Senior Consultant, Workday Organizational Change Management

About the Role: Senior Consultant, Workday Organizational Change Management

Avaap is seeking a seasoned Workday Change Management professional with deep higher education experience to lead organizational change efforts for colleges and universities undergoing Workday transformations. In this role, you will serve as a primary change management lead on assigned engagements—owning strategy, execution, and client partnership. You will work directly with executive sponsors, project leaders, and functional teams to design and deliver practical, scalable change approaches that enable long-term adoption.

As a Senior Consultant, you are expected to operate independently, guide client teams through complex change environments, and lead small delivery teams while modeling best practices in applied change management.

What Excellence Looks Like In This Role

• Serving as a trusted advisor to client sponsors and change leaders throughout the implementation lifecycle.
• Independently leading the change management workstream on medium to large Workday engagements.
• Translating change theory into practical, institution-ready strategies.
• Designing adoption approaches that respect higher education culture, governance, and capacity constraints.
• Coaching client leaders and teams to confidently lead change within their organizations.
• Leading and mentoring consultants and specialists to deliver high-quality outcomes.
• Anticipating risks and proactively adjusting strategies to protect adoption and readiness.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead end-to-end change management delivery for assigned Workday implementations.
• Partner with executive sponsors, project leadership, and functional stakeholders to assess readiness and organizational impact.
• Develop and execute integrated change strategies aligned to Workday milestones and client priorities.
• Design and guide communications, engagement, and training approaches tailored to higher education audiences.
• Translate system design and program decisions into clear, actionable adoption plans.
• Review, refine, and approve client-facing change deliverables.
• Identify adoption risks and develop mitigation and reinforcement strategies.
• Facilitate leadership sessions, change network meetings, and cross-functional working groups.
• Lead and coordinate consulting team members and subject-matter specialists.
• Support knowledge sharing, continuous improvement, and delivery standards across engagements.
• Lead transformational initiatives at mission-driven higher education institutions.
• Operate as a strategic advisor—not just a project contributor.
• Work alongside experienced Workday and change management professionals.
• Influence delivery standards, tools, and methodology.
• Grow into advanced leadership and practice development opportunities.
• Remote-first environment with client travel as needed.

Required Qualifications

• Demonstrated experience supporting Workday HCM, Financial Management, Payroll, and/or Student implementations.
• Proven success leading change management efforts within higher education institutions.
• Consulting or professional services background.
• Strong facilitation, communication, and stakeholder management skills.
• Ability to independently lead workstreams and manage multi-resource delivery.
• Experience applying structured change management methodologies in real-world environments.

Preferred Qualifications

• Workday certification (Workday Pro and/or Implementation Certification strongly preferred).
• Certification in change management methodologies (e.g., Prosci, ADKAR).
• Experience in decentralized, shared-governance, or unionized environments.
• Experience mentoring junior consultants and developing delivery capability.

Key skills/competency

• Workday HCM
• Organizational Change Management
• Higher Education Consulting
• Stakeholder Management
• Communication Strategy
• Implementation Leadership
• Adoption Planning
• Prosci/ADKAR
• Facilitation
• Risk Mitigation