Mott MacDonald transforms HR operations with digital adoption solutions, driving employee efficiency and standardized processes across the globe

Mott MacDonald, a global management, engineering, and development consultancy, adopted SuccessFactors as part of its digital transformation strategy to unify all four of its regions on one HR platform. Recognizing the need for change management support, the company deployed WalkMe to ensure a seamless transition.

Once onboarding to SuccessFactors was complete, Mott MacDonald discovered further applications for WalkMe for optimizing processes across the HR landscape and improving the employee experience. The company took advantage of the platform’s automation and analytics capabilities and implemented a rigorous governance strategy to standardize its processes across regions.

With WalkMe, Mott MacDonald has unified and streamlined numerous HR workflows, reduced the need for employee training and support completing tasks, and improved data governance. The company continues to find new ways to utilize WalkMe to proactively address pain points and deliver better experiences to both end users and support team members, boosting operational efficiency in the process.

When Mott MacDonald moved to a robust HR software, SuccessFactors, thousands of employees needed to adapt to the new, standardized processes as quickly and effortlessly as possible. Because each of the company’s four regions across the globe had its own policies, standardizing the complex and detailed processes was a priority.

“Historically, we’d produced big user guides. Each region had a separate manual,” said Peter Gomm, People Systems Lead for Talent Development at Mott MacDonald. “People would read them, and later, when they tried to search the document for what they needed when they were actually completing a task, they had trouble finding it. They would have to reach out to support teams for the answer.”

As one of the world’s largest employee-owned companies, Mott MacDonald envisioned a modern, time-saving solution for its 20,000 employees and turned to digital adoption. “We needed to support our employees, both by onboarding them to our platforms,” Gomm said, “but also to give them guidance at the point they need it, rather than having to reach out to us.”

Mott MacDonald turned to WalkMe to ease the transition and ensure critical workflows were completed quickly and accurately. “We chose WalkMe because we wanted to help our people get the most out of the system, while also providing the business the data we need,” Gomm said.

To start, the team deployed WalkMe for SuccessFactors to help users learn the new system effectively and efficiently, providing a guided structure for the more complex and less intuitive processes. Having digital adoption in place meant thousands of employees in different regions learned the same processes in the same way and could complete them accurately and quickly.

Once onboarding to SuccessFactors was completed, Mott MacDonald continued to discover new ways to use WalkMe. The focus shifted from basic tips to comprehensive, standardized guidance for critical workflows, such as performance, succession, recruiting, compensation, and benefits modules. With every additional application, WalkMe guidance delivers reliable, consistent guidance to the global employee base.

One of the most impactful changes WalkMe made possible was related to the annual review process: a critical task that touches nearly everyone at the organization. Mott MacDonald developed WalkMe WalkThrus and SmartTips to support employees in setting goals, recording achievements, and giving and receiving feedback.

Mott MacDonald also employs WalkMe to validate data, ensuring critical information adheres to defined formats. For example, to make sure the business has the correct data in the event of a security issue, one of the company’s tools requires a specific numerical format. To guarantee that employees enter the data correctly in SuccessFactors, where the information is pulled from, Mott MacDonald implemented WalkMe to validate the format of information entered. This proactive approach helped prevent data quality issues.

The company continues to find simple but elegant ways to drive desired actions, bringing in WalkMe’s automation capabilities to address common challenges. For example, Mott MacDonald found that adjusting dates for Talent Review reports wasn’t clear and often caused user frustration, so Gomm’s team built a DAP solution to automatically use the correct date range.

“Every single person who encountered that screen was coming to us and asking where their data had gone. Now, when somebody clicks into that page, WalkMe sets the dates and tells you that it’s created a wide date range that will capture the majority of talent reviews,” Gomm said. “With automation, we offset any need to contact support and enable team members to focus on what they were trying to accomplish.”

Beyond simplifying workflows and addressing common pain points, the company continues to use WalkMe as a change management solution. When a compensation and salary review module launched, Mott MacDonald developed various digital adoption solutions to guide users through the new system.

As implementation of WalkMe grew, Mott MacDonald’s builders, who were creating WalkMe guidance across workstreams and regions, needed a governance strategy to standardize processes and build a community of content creators. “We decided to develop an integrated, global process for using WalkMe,” Gomm said.

Led by Gomm, Mott MacDonald adopted a robust governance strategy. The company started using Insights, WalkMe’s analytics tool, to identify drop-off points in processes, which helps Gomm and his team strategically fine-tune their guidance to ensure it meets user needs and enables them to complete tasks accurately and quickly. “With Insights, we’re able to understand our people’s behaviors, so we can be more strategic with how we implement our digital adoption solutions and ultimately drive the desired actions, which benefits the employees and the business,” Gomm said.

By leveraging WalkMe, Mott MacDonald enhanced the employee experience, increased productivity, and reduced support requests. The company has saved an estimated 9,477 hours annually in deflected support queries, along with an estimated 1 hour of training time saved per employee, and more than 280 hours saved through improved process cycles per year.

“My favorite thing about WalkMe is that it’s quick and agile, which empowers us to respond to needs as they arise,” Gomm said. “Our builders can develop a WalkMe solution and push it out to 20,000 employees, providing them access to immediate, just-in-time help. With other tools, it isn’t as simple.”

With four regions globally, having a single source of truth has been key for unifying employee experience. Additionally, the WalkMe builders are now connected and in sync. “Everybody talks to each other and shares knowledge. We have a vibrant community of builders.”

Mott MacDonald continues to discover new ways to implement WalkMe to optimize employee experiences and address pain points like being able to access the right learning modules at the right time. To fix this gap, Gomm’s team plans to build WalkMe guidance for effective searches or even have WalkMe perform the search for them. “Learning touches everybody, so our focus next year is going to be simplifying the learning programs we have in place,” Gomm said.

With time and resources saved from digital adoption and streamlined processes, Mott MacDonald can focus on its mission to deliver excellence in engineering and consultancy services on a global scale.