When every millisecond counts, so does every process
McLaren Racing approached an ambitious Workday implementation with the same precision that drives its success on the track.
THE SITUATION
In Formula 1®(F1) racing, victory is often in the margins. A pit stop that’s 0.2 seconds faster than the one before … A small adjustment in tire pressure to optimize how a car grips the track. These seemingly minor changes can add up to a win—or even back-to-back Constructors’ World Championships as seen by the McLaren Mastercard F1 Team in 2024 and 2025, which is why McLaren Racing is relentless in pursuing marginal gains.
Across McLaren Racing, which is home to the McLaren Mastercard Formula 1 Team, Arrow McLaren in the NTT INDYCAR SERIES, McLaren Racing’s 2027 entry in the FIA World Endurance Championship, and McLaren Racing’s F1 Academy and F1 Sim Racing Championship teams, people move as fast off the grid as they do on it. As an organization, McLaren Racing has built a culture of excellence by prioritizing empowerment and continuous learning that helps foster a collective “no-blame” mindset. This intentional combination of ambition, trust and autonomy supports McLaren Racing’s ability to attract and retain elite talent.
And just as the team paired human capabilities with advanced technology to drive success on the track, McLaren Racing leaders wanted to make sure the HR teams had modern tools and systems to enhance the overall People experience. “We had to take a look and see where we could find our own marginal gains,” said Sarah Wilson, People Director, Commercial & People Technology, McLaren Racing.
McLaren Racing had outgrown its existing HR systems. They were disconnected and without a centralized data source for candidate and employee data. The lack of integration slowed decision-making within an organization that knew how to move quickly, with high quality and confidence, throughout the busy racing season with people (and cars) moving all over the globe. The existing tools were in tension with the operational excellence employees were accustomed to on and off the track. McLaren Racing sought to provide its team with the speed, clarity and personalization found elsewhere in the market. It wanted to empower managers and leaders with not only real-time data, but with embedded analytics that could be integrated into their workflows and help them make timely, informed decisions about their people.
As Official Transformation Partner of McLaren Racing, Deloitte was ideally positioned to help McLaren Racing implement an elevated human resources information system (HRIS) that could scale with the operation and move with the pace and precision of elite motorsport. As a globally recognized leader in Workday transformations, with multiple Workday Partner of the Year awards, Deloitte helped McLaren Racing set an ambitious timeline for deployment, given the large number of planned modules and functionality. The 30-week deadline reflected both organizations’ commitment to maintaining high standards at a very high speed.
MARGINAL GAINS DON’T STOP AT THE TRACK
THE SOLVE
The project got underway at the McLaren Technology Centre (MTC) in Woking, England, a stunning facility designed to reflect McLaren Racing’s “no-compromise ethos,” with an array of historically significant racing vehicles greeting visitors upon their arrival. “As an implementation partner, this is equally inspiring and challenging, as it’s evident that only the very highest standards will deliver what’s needed by the end of the project,” said Lynsay Gillespie, the Programme’s Workday director, from Deloitte UK.
Deloitte brought extensive HR and Workday experience built across industries and geographies. Team members were eager to innovate and tailor a creative solution for McLaren Racing’s highly specific operational model. McLaren Racing envisioned back-office systems that were fit-for-purpose and could enhance on-track performance. Together, McLaren Racing and Deloitte could simplify legacy processes, empower talent and create lasting solutions by working through challenges collaboratively.
The design, tailored for McLaren Racing, encompassed a large scope of Workday modules and functionality, including Human Capital Management, Absence, Talent, Performance, Core Compensation, Peakon, Prism, Help, Journeys, Reporting, Security and Integrations. McLaren Racing People leaders realized existing structures and processes were complex, but they knew them in and out—quirks and all. But after walking through more sustainable options with Deloitte, McLaren Racing leaders recognized that a new structure—with analytics embedded into decision-making at every level—could deliver long-term benefits over short-term familiarity.
