HRIS; Workday) Implementation Project Specialist

Job Title:

HRIS (Workday) Implementation Project Specialist
Bargaining Unit:
Non-Union
Language Requirement:
English Essential
Vacancy Status:
New position – fixed term contract

Cornwall is a beautiful community with a population of 47,000 situated on the banks of the St. Lawrence River in Eastern Ontario. The city offers a wide array of urban amenities, making it an excellent place for a career and raising a family. With a growing economy, expanding population and fantastic quality of life, there has never been a better time to start the next phase of your career with the City of Cornwall!

Cornwall is a diverse and progressive community where residents and partners feel safe, welcomed, and enjoy a high quality of life supported by access to financially responsible and sustainable municipal services and infrastructure.

The HRIS (Workday) Implementation Project Specialist leads the planning, coordination, implementation, testing, deployment, and stabilization of the organization’s Workday Human Resource Information System. The role serves as the central project contact between Human Resources, Payroll, Finance, Information Technology, vendors, implementation partners, business units, and senior leadership, supporting the delivery of various HR functions in alignment with organizational goals while ensuring compliance with labour laws, collective agreements, municipal policies, and best practices.

• Lead the full lifecycle Workday implementation, including planning, discovery, design, configuration coordination, integration, testing, training, deployment, and post-go-live stabilization.
• Develop and manage project plans, schedules, milestones, deliverables, budgets, dependencies, risks, issues, and resource requirements.
• Coordinate cross-functional activities with HR, Payroll, Finance, IT, software vendors, implementation consultants, business units, and senior stakeholders.
• Serve as the primary project contact for implementation decisions, escalations, stakeholder communications, and project status reporting.
• Facilitate requirements gathering, business process reviews, workflow documentation, and process redesign across HR, payroll, finance, time, attendance, benefits, position management, reporting, and approvals.
• Oversee data preparation, cleansing, conversion, validation, migration, reconciliation, and quality assurance in partnership with Payroll and Finance.
• Support the integration of Labour Relations requirements into the HRIS platform by assisting with the planning, development, and implementation of related protocols, policies, programs, procedures, workflows, and data requirements aligned with organizational goals.
• Coordinate integrations between Workday and related enterprise platforms, including payroll, finance, timekeeping, identity management, reporting, and document management systems.
• Maintain project governance tools, including steering committee updates, decision logs, risk registers, action trackers, dashboards, and implementation documentation.
• Lead change management activities, including stakeholder engagement, communications, training coordination, readiness assessments, adoption support, and go-live support.
• Coordinate testing activities, including unit, integration, user acceptance, payroll parallel testing, defect tracking, and issue resolution.
• Ensure the implementation supports legislative, collective agreement, policy, audit, privacy, accessibility, records management, and data security requirements.
• Identify risks, resolve barriers, elevate issues, and support post-implementation evaluation, lessons learned, optimization, and transition to steady-state operations.

• N/A

• Post-secondary education in Human Resources, Business Administration, Information Technology, Computer Science, Finance, Project Management, or a related discipline.

• Minimum of five to seven years of progressively responsible project management experience, preferably including enterprise system, HRIS, payroll transformation, or Workday implementation.

• Demonstrated experience leading complex, cross-functional projects involving HR, Payroll, Finance, IT, vendors, consultants, and senior stakeholders.
• Strong working knowledge of HR processes, labour relations, payroll administration, financial processes, software implementation, IT systems, integrations, data management, reporting, security, and business…