5 Things To Know About Workday Credentials and WayTo by Workday

Here's a deeper look at Workday Credentials, a new blockchain-powered credentialing technology for enterprises, and WayTo by Workday, which provides people with a way to manage and share their digital credentials.

Earlier this year, we announced we were developing a new blockchain-powered credentialing technology—which will bring credentials into the digital age and remove the friction associated with issuing, managing, and verifying credentials. This week at Workday Rising, we announced the beta release of the technology, and I wanted to take this opportunity to share some more details about Workday Credentials for enterprises, and WayTo™ by Workday for individuals.

Why is Workday so excited about credentials?

Credentials have been part of the fabric of work for thousands of years. They help us show who we are, what we’ve done, and what we know. In industries like healthcare and manufacturing, credentials help keep us safe. In fact, over 100 million credentials and certifications are being managed in Workday today by Workday Human Capital Management (HCM) customers. 

But when we dug deeper with our customers, we came to the realization that today’s credentials aren’t fit for purpose in a complex, changing world of work. They’re largely still paper based—and verification requires manual effort (and sometimes even fax machines!). By using new technologies like blockchain, we can make credentials digital. And through this transformation—from paper to digital—we can streamline the whole process for our customers, partners, and individual employees that hold credentials.

We also realized that organizations and individuals have different needs when it comes to credentials. Organizations need a way to issue, manage, and verify credentials, and individuals need a way to securely allow access to the credentials they hold. That’s why we created a platform consisting of Workday Credentials for organizations, and the WayTo by Workday app for individuals. Together, they bring credentials into the digital era.

What is the WayTo by Workday app, and how is it different from the existing Workday mobile app?

The Workday mobile app has evolved to become a central point of engagement for our customers and their employees. We know that today’s workers need access to Workday from wherever they are. From time tracking to expenses, people use the Workday app every day, and we’ll continue to invest in and improve it, including the new Workday People Experience. 

But as we explored the power of digital credentials, we saw a need for a brand new app. An app that could follow people throughout their career.

This week at Workday Rising, we announced the WayTo app, which holds your verified identity for the changing world of work. It gives you a way to manage and share your digital credentials. As the credential network expands and more businesses turn to digital credentials for hiring and recruiting, you’ll soon be able to use the WayTo app to apply for jobs, prove your employment, and capture your skills and capabilities—all in a way that puts you in control of your professional data.  

What’s the connection between blockchain and Workday Credentials? 

We started experimenting with blockchain technologies in late 2016, with the hypothesis that it could bring a new level of trust to enterprise data. These explorations evolved into the technologies that we’re sharing this week at Workday Rising. When a credential is issued on our platform, we’re able to securely bind that credential to the blockchain. When it’s later shared (during a job application, for instance) we know that it’s genuine, and that it hasn’t expired or been revoked. This whole process has been built from the outset with user privacy in mind.

With our customers and partners, we’re also creating a credentialing consortium. This consortium will help provide broad trust in credentials through open standards, and will help us to innovate collaboratively in the future. We’ll have more details to share on this in the coming months.

How will Workday customers use this platform in the future?

This technology allows us to build a 360 degree, verified picture of talent through the credentials they acquire throughout their career journey. This has use cases across every industry.

For our healthcare customers: imagine being able to onboard a nurse—in a matter of days instead of weeks—by verifying their identity, healthcare credentials, and work experience right within Workday.

In industries like manufacturing—where safety is critical, and compliance decisions need to be made instantly—credentials and identity could be verified in real-time, with real trust. 

And as our ecosystem grows, we envision that these technologies will open a whole host of new uses cases and possibilities in the future. This is just the beginning.

When can customers start adopting Workday Credentials?

This is real technology that’s built for scale—and customers attending Workday Rising will get to test the WayTo app, today! At Workday Rising, we’re issuing attendees their very own digital credentials. This is our biggest real-world deployment of the technology yet.

We’re then planning to make the Workday Credentials platform available to our customers in 2020. In the meantime, we’ll be working with our design partner customers and partners to bring our vision for digital credentials to life in a variety of industries and use cases. Stay tuned for more information in the coming months! In the meantime, if you’d like to learn more, watch this short video: 

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