Why Workday believes agentic AI is the next evolution of HR and financials, and what that means for skills, strategy and the future of work.
Workday is embedding agentic AI across HR and finance, moving from support tools to autonomous workflows. Executives argue AI must amplify human talent rather than erode skills, with emotional and critical thinking capabilities becoming more valuable. The HR software market is shifting towards platform ecosystems, where openness and integration may matter more than legacy ERP dominance.
A new chapter in human (agentic) resources
AI helps humans — that, at least, is the mantra repeated by advocates across the spectrum of predictive, generative and now agentic AI. As the hype surrounding large language models begins to settle into more practical use cases, one company has placed itself firmly at the centre of the debate: Workday.
Known for its focus on people-driven disciplines such as HR and finance, the firm has spent the last year developing agentic AI services capable of executing tasks once managed by accountants and HR managers. From payroll calculations to drafting employment contracts, the company is steadily embedding machine agents into the everyday rhythm of work. You can learn more about how these systems function in our article about AI Agents and Jobs.
But this raises the fundamental question: how much automation is too much? Will AI sharpen our talents, or quietly dull them?
Are we outsourcing our skills?
Speaking at a recent forum provocatively titled “Is AI quietly killing our skills?”, Workday’s chief learning officer Chris Ernst and McKinsey’s Heather Stefanski both acknowledged the uncomfortable truth: technology has always replaced certain human capabilities. Mental arithmetic gave way to calculators. Maps yielded to GPS. What next for HR?
Stefanski noted her firm is actively teaching people how to teach and learn again, rather than assuming learning is static. Ernst added that HR leaders should prioritise emotional intelligence and human connection as automation spreads, because those are the skills that will remain resilient. This aligns with a broader conversation about What Every Worker Needs to Answer: What Is Your Non-Machine Premium?.
This strikes at the heart of Workday’s approach: to automate repetitive processes, while doubling down on the human qualities that cannot be coded.
How agentic is HR becoming?
Workday’s head of agentic AI, Jerry Ting — who joined following the acquisition of contract intelligence start-up Evisort — explained how AI agents are now capable of handling tasks such as:
Delivering performance reviews,Executing financial close processes,Conducting profitability analyses,Drafting contracts for contingent workers,Running payroll workflows
It is a far cry from early HR chatbots. These are not simply assistants; they are systems of execution, managing work end-to-end. For a deeper dive into the technical aspects of agentic AI, consider exploring research from organizations like the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM).
As Workday co-founder Aneel Bhusri put it:
“I honestly believe AI is under-hyped today. Last year people thought AI would solve everything. Today, people know what it can and cannot do; and we’re on the path to enlightenment.”
“I honestly believe AI is under-hyped today. Last year people thought AI would solve everything. Today, people know what it can and cannot do; and we’re on the path to enlightenment.”
A manifesto for AI in the enterprise
Workday has begun to frame its AI principles as a kind of manifesto: every product must amplify talent, improve decision-making, strengthen compliance, boost productivity and deliver ROI.
The company insists its strength lies in openness. Gerrit Kazmaier, president of product and technology, argued that closed systems and fragmented “point solutions” create governance nightmares. Instead, he says Workday is committed to an open platform where partners and customers can integrate freely, enabling a new flavour of ERP that is workflow-driven and deeply context-aware. This approach is also key to understanding the concept of Reinventing ERP with Event-Driven Agentic AI.
Coming from SAP, Kazmaier is no stranger to enterprise software empires. But his rhetoric suggests Workday wants to leapfrog its rivals by presenting itself not just as an HR application vendor, but as an AI-enabled platform company.
How far will Workday stretch?
CEO Carl Eschenbach makes no secret of the ambition. In his words:
“We’ve gone from being an applications company delivering HCM and financials, to being one of the few companies that can truly claim we are both an application and a platform company.”
“We’ve gone from being an applications company delivering HCM and financials, to being one of the few companies that can truly claim we are both an application and a platform company.”
Eschenbach stopped short of promising a pivot into full-scale ERP, CRM or field services. But he hinted that Workday’s open platform strategy allows it to consolidate adjacent services and absorb third-party innovations without needing to build everything itself.
The move positions Workday in a different league from the traditional HR software players — one where the platform matters more than the product.
