rather.

Jeff Fetterman: Um, so we can line it up with launch and say, okay, we've got a captive audience, come in, and we're going to show you these specific things. Um, but, They had already been through the earlier training, so they were familiar from an employee point of view, now they were just seeing some of these new features.

Jeff Fetterman: But that's really the only kind of role based, um, there's obviously on the HR side where, you know, the our HR team needs to learn a ton, and we got that training directly from Workday, so we didn't have [00:19:00] that kind of extra piece of having to teach our own team how to do it, um, thankfully. 

Jenny Fedullo: Yep, yep. That's great.

Jenny Fedullo: Sandra, I'm sure you didn't have any resistors, right? But, um, but, um, was that part of your strategy to think about how are we going to get to those that may, may be the resistors? You know, how did you address those? What was, what was the thought around, around that?

Sandra Holzgen: Yeah, that, you know, always in a big change initiative, there's always those resistors.

Sandra Holzgen: So, um, those are my favorite people, because they help you identify what, what's going wrong, or what could go wrong, or what we haven't solved for you yet. So, in every change meeting, We, um, talked about what are all the negative things you're hearing about Workday? What are people, what's on their mind?

Sandra Holzgen: What are they nervous about? And, um, how do we answer all of those questions? We also, when we went live, the the Monday we went live, [00:20:00] We had a very slick process that I've never used before, but with Teams and the technology that's available, we, we called it our white glove service. So instead of having people put in tickets, um, when a lot of new system launch, you enter ticket and that goes in there and it, Might go into a black hole.

Sandra Holzgen: Um, we had, um, hands on train, hands on, um, help. So we had people in a conference room where an employee or leader could stop by and they could, um, get help that way. We had a Teams channel that was linked from our intranet. So, we had a tile on our intranet that, um, was a workday tile that, um, connected you directly to a team site that HR resources were manning live.

Sandra Holzgen: So, if you were at home working, we had resources for you there, and we didn't really launch our ticket system until after two weeks going live. So that helped us with the change resistance, um, [00:21:00] from like the go live date, but we also are continuing to meet and continuing to keep our change, um, partners in place until we get through every cycle.

Sandra Holzgen: So when you think about we went live September 16th, um, And then we'll have open enrollment on the first week of November, and then we'll launch into performance management with performance reviews, and then we'll go through merit increases and then the announcement. So our change partners will be, uh, be with us for the entire journey or entire cycle of our process.

Sandra Holzgen: So I was in a, um, executive senior leadership. leadership meeting today with all of our directors and above. And one of the questions I asked are, what negative noise are you hearing from your people around workday? So I'm inviting, we're always inviting the negative feedback. So really, like, what haven't we heard yet?

Sandra Holzgen: Because I don't want any negativity to be the best kept secret. And it was [00:22:00] very refreshing to hear, oh, it's so much easier. My teams love it. I can't really think of anything negative to give you feedback on, which, to me, is a huge success, only a little bit over a month after GoLive. I've done this a lot of times in my career, and, um, I'm very proud of this HR team.

Sandra Holzgen: It's one of the best implementations that I've seen in my career. 

Jenny Fedullo: Well, that's awesome. Well, yeah, I mean, you know that if you're making yourself vulnerable, you're asking for feedback, you're building credibility and trust. And, um, yeah, that goes a long way and not everyone buying in. Yeah, that's, that's great.

Jenny Fedullo: Great, great story. Alright, so question for both of you. I think you said Go Live was September 16th. Um, so what, what methods or tools did you use to measure the success, right? And then to reinforce the learning post implementation? How are you, how are you keeping it going? 

Jeff Fetterman: Yes, I will say on the training side, we are doing a [00:23:00] post, uh, survey, uh, that just launched, uh, we didn't want to launch it right away, we wanted to give people a little bit of time, um, and, and so we're, we're asking some pretty simple questions, uh, about that, but probably the The bigger thing we're doing is we're looking at what were the types of questions people are asking.

Jeff Fetterman: So as we went through that white glove service, we had these open office hours. What kinds of questions were people asking and were they related to the things that we covered in the training? And even now that we're You know, over a month into it and people are starting to put in tickets. Are they tickets related to the things that, you know, when we look at the, the objectives that we had and we're seeing that most of the questions that people have are not things that we covered in the training.

Jeff Fetterman: So we feel like, okay, so we, we wanted to make sure that we got those things and nailed them down. We didn't try to cover a ton of things in the training. We just wanted to focus on those critical musts. And so now we are looking back and saying, yep. [00:24:00] And people seem very comfortable with those things. So we're feeling pretty good about the success of the training based off of, of kind of those metrics.

