20 Years of Working With Workday

When the EU announced the new EU Pay Transparency Directive, which will come into effect in June 2026, Workday sought a partner to meet the new regulations—leading them to deepen their current relationship with Kainos, now the first deployment partner for Workday’s Pay Transparency Analyzer. The EU directive is meant to help divulge salary discrepancies and ensure fair pay for all.

Beyond the concerns of adhering to new regulations, a significant concern many businesses have had of late is the return on business value with AI. According to a study by Implement Consulting Group, commissioned by Google, it is estimated that generative AI could boost the EU’s GDP by 1.4 trillion EUR over the next decade, a total increase of around 8 percent. (Source: Implement Consulting Group) Most businesses have been impacted in some way by current macroeconomic conditions, meaning for most, it is not business as usual. Some are turning towards AI to solve the drawbacks current conditions have caused.

According to Carl Eschenbach, Workday CEO, AI removes everyday drudgery. “We no longer work with technology, but the opposite happens, technology starts to work for us”, he explains. An overarching theme at the event was the coming together of technology and humanity—ensuring that kickstarting transformation with AI would not mean losing humanity, or rather—as many fear—making people obsolete altogether.

Humans and AI collaboration

“How do we transform our organizations with AI without losing our humanity?”, was a question that Chief Marketing Officer, Emma Chalwin put forward. For those asking themselves the same thing, Chalwin was there to assuage any fears, “Technology is the engine, but we are the drivers.”

Ashley Goldsmith, Chief People Officer at Workday, went into more detail on this topic in her keynote speech, quoting the World Economic Forum, according to which eleven million jobs are to be created by 2030 through AI. "Humans come through to work with technology and not be replaced by it,” she explained.

Later, when asked about the evolving role of HR in a world of AI and automation, Goldsmith had the following to say: “In a lot of ways, I think the evolution of HR began even before this. And I think it's really just accelerating more and more in some ways. […] And now companies are bringing on AI and the transformation in their workforce. All of that, I think, puts HR at the forefront.”

The aforementioned World Economic Forum report also states that all technologies and macrotrends will result in 92 million jobs being displaced and 170 million jobs being created, all by 2030. That is a net increase of 78 million jobs worldwide.

It is then a question of reskilling to remain relevant in an AI-based business world. To that end, adopting a skills-based recruiting approach, which focuses more on candidates’ skills over education or work experience and which Workday itself already implements, might be the best way for businesses to find talent in the future.

Example: Workday and Paradox

80 percent of organizations are not seeing business value from generative AI (Mckinsey and Company. While some larger companies may choose to invest in building their own AIs, there are several challenges to enterprise AI, such as managing data governance, security, integration, limits in the scope of the design, as well as time and resource limitations. This is why many turn to agentic AI, to circumvent the limitations of generative AI.

80 percent of companies see no business benefit in generative AI (McKinsey and Company). While some larger companies may choose to invest in building their own AIs, there are several challenges to enterprise AI, such as managing data governance, security, integration, limits in the scope of the design, as well as time and resource limitations. This is why many turn to agentic AI, to circumvent the limitations of generative AI.

According to Workday, 82 percent of enterprises use AI agents in some capacity. Workday’s acquisition of Sana will allow Workday users access to the no-code agent builder to create personalized AI agents as of 2026. This could be especially relevant in the DACH-region, where users are more conscious of how their data is being used.

On that matter, Max Wessel, SVP of Growth at Workday, said, “I think in DACH, users are more skeptical of those ‘I am opting you in to this’ type of utilization. I think therefore there is actually much more opportunity for something like Sana, where you equip the user with the tool and the user can easily configure how the tool works for them in their context, specifically to their data and not beyond.”

Payroll optimization across EMEA

Companies that operate within EMEA, and especially countries within the European Union, have a good deal of employees across boarders. With international employees comes the complexity of the different rules and tax regulations that every country has surrounding salaries. To tackle these issues, Workday has launched Workday Go Global Payroll, a solution provided through Workday’s expanded partnership with Remote, which adds additional functionalities to Workday GO, a unified, AI-powered cloud platform.

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"Technology is the engine, but we are the drivers."

Emma Chalwin,
Chief Marketing Officer,
Workday

Max Wessel, global SVP of Growth for Workday, had the following to say: “For us, we know that we can't do everything in the world. What we want to do is make sure that data is clean, that the interfaces are simple and easy, and that the active deployment is straightforward for customers. There should be no headache in a partnership. And what we've done with our partner in Remote is build a unique solution that integrates very easily to Workday, that ensures your data inside of Workday remains the source of truth, but is bi-directional in nature.

"So it can be accessed and updated and it fills up a real hole for our customers, which is if I don't want to just buy a software system, if I really want a managed service to make my global payroll complexity go away, how do I do that without having to turn to two different vendors?” No other region outside the EU has the same restrictions in terms of governance and data security.

Workday EU Sovereign Cloud

No other region outside the EU has the same number of restrictions regarding governance and security surrounding data. This is to be expected, as the DACH region in particular values data protection quite highly. To that end, Workday has announced an answer to meet the EU’s strict requirements. Workday’s EU Sovereign Cloud includes built-in governance adherence, is managed by EU personnel only, and will be available to everyone at the beginning of 2026. The new offering will be overseen by an EU advisory board, to ensure transparency and compliance, and is built on top of AWS’s cloud infrastructure.

Competition

The official position of Workday is that they don’t focus on their competition; they focus only on their customers. When asked about how the company is dealing with competititon with the ERP giant that is SAP in particular, especially in the EMEA region, Rob Enslin stated, “Focusing on the competition is not really healthy. Focusing on your customers, and how to transform what we’re doing, is really where we focus.”

Perhaps SAP would do well to focus more on their customers as well. Workday may have a leg up over their competition in this aspect. When asked about any recent wins from SAP, Jens Löhmer, CTO DACH and Continental Europe, expanded on a recent case. “We won Bayer AG. So, this company has a large enterprise base. They were using SAP and still are.

"They have a huge architecture base and are also modernizing it, but we've been able to convince them about Workday, and we're happy about this partnership. […] The Head of Talent Optimization was really excited about a wonderful new operating model in terms of giving employees more flexibility. Super modern for a German company.”

Conclusion

Workday has firmly established itself as an ERP powerhouse. From pay transparency and sovereign cloud solutions to agentic AI and global payroll optimization, Workday’s strategy reflects a deep understanding of both regional complexity and future workforce demands. The company is positioning itself not just as a technology provider, but as a long-term transformation partner.