Creative collaboration also helped the combined team overcome challenges in mapping the McLaren Racing team’s distinctive reporting structure to traditional Workday reporting hierarchies. The resulting customization used Workday’s ability to enable “roll-up” assignments that enable reporting based on context, such as trackside operations versus planning at MTC. This could reduce maintenance effort, simplify reporting, and significantly mitigate the risk of manual errors after go-live.
The McLaren Racing team is used to acting with confidence at high speed. Its governance structure was built to support those split-second in-race decisions, and it enabled successful focused sprints and timely executive approvals throughout the 30-week period. Deloitte and McLaren Racing also avoided delays by concentrating only on what was necessary. This meant that even if McLaren Racing could take on additional functionality and modules, that didn’t have to mean it should. Drawing on years of experience as a trusted adviser in the Workday ecosystem, Deloitte could help anticipate high-priority employee touchpoints within the system on day one so McLaren Racing could concentrate efforts on what matters most to its people.
In the final, critical stages of the project, McLaren Racing completed testing in six weeks, with strong coverage and high-quality results. Deloitte and McLaren Racing rehearsed cutover down to the minute, conducting multiple walkthroughs with all key players. The result was a smooth and efficient transition, with all cutover activities delivered on time, both pre- and post-go-live, further illustration of the precision and rigor McLaren Racing and Deloitte brought to the project.
The McLaren Racing change management team met people where they were, even if they were on the road, with clear, instructive communications that were timed strategically, so as not to distract from race-related priorities. And on day one, McLaren Racing pushed out the app to people’s phones, and nearly two thirds of the employee population logged in from MTC, from Arrow McLaren in Indianapolis, Indiana, and from other race locations around the world. Thirty percent of day-one logins were from mobile devices. To welcome employees to Workday, McLaren Racing had invited its people to log in and request their next day off (since time off tends to be the HR touch point employees engage with most frequently). Almost 20% of the entire month’s time-off requests were made in the first two days after go-live, and more than 1,710 were entered over the system’s first four weeks. For the implementation team, this served as a positive indicator of early employee engagement with the enhanced experience and its effectiveness as employees engaged with it on the go.
The successful Workday implementation may not appear in the trophy case, but it delivers the marginal gains McLaren Racing sought for its People team. Less time entering data manually. Enhanced visibility into workforce capacity. Faster access to timelier data through dashboards and analytic insights that help underscore what it means. Off the track, these incremental efficiencies can drive the win.
Let’s make this work.
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THE IMPACT
When high-performing F1 teams (or businesses) have to navigate the same challenges—be that cost cap compliance, race day weather or the laws of aerodynamics—competitive advantage on the track may come down to how their respective people use data to make winning choices. Now, McLaren Racing’s People team has its own data-driven strategy and fit-for-purpose technology solution it is using to address everyday operational challenges. “The new human capital management system gives us faster real-time data for us to be able to make decisions,” said Wilson. “It’s automating processes for us. It’s making everybody’s lives more efficient.”
Data that used to come from disparate sources has been centralized and structured so it’s accessible to leaders when they need it. McLaren Racing is using the tools to support better hiring decisions, manage operations proactively and respond to unexpected challenges quickly and confidently.
All McLaren Racing employees logged into Workday within the first four weeks, across desktop and mobile, high employee engagement driven by a successful change strategy and supported by effective design. For the first time, McLaren Racing employees could manage their personal data via a front-end Workday experience that offers convenience and transparency.
A new racing season is underway and a relentless combination of performance, precision, strategy and organizational excellence positions McLaren Racing for sustained success on the track. And now, as HR functions across industries accelerate toward a more efficient, AI-driven future, McLaren Racing’s People team is positioned to maintain their own competitive edge and find victory in the margins. And those margins just got wider.
PRECISION ACROSS MARGINS COMPOUNDS INTO COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE
