How Delaware North Australia & New Zealand Turned Compliance into a Competitive Advantage
→ The Challenge
Critical Compliance in a High-Volume Hiring Environment
Delaware North operates across Australia and New Zealand, managing a large, fluid workforce that scales rapidly for major events and to meet seasonal demand. Managing this high volume of staff—including thousands of casuals and visa holders—creates relentless pressure on recruitment and HR teams to ensure ongoing compliance.
Roles across Delaware North’s network of employees are widely varied: from airport team members and Chefs and F&B team at MCG, to highly specialised roles on remote sites like Lizard Island. For example, a single dive instructor may need up to five certificates in addition to more standard employment requirements like right to work and reference checks.
Delaware North was looking for a unified, intelligent compliance engine capable of handling scale, speed, and regulatory variation.
→ The Solution
A Centralised HR Tech Ecosystem
Delaware North’s strategic answer was to pursue a full integration of their core HR tech stack: iCIMS (recruitment), CheckWorkRights (compliance), and Workday (global HRIS). The goal was to establish a secure, automated, multi-directional data flow that reduced human intervention.
The Delaware North and CheckWorkRights teams worked together to establish a matrix of required checks and compliance requirements based on employee role and location. Then they analysed existing manual workflows to map a secure, automated flow:
- When a candidate is created in iCIMS, their role and location metadata automatically triggers CheckIntelligence™ automation in CheckWorkRights.
- CheckWorkRights initiates and sends all required checks, manages communication with the candidate, and facilitates review and validation by a manager.
- All final compliance data, including right to work status and critical expiry dates, flows back into iCIMS.
- Once candidates are hired, this data also flows directly into Workday to track and manage employees throughout lifecycle.
- CheckWorkRights continuously monitors visa status with the Department of Home Affairs and tracks expiries for licences and certifications with automated alerts.
The system now centralises all compliance documentation into Workday as a single source of truth so compliance can be proactive.
"The integration lets us visualise the entire picture. Anyone new to the HR team can immediately get a look at that whole candidate or employee's journey and all the compliance data, simplifying the onboarding process."
Sam Langan, HR Systems and Solutions Lead→ CheckIntelligence™
Mastering Regulatory Complexity at Scale
For a business as large and complex as Delaware North, employee compliance requires an engine capable of managing high volume and extreme variation in checks required with contextual nuance.
This is where CheckIntelligence™ delivers, solving for:
- Role variation: Lizard Island Resort has staff ranging from plumbers to dive instructors, and a single hire might require up to five different licences or certificates. CheckIntelligence™ manages this complexity, dynamically assigning the precise checks based on the role and location code pulled from iCIMS.
- Location variation: A bartender in Victoria requires a different RSA to a bartender in New South Wales, and the system automatically triggers relevant document collection based on state requirements.
- Internal mobility: If an employee moves roles or transfers locations within the organisation, CheckIntelligence™ automatically recognises the change. This triggers a review and flags any new compliance requirements (e.g. a new state-based license or site clearance), instantly ensuring continuous adherence to legislation without manual intervention.
“Recruiters should be less worried about compliance and more worried about getting the right people. CheckIntelligence allows us to keep our focus on people, not process."
Kimberley Manning, Director Talent Acquisition→ Strategic Impact
Air-Tight Compliance as a Competitive Edge
By embedding compliance into the core HR tech ecosystem, Delaware North achieved immediate and quantifiable returns:
- Proactive compliance: The system continuously monitors compliance status and mobility changes, flagging critical issues before they can expose the business to risk.
- Management by exception: The team can now concentrate only on the non-compliant cases flagged by the system.
- Time and resource savings: The efficiency gained immediately freed up recruiters for more valuable and people focused tasks.
On working with the CheckWorkRights team, HR Systems and Solutions Lead, Sam Langan said, “The biggest thing for me is their responsiveness. 95% of my emails are answered the same day. It’s that, combined with their openness to develop alongside us that truly makes the partnership a success.”