Sandra Holzgen: Yeah. And I would say like, you know, after Go Live, we have identified some things that we didn't think of, right? So we went from a daily accrual PTO to a biweekly PTO accrual. So employees used to earn like a certain, um, number. of hours or on a daily basis. Now it's a pay period basis, so we just had to solve for and the end of the year at the organization and make sure we have a carryover that employees can carry over and we even cash out a certain amount.

Sandra Holzgen: We pay people for unused time at our organization. So we really didn't need that. Um, you know, we knew we had to implement the new way we, we, um, calculated the time, or the, the accrual time, but we really didn't think through the end of the year. The accrual ends this year, um, December [00:25:00] 21st, and we needed to get through December 31.

Sandra Holzgen: So we had to go back. We had to figure that all out. Um, we had that come up through the feedback of our Change Champions and Change Agents. And we actually just sent out a video today. We did a lot of video training. Um, so just snippet training. So not getting everybody into a whole Teams training site.

Sandra Holzgen: Uh, snippet trainings to, to give demos, just in time demos on how to use the system, how to look for what you're looking for. We had an FAQ that we set up. Um, frequently asked questions around Workday and what we were hearing, and we also had job age, uh, to, to Jeff's point earlier, where employees could go back in and look at those job age.

Sandra Holzgen: So, we tried to make this less about the training hour, and really, Jeff's team's training were either 45 minutes or an hour long, I believe. And so, it was, Quick hit training, more of that micro, micro learning approach, so because [00:26:00] people forget it. Anyways, if we were to do eight hours of workday training, it wouldn't have been as effective as all of these little things to self serve.

Sandra Holzgen: Meet the learner where they're at. Is what we were trying to solve for with this change. 

Jenny Fedullo: Yeah, great approach. So Sandra, Jeff had mentioned, I think I saw you probably in an ATD event along the way, a little plug for for Central PA ATD, um, but he had mentioned you have a degree perhaps in change management from I think I think, Case Western, curious, um, well that gives you an advantage, right, that you were probably able to bring more to the table around change management than perhaps others, um, in your position, but did you pull from anything, any, any inside tips you can give us on principles or application, you know, things that you were able to apply that I 

Sandra Holzgen: do have a master's from Case Western, Positive Organizational Development and Change Leadership.

Sandra Holzgen: Change has been my [00:27:00] passion forever. So I've really, really helped people get through major changes in their life through conversions and things like that. And my, uh, behind me on my desk is you must be the change you wish to see in the world. So I'm a change pusher, uh, by nature. But some of the things that really from Case Western, um, that I pulled from is appreciative inquiry and that, um, Siri is around.

Sandra Holzgen: Asking a question that only allows the participant to stay in the positive, because we know that if you're able to stay in the positive, the chemical makeup in your brain allows you to be more collaborative, more creative, and more open to change. So the way in which we ask questions through this journey of change, I believe, helped us Um, get some of the positive outcomes.

Sandra Holzgen: So appreciative inquiry, Dr. David Cooperrider, uh, from Case Western, was my professor in this approach and [00:28:00] theory and thinking, and I use that strategy with this change and, um, really also the, um, You know, the methodology, making sure you have a methodology that you're rooted in, and before I got to PSECU, um, the ADCAR methodology was alive and well.

Sandra Holzgen: Jeff and the team brought that to, um, the organization, and that's something that I was certified in, in my past life, so ADCAR, uh, is a methodology around, um, you know, five steps. Awareness. Yep. Desire, um, knowledge, ability, and reinforcement. And, and you know from that motto that capturing the heart is the most important thing to help implement change.

Sandra Holzgen: So, because my team was so busy implementing and um, you know, doing all of the hard work for Workday, I'll say. I got to do the fun stuff and I led the change effort for the organization, which I [00:29:00] got to roll up my sleeves and do some real good work, um, for the, um, this change initiative. So, Case Western, great program, learned a lot and tried to bring that to the organization.

Jenny Fedullo: Well, I'm intrigued. I think, Susan, we have the next topic for the next podcast. Just probably talk about change, but, but yeah, the ad car model, we're actually, we just talked about that a few weeks ago with AI, as we look at what's our AI strategy, where are we, you know, so we're going through those stages as well.

Sandra Holzgen: Nice. It works. It's, it's easy too. 

Jenny Fedullo: Alright, so now that you're through it, you're a month post, um, what's the biggest lesson you learned throughout the entire process and how do you think it's going to influence your future large projects? 

Jeff Fetterman: I will say probably the one of the lessons learned, and this is, luckily, I think we did this well, was get people engaged very early on this, you know, and Sandra set the tone early on.

Jeff Fetterman: This is not an [00:30:00] HR project. This is an organization project. So let's get people from across the organization, get them involved, um, and identify some of those people who maybe aren't so excited about change and get them to be part of it. Don't, push them away, but actually engage with those people, because those are going to be your hardest critics and, um, listening to them and being aware of the things that they're concerned about probably speaks to a lot of other people across the organization will have a lot of the same concerns.

