Employee Xperience Labs

I unfortunately did not have the pleasure to attend this week’s Workday Rising event in Las Vegas – but thanks to technology I was able to watch the main keynotes and what I saw was amazing. But before I go there, let me say that from far it feels like a very different Workday than just like two years ago. It feels more open, collaborative with 3rd parties and fully invested in a theme and vision vs. the “power of one” mentality I felt a few years ago. And that is brilliant!

And it is not only that it provides this feeling – it is also visible in the products and the roadmap. The collaboration with ADP, with Microsoft, with Google, with AWS are a clear strategic move and collaborative investment which truly pays off for the Workday customer – in more than one way. But this is not where I want to focus on today.

Workday Illuminate

Illuminate is the new theme apparently – I will leave it to others to judge on naming and marketing. I am here to talk hands on value. And this value is today and can be even more massive in the future! 

Granted, Workday was a bit slow to adapt and adopt Gen AI – but they were not really late to the game as advanced machine learning and AI (without Gen) were integral parts of the product before already. And now extended by interesting and value adding Gen AI capabilities. It might be boring (and even I have complained about this in earlier posts) but I am most excited about the Workday Assistant capabilities with Gen AI. Yes, the other features like the Agents for succession or optimizing business processes are interesting, but the power (or failure, but I am positive) is in the Workday Assistant. A product that had a miserable start due to its non existing capability and usefulness a few years back. But now it looks like Workday has understood and is working towards the right goal of simplifying their interface and forms for the end-user. 

We should not forget, Workday and the other HCM systems of its class are no longer HR systems, but systems for end-users and for as much self-service as possible for managers and employees. And that means that the vast majority of users are casual users that need to do admin things 2-3 times a year on average. They don’t remember how things work, what a business process is, how it is called or which one to use for which problem, what information to fill in which field, etc. etc. etc. – and this is where the Gen AI powered Workday Assistant can bring the power – and improve the experience. This is what is needed deeply and excites me.

True value-add Talent Management

It is not only our ticket to less noise and improved self-service which empowers us in HR – but it is also our ticket to more value-add in and with Workday. It is always the same story (and I don’t blame it, I am actually fully understanding!): If the HR basics don’t work out, e.g. you don’t pay employees correctly and on time, no one offers you or supports you in getting a seat at the strategy table. – and the same is true for a system: If the basic admin work cannot be done smoothly and without pain and suffering for the end-user, they won’t want to come back into the system, they are not curious what else can be done, explored, supported by Workday. And that is currently a missed opportunity – ok, granted there is still a lot of homework that Workday has to do in the space of true integrated talent management, but I have hopes that with the launch of the Succession Agent they will bring the rest of the house in order.

So my vision and hope is that with the simplification of admin self-services we can excite our manager and employees to take advantage of the talent features of Workday and improve overall engagement and career/ team development, leading to a much stronger overall organization. This is where we need to get to, and this week I see the path towards that.