Making an Impact Forever Forward: Insights From Our Global Impact Report

In this article, we discuss: 

• ESG Solutions and Customer Success: Helping Others Innovate
• Environmental Sustainability: Protecting the Planet 
• Social and Community Impact: Putting People First 
• Governance: Acting With Integrity
• Moving Organizations Forever Forward

At Workday, we measure our success not only in financial terms, but also by how we operate in the world. As a Fortune 500 company with more than 19,000 employees and more than 10,500 customers worldwide, we recognize our role in creating a more sustainable future for our communities and our planet. 

In our “2024 Global Impact Report,” which covers our fiscal year that ended January 31, 2024 (FY24), we share our vision and progress toward operating as a more sustainable company and dive into how our focus on environmental,  social, and governance (ESG) aligns with four topics that are essential to our business and our community: leading with innovation, protecting our planet, putting people first, and acting with integrity. 

ESG Solutions and Customer Success: Helping Others Innovate

Our customers have to comply with new and changing regulations and workplace shifts, and helping them do that is core to what we do.

Managing ESG Reporting: When it comes to ESG reporting, requirements are always evolving. To achieve their sustainability goals and measure progress, our customers need access to high-quality data and analytics across business functions. That’s why we’ve increased our focus and technology investments to help customers track and report their ESG goals using Workday. This includes Deloitte’s Accelerate2zero, which captures Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions for organizations; ClimateAdapt, which helps organizations take on climate risk materiality assessments; and PwC’s new Carbon Ledger within Workday, which simplifies greenhouse gas emissions data across Scope 1, 2, and 3, and calculates carbon impacts. 

Also in this year’s report, we share how our social reporting for ESG solutions provides a curated package of reports in Workday Human Capital Management (HCM) covering the most common areas required for ESG disclosures including workforce composition, organizational health, diversity, and workforce investment.

At Workday, we leverage these solutions for our own use in reporting as well to track our commute and remote work emissions; supplier sustainability; employee skills; and diversity, equity, belonging, and inclusion data.

Focusing on Skills for Good: When it comes to enabling employment for all through innovation, we believe in a skills-based talent philosophy. Workday Skills Cloud uses AI to help organizations deeply understand the skills and capabilities of their workforce to facilitate reskilling, upskilling, and internal mobility. Insights gained from Workday Skills Cloud help our customers align their people, skills, and tasks. By focusing on skills rather than on academic achievement, our customers not only enable internal mobility for their employees, but also empower people from nontraditional backgrounds to participate in the workforce, add value, and contribute to economic growth. 

Environmental Sustainability: Protecting the Planet 

As a large corporation, we recognize our responsibility to invest in new environmental-sustainability-focused innovation that directly addresses the climate crisis. Guided by our values of innovation and integrity, we support cutting-edge, science-based efforts to protect the planet. 

Our Commitments: At Workday, as part of our commitment to the planet, we also remain committed to our science-based emissions reduction targets (SBTs), which support a zero-carbon future. Part of setting ambitious goals means we actively need to track where we’re progressing and where we’re falling short. In terms of wins, we’ve met our 100% renewable electricity goal.  

For areas where we need to focus, we’ll continue to engage with our suppliers to commit to having their own SBTs, and we’ll take steps to reduce our employees’ business travel emissions. This includes our investment in decarbonizing the aviation industry. As part of our partnership with Sustainable Aviation Buyers Alliance (SABA), we’re contributing to the largest-ever collection of deals to purchase high-integrity Sustainable Aviation Fuel certificates (SAFc), a milestone that supports decarbonization efforts.

Maximizing Partnerships: The global business community, especially the large enterprise, plays an important role in addressing climate change. We partner with other organizations that share our vision that it’s our collective responsibility to get the world to a sustainable 1.5°C future. Partnerships help create a demand for high-quality carbon avoidance and removal projects and amplify the impact of investments. We continued our partnership with Frontier, and announced our projects with Lithos Carbon, CarbonCapture, and Heirloom, which are collectively removing over 338,640 tons of carbon by 2030. We also announced our multiyear carbon credit offtake agreement with Patch, which funds a first-of-its-kind project to plug approximately 1 million orphaned oil and gas wells. 

Social and Community Impact: Putting People First 

Since day one Workday recognized that happy employees make happy customers and ultimately a better world, and 19 years later, employees remain our number one core value.   

