How Ingenia Communities simplified compliance and scaled HR with a lean team

When Ingenia Communities’ HR leaders took the stage at last year’s Dayforce Summit, they shared how a lean team simplified compliance and scaled operations across 103 residential and holiday parks in Australia.

As the business expanded, its fragmented, paper-heavy systems began to fall behind. Data errors and duplicated efforts made it harder for teams to onboard employees and run payroll accurately. During the peak holiday season, an additional 300 seasonal hires created a surge in administrative work. Meanwhile, changing compliance demands - from award changes to positive duty obligations - made keeping up with change even more difficult.

Many organisations face similar friction. According to Dayforce’s 2025 research on organisational friction, employees in high-friction environments are 34% more likely to feel unmotivated, and 44% less likely to feel equipped with the tech they need. Inefficiencies like these slow down decisions, increase rework, and make it harder for employees to do their jobs well.

Ingenia’s story shows what it looks like to take that friction seriously and take meaningful steps to remove it. “The business had grown so fast, and the systems and processes just couldn’t keep up,” recalls Hayley Nuttall, former General Manager, People & Culture at Ingenia. “We didn’t want any more system integrations. We had so many issues around duplicated effort and poor resourcing. It wasn’t sustainable.”

With HR operations spread across legacy systems, including Preceda, Riteq, and Ascender HCM, the team chose Dayforce to replace fragmented systems with a single platform for payroll, workforce management, and HR.

Removing barriers so people could focus on what matters most

Nuttall’s north star was clear: to get out of the way so employees could focus on caring for residents and guests. “How do we take the complexity out of their roles and make work life better? How do we cut the red tape so people can do their best work with residents and guests?” shared Nuttall.

The team faced some very real challenges:

• 70% of employees are site-based
• Staff work under multiple awards
• Many employees are not tech-savvy
• The HR team is small and stretched
• Compliance demands were accelerating

To move forward, Nuttall recognised the need to pause and realign. “We needed to slow down to speed up,” she said. “We did a lot of work going back into the business to ask: What are our priorities? Where are we good, great, or not good enough?”

Building trust and capability before introducing change

Ingenia’s leadership team understood that technology alone wouldn’t deliver transformation. It had to be paired with creating clarity, trust, and capability across the business.

To start, the team replaced traditional position descriptions with success profiles. These outlined not just tasks, but the mindset, accountability, and behaviours needed to succeed. “Success profiles talk to accountabilities and the competencies someone has to have to be effective in their role,” said Nuttall. “It sets expectations early and makes it clear what ‘good’ looks like.”

For Rebecca Ford, People Systems & Projects Manager at Ingenia, trust came from relationships, transparency, and a willingness to own missteps. “Owning a mistake when you get it wrong, or calling it out for what it is, helps build respect,” she said. “They’re going to understand where you’re coming from a lot more if you have that sort of relationship.”

“You need to be able to hire people who are prepared to go on that journey of change. To fit in, they’re going to need a growth mindset and evolve with where you’re going in your business.”

Lessons from Ingenia’s transformation journey

Frontline managers helped evaluate Dayforce and shaped the rollout from the start. They assessed features, voted on what mattered, and helped shape the final decision. “They gave feedback on what would make work life better,” said Nuttall. “They knew we had their back.”

Upskill internal champions

With limited hands on site, Ingenia created ‘super users’ - trained managers who supported their teams and helped drive adoption. “We weren’t on site for go-live, so we focused on upskilling our managers and getting their buy-in,” said Ford. Two years later, the team still runs open training sessions each month to keep knowledge up to date.

Make learning bite-sized and ongoing

Ongoing education through monthly webinars, bite-sized videos, visual guides, and live sessions makes learning easier in the flow of work. “There’s a lot of value in giving people space to ask questions and walk away with something practical,” said Ford.

Be present and accessible during go-live

For Ingenia, daily “hyper care” drop-ins helped managers feel supported without overloading the team. “We were online every morning at a set time,” said Nuttall. “Some people came every day asking the same things, and that was totally fine. We just made ourselves available with an aim to build trust and confidence in Dayforce.”

Simplify compliance for non-HR managers

The team recognised that frontline managers had limited time to track constant award changes. “Our managers aren’t HR experts – we are,” said Ford. “So, we give them the tools to crack the code.”

The team provides award interpretation cheat sheets that make complex requirements, like penalty rates and minimum breaks, easier to understand. They also run monthly sessions that show how Dayforce features link to real-world compliance outcomes.

Promote adoption like a campaign

Internal promotion was key to getting employees to use Dayforce. The team created a targeted campaign called “Download Dayforce Week”, complete with QR codes, videos, and team-led reminders. “When you have a diverse workforce who don’t have the same levels of technological literacy, with some not even having smartphones, it’s imperative that there’s as much training and guidance as possible,” said Ford. “We used every meeting, every channel, and made it easier - and we hit a 98% download rate.”

Lean on relationships and community

Both Nuttall and Ford highlighted the value of building strong relationships with consultants and peers. “There were times we had to pivot or change course,” said Nuttall. “We worked through it together with our consultants, and our peers in the Dayforce customer network were so helpful, too.”

One platform, multiple gains

With Dayforce in place, Ingenia can make faster, more confident decisions with a single source of truth across payroll, HR, and workforce operations. The results are clear: fewer errors and faster, more informed decisions.

For Ford, the transformation has reshaped her role. “My role is now very focused on process, systems, and our ways of operating,” she said. “We went live with the basics, and now we’ve uncovered so much more we can do.”

Since its implementation, Ingenia has expanded its use of Dayforce to standardise processes, reduce rework, and drive continuous improvement. “We’re more data-led than ever,” Nuttall explained. “And our board has far greater confidence that we’re paying people accurately and on time, and that we’re not exposed to unnecessary compliance risk.”

Simplifying work, at scale

With everything on one platform, Ingenia reduced complexity and gained better control over compliance and growth. Their experience shows that when payroll, workforce management, and HR data live in one place, teams spend less time fixing issues and more time supporting the business with confidence.

Connect talent, skills, and growth in one view

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