The Agentic Wave: A New Era of Workforce Management

Reflecting on the past year, it has become clear to me just how fundamentally different this AI revolution is from any other technology shift we’ve seen in the enterprise. 

We’ve gone from mainframes to minis, client-server to the web, and then on to the cloud. Each was a big deal. But AI is different. It’s about applied math, probabilities versus deterministic outcomes. AI is a whole new ballgame. 

The generative AI wave was real but short-lived. And, while it’s valuable for consumer applications, it falls short when applied to the enterprise. The use cases we explored around generative AI—job descriptions, procurement forms—are helpful for customers, but not truly transformative. And often, the time saved in content generation is offset by the time spent reviewing and editing the AI's output.

After spending time with some of tech’s most brilliant minds and talking about the new “agentic wave,” a lightbulb moment occurred. We’ve been deeply invested in skills for years, building our Skills Cloud and developing a rich understanding of how they function within the enterprise.  This foundation, combined with our exploration of AI, enabled us to see how agents could best be built: by focusing on skills and roles, rather than simply automating existing business processes.

Think about Skills Cloud. We’ve deconstructed work into a canonical set of skills, which can then be bundled into roles. This mirrors how humans combine skills and roles to perform work, and the agent concept aligns perfectly with this human model. And if this is true, then Workday needs to do two things: Build these agents for our customers, and—just as importantly—provide the system to manage them. 

Workday Illuminate and Role-Based Agents

At Workday Rising in September, we announced Workday Illuminate, our next-generation AI platform that accelerates, assists, and transforms the way businesses are run. Today, customers leverage generative AI to help accelerate common tasks, and we also have co-pilots to assist them in their more complex tasks and provide recommendations.

But to truly achieve business transformation, agents are needed. The real value of agentic AI lies in its ability to drive dramatic productivity gains and deliver a clear return on investment. By automating complex tasks and orchestrating workflows, AI agents free up employees to focus on higher-value work, leading to increased efficiency and innovation. 

Workday believes that agents will peacefully coexist with humans to drive a step-function change in productivity.  But the future, and true power of agents, is when they become role-based. These role-based agents may start with a skill and they will, over time, have many configurable skills. Role-based agents are more valuable than task-based agents because they mirror the multifaceted nature of actual roles, going beyond simple task completion. For example, accountants are not just responsible for record keeping, but also budgeting and forecasting, ensuring compliance with regulations, and delivering strategic guidance. 

Role-based agents support a wider range of responsibilities and provide more holistic value to organizations by empowering employees in their various duties—this is how we truly unlock the power of AI in the enterprise. However, the full potential, and safe implementation, of these powerful role-based agents cannot be realized without a robust system for managing them.

The Challenges of Agentic AI

With the power of AI agents comes responsibility. These tools operate at incredible speeds, and if not managed properly, they can create unintended consequences or even be misused. How do we ensure these agents are secure? How do we onboard them, govern them, and manage them? How do we prevent agent sprawl across the enterprise?

We've still got some hurdles to overcome. Accuracy, consistency, bias, speed, and cost are all things we need to consider carefully when implementing agentic AI within organizations. That's why it's so important to set clear boundaries and rules for how they operate. Just like we wouldn't give a new employee free rein over sensitive systems, we need to control what our AI agents can access and do.

Many companies today lack a central way to do this, which is a big risk. That's where an agent system of record comes in. This acts as a central AI system of record for governance, management, auditing, monitoring, and role-based access controls, ensuring AI agents are used responsibly and efficiently.

Workday has already been trusted to manage workers for decades. We have over 70 million users at the majority of Fortune 500 companies on our platform, and we’re processing more than 800 billion transactions a year. Our dataset is unmatched, and we are securing and protecting our customers’ most precious assets—their people and their money. 

But digital workers are now joining human workers as one combined workforce, and we need a unified platform to manage them as one. This is a fundamental shift, and companies that don’t embrace managing this complexity will fall behind. Workday is uniquely positioned to lead this transition. We understand human capital management, skills, and roles better than anyone; managing digital labor is a natural extension.

A New Era of Workforce Management

As AI takes on bigger roles, management of these digital workers will be essential for organizations to reach their full potential. It's all about building a future where humans and AI work together seamlessly to drive success.

That’s why I’m excited to announce Workday Agent System of Record. Agent System of Record provides a centralized system for managing an organization’s entire fleet of AI agents—Workday agents and third-party agents—all in one place. Customers can onboard new agents, define their roles and responsibilities, turn them on or off, track their impact, manage their costs, ensure compliance, and drive continuous improvement. 

Agent System of Record is how we make sure our AI agents are working effectively and responsibly. 

It's about having a framework to guide their entire lifecycle, which includes:

• Cost optimization: Tracking and managing the expenses related to developing, deploying, and maintaining AI agents.
• Security and compliance: Addressing the risks that come with AI, like data privacy, bias, and access control.
• Performance management: Making sure AI agents are meeting their goals and contributing to business success.

Agent System of Record gives IT and business leaders the foundation of trust, transparency, and control they need to understand the true value of their AI investments, while keeping their organizations resilient and secure in this new era of human-machine collaboration.

Workday’s New Role-Based Agents to Transform the Enterprise

We also unveiled a new lineup of role-based agents today that customers will be able to easily deploy and manage through Agent System of Record—Contracts Agent, Payroll Agent, Financial Auditing Agent, and Policy Agent. While most agents today focus on tasks, Workday’s agents are role-based, with a configurable set of skills to support people in their jobs. 

And we’re making it easy to find and deploy these agents through the Workday Marketplace, where customers will be able to find agents from Workday, third-parties, and our partners. And in the future, organizations will be able to customize and extend these agents to meet bespoke needs through Workday Extend. 

This is a new era. The future of work is here. And just like with the transition to the cloud, Workday is ready to help our customers be first to the future. 

Want to learn more about Workday Agent System of Record? Join our digital broadcast on February 12th and discover how to unlock the full potential of agentic AI for your organization.