Celebrating Diversity: We continue to invest in VIBE™ (Value Inclusion, Belonging, and Equity)—our vision for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI)—to support talent through fair and equitable hiring, development, and promotion processes. 

We understand the importance of transparency when it comes to diversity representation data. To build trust and accountability, our journey to achieve true equity and balanced representation must be underscored by being transparent about our challenges and areas for improvement. Leading with transparency serves as a catalyst for change, sparking conversations, driving strategic initiatives, and holding us accountable to our core values and goals.

To continue moving forward, in FY24 we launched new VIBE objectives and expanded global self-identification options for more than 90% of our employees. This allows us to better understand the needs of our workforce and continue our momentum to a more equitable workplace. We also made progress in achieving our new VIBE goals by increasing the number of women represented at the VP level and by growing our Black director population. In addition, we introduced our VIBE Star Award, which honors individuals who champion for inclusion, belonging, and equity. 

While we're proud of the progress we're making, this remains an area of focus for us. Our journey to achieve true equity and balanced representation must be underscored by being transparent about our challenges and areas for improvement, which includes continuing to drive diversity across our organization. Leading with transparency serves as a catalyst for change, sparking conversations, driving strategic initiatives, and holding us accountable to our core values and goals.

Valuing Skills Growth: Employees are at their best when they have opportunities to develop new skills. Our skills-first people strategy is supported by Workday Skills Cloud using AI technology and innovation fueled by Workday HCM, including Career Hub. Via Career Hub, employees access gigs and learning opportunities, and find connections to support their career aspirations. To date, more than 10,000 current Workday employees have completed onboarding in Career Hub, opening up new learning opportunities for them and helping us meet emerging talent needs.

Our Chief People Officer Ashley Goldsmith shares, “Investing in skills is a triple win. It supports employees in their career growth, helps to build new and diverse talent pools, and ultimately creates a more agile, high-performing workforce.” 

Giving Back: Via the Workday Foundation, we’ve invested in workforce development organizations that focus on reskilling workers for digitally-enabled career paths and supporting a low-carbon economy. This year, the Workday Foundation provided $7.9 million in grants to organizations supporting workforce development ecosystems, green jobs, and global issues impacting our communities.

Governance: Acting With Integrity

Integrity is one of our core values, and we work hard to sustain a culture of honesty and trust with our communities, including employees, customers, partners, and investors. We promote the long-term success of our business and provide clear guidelines for decision-making, risk management, and ethical conduct. We’ve appeared on Ethisphere’s World’s Most Ethical Companies and JUST Capital’s America’s Most JUST Companies lists, and been named one of Comparably’s Best Places to Work.

Responsible AI: With AI growing in impact, we remain committed to ethical, responsible, and trustworthy AI. We recognize AI is a transformative technology that has the power to unlock human potential, but that also presents risks. So, guidelines for decision-making, risk management, and ethical conduct are essential for businesses to balance innovation with building trust. 

Workday has been leading by example for nearly a decade in our commitment to the responsible development of AI technologies in service of our customers, and its responsible deployment within our own company for the benefit of our employees and our global advocacy for its regulation for the good of the world around us. 

Our technology innovations go through our responsible AI governance program, and we advocate for responsible AI in conversations with business and government leaders. “We take a risk-based approach to responsible AI governance and rely on a diverse set of stakeholders to shape associated policies and practices,” says Kelly Trindel, chief responsible AI officer at Workday. “A dedicated, independent responsible AI team with guidance from cross- disciplinary subject matter experts and senior leadership is foundational.” 

As a leading enterprise platform, we remain committed to helping organizations manage their most important assets—their people and money. We strive to be transparent with our customers about how data is safeguarded and equip them with resources to meet privacy and compliance needs. Protecting our customers’ data is essential, so we employ security across our people, processes, and technology. 

Moving Organizations Forever Forward 

“We’re proud to share all the ways we’re moving businesses forever forward—fueled by our people, powered by our platform, and supported by our partnerships,” says Carl Eschenbach, chief executive officer at Workday. 

With our focus on supporting our customers’ innovation efforts, helping to protect the planet with how we run our business, putting people first, and acting with integrity, we’re taking crucial steps to having a positive impact on our communities and the broader world.

To learn more about our global impact, read our “2024 Global Impact Report.”

^{All references to “net-zero” in the“Workday Global Impact Report” encompass Workday emissions from offices, data centers and public cloud, and business travel.}