Every Pound Counts. Your Workday System Should Prove It.

UK charities are operating under sustained financial pressure. Total charity income in 2023/24 was £96 billion but total spending reached £94 billion. The margin between income and expenditure continues to narrow, and 83% of charities report challenges in maintaining income streams.

At the same time, workforce costs are rising. The National Living Wage increases each April, and the 2025 changes to employer National Insurance contributions have added further pressure. For charities, which employ around 978,000 people across the UK approximately 3% of the total workforce this is a direct constraint on the resources available to deliver their mission.

In this environment, technology systems that cost money without demonstrating value are an easy target. For organisations that have implemented Workday, the question is: are you genuinely getting the return on that investment or is the system an overhead?

The Financial and Workforce Reality

The Hidden Cost of an Under-Optimised System

Many charities and not-for-profit organisations implemented Workday to consolidate fragmented HR and finance systems. The intention was clear: one platform, better data, lower administrative overhead.

What often happens post-implementation is less clean. The system is live, but it is not fully configured. Reports are not set up the way the leadership team needs them. The HR team is still extracting data manually for board reporting. Payroll exceptions require investigation that should be automatic. And when something needs changing, the organisation is logging a ticket with an external partner and waiting for a response.

For a charity, every hour of staff time spent managing a system rather than using it is a cost against the mission. Every support call is a line item that could have been a service delivery resource.

What Alacrity Solutions Provides

Alacrity Solutions works with organisations under 5,000 headcount that have implemented Workday and need to get more out of it without the cost model of a large partner.

The approach is built around ownership. Alacrity's team trains your internal staff to manage the system confidently, so the organisation is not paying for external support to answer questions your people should be able to answer themselves. And where ongoing AMS support is needed, Alacrity provides it at a price that is sustainable for a not-for-profit organisation.

With over 30 years of combined in-house Workday knowledge, the team works closely with each client not through a helpdesk, but through a direct relationship with consultants who know your configuration.

For charities and not-for-profit organisations, that means:

•        Workday configured to reflect your actual structure: volunteers, employees, fixed-term contracts, complex funding streams

•        Finance and HR analytics that give trustees and senior leadership the reporting they need without hours of manual preparation

•        Internal training to reduce dependence on external support and build genuine in-house Workday capability

•        Ongoing AMS support for system maintenance, release management, and process changes at a price that reflects your scale

Making the Investment Work

Workday is not a small financial commitment for any organisation. For a charity, the case for that commitment depends on the system delivering clear, demonstrable value in time saved, reporting quality, and reduced administrative overhead.

If your Workday tenant is not delivering that, the issue is rarely the platform itself. It is the configuration, the training, and the ongoing support model. Those are things Alacrity Solutions is built to address.

Because every pound counts. And your Workday system should be helping you protect the ones that matter.

Alacrity Solutions provides expert Workday AMS support and workforce training for organisations under 5,000 headcount. With over 30 years of in-house Workday knowledge, Alacrity delivers a personal service at a price that mid-sized organisations can sustain.