Target enhances the HR experience and employee benefits. (2024)

Target invests in its team members’ whole selves, with benefits that take care of each team member and their families to support their health and financial well-being. Target’s partnership with Workday has enabled the HR team of the Fortune 50 retail brand to remain agile in the face of unique safety and demand challenges brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. The flexibility and responsiveness of Workday HCM helped Target introduce—or in some cases, update—team member benefits at record pace.

Fueling agility with flexibility.

In 2018, Target deployed Workday to help modernize its HR capabilities and achieve greater organizational agility. Workday enables Target HR team members to make changes and reconfigure business processes quickly and easily without code changes that require development and deployment. Target can use the multiple testing environments in Workday to model and analyze the impact of changes before they are finalized.

When it’s necessary for Target to connect to other vendors’ systems, Workday provides the tools to build and modify integrations and validate results. The same test environments can be used to evaluate software updates. Dana Klein, director of technology at Target, says, “Workday provides the foundation, flexibility, and speed we need in an HR software partner.”

• Improve business agility by efficiently adjusting processes through low-risk software configurations
• Empower and motivate team members with proactive communications and improved benefits
• Quickly introduce new benefits and leave-of-absence policies without disrupting operations

Expediting enhancements to team member benefits and pay.

Target was laser-focused on taking care of its team members during the pandemic. With help from Workday’s automated functionality, the company was able to implement many changes efficiently:

• Adjusted leave-accrual schedules so team members would not lose time off

• Allowed temporary leave of absence for at-risk team members

• Provided additional sick time for those who had COVID-19

• Changed paid time off to accrue at double the annual limits—and applied this change retroactively

• Raised starting wage for U.S. team members to $15 per hour

• Complied with new state-specific time-off legislation

Through configuration and integration updates, these changes were made very quickly. “Dynamic functionality and configurations in Workday allowed us to quickly augment benefits without manual intervention,” Klein says. “That was a big win and a huge time-saver.”

Streamlining processes to better serve team members.

Target also uses the Workday platform to efficiently communicate with team members. Workday notification prompts and a centralized document platform enable efficient information sharing throughout Target. Klein explains, “We configured Workday capabilities to notify thousands of team members simultaneously about wage increases and alert them to update their contact information. We also paused and rescheduled educational campaigns for both headquarters and in-store team members so they were aware of the latest details about remote work arrangements.”

Another impactful element is the ability for Target team members to access helpful information and manage processes on their own. “Workday provides team members with great self-service capabilities and the visibility to perform transactions on their own. Speeding up these processes means our team members can spend more time delivering an exceptional guest experience,” Klein says.

Scaling retail teams.

Over the course of several months, Target hired thousands of additional team members to meet new guest demands prompted by the pandemic. Klein notes, “With Workday, we handled an unprecedented number of applications without worrying about technology adjustments or seeing any impact on other applications.”

Recruiting processes were easy to adjust. Klein explains, “We used the Workday Enterprise Interface Builder tool to create several hundred permanent job requisitions in one step instead of doing that manually for each. We also used simple configurations that could be done in one business day to update our screening procedures.”

Mobile access has also transformed the applicant experience. With Workday Recruiting, new job applicants can review job openings and initiate the process of joining the Target team from their mobile devices. Klein comments, “The usability of Workday, especially with its mobile capabilities, continues to pay off in how our team members get information and how we engage with job applicants.”

Adding a national holiday to the company calendar in five days.

In 2020, Target announced Juneteenth as a new company holiday and partnered with Workday to roll it out fast—in just five business days. HR team members completed an impact analysis and all necessary configurations in the first two days. In the process, HR was able to use employee extended illness benefits to remove time-off submissions from team members who had already requested to take Juneteenth off. Mike McNamara, Target’s executive vice president and chief information officer, says, “I give Workday a lot of credit. Its solution was ready for uncertainty. We decided on a Monday to make that upcoming Friday a national holiday and Workday enabled it to happen seamlessly.”

With the only constant being change, Workday HCM helps Target stay agile and provide its team members with an ongoing, exceptional HR experience.