A crowded HR battlefield
Of course, Workday is far from alone. SAP’s SuccessFactors, Oracle Fusion Cloud HCM, Dayforce, UKG, ADP, Paycom, and BambooHR all compete aggressively in this space, each with their own differentiators.
SAP SuccessFactors leans on ERP integration.,Oracle capitalises on its database and multi-cloud infrastructure.,Dayforce champions payroll and benefits integration.,BambooHR zeroes in on SMEs with lighter HRIS offerings.
Analyst firm Gartner also lists Asian providers such as Darwinbox, Yonyou and Cegrid among notable challengers. The competitive field is diverse, with some vendors seeking breadth, others depth, and a few aiming for sectoral specialisation.
Tiffani Bova of The Futurum Group observes that Workday’s marketplace strategy increasingly goes beyond HR functions, integrating analytics, healthcare and financial services to bolster its ecosystem position. This contrasts sharply with rivals who remain anchored to ERP or database strengths.
Beyond digital HR
The next battleground is not simply payroll accuracy or contract automation. Buyers are asking deeper questions:
How globalised are payroll and compliance capabilities?,How configurable and low-code is the system?,How secure and scalable is the cloud architecture?,And of course, what is the price of managing all this at scale?
The answer may lie in how much administration burden each platform can shoulder on behalf of clients. The winner will not just provide software, but an intelligent backbone that frees humans to do what they do best.
As Workday frames it, this is not about replacing HR, but evolving it into human (agentic) resources; where machines handle the repetitive load, and humans take the higher ground of judgment, creativity and empathy. For more on this, read our article on AI with Empathy for Humans.
If Workday is right, the HR function may soon become the testing ground for a new corporate relationship between humans and agents. But does agentic AI truly free us to focus on higher-value work — or will we lose touch with the very skills that make us human?
Latest Comments (9)
We tried some automation for routine HR requests, but the amount of edge cases and exceptions made it almost more work to manage. Workday claiming they can automate employment contracts seems a bit ambitious from my experience.
as a software engineer here in vietnam, we see a lot of interest in AI for business but always this question about skills. workaday saying ai should amplify talent, not erode it, and then talking about things like payroll calculations and drafting employment contracts becoming automated. it feels like these are exactly the kind of tasks that new HR people might do to learn the ropes. if agents do these, how do new people build that foundational experience? or is the idea that they will be spending more time on the 'emotional and critical thinking' parts from day one?
It's so interesting how Workday is talking about "amplifying human talent rather than eroding skills" with agentic AI! I’ve been playing around with some of these autonomous workflow tools for content creation and it really does feel like it frees you up for more strategic thinking. Like that mental math to calculator analogy, but for HR.
Workday pushing agentic AI for payroll and contracts? Sounds like a feature, not a revolution. We've been doing autonomous workflows with custom scripts for years. Just because it's wrapped in an LLM doesn't make it fundamentally new for ops.
Totally, Workday's take on AI amplifying human talent aligns with what you guys discussed in that "AI and Jobs" article last month. It's a tricky balance, this automation thing.
@dewisari: interesting read. it reminds me of how i'm trying to re-skill myself with machine learning for my data analysis work. this whole idea of "learning how to teach and learn again" that Stefanski mentioned, it feels very real when you're trying to integrate new tech like agentic AI into established processes. how do you even start to train your team effectively for that?
This point about AI amplifying human talent versus eroding skills is quite a debate. In the context of agentic AI, particularly when considering tasks like payroll or contract drafting, it reminds me of the concerns around de-skilling that have been discussed in academic circles for decades, especially with earlier forms of automation. From a linguistic perspective, I'm curious if Workday is looking at how these 'agents' are trained on diverse language datasets, especially for regions with many linguistic variations like India. The nuances in legal or HR terminology can be significant, and a generic agent might miss cultural or legal specifics if not carefully developed.
The shift from support tools to autonomous workflows, as Workday describes, mirrors what we see in factory automation. For agentic AI to truly amplify talent, like Workday's Chris Ernst suggests, the human-machine interface needs careful design. Over-automation risks skill degradation if not managed.
While Workday's vision for agentic AI in HR is ambitious, the potential for skills erosion, as raised by Ernst and Stefanski, merits close monitoring. Our regional digital transformation frameworks in ASEAN emphasize workforce upskilling. We must ensure these autonomous systems genuinely amplify human talent, rather than inadvertently creating new skill gaps for our civil service.
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