Workday Functional Lead - Human Capital Management / Payroll

This role sits within FA Digital Technology and owns the product backlog across the Workday HCM and Payroll product areas, ensuring alignment with business priorities, product strategy and the wider Corporate Workday roadmap. It acts as the primary interface between business stakeholders, Product Management and delivery teams, translating business needs and strategic objectives into prioritised, value-driven outcomes. The postholder provides functional leadership across the FA Workday platform for relevant SKUs including HCM, Absence, Compensation and Payroll, ensuring platform capabilities are effectively leveraged and that system changes are delivered effectively.

• Own and continuously refine the Workday HCM/PY backlog in collaboration with Product Managers, business stakeholders and delivery teams, ensuring alignment to business priorities, product strategy and the wider Corporate Workday roadmap.
• Perform and/or oversee configuration within the Workday HCM, Payroll, Absence and Compensation modules, ensuring solutions are aligned to business requirements, governance standards and platform best practice.
• Work closely with stakeholders to understand business needs and translate them into effective Workday solutions, maintaining strong end-to-end knowledge across HCM, Absence, Compensation and Payroll.
• Act as the Functional Lead for Workday HCM/PY, supporting backlog execution, configuration coordination, feature adoption and the assessment and validation of bi-annual Workday releases.
• Act as an HR Reporting and Analytics SME, helping ensure business decisions, operational needs and improvement opportunities are reflected appropriately in product priorities and solutions.
• Champion and operate a tiered support model across Workday HCM/PY, including Tier 0 support materials, Tier 1 upskilling, Tier 2 support and escalation to Tier 3 / AMS where required.
• Fulfil relevant administrative responsibilities across the Workday tenant, including support for HCM, Org, Position, Compensation and Business Process Administration, ensuring effective governance, configuration and operational continuity.
• Champion an ethos of “why not Workday” for ongoing and future HR challenges, ensuring the platform is used effectively and consistently to meet business needs.
• Create sprint plans, ensure backlog items and user stories are prioritised, clearly defined and sprint-ready, and lead refinement, estimation and delivery support across the product area.
• Provide ongoing clarification to delivery teams and support quality assurance, functional testing, user acceptance testing, sign-off and deployment to ensure delivery of valuable, high-quality outcomes.
• Act as a key interface between business stakeholders, Product Management, delivery teams and third-party partners, balancing priorities and ensuring external delivery aligns with FA standards and ways of working.
• Maintain clear, concise and up-to-date documentation across the relevant delivery and support tools, and contribute to continuous improvement of Digital Technology processes, standards and practices.
• Keep up to date with developments in Product Ownership, Business Analysis and Workday practice, support colleagues where appropriate, and consistently demonstrate FA values and behaviours.
• Carry out additional tasks as required to meet the FA's changing priorities, and comply with all company policies and procedures to ensure the highest standards of health, safety and well-being are maintained.

• Deep Workday configuration expertise across the Core HCM module, with some understanding of the Payroll, Absence and Compensation modules.
• Experience with Workday feature release cycles and SaaS platform update adoption.
• Functional knowledge of HCM and Payroll processes, including employee lifecycle, absence, compensation and pay.
• Proven experience as a Product Owner, Functional Lead or Business Analyst working with Agile teams and methodologies.
• Significant experience in defining and managing requirements using recognised techniques.
• Strong experience of backlog ownership, prioritisation and refinement aligned to business value and strategy.
• Strong Agile delivery experience, particularly within Scrum and/or Kanban.
• Ability to translate business needs into clear, prioritised and value-driven outcomes.
• Strong stakeholder management skills, including negotiation of competing priorities.
• Experience working closely with Product Managers, Delivery Managers, Business Analysts and technical teams in cross-functional delivery environments.
• Ability to define and refine user stories and acceptance criteria to ensure sprint readiness.
• Strong analytical, problem-solving and decision-making skills in complex environments.
• Ability to support delivery through QA/UAT, sign-off and deployment.
• Strong communication, collaboration and presentation skills.
• Highly organised and self-disciplined, with strong planning and time management skills.

• Workday configuration expertise across one of the following modules: Payroll, Absence and Compensation.
• Experience acting as a functional SME or domain lead.
• Experience of supporting or overseeing system configuration and tenant administration responsibilities.
• Experience with HR reporting and analytics.
• Experience working with Managed Service Providers (AMS) or implementation partners.
• Understanding of tiered support models and live-service environments.
• Experience in HR transformation, enterprise system implementation or large-scale digital transformation programmes.
• Experience mentoring Product Owners or Business Analysts.
• Familiarity with business architecture, end-to-end process design and change management in enterprise system environments.
• Product Owner, Agile BA or relevant Workday certifications.
• Systems analysis experience, such as logical data design or an understanding of schemas and workflows.

• Hybrid working model whereby the expectation is to work from your contractual location for part of the week, and as and when required by the team, with the remaining days worked remotely.
• The hybrid model will continue to be monitored and may be adjusted in future if deemed necessary.

• Access to event day tickets at Wembley Stadium, alongside a host of regular internal events throughout the season, encouraging colleagues to connect and learn and to look after their mental health and well-being.
• Free, nutritious lunches at Wembley Stadium and St. George's Park.
• Free private medical cover.
• A contributory pension scheme.
• An additional 'Thank You' day's leave, volunteering days, as well as 25 days of annual leave (based on a full-time, permanent contract).
• A hybrid working model which offers greater flexibility.
• Unique office spaces under the arch of the iconic Wembley National Stadium, the home of English Football.
• A world-class Elite Performance Centre, St. George's Park in Staffordshire, an exceptional setting to develop and inspire high-performing England teams and leaders.
• Great opportunities to develop and grow in the role.