AI is changing what employees do at work, and Workday wants to help companies determine which tasks could be automated, which skills need developing and where human judgment remains essential.
Announced Oct. 13 at Workday Rising 2026, Work Intelligence analyzes tasks within jobs and connects them to employee skills. The tool aims to help organizations make more informed decisions about automation, hiring and workforce development.
The product draws on Workday Skills Cloud, which serves more than 3,450 customers and uses an ontology of more than 75,000 standardized skills, according to the company.
“AI rarely changes a whole job at once. It changes tasks,” Workday said in its announcement, arguing that traditional headcounts and organizational charts offer limited insight into how AI affects daily work.
Nikki Helmer, Workday’s vice president of talent management and insights, said the task-level approach could help businesses make better decisions about hiring, training and redesigning roles. Work Intelligence is currently available to early-access customers using Workday Human Capital Management (HCM).
How Work Intelligence could inform hiring decisions
Work Intelligence is designed to work alongside Workday Decision Intelligence, which helps HR and finance teams assess workforce plans against existing skills, staffing requirements and costs.
For example, a company considering 50 new hires could examine whether its current workforce already has the skills and capacity to handle some of the planned work. Decision Intelligence can then help leaders compare developing existing employees’ skills with recruiting externally.
Workday also plans to connect these insights with Workday Learning, powered by Sana, to recommend personalized training paths. The company cites its 2026 Global Workforce Report, which found that 76% of heavy AI users expect AI to create new career opportunities.
Workday expects emerging roles to include people responsible for coordinating human workers and AI agents, measuring automation outcomes and managing agent performance.
Why task-level planning could change hiring
The shift from job titles to individual tasks could give companies a more practical way to evaluate AI investments. A role may contain repetitive administrative work suitable for automation alongside responsibilities that require judgment, collaboration or specialized knowledge.
That distinction matters because automating part of a job does not necessarily eliminate the need for the employee. It may instead free up time for higher-value responsibilities, provided employers deliberately reorganize the remaining work.
Workday’s approach also connects workforce planning with skills development and financial analysis. Rather than treating automation, recruitment and training as separate projects, companies can examine how those decisions affect one another.
However, the quality of those recommendations will depend on how accurately the platform represents employees’ skills and actual workloads. Task-level analysis alone cannot determine whether an employee’s freed-up time translates into measurable business value.
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What this means for employers and employees
For employers, Work Intelligence could help inform hiring budgets, training investments and decisions about which responsibilities to automate. Businesses may discover they can fill emerging skills gaps by developing existing employees instead of competing for outside talent.
Employees could benefit from clearer training recommendations and potential career paths as AI changes their responsibilities. But more detailed workforce analysis also raises questions about transparency, particularly when employers use task-level information to make decisions about roles and staffing.
The larger test for Workday will be whether its approach helps companies redesign work around AI without treating automation as simply a way to reduce headcount.
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