Trust Within a Changing World
Workday’s Rich Sauer, chief legal officer and head of corporate affairs, introduces how we define trust, why it matters in today’s changing world of work, and the impact it has on our business.
Workday’s Rich Sauer, chief legal officer and head of corporate affairs, introduces how we define trust, why it matters in today’s changing world of work, and the impact it has on our business.
Trust can mean something different to all of us—but given the events of the past two years, we’ve seen firsthand how its force and value is universally undeniable. It can build consensus where there is disagreement, community where there is distance, and a path forward where there is uncertainty.
At Workday, trust is the fabric that connects us to our employees, our customers, and our communities at large. We recognize that trust is not assumed, it’s earned, and we work tirelessly to earn and retain it in every conversation we have, every position we take, and every product we develop.
In a word, trust is central to everything we do. It guides us to do what’s right for our people, customers, and communities. It fosters greater collaboration and transparency so that we can solve challenges through innovation. And it inspires us to do our part in building a world with trust at its foundation.
At Workday, employees are our number one core value, and we recognize that their needs are diverse, complex, and ever changing. We establish trust with our people by putting them first, taking care of their needs, and providing them with a rich and engaging experience that’s interspersed with a healthy dose of fun.
One example of how we’ve aimed to do this is through our efforts to support employees during the pandemic. Our goal was to meet them where they were at and with what they needed, when they needed it, whether it be through a one-time payment—equivalent to two-weeks pay—to help accommodate any unforeseen costs, expanding our caregiver support, providing free mental health resources, or rolling out new flexible schedules including “Thank You” Fridays—days off for the entire company to disconnect and show appreciation for hard work under difficult circumstances. Through these efforts, we aimed to do the right thing, leaning into our values and what we stand for as a company.
Workday understands the role we must play in helping to build a world where trust is at its foundation.
Additionally, we build trust with our people by nurturing a strong employee experience that begins with a continuous, two-way dialogue to understand what employees need and to respond accordingly. We aim to listen and constantly engage with our employees to build a great workplace for all and strive every day to earn and maintain their trust in us—whether it’s through the use of our own products, like Workday Peakon Employee Voice, or through our own workplace initiatives, like providing learning journeys focused on the concept of trust.
Trust is also foundational to our customer relationships. Our customers trust us to help them navigate change, and we show up every day to support their needs. The events of the past two years are a testament to that fact, as we helped our customers and their employees—many of whom were on the front lines—navigate the pandemic and its seismic impact on their businesses. We’re proud of how we’ve been able to meet the needs of our customers in these critical moments; however, we recognize their trust in us goes far beyond that. In times of change they rely on us to listen to their needs, innovate with integrity, and deliver the solutions they rely on to help them navigate the changing world of work while keeping their data safe and secure.
When it comes to innovation, we build with trust top of mind. Our customers expect us to create and deliver products with integrity, and because of that, privacy, ethics, and security have been embedded into Workday’s design since day one.
We’re focused on delivering unparalleled security and data privacy across all aspects of the Workday service. This includes complying—and helping our customers comply—with various international privacy regulations, staying true to our privacy by design principles. In fact, Workday's operations, policies, and procedures are audited regularly to ensure we consistently meet or exceed all standards expected of a cloud service provider. Additionally, by providing a consistent security model, employing industry-leading safeguards, and continuously monitoring our service, our customers can be assured we prioritize the safeguarding of their data.
Our customers also trust us to deliver innovations that are reliable, which is why we’ve invested heavily in how we support their product deployments—embedding security features, checks and balances, and testing into our approach—with the goal of providing the functionality, visibility, and transparency they need, with the highest standards of reliability and availability. And when we update our software, we make it available to every Workday customer at the same time, which streamlines use and support and enables our customers to share their experiences through our Workday Community, where they can connect on best practices and learnings, provide feedback to us, and more.
Another crucial expectation our customers have is getting the service they need, when they need it. To maintain service availability, our architecture is able to scale to meet the changing workload demand of our customers, and we make ongoing investments in proactive monitoring to pinpoint issues and apply compute and network resources before a customer is impacted. It’s because of these efforts that our service availability uptime is 99.97% to date this fiscal year, and we’re able to maintain a customer satisfaction rating of 97%. To us, trust is built on meeting the commitments we make.
Workday understands the role we must play in helping to build a world where trust is at its foundation. We do this by contributing to the development of forward-looking public policy and supporting initiatives rooted in transparency, ethical business practices, and in support of sustainability.
In addition to our commitment to privacy in the products we deliver, we believe privacy is a fundamental right. We are a leader in the enterprise cloud sector and work constructively with policymakers to advance a modern legal framework that protects individuals and enhances understanding and trust in technology around the world. For example, we continue to work diligently to ensure a government-to-government agreement is in place supporting trans-Atlantic data flows, and to encourage the U.S. Congress to adopt comprehensive privacy legislation. Additionally, we were the first cloud provider to adhere to the recently issued European Cloud Code of Conduct under GDPR.
Beyond the realms of responsible innovation and privacy, we also recognize our place in the world and the trust people place in us to help ensure its future is protected. This stands as the cornerstone of our commitment to environmental sustainability and we recognize the need for swift and meaningful action to address climate change. Workday is dedicated to doing our part to help the world achieve a net-zero future by 2050, keeping global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, and we support policies like the Paris Agreement that can help get us there. Workday is committed to clean and renewable energy, and in 2020 we matched 100% of electricity use at our offices and data centers globally with clean, renewable sources.
As we move forward we do so with these principles in mind, so that every relationship we build, every idea we have, and every action we take contributes to strengthening the fabric that holds us all together in a changing world—trust.
More Reading
How is skills-based hiring reshaping the way we think about talent? Carrie Varoquiers, chief philanthropy officer at Workday, chatted about this with the founder of Grads of Life and a Workday program manager who is also an alum from Year Up.
Learn about the Workday Foundation’s Upstream Grant Fund. This fund supports investments in prevention initiatives, including nonprofits that help build unified communities, reduce the severity of disease and pandemics, and drive disaster and resilience response.
We’re hitting the road this summer to spend some face time with our favorite people—customers, prospects, and leaders—to better understand their challenges, strengthen trusted relationships, and help them navigate the age of AI.