On Our Way to Workday: Transforming How We Work
On Jan. 1, 2026, Houston Methodist will launch Workday to manage many of our HR, financial, supply chain and planning functions. It will replace MARS and is the industry leader in enterprise resource planning (ERP) software. When Workday launches, every employee will interact with it in some way, whether through payroll, benefits, recruitment, onboarding, compliance, learning, supply chain, accounting and grants. Every employee will also have better, faster access to information needed for both their professional and personal lives.
Clear Benefits
Workday’s improved employee experience provides easier access to information, is more user-friendly and includes customizable reporting tools. While employees will use Workday for business tasks, such as onboarding, training, performance and expense tasks, Workday will also provide easier access to personal information on-the-go. This includes viewing or downloading important items, like paystubs, tax documents, benefits and wellbeing information, PTO balances and more.
“Workday’s modern, cloud-based features and mobile-friendly options allow us to better serve our employees, who in turn, will be better supported to serve our patients,” said Kevin Burns, executive vice president, chief financial officer and chief business officer. Burns, who’s one of the project’s executive sponsor, added, “Transitioning to Workday will give us a unified environment plus best-practice methods for business operations.”
On Our Way to Workday
Great care and planning have gone into the selection and preparation for the launch of Workday. The implementation team includes more than 50 employees from Finance, Human Resources, Information Technology, Research and Supply Chain. HM has engaged professional services support and coaching from KPMG, our implementation partner.
Ken Letkeman, senior vice president and chief information officer and project executive sponsor, said, “Workday presents us with a unique opportunity to streamline many applications into one and provide our employees with a better experience. Once implemented, we’ll be able to plan smarter, report faster and analyze better. With Workday’s modern system it will be easier for our employees to access and use.”
Our version of Workday will improve and ease how we do our daily jobs, help us substantially reduce duplication of efforts and improve system security.
Michael Brown, senior vice president and chief human resources officer and project executive sponsor, added, “Everyone wants and deserves to be able to access their paycheck information and to review and select their benefits quickly and easily. We expect the flexibility that Workday will bring to these activities will be a real game changer.”
The Road Ahead
The design phase of the project will begin in July and run through early November. In 2025, all HM employees will be trained on how to use and navigate Workday. Extensive support will be available both before and after the Jan. 1, 2026, go-live date.
Our goal is to make this the best Workday implementation ever! We’ll need everyone’s support to make our journey successful. Look for more communications about our Workday in the upcoming months.