Dayforce and Enforce partner with Bankstown Sports Club to implement modern HCM technology

Just southwest of Sydney, Australia lies the bustling and diverse suburb with just under 35,000 residents. Bankstown Sports Club is located in the center and has been a staple of the community since 1958.

Bankstown Sports Club is a not-for-profit organisation that was originally created as a communal meeting place for local sports teams. While still serving this mission, Bankstown Sports Club has grown into a wide-reaching hospitality business that offers entertainment, a variety of unique dining experiences, and space for large gatherings and functions. As a not-for-profit, all revenue generated from these activities goes directly back into improving the facilities, programs, and operations of the organisation.

Serving the fluctuating needs of an always-on business

Bankstown Sports Club employs 520 staff members across its restaurants, event spaces, facilities, and corporate office. The company also operates certain aspects of the organisation 24 hours a day, seven days a week. This diverse set of employee roles and the always-on nature of the business creates a fair bit of complexity when it comes to workforce planning and forecasting. It must account for last-minute staffing changes to ensure the business can continue to serve its customers and the community.

Bankstown Sports Club, however, had five different systems for rostering, payroll, HR, training, recruiting, and onboarding. This created duplicate work across the HR team, limited their visibility into important data, and restricted their ability to manage the workforce efficiently. “Labour is our biggest expense, and it wasn't getting managed effectively. We had multiple systems that didn't integrate with one another. And it just wasn't working very well,” says Rod Dearsley, CFO at Bankstown Sports Club.

Bankstown Sports Club needed technology that could bring all areas of HR into a single solution and give the team real-time visibility into reliable workforce data. The company selected Dayforce for payroll, workforce management, recruiting, onboarding, performance, and learning.

Striving for a common goal

Bankstown Sports Club began its implementation of Dayforce in January 2021, with the support of both Dayforce and its implementation partner, Enforce.

Enforce is a global cloud application consulting firm that has years of experience and proven best practices implementing Dayforce. “We're the high-touch implementers who are driven by customer transformation. We're focused on customer success and are very proud of our average net promoter score of 9.7 from Enforce-led implementations,” says Gordon Turnbull, Practice Director at Enforce.

Right from the start, Dayforce, Enforce and Bankstown Sports Club were, for all intents and purposes, one team. “This comes down to open communication and being a trusted partner to the customer. And that's why a vendor-customer relationship goes out of the window on day one. We are all working towards the same project, and we've got the same goals. There's no difference there,” says Victor Van Straten, Project Manager at Enforce.

“Enforce understood both sides of the challenge for us,” says David Watt, Bankstown’s People and Culture Manager. “They understood the challenges of the local labour market here in Australia, but they also understood Dayforce as a system and the work that was involved with the implementation required from Dayforce.”

Enforce prides itself on being a high-touch implementer, which means that their team is with the customer on every step of the journey and always available to work through challenges. During Bankstown Sports Club’s implementation, this ranged from having to manage a complex implementation through a global pandemic to ensuring that large amounts of data from five different systems was integrated properly. It also meant guiding change management to ease adoption of the new technology across the organisation.

An example of this high-touch approach was demonstrated when Enforce ensured that Bankstown had key individuals with the proper Dayforce training to ensure adoption across the company. “Enforce went above and beyond. We were struggling on the training side, and learning through the lockdown made it even harder for us. Enforce, with the help of Dayforce, gave us a trainer to assist us through that to make sure that our project team and certain staff were trained prior to the implementation of the Dayforce system,” says Dearsley. “Getting our staff trained was important because it made sure that we were experts in the system. This ensured that at the time of implementation we knew how to use the system and train others as well.”

Enforce also brings deep industry and regional expertise to the table to ease compliance adherence and configuration. “We've got a fairly complex award system and labour agreement. In fact, most industries in Australia have complex labour rules. And we needed to make sure that it was incorporated into the Dayforce system. So, that was the biggest fear for me,” says Dearsley. “But with the help of Enforce, we were able to get through the testing phases. And we also had an industry body come in and check that the interpretation of the award was correct. We passed with flying colors, and we've had no issues post-go-live.”

Watt appreciates the guidance, expertise, and enthusiasm Enforce brings to the table. “A transition between any system is challenging. Having somebody as professional and competent as Enforce by our side being able to guide us, answer our questions, but also really going into detail on how we were building Dayforce to best suit us was invaluable for us.”

But all this would not be possible if Bankstown wasn’t committed to the success of the project as well. “They were a very focused, enthusiastic team. They really embraced the system and the implementation,” says Turnbull.

Turnbull also acknowledges that the partnership between Dayforce and Enforce has brought great value to customers in the region. “Enforce and Dayforce has had a tremendous partnership over the last four years. Dayforce provides the Dayforce technology, and we manage implementation services. We look forward to this continuing in the future,” he says. “Through their acquisitions and investments in this region, we can see that Dayforce is deeply focused in Australia and New Zealand and we're really excited to be partnering with them on that journey.”

Continuing to grow together

Since going live with Dayforce in October 2021, Bankstown Sports Club has received great feedback from employees. “I have spoken to a few staff over the last few months. A lot of them love the platform and the visibility that they've now got compared to what they didn't have,” says Dearsley. “The adoption of Dayforce has been really high.”

The company has also seen some impressive results from a payroll perspective. Bankstown only has one person processing payroll for all 520 employees. Now, with Dayforce, this payroll specialist doesn’t have to check and approve every single employee’s hours – they simply scan for anomalies. “The actual payroll function has gone from being a full day of processing to just a few hours,” says Dearsley. Learning more about Bankstown Sports Club’s success with Dayforce here.

As Bankstown Sports Club continues to improve its operational efficiency and its use of Dayforce, Dearsley is looking forward to his continued partnership with both the Dayforce and Enforce teams.

“As we continue to grow, as we continue to learn and interact with Dayforce, we're excited by this ongoing partnership with Dayforce,” says Watt.

“We would not have achieved what we achieved in terms of go-live without their support through those first couple of weeks,” adds Dearsley. “Since implementation, we're still using the support of Enforce on an ongoing basis. They've been a great supporter, and we will continue partnering with Enforce into the future to assist us with the challenges that arise.”