Workday Announces Nearly 1,000 Customers Are Live on Skills Cloud

Workday Helps Customers Accelerate the Adoption of Skills-Based People Strategies

PLEASANTON, Calif., Sept. 22, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Workday Inc. (NASDAQ: WDAY), a leader in enterprise cloud applications for finance and human resources, today announced that nearly 1,000 organizations are using Skills Cloud to more effectively hire, engage, and retain their workforce in the changing world of work. In addition, Workday is making a packaged solution — skills foundation — available to help customers accelerate their adoption of the Workday skills infrastructure, including Skills Cloud, Talent Marketplace, and Career Hub, among others.

According to a McKinsey Global Survey, 87% of executives said they experience skill gaps in the workforce or expect to experience them within a few years, but less than half of respondents have a clear plan to address the problem. These findings underscore that organizations need visibility into their employees’ skills, including those they already have and those that are needed to meet business goals.

Workday, which has a customer community of more than 55 million workers, uniquely helps organizations optimize talent by providing a deep understanding of skills that can only be derived with insights from a unified human capital management (HCM) system. Workday HCM securely houses worker data — including skills — and makes this data available as part of a connected talent experience, which encompasses learning, recruiting, and performance, among others.

Skills Cloud, which is included with Workday HCM, dynamically updates across the employee’s talent journey to reflect new skills development, helping customers continuously evolve skills-based people strategies. This includes the ability to access real-time data on where skills exist — or do not — so they can better respond to business needs and deliver a unified talent experience for their workforce. Since its launch in 2018, Skills Cloud has grown its verified skills from 25 million to more than 2 billion today.

Supporting Customers in Their Skills Transformation
There are fundamental steps organizations must take as they shift their talent strategies to focus on skills. To help customers begin their skills transformation journey, Workday is delivering skills support across three critical areas: foundation, which provides the intelligent infrastructure for skills; insight, which identifies opportunities for action; and optimization, which powers skills-based talent programs.

• Skills Foundation: Workday HCM customers can take advantage of a new packaged solution — skills foundation — to help accelerate and guide the adoption of essential elements such as the Skills Cloud ontology, skills inference, skills verification, and critical skills. With the ability to identify worker skills and interests, and match them to internal jobs, learning, mentors, and short-term gigs, organizations can drive better employee engagement by supporting internal mobility and career development. For example, an organization looking to democratize opportunity and develop its leadership team could gain visibility into skills strengths and skills gaps to create a targeted career development program that addresses these gaps and improves business succession.

• Skills Insights and Optimization: Through a combination of products, solutions, and services, Workday also delivers insight via skills dashboards, which provide customers with analytics that offer insight into skills coverage, skills engagement, and skills acquired and lost through staffing transactions. With this foundation and insight, customers can leverage Workday to optimize their workforce with skills-based strategies, including functionality for recruiting, onboarding, learning, performance, internal mobility, and planning.

Comments on the News
“Organizations are more focused than ever on deploying a skills-based people strategy to improve retention, hiring, recruiting, and employee engagement,” said David Somers, group general manager, office of the chief human resource officer, Workday. “Our Skills Cloud provides the foundation to help our customers adopt a strategy for addressing skills and support their move towards a more agile workforce.”

“At Thomson Reuters, we want to create experiences that are employee-first and that will allow employees to grow and learn,” said Dalia Kendik, head of digital HR, Thomson Reuters. “Leveraging Skills Cloud was the first step in our move to a skills-based people strategy, giving us the data and insights needed to help employees set career paths, fill internal roles, reskill and promote internally, and build our talent pipeline. We want to bring transparency into career development, and Workday skills-powered solutions help us achieve this goal.”

“There is a tremendous shift taking place across key HR business processes, with skills emerging as one of the biggest areas of focus as enterprises look to address increasing talent challenges,” said Holger Mueller, principal analyst and vice president, Constellation Research, Inc. “Workday customers now have the opportunity to outpace other organizations by leveraging solutions that help them get a better understanding of the skills of their workforce and the data needed to improve overall planning, recruiting, internal mobility, and talent management.”

For more information:

• Read the blog “Our Vision for Skills in a Changing World”

About Workday
Workday is a leading provider of enterprise cloud applications for finance and human resources, helping customers adapt and thrive in a changing world. Workday applications for financial management, human resources, planning, spend management, and analytics have been adopted by thousands of organizations around the world and across industries – from medium-sized businesses to more than 50% of the Fortune 500. For more information about Workday, visit workday.com.

Forward Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements including, among other things, statements regarding Workday’s plans, beliefs, and expectations. These forward-looking statements are based only on currently available information and our current beliefs, expectations, and assumptions. Because forward-looking statements relate to the future, they are subject to inherent risks, uncertainties, assumptions, and changes in circumstances that are difficult to predict and many of which are outside of our control. If the risks materialize, assumptions prove incorrect, or we experience unexpected changes in circumstances, actual results could differ materially from the results implied by these forward-looking statements, and therefore you should not rely on any forward-looking statements. Risks include, but are not limited to, risks described in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”), including our Form 10-Q for the fiscal quarter ended July 31, 2021, and our future reports that we may file with the SEC from time to time, which could cause actual results to vary from expectations. Workday assumes no obligation to, and does not currently intend to, update any such forward-looking statements after the date of this release.

Any unreleased services, features, or functions referenced in this document, our website, or other press releases or public statements that are not currently available are subject to change at Workday’s discretion and may not be delivered as planned or at all. Customers who purchase Workday services should make their purchase decisions based upon services, features, and functions that are currently available.

Media Contact:
Whitney Parker
media@workday.com