Transforming Timekeeping And Absence Management: A Large-Scale Workday Implementation Across Abbott's Medical Devices Division

Abstract

The strategic rollout of Workday Timekeeping and Absence to Abbott's Medical Devices business in the United States and Puerto Rico is an enterprise-wide transformation project that replaced aging Kronos platforms, affecting over 16,000 employees across multiple manufacturing facilities and deploying 160+ Workday ZK Teko physical clocks. The implementation engaged a cross-functional project team of 100+ members spanning IT, HR, manufacturing operations, and compliance functions. The rollout consolidated payroll processing functionality, improved regulatory compliance, such as California attestation, and modernized employee experience with mobile-responsive interfaces and biometric identity verification systems. The conversion resolved key issues such as disjointed legacy systems, regulatory risks, and shallow enterprise-wide visibility into labor statistics that had developed organically at various sites and business units over prior decades. Major results were gains in operations efficiency, cost savings from system consolidation, improved readiness for audit, and greater data visibility to support workforce planning. Implementation involved thorough change management frameworks covering technological, organizational, and human aspects in parallel through stakeholder involvement, customized communication techniques, hybrid learning solutions, and Site Champion initiatives that provided localized go-live support. The project had well-defined governance structures, deployment phasing strategies, and ongoing improvement techniques that supported successful organizational adoption and not just technical deployment. This change adds to the overall body of work in digital workforce management and offers insight into large-scale enterprise system modernization in regulated manufacturing environments, serving as a model for cross-functional collaboration and technical program management in healthcare device manufacturing operations.