Jeff Fetterman: And so engaging with those people early and, you know, kind of keeping them, um, engaged throughout the process, I think was a really big lesson learned for us. 

Sandra Holzgen: I think the other thing I would say is you always want more time. When you do something this big, and seven and a half months is fast. It's the rapid deployment.

Sandra Holzgen: We didn't get everything we wanted out of the box because we did out of the box with this technology. Workday is the number three provider in the country. And, um, we're, we are making [00:31:00] sure that we stay focused on what we couldn't implement in that seven and a half months and having a project plan for the next two years, two to three years to activate and make sure that we can implement the system fully, use this technology fully, and really get the most out of our investment.

Sandra Holzgen: Very fortunate that we were able to do this and get this approved and get this through a budget process. And really now it's our job as good stewards to make sure we maximize that investment. 

Jenny Fedullo: Alright, last question. Um, I always like to close with this, but for those listening, um, maybe getting ready to embark on something this big, uh, what, what's the one piece of advice that you would, you would offer?

Sandra Holzgen: I think the one piece of advice that I would offer as an executive leader is, um, I had many conversations with my, um, first team, which is my peer team around activating their support. Because they had to roll this out throughout their entire organizations. [00:32:00] And, you know, some of those individuals have 300 employees on their teams and they have, you know, we, we did a lot of change.

Sandra Holzgen: We went to a, uh, for our employees, they have to check in and check out for the first time in our, um, payroll, um, time tracking history. So I think getting that, uh, organizational support and then, um, Igniting what I needed them to do for me in order to make this successful. So, you know, I said things like, hey, I need your support.

Sandra Holzgen: We're in this together. I can't, my team can't be successful without your teams. And I had a lot of support and leaders showing up for me saying, what do you need? And then as we were into it, follow up conversations about, are my, are my people showing up for your team and is there anything I need to do for you on in the workday space, especially your technology partners?

Sandra Holzgen: Those are pretty critical. 

Jenny Fedullo: That's so, so important what you're saying with that, with [00:33:00] that support, because, yeah, I think so many times in these large implementations, those that aren't involved directly. Or like, eh, they're on the, that implementation team. It doesn't really impact me until it does. Right, right.

Jenny Fedullo: But you're right. If they're in every step of the way and they truly are supporting you, it's gonna make it more, more successful. Yeah. Jeff, what about you? Yeah. What's your advice? 

Jeff Fetterman: Yeah, so Sandra started, uh, kind of at the top of the org. I'll go down lower to the org. We talked about the ADCAR model, and we have been training managers on the ADCAR model since 2017.

Jeff Fetterman: So, this was not a new concept to people, so we could talk about those phases of, of, or those pieces of the model, and it meant something to people. They were aware of it. Maybe they didn't know, they weren't practitioners, they didn't know it inside and out, but we talked about, hey, we need you as managers to help Raise that awareness and make sure that people have that desire to want to be part of this.

Jeff Fetterman: Like they understood that language and so what they weren't, we weren't in the middle of a [00:34:00] project and now we introduced this new model. We leveraged a model that people already were familiar with to help drive that project home and so that was something that I think was probably really helpful is there was a language there that everybody already spoke.

Susan Cort: Yeah, such great advice. What a journey the two of you had and your teams that worked on this. Congratulations. Yes, congratulations. 

Jeff Fetterman: very much. 

Susan Cort: You can get some sleep. Well, except they have more to roll out. Didn't you hear that? Sorry, phase two is coming. Yes. Good luck with the future rollouts and thank you for joining us.

Susan Cort: Thank you. 

Jeff Fetterman: Thanks for having us. 

Susan Cort: Jenny, Jeff, Sandra and their teams seem to have the perfect recipe for training employees to embrace change. 

Jenny Fedullo: Agreed. I mean, today's conversation with them really highlighted the power of engaging hands-on training and facilitating a large scale change and their insights into their workday implementation journey, complete with [00:35:00] change champions, gamification and real time support demonstrated how impactful training can ease transitions and drive adoption.

Susan Cort: Absolutely. 

Jenny Fedullo: Yeah. And at d'Vinci, we're dedicated to delivering training that. Not only builds skills, but fosters real engagement and adaptability, ensuring that our clients can navigate transformations with confidence and success. 

Susan Cort: Yep. Change is not something to fear. You can definitely embrace it with the right plan.

Susan Cort: Absolutely. Well, thanks Jenny. And special thanks to our guests from PSECU, Jeff Fetterman and Sandra Holzgen. If you have an idea for a topic or guest, please reach out to us at poweredbylearning@dvinci. com. And don't forget to subscribe to Powered by Learning wherever you listen to your podcasts.