Workday Named a Leader in the 2021 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Cloud HCM Suites for 1,000+ Employee Enterprises

We’re thrilled to announce that for the sixth year running, Workday has been recognized as a Leader in the Gartner^® Magic Quadrant^TM for Cloud HCM Suites for 1,000+ Employee Enterprises, based on our completeness of vision and our ability to execute. For the ability to execute, we received the highest position overall for the second consecutive year. 

In a year when events have relentlessly pressure-tested organizations, we believe this recognition demonstrates our ability to help organizations stay agile and support their workforces as they face both expected and unforeseen challenges.

One of the biggest challenges for businesses continues to be the “Great Resignation”—the prediction, and now the reality, that a high percentage of employees would switch jobs or careers now and in the coming months. As companies work to attract and retain talent by providing strong support in areas such as skills development, internal career mobility, and a streamlined and supportive employee experience, they’re turning to Workday Human Capital Management (HCM) to help them better understand what their employees need and when they need it, and to support their business and its ability to pivot into the future. Currently, more than 3,700 customers worldwide, including Acxiom, Aurecon, BMO Financial Group, EMC Insurance Companies, Rocket Companies, Wellesley College, and more are using Workday HCM to achieve these goals in today’s changing world.

The Skills Transformation

Organizations are reinventing the way they operate, reimagining roles and redefining work by shifting away from a focus on jobs to a focus on skills. This evolving focus is one of the many changes we’re seeing in the world of human resources (HR). 

Workday’s vision and multi-year investment in a skills-based people strategy is helping drive a shift from pedigree and connections to skills. This is critically important in helping organizations acquire and develop talent, including establishing new career pathways and opportunities for populations that have been historically underserved. Our global customers have been reaping the benefits of our investment in skills, with more than 1,000 customers using Workday Skills Cloud to attract, manage, and retain talent.

As we heard from Karen Collins, chief talent officer at BMO Financial Group, “Our skills strategy focuses on helping employees build the skills over time, and making it easy to connect them to the work that inspires them. Workday enables both the reskilling goals of our company and the career aspirations of our team members by transparently showing the skills they need, and helping them find the right learning to fill the gaps—in person and through virtual and digital channels.”

Prioritizing the Employee Experience 

Employees are our number one value at Workday, and that priority shines through in the products and features we develop for our customers. Many employees are grappling with mental health and additional caregiver responsibilities, and as a society we’re reckoning with structural inequity and injustice. That's why listening to employees, truly hearing what they're saying, and being able to respond and take meaningful action in real time is more important than ever. 

This year we invested in the acquisition of Peakon, a Workday Company, which provides a tool that gives a better understanding of not just employee sentiment, but its drivers. With its intelligent listening technology, Peakon elevates the voice of the employee, providing our global customers with richer, real-time insights into employees’ feelings, challenges, and level of satisfaction.

As Liam Hayes, chief people officer of Aurecon, told us, "Workday has enabled our HR team and the business to be more agile. With Peakon providing so much insight now in terms of what our people are feeling and thinking, and the things that they would like us to focus on, it certainly is providing greater discussion around our executive table in terms of what we should do."

We’re also elevating the employee experience with Workday Everywhere, which enables employees to complete tasks in Workday in a more intuitive and productive way, without interrupting their flow of work. By bringing Workday tasks and insights directly into digital workspaces, including Slack and Microsoft Teams where employees are already collaborating and communicating, employees can quickly access Workday without having to toggle between different applications. This means fewer interruptions, less context-switching, and ultimately, less mental load (a concept that many of us have become all too familiar with). Simply put, employers can use Workday Everywhere to deliver a simple, connected, and more engaging employee experience.

Helping Our Customers Scale and Grow

As our customers continue to define—and redefine—what the world of work will look like, they look to us to help them scale and grow. Workday has continued to make advancements in scale that allow us to support the needs of complex, global organizations, including more than 50% of the Fortune 500 and over 50 customers with more than 100,000 employees. Our investments in scale are also designed to ensure we can support events such as seasonal hiring or benefits open enrollment. 

At the heart of all we do is the customer. That’s why customer service has and always will remain one of our core values, and we're pleased that we have a score of 97% for our 2021 annual Customer Satisfaction Survey. Earlier this year, we were also named a 2021 Gartner Peer Insights “Voice of the Customer”: Cloud HCM Suites for 1,000+ Employee Enterprises. 

Looking Forward

While we’re extremely proud of our past accomplishments, we know that the world is moving in one direction only: Forward. That’s why we’re pleased that our future-facing vision and execution continue to serve the current needs—and anticipate the future needs—of our customers. This latest recognition is a welcome sign post on a longer road. We hope, no matter what the future brings, to continue on the path of making brighter work days for all.

_{Read the report: “Gartner Magic Quadrant for Cloud HCM Suites for 1,000+ Employee Enterprises,” by Sam Grinter, Chris Pang, Jeff Freyermuth, Ron Hanscome, Helen Poitevin, Ranadip Chandra, and John Kostoulas. Published October 19, 2021.}

_{Gartner Peer Insights “Voice of the Customer”: Cloud HCM Suites for 1,000+ Employee Enterprises. Published April 9, 2021.}

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