Workday Inc (NASDAQ: WDAY) has introduced Work Intelligence, a new capability designed to help organisations understand how artificial intelligence is changing job tasks and identify the skills employees will need as work evolves. The platform breaks jobs into individual tasks, links those tasks to the skills they require and helps business leaders identify where new capabilities are needed. It also highlights employees who already possess relevant skills and areas where training could help them prepare for changing roles.
Work Intelligence draws on Workday Skills Cloud, which is used by more than 3,450 customers and is built on an ontology containing more than 75,000 canonical skills. The system uses workforce, job and skills information to provide a more detailed view of how AI affects work than job titles and organisational structures alone can offer.
According to Workday’s 2026 Global Workforce Report, 76% of heavy AI users expect AI to create new career opportunities. Work Intelligence is intended to help organisations plan for those opportunities by identifying emerging skill requirements and assessing how existing employees can take on new responsibilities.
Nikki Helmer, Vice President of Talent Management and Insights at Workday, said the basic unit of work was shifting from the job to the task. Without visibility into individual tasks, she said, organisations could struggle to decide whether to hire, develop skills internally, automate activities or redesign roles. Work Intelligence provides data to support those decisions.
The system is designed to work with Workday Decision Intelligence, helping employers assess internal skills and compare the potential time and cost of developing existing employees with recruiting externally. The tools provide information for decision-making but do not make employment decisions about individuals.
Workday Learning, powered by Sana, can then use these insights to recommend personalised training paths. For example, a financial analyst whose manual reconciliation tasks are increasingly supported by AI could be guided towards forecasting skills relevant to future responsibilities.
Work Intelligence also aims to help organisations anticipate new roles as AI becomes more widely used. These may include positions focused on coordinating human workers and AI agents, measuring AI’s impact, managing agent performance and determining appropriate uses for AI.
In addition, the platform helps leaders monitor how AI changes work over time. They can track shifts in tasks, employee time allocation, skill requirements and movement into new responsibilities. This information can help companies assess whether AI investments are delivering operational benefits and adjust workforce plans as business needs change.
Work Intelligence is currently available to early-access customers of Workday Human Capital Management (HCM). Workday provides enterprise software for human resources, finance and information technology. More than 11,500 organisations worldwide, including over 65% of Fortune 500 companies, use its platform. The company combines AI with business data, processes and controls to support enterprise operations and decision-making.
