Workday Introduces Agent System of Record for AI Workforce Management

PLEASANTON, Calif., Feb. 14, 2025 — Workday, Inc. has announced the Workday Agent System of Record to help organizations manage their entire fleet of AI agents – from Workday and third-parties alike – in one place. The Agent System of Record will enable businesses to thrive in the age of agentic AI by providing the essential tools to help effectively govern, manage, and optimize their digital workforce.

As the number and complexity of AI agents grow, organizations of all sizes face a new set of challenges: managing their deployment, ensuring their security and compliance, optimizing their impact, and managing costs. Without a centralized approach, they risk fragmented operations, increased security risk, and difficulty measuring the true value of their AI investments.

The Agent System of Record will provide an efficient, secure way to onboard new AI agents, define their roles and responsibilities, track their impact, budget and forecast their costs, support compliance, and foster continuous improvement. By providing a single system for managing AI agents being used across a company’s workforce, Workday will give IT and business leaders transparency and control over the impact of AI agents on work.

“The workforce of the future will include both humans and AI agents, and businesses that don’t learn to manage this incredibly complex reality will quickly fall behind,” said Aneel Bhusri, co-founder and executive chair, Workday. “We believe no company in the world is better positioned than Workday to usher in this new era of workforce management in a trusted, ethical way. Our deep understanding of human skills and roles naturally extends to managing digital labor. The future is here, and just like with the transition to the cloud, we’re ready to help our customers get there first.”

“At Workday, we believe that humans and agents should peacefully coexist in a way that amplifies human performance,” said Carl Eschenbach, CEO, Workday. “As the system of record for more than 10,500 organizations around the world, there is no one better than Workday to manage every part of the workforce – employees, contingent workers, and agents – on our trusted platform.”

Unlock the Full Potential of AI Agents

With decades of experience in handling sensitive data and managing complex workforce processes, Workday is a recognized leader in responsible AI development. With the Agent System of Record, organizations will be able to leverage the best AI agents for their needs—whether they’re from Workday, Workday customers, or partners— while maintaining centralized control, governance, and visibility.

Key benefits of the Agent System of Record include:

• Centralized Management: Manage all AI agents within a single system to gain transparency into their impact and effectiveness.
• Streamlined Agent Onboarding: Quickly onboard new agents with defined roles, skills, and secure access to relevant data, accelerating time to value.
• Managing and Optimizing Costs: Budget, forecast, and optimize the ROI of AI agents to ensure efficiency and effectiveness in delivering business outcomes.
• Support Secure and Compliant Deployment: Deploy agents with confidence, leveraging automated configuration, access controls, and policy enforcement to mitigate risk.
• Real-Time Operational Visibility: Monitor agent activity, enforce policies, and track costs in real time to optimize performance and ROI. Maintain continuous agent oversight with real-time identity verification, agent orchestration, and financial cost monitoring for optimal performance.

New Role-Based Agents Transform Entire Business Processes

Workday also announced new role-based AI agents that customers will be able to easily deploy and manage through the Agent System of Record. While most agents in the market today are task-based and follow specific step-by-step instructions, Workday’s role-based agents contain a configurable set of ‘skills’ that give them more autonomy and the ability to more fully support people in their roles. The agents can perform hundreds of individual tasks. Workday’s previously announced role-based agents include Recruiting, Talent Mobility, Succession, and Optimize Agents.

New Workday agents announced today include:

• Contracts Agent: Continuously analyzes contracts across the enterprise, surfaces obligations and opportunities buried in unstructured data, and drives business actions to capture value and mitigate risk.
• Payroll Agent: Identifies and updates invalid payroll data. Automates audit workflows, surfaces insights, and recommends fixes. Monitors compliance and delivers system updates.
• Financial Auditing Agent: Increases efficiency and mitigates risk during the audit experience by connecting complex business documents to monitor transactions, reconcile balances, and review internal controls. Allows audit firms to develop apps that connect directly to their Workday customers.
• Policy Agent: Continuously reads a company’s latest corporate policy details, then seamlessly and proactively sends that information to employees and managers wherever they are asking questions or doing work. Delivers a simplified self-service user experience, more compliant transactions, and deflection of tactical case volume, allowing the HR help desk to focus on more complex cases.

Discover and Deploy Industry-Leading AI Agents Through Workday Marketplace

AI Agents from Workday and Workday partners will be featured in Workday Marketplace, making it easy for customers to discover and deploy agents that meet their business needs. In the future, customers and partners will also be able to augment, customize, and complement AI agents that integrate seamlessly with Workday through Workday’s developer platform, Workday Extend.

The Workday Agent System of Record and new role-based AI agents are currently in development and are expected to become available later this year.

About Workday

Workday is the AI platform that helps organizations manage their most important assets – their people and money. The Workday platform is built with AI at the core to help customers elevate people, supercharge work, and move their business forever forward. Workday is used by more than 10,500 organizations around the world and across industries – from medium-sized businesses to more than 60% of the Fortune 500.

Source: Workday