Workday is increasingly focusing on an integrated approach to managing artificial intelligence (AI) alongside the human workforce, within a unified system. This strategy addresses the growing need for centralized control and governance as organizations deploy AI tools across their operations. Workday's approach aims to ensure that AI augments human capabilities, streamlines processes, and drives better decision-making, all while maintaining security, compliance, and ethical standards.

Centralized AI Management

Workday's "Agent System of Record" provides organizations with a centralized platform to manage AI agents, whether they are developed by Workday or third-party providers. This system enables companies to onboard new AI agents, define operational parameters, track performance, and monitor costs within a single platform. Key features of this system include:

• AI Agent Marketplace: A central location for discovering and deploying AI agents designed for specific business roles.
• Role-Based AI Agents: AI agents tailored to specific functions such as contract analysis, payroll processing, financial auditing, and policy management. These agents possess configurable capabilities that allow them to support employees across multiple tasks.
• Security and Compliance: The platform helps organizations maintain security and compliance by governing AI access to sensitive data and ensuring adherence to company policies and regulatory frameworks.
• Cost and Performance Optimization: The system allows for monitoring and optimization of AI agent performance and costs, ensuring a return on AI investments.

AI-Powered Automation and Augmentation

Workday is embedding AI and machine learning (ML) into the core of its applications to automate tasks, enhance decision-making, and personalize experiences. Examples of AI-powered capabilities within Workday include:

• Skills Cloud: This feature uses machine learning to understand and correlate job skills data, making it easier to gather employee skills data, encourage skills development, and improve the understanding of skills and capabilities across the workforce. Skills Cloud gives you access to a remote database of over 50,000 skills that Workday maintains and updates regularly. The Skills Cloud helps in matching workers with relevant job postings and learning coursework.
• Generative AI for HR: Workday is incorporating generative AI to automate tasks such as generating job descriptions, employee growth plans, and customized knowledge content.
• AI-Driven Insights and Recommendations: AI algorithms analyze large datasets to generate career paths based on personal goals, surface employee feedback, and provide data-driven insights to managers.
• Intelligent Automation: AI agents can automate repetitive tasks such as report generation, resume screening, and expense report auditing.

The Human Element

Workday emphasizes the importance of "human-machine teaming," where AI augments human capabilities rather than replacing them. The company believes that AI should free up human capacity for more meaningful work, such as strategy, problem-solving, and innovation. Workday's approach ensures that users remain in control, with the ability to personalize and validate AI-generated content.

To facilitate the integration of AI into the workforce, Workday is focusing on:

• Building AI Skills: Workday is investing in programs to help employees develop the mindsets, skills, and habits needed to use AI effectively.
• Manager Enablement: The "Manager Insights Hub" provides managers with a single, integrated page to view employee goals, development plans, and feedback, enabling them to provide better guidance and support.
• Ethical AI Practices: Workday is committed to transparency and accountability in its AI development, ensuring that AI is applied ethically and responsibly.

Integration and Extensibility

Workday provides tools and platforms that allow organizations to integrate Workday with other systems and build custom AI-powered applications.

• Workday Extend: A low-code/no-code platform that enables developers to build customized applications and solutions that leverage Workday data and AI capabilities.
• Workday Integration Cloud: This platform allows for secure and efficient connection to third-party systems, enabling seamless data sharing and workflow automation.
• Workday Prism Analytics: A big data system that allows organizations to bring in data from other sources for intelligent analysis within Workday.

By providing a unified system for managing AI and the human workforce, Workday aims to help organizations navigate the changing world of work, improve productivity, and drive better business outcomes. The focus is on using AI to augment human capabilities, streamline processes, and create more meaningful experiences for employees.