Client Background and Context

Finsbury Food Group is one of the UK's leading bakery manufacturers, with 3,000 employees spread across production sites and offices. The majority work in production or logistics, which means most of the workforce does not sit at a desk and does not have a corporate email account.

When the business decided to roll out Workvivo as its company-wide communications platform, it faced a practical question straight away: how do you get 3,000 employees onto a platform when most of them cannot receive an activation email?

The existing approach was manual. Someone had to check Dayforce, the company's HR system, and then separately set up access in Workvivo. For a business the size of Finsbury, that was slow, prone to error, and simply not built for scale.

Beyond the rollout itself, there were ongoing problems to solve. When a new employee joined and was added to Dayforce, there was no automatic trigger to give them access to anything else. When someone left, removing their access required a separate manual step that was not always caught in time. When someone moved between sites or changed roles, their access often did not update to reflect the change.

Finsbury needed an identity and access layer that could do what its existing tools could not: connect Dayforce to Workvivo automatically, handle every type of employee, and keep running reliably in the background without someone checking it every week.

The Challenge

The problem was not one thing. It was several things happening at once, all pointing to the same gap: there was no automated link between who someone is in the HR system and what they can access at work.

• No connection between HR and communications: Dayforce held the employee data. Workvivo was where employees needed to go. But nothing connected the two. Every new account had to be set up manually, which meant delays, inconsistencies and a process that relied entirely on someone remembering to do it.
  
• Most employees had no corporate email: Standard platform onboarding assumes employees have a corporate email address. For frontline workers in a manufacturing environment, that assumption does not hold. Without a way to handle email-free access, a significant portion of the workforce would be locked out from the start.
• Manual offboarding left gaps: When employees left the business, removing their access from Workvivo depended on a process that ran separately from Dayforce. The result was that leavers sometimes retained access longer than they should have, and the records between systems did not always match.
• The Workvivo rollout needed a proper foundation: Launching a communications platform to 3,000 employees is only useful if those employees can actually get in. Without solving the access problem first, the platform rollout would have launched with significant gaps in coverage from day one.

Finsbury Food Group needed a solution that would run automatically, work for every type of employee, and hold up as the business grew.

The Solution

Connect was deployed as the identity and access layer between Dayforce and Workvivo. Rather than building workarounds for frontline employees, it created a single, consistent process that works for everyone.

Dayforce connected to Workvivo, automatically

The first step was integrating Connect with Dayforce. Once that connection was in place, employee data flowed automatically. When someone is added to Dayforce, Connect picks up the record and provisions their Workvivo access without anyone needing to do it manually. The process runs in the background, quietly and reliably.

QR code activation for frontline employees

For employees without a corporate email address, Connect's QR code activation provides a straightforward alternative. On their first day, a frontline employee scans a code, verifies their identity using a small number of personal details, and creates a password. No inbox required. The whole process takes a few minutes and can be done on any mobile device.

Desk-based employees with Microsoft 365 accounts continue to sign in through standard single sign-on. Both groups are provisioned by Connect, just authenticated differently depending on how they work.

Automated joiner, mover and leaver workflows

Before Connect, managing joiners, movers and leavers was entirely manual. Now it runs automatically. When someone joins and is added to Dayforce, their Workvivo access is provisioned. When someone changes roles or moves between sites, their access and audience mapping updates to reflect the change. When someone leaves and is marked as a leaver in Dayforce, their access is removed. The whole cycle runs without manual input.

A reliable source of truth from day one

With Connect sitting between Dayforce and Workvivo, the two systems stay in sync. The employee record in Dayforce drives what happens in Workvivo, which means the data is accurate and up to date without anyone having to maintain it separately.

The Results

Finsbury Food Group now has a fully automated access model, integrated with Dayforce, and built to work for every employee regardless of role or location.


For IT Teams

• Full integration between Dayforce and Workvivo, with no manual data entry required
• Automated provisioning for all joiners, movers and leavers, running in the background
• QR code activation for frontline employees: secure access with no personal details needed beyond simple verification
• A scalable system that can grow alongside the business without additional overhead

For HR Teams

• No more manual onboarding steps when a new employee joins
  
• No more separate offboarding process to manage when someone leaves
  
• Fewer errors from manual data entry between systems
  
• Confidence that the access picture in Workvivo reflects what is in Dayforce

For the Business

• 3,000+ employees connected to Workvivo, including the frontline workforce that could not be reached through standard email-based onboarding
• An identity and access layer that runs reliably and scales as the business grows
• A platform rollout built on a solid foundation, with access solved before launch, not after
• A process that keeps working without anyone having to check it

Finsbury didn't need to change how it manages its people. It needed a way to make the system it already had talk to the tools its people needed to use.

By connecting Dayforce to Workvivo through Connect, 3,000 employees now have automated, reliable access from their first day, with a process that keeps running accurately without manual effort.