Tech vendors are all competing to implement generative AI for their HR customers.
At its US conference, Workday laid out its stall on how new AI updates will transform the future of work.
In particular, how will managers be empowered?
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AI and machine learning has long been part of Workday’s platform.
But, at its Rising US 2023 conference in San Francisco, Workday laid out its commitment to the latest iteration of this technology, generative AI.
The enterprise cloud giant announced a couple of new features to the Workday platform.
These include generating job descriptions in minutes (rather than hours), creating personalized content for employees quickly and in multiple languages, and producing employee Growth Plans that pull from Workday’s data.
Top of mind for Workday when thinking about generative AI is managers, and helping them do their jobs better.
David Somers, group GM, office of the CHRO product, Workday, shares: “Managers play such a pivotal role in the growth and development of their teams but face increasing pressure to improve productivity and performance while navigating evolving workplace policies.
“Workday is the single source of truth for people data, enabling us to surface relevant team information to managers when they need it most, helping them be more impactful.
“Workday AI is making it easier for managers to succeed in their most important role: people leadership.”
Industry analyst, and keynote at UNLEASH World 2023, Josh Bersin is particularly impressed by Workday’s new manager-focus, and particularly the Manager Insights Hub.
In a post, Bersin shared: “This is a completely integrated Manager portal that lets any supervisor or leader look at employee goals, development plans, feedback (integrated from Peakon), and other information, designed to make managers ‘better at managing’.”
Bersin further added that he was pleased see progress had been around the ‘Ask Workday’ assistant – something that customers are very excited for.
Interestingly, SAP announced its own assistant – Joule – earlier this week, as part of the tech giant’s wider bet on AI.
This includes appointing Walter Sun as the new global head of AI, and acquiring LeanIX to drive AI-enabled process optimization.
Bersin concluded: “While [Workday] didn’t really expose its underlying tech stack, I think these announcements will show customers that Workday is now focused in this area and is placing some educated bets.”
Responsible AI is top of mind for Workday
Talking about the new Workday AI features, Sayan Chakraborty, co-president at Workday, shared: “Generative AI has the potential to completely transform work as we know it.
“When applied responsibly, it has the power to elevate performance and to free up time to focus on the valuable work we really want and need to be doing.”
It is very clear that security and privacy is top of mind for Workday when thinking about AI; it’s about tech for tech’s sake, but ensuring that AI is actually helping employees do their jobs better.
At a recent Workday Elevate conference in London, UNLEASH sat down with Patrick Blair, president of global Sales, Dan Pell, VP and GM for UK&I and Angelique de Vries, president of EMEA, to talk AI and the future of HR.
Blair shared: “We want to make sure that whatever we’re doing is for the benefit of people, and the benefit of making people more productive”, and doing this in an ethical, transparent way.
This responsible approach to AI is really coming to the fore in Workday’s new AI marketplace, which will be launched in the first half of next year.
Workday’s co-founder, co-CEO and chair Aneel Bhusri shares: “The Workday AI Marketplace will enable our customers to harness the incredible amount of AI innovation happening today while at the same time give them the peace of mind in knowing that each solution is proven, trusted, and meets Workday’s stringent standards for responsible AI.
“Combining the power of the Workday platform with some of the world’s most innovative AI native companies will give our customers a running start in building for the future.”
AI and UNLEASH World 2023
Automation and AI is going to be front and center at UNLEASH World 2023.
Grab a ticket now for our upcoming Paris show to get invaluable, in-person, actionable insights on how to use AI to your advantage from Josh Bersin, as well as HR leaders like Anika Grant and James Purvis.
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