How Delivery Hero Connected Workday to Its Immigration Program
At a Glance
~3,000 employees
based in Berlin
50%+
of the workforce comes from outside the EU
43 new cases
initiated through the Workday–Boundless integration
1 day per month
in time savings
Just hours
from employees signing their employment contract to receiving access to the immigration platform
Scaling a Global Workforce With a Lean Mobility Team
Delivery Hero operates across APAC, LATAM, MENA, and Europe through brands including talabat, foodora, and HungerStation. The company processes around 11 million orders every day and now operates in around 65 countries around the world.
At its Berlin headquarters, approximately 3,000 corporate employees support those operations. More than half are international hires from outside the European Union, a reflection of the company’s rapid hiring during its hypergrowth years between 2020 and 2022.
Supporting that workforce is a surprisingly lean Global Mobility function.
Lorna Ather, Principal of Global Mobility at Delivery Hero, oversees immigration strategy, vendor management, compliance, and employee experience. Day-to-day operations are handled by one dedicated mobility specialist, supported by three additional team members during busy periods.
As the company continued to grow, one challenge became increasingly urgent.
Many of the employees hired during Delivery Hero's rapid growth were approaching the end of their initial four-year work permits. “We had a lot of people who started from 2020 to 2022,” said Ather. “A visa or work permit is generally valid for four years, so there's a huge wave of people—hundreds of employees—who need renewals now.”
At the same time, the company continued hiring internationally and relocating employees into Germany.
Every new hire and transfer needed to be set up in Boundless before their immigration process could begin.
Before the integration, that work was entirely manual.
The team gathered employee information, created profiles individually, and relied on spreadsheets and manual data entry to start each case.
“Even if it was just five minutes per profile, it still adds up. Hundreds of profiles. And you need to train people, and they need to do it right. And then there's always human error.”
Building a Direct Workday Integration
Delivery Hero had already worked with Boundless for several years and knew that as the partnership expanded, automation would become essential.
“We knew at that point that this integration would be needed. Otherwise, it would be a lot of manual work,” said Ather.
Working together, Delivery Hero’s People Tech team and Boundless designed a direct API integration between Workday and Boundless.
Although the project was delivered on a tight timeline that overlapped with the Christmas holiday period, the implementation went smoothly. The process took 6 weeks end to end, from requirements gathering through build, to user acceptance testing.
“The partnership was super smooth. Any time there was something where we weren't sure, we'd reach out and somebody would be there. It was just easy,” said Ather.
How the Integration Works
Today, immigration support begins directly inside Delivery Hero’s HRIS, Workday.
When a new employee signs their contract, they complete a relocation questionnaire covering information such as citizenship, relocation plans, family members, and required immigration support. The Global Mobility team reviews the information and submits the case directly from Workday to Boundless with a single action.
Within hours, employees receive an invitation to begin uploading their immigration documents into Boundless.
The integration also synchronizes visa and work permit information back into Workday, letting Delivery Hero automatically maintain accurate immigration records as part of its compliance program.
“Within a matter of hours after signing a contract, they’re already in Boundless. They already get an email saying, ‘Go to Boundless, upload your documents.’ It’s a very quick turnaround.”
The Results
Removing manual profile creation has saved hours of administrative work across hundreds of cases while reducing opportunities for data entry errors.
That allows the Global Mobility team to spend less time on repetitive administration and more time supporting employees.
For Delivery Hero, the biggest improvement has been the employee experience.
Relocating internationally is one of the most stressful moments in an employee’s career. Receiving immediate communication after signing an employment contract helps reduce uncertainty and builds confidence that the process is already underway.
Employee feedback has also improved. According to Ather, employees consistently highlight both the responsiveness of the Boundless team and the transparency of the process.
“Our employees always say the Boundless team is brilliant,” said Ather. “Everything was smooth. I knew where I was with the whole process. It was explained to me really well.”
The integration also gave the Global Mobility team a concrete project to share with leadership. At a time when automation was becoming a company-wide priority, it demonstrated how the team was reducing manual work, improving the employee experience, and contributing to broader business goals.
“Showing that something is adding value, showing that something is automated — everybody is obviously very pleased with that,” said Ather.
What’s Next
Today, the integration supports new hires and employee transfers.
Delivery Hero is now planning to extend the same API-driven workflow to visa renewals, creating a more automated immigration process across the entire employee lifecycle.
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