Workday Advances Performance Management Initiative to Empower Individuals, Deepen Employee-Manager Relationships

PLEASANTON, Calif., Aug. 02, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Workday, Inc. (NASDAQ: WDAY), a leader in enterprise cloud applications for finance and human resources, today announced that it is continuing to advance Performance Enablement?a new approach that empowers employees to drive their own career development and performance. After conducting Career and Progress Check-ins, ongoing discussions that have replaced the company's annual performance review, Workday is now deploying additional efforts to further encourage and enable its 8,600-plus workers to focus on their professional growth goals. By providing personalized training through agile career workshops and employing a do-it-yourself (DIY) approach to development with an innovative practice called career sprints, Workday is equipping its employees to take greater control of their careers.

Performance Enablement centers on five key factors that fuel employee success?contribution, capabilities, career, connections, and compensation and recognition?which are intentionally woven into focused events and activities throughout the year. The new framework marries art and science through high-touch people programs supported by high-tech measurement of outcomes to ensure the company's efforts have a positive impact on the overall employee experience.

Employees Want More Optionality and Ownership of Careers
In the ever-changing world of work where reskilling, ongoing development, and continuous learning determine a person's success in the workforce, employers are increasingly seeking new ways to help employees attain the knowledge, skills, and experiences they need to continue growing. And workers want optionality?the ability to move in a variety of directions and pursue different learning experiences?to have more career choices. According to an American Psychological Association survey, "Training and development is one of the areas employees are least satisfied with?the lack of opportunity for growth and advancement is second only to low pay as a source of work stress."¹ Also, having employees solely rely on their direct managers for new training and learning opportunities often puts a strain on their relationship, with the onus for advancement put on people managers while leaving workers at the mercy of someone else's timeline.

With a better understanding of today's workforce needs, and because of employee feedback and requests related to professional growth, Workday set out to find a new way to facilitate self-driven development. By arming employees with the tools and knowledge that will help them pursue their desired skills and competencies without requiring managers to broker every step of the process, Workday can help evolve the employee-manager relationship into a true partnership.

Tracking Progress and Measuring Outcomes
With Performance Enablement, Workday is leveraging an organizing framework that lets employees know where they stand and equips them with the information and technology they need to move their careers forward. Using Workday Human Capital Management (HCM), the company has a means to track progress as well as measure how well its people managers are supporting career experiences. The resulting data drives more productive conversations focused on helping individuals pursue their career interests, grow their capabilities and internal networks, and be recognized and rewarded based on their contributions to the business.

With Performance Enablement, Workday employees benefit from:

• More Meaningful Check-ins ? Employees are encouraged to have ongoing and productive conversations with their managers through Career and Progress Check-ins, which will typically take place 2-4 times per year. These performance partnership discussions can address progress to-date with career, capability, connections, and contribution goals; professional interests and aspirations; plans to reach forward-looking goals; and compensation updates, when appropriate. Through the Workday Talent and Performance Dashboard, workers are able to initiate check-ins with their managers as well as track progress against goals, request feedback from colleagues, and add connections to their network.
   
• DIY Development and Growth Opportunities ? To help employees work towards the goals they set with managers in their Career and Progress Check-ins, Workday recently kicked off a career agility workshop where participants learn how to develop a specific capability or connection over three to six months through a self-driven career sprint. Career sprints, modeled after the agile development methodology used by technical teams, aim to help individuals better collaborate with cross-functional teams, self-organize, and pursue new skills at an incremental pace so they can proactively pursue their desired capabilities, connections, and career interests.
  
  Also, workers can leverage Workday HCM for assistance with career planning and professional development. They can identify career interests that trigger job notifications when a relevant position opens and utilize personalized content recommendations in Workday Learning to help build new skills. They can also access the Workday Opportunity Graph, a feature that continuously analyzes career movements within the company to show an employee what their next internal move could be ? for example, "73 percent of employees in your current role make this move next."

• Focused Feedback and Measurement ? In collaboration with Great Place to Work, Workday launched the Best Workday Survey to pulse employees each week and allow them to confidentially provide feedback about the workplace culture. Based on these insights, people managers are measured on how effectively they enable their teams and the level of employee experience they are creating for them. They are, in turn, held accountable for their results and provided with targeted coaching content, tools, and training that helps them improve their people management skills.  

Comments on the News
"Today's leaders have the tremendous responsibility of creating a corporate culture capable of developing every ounce of human potential within their organizations," said Michael Bush, chief executive officer, Great Place to Work. "Workday's Performance Enablement approach underscores the importance of an optimal employee experience. When organizations create a workplace where employees are engaged, encouraged to pursue professional interests and work that fulfills them, and rewarded and recognized for their contributions, they can achieve a better business through a great place to work for all."

"Organizations that do not innovate their HR practices to help their people develop and reskill will fail to attract and retain top talent in today's competitive market," said Greg Pryor, senior vice president, people and performance, Workday. "We intentionally designed Performance Enablement to focus on the needs of individuals and are continuously measuring outcomes to determine the impact of our efforts. When people are enabled to grow, perform in their roles, and evolve their careers, it positively affects overall performance and delivers collective results for our colleagues, customers, and company."

About Workday
Workday is a leading provider of enterprise cloud applications for finance and human resources. Founded in 2005, Workday delivers financial management, human capital management, and analytics applications designed for the world's largest companies, educational institutions, and government agencies. Organizations ranging from medium-sized businesses to Fortune 50 enterprises have selected Workday.

© 2018. Workday, Inc. All rights reserved. Workday and the Workday logo are registered trademarks of Workday, Inc. All other brand and product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.

¹ American Psychological Association's Center for Organizational Excellence "2017 Job Skills Training and Career Development Survey"

Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements including, among other things, statements regarding the expected performance and benefits of Workday's offerings. The words "believe," "may," "will," "plan," "expect," and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks, uncertainties, and assumptions. If the risks materialize or assumptions prove incorrect, actual results could differ materially from the results implied by these forward-looking statements. Risks include, but are not limited to, risks described in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), including Form 10-Q for the quarter ended April 30, 2018 and our future reports that we may file with the SEC from time to time, which could cause actual results to vary from expectations. Workday assumes no obligation to, and does not currently intend to, update any such forward-looking statements after the date of this release.

Any unreleased services, features, or functions referenced in this document, our website, or other press releases or public statements that are not currently available are subject to change at Workday's discretion and may not be delivered as planned or at all. Customers who purchase Workday, Inc. services should make their purchase decisions based upon services, features, and functions that are currently available.

© 2018. Workday, Inc. All rights reserved. Workday and the Workday logo are registered trademarks of Workday, Inc.

Media Contact
Samantha Sok
Workday
+1 (312) 315-8190
[email protected]