Building the workforce operating model behind HR transformation

Alyve helped a Victorian water utility design critical workforce service journeys and turn a major HR platform implementation into a clearer model for accountability, policy and manager action.

21

Workforce journeys designed

5

Structural opportunities identified

3

New workstreams launched

Opportunity

The client was preparing for a major HR platform implementation, with real investment committed and a fixed delivery timeline ahead.

Before configuration could begin, the client needed to understand the workforce services the new platform would support. The People, Performance and Culture function served a mixed workforce across permanent employees, managers, contingent workers and several distinct employment categories.

The workforce lifecycle was being held together by individual knowledge, manual coordination and workarounds that had built up over time. Approvals travelled by email. Some processes ran outside the system. Managers carried accountability for workforce decisions, but often lacked the live data and process visibility required to act with confidence.

The coordination load kept landing back with PP&C. Each upstream gap became another manual intervention, another clarification, another handoff.

The client needed more than documented journeys. It needed a future-state design that could guide configuration, clarify accountability and reduce the manual effort embedded in the current workforce lifecycle.

Solution

Alyve treated the service design phase as operating model design.

The work focused on how the workforce lifecycle should operate once the new platform was in place: what the system should enforce, what managers should be able to initiate, where PP&C should govern, and how policy, data and approvals should move through the workflow.

Across eight sprint cycles from January to May 2026, Alyve designed 21 service journeys covering the full workforce lifecycle. The work brought together PP&C, managers and implementation stakeholders to test the future experience before technical configuration began.

Six design principles shaped the future state: 
  1. Managers should sit at the centre of workforce decisions, with the visibility required to act.
  2. Lifecycle rules should be simple, consistent and enforced through the system.
  3. People activity should move through one trusted front door, reducing parallel processes and off-system work.
  4. Position data should become the single source of truth for FTE, access, pay and reporting.
  5. Workforce experiences should be consistent across the function.
  6. Business-led governance should protect the design as it moves into configuration. 
The completed service design gave the client a practical foundation for the next stage of work: business requirements, SOPs and the future PP&C operating model.

Outcome

The client left the service design phase with 21 validated workforce journeys and a clearer view of the operating model required to make the HR platform succeed.

The executive playback identified five structural opportunities running across the workforce lifecycle. These included automating the coordination layer, embedding policy into process, making position the single source of truth, equipping managers to act with confidence, and redirecting PP&C capacity toward planning, coaching and higher-value work.

Each opportunity could be unlocked through the design already completed, without requiring new investment.

The completed work is now flowing into three practical workstreams. Business requirements are translating the journeys into data fields, rules, approval paths and integrations. SOPs are being written by audience, so managers, HR administrators and payroll teams know what to do and where to go. The future PP&C operating model is being shaped from the same design, clarifying accountability across workflows and handoffs between PP&C, Finance, IT and Payroll.

The service design also created a documented view of every major process, role, decision point and handoff across the PP&C function. That foundation now gives the client a stronger basis for platform configuration, operational readiness and future automation.

The value was clarity before configuration. The client can now move into implementation with a design that reflects how workforce services should operate, rather than simply transferring accumulated manual work into a new system.

Planning a new platform implementation?

Early design decisions set the operating model that the system will later enforce.

Alyve helps clients use service design to clarify accountability, simplify workflows and protect implementation value before configuration begins.

If your client team is preparing for a major system implementation, let’s start with the operating model decisions that need to be made first.

Contact us.

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