Change is happening fast, and organizations must reskill, redesign, and meet the moment—or be at risk of falling behind. With competing priorities running rampant, these three key areas can help build a future-ready workforce of tomorrow.
With a name like Workday, it’s a given that we think about work a lot around here. And it’s a good thing there are more than 19,500 of us doing that, because there are some huge shifts happening that are causing organizations to reimagine how work gets done.
The workplace is being transformed by one of the biggest technological shifts of our lifetime. The coming years will bring change, but those who take on the challenges and opportunities with confidence will be the ones shaping the future of work.
Change is happening fast, and organizations must reskill and redesign to meet the moment. To help you get ahead, here are three key areas to focus on today to build the future-ready workforce of tomorrow.
For years, organizations have been sitting on mountains of data, but aren’t using it all to their advantage.
While the insights we can derive from data are powerful, deciphering it can take a monumental amount of time and resources.
According to estimates, approximately 80 to 90% of enterprise storage is unstructured. Moreover, only 29% of organizations can evaluate data quickly enough to maintain a competitive advantage. And when we try to get a unified view of insights across the business, like marrying HR and finance, the data trouble seems to double.
The uncomfortable reality is that there’s only so many hours in a day, and only so much training a company can offer, to effectively harness actionable insights from data. That’s where AI comes in.
Deploying AI solutions to unify all of that unstructured data that typically sits in siloes—creating one source of truth that informs strategy—iwill separate the leaders from the laggards in the AI adoption race.
For HR leaders, this holistic view takes the guess-work out of the function. Powered by accurate, timely insights, HR leaders are empowered to proactively align HR decisions with company goals, becoming strategic business partners.
Rather than chasing insights from fragmented data pools, they can leverage insights to focus more on improving employee experiences, contributing to objectives, and elevating the human experiences within their workforce.
The merger of Just Eat Takeaway.com, a multinational delivery service, presented a difficult challenge: How do they grow internationally if their systems are completely separate?
Siloed data is already a challenge in the first place, so trying to manage two separate companies' data coming together is no easy feat.
They got to work by establishing a unified system for both companies to feed HR and finance data into. By doing this, the newly merged Just Eat Takeaway.com was able to:
“Workday helps us get timely data to stakeholders by streamlining processes and connecting our finance and HR systems. It’s the backbone of our ERP systems.”
Latifa Azarkan
Global Finance Operations Director
Just Eat Takeaway.com
Just Eat Takeaway.com's success shows the power of becoming a pacesetter in your industry by putting AI to work and solving the unstructured and siloed data challenge.
As with data, which forms the interconnected fabric of our digital infrastructure, skills are the human data points that create the tangible fabric of our workforce.
Skills are also quickly becoming the new language for talent development and talent strategy conversations. As HR leaders partner cross-functionally to understand AI’s impact on each department and identify necessary human skills, closing skill gaps with agility becomes critical.
By proactively aligning roles and their associated skills to fluctuating business objectives, your organization will stay competitive, attracting top talent and moving at the speed of innovation.
This agility builds organizational resilience that will stand the test of time in the face of rapid transformation. Moreover,AI agents will be the conduit for humans having the ability to develop new skills or refine existing in-demand skills they already possess.
These agents are going to be HR, and their workforces’, best friends. They’re purpose-built to offload key tasks and take initiative where it makes sense for them to do so (AKA, where a human can hand off mundane tasks). As a result, your human talent is unburdened and empowered to make strategic, high-value contributions—like developing new skills.
When PUMA, a global athleticwear powerhouse, was making a concerted effort to unify and streamline their HR management, payroll, and talent development systems under one framework, they saw the potential for enhanced efficiencies.
The company was able to capitalize on untapped talent potential, contributing to:
All from unifying their systems and discovering internal skills within their existing talent pool.
“We’re always looking for ways to make the lives of our people and managers easier. That’s why we’re all in with Workday—one source for information and truth.”
Dietmar Knoess
Vice President of People & Organization
PUMA
With AI advancements, there’s a lot of talk around deeper collaboration. As a result, HR is partnering with new areas of their organizations in unprecedented ways. But what's truly top of mind in these conversations? Human-AI collaboration.
Historically, technology investments have been led by IT. Typically, the IT department works behind the scenes to educate themselves on the solution, orchestrate its integration, and manage its end-to-end usage.
But with AI, everybody becomes an end-to-end orchestrator. Because this technology constantly leverages pattern recognition and evolves based on user inputs, its ability to be molded by the end-user is virtually limitless.
This benefits your entire organization by:
Empowering your workforce: Deploying a platform that allows for custom-built apps to meet a wide range of business needs. This helps to augment your workers, cutting out the lengthy process of acquiring new software. It also allows them to stretch their knowledge, becoming more than just a stakeholder but a powerful contributor.
Allowing for proactive planning: Improve timeliness and accuracy of scenario modeling so you can get ahead of, and respond to, unplanned needs. This shortens, or helps to avoid completely, any time of disruption due to unforeseen circumstances in the regular rhythm of business.
To truly unlock the power of AI and harness it for the betterment of future workforces, HR leaders must step into the pivotal role of orchestrating its successful integration within their organizations. This requires a strategic focus on the following:
The path forward is clear: By integrating these strategies, HR leaders can not only navigate rapid transformation but actively shape a resilient, high-performing workforce that thrives on innovation and collaboration. The future of work isn't just arriving; it's being built, and HR is at its strategic core.
The right workforce management solution can reduce turnover by 45% and save an average of $650,000 over 5 years. Download this Workday Buyer's Guide to identify the optimal system for your business today.
As part of 2025's World Economic Forum Annual Meeting, Workday Chief People Officer Ashley Goldsmith discusses new research on the ways AI is elevating uniquely human skills. Learn how AI can elevate your organization's workforce and discover actionable insights.
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