Workday and generative AI: the keys to a competency-centric organization

Today, the traditional organization based on qualifications, experience and job descriptions is showing its limitations. To remain competitive and attractive, companies need to rethink their approach and place skills at the heart of their strategy. But how do you bring about this transformation towards a skills-based organization? What are the challenges and expected benefits? And above all, how can technology accelerate and facilitate this strategic shift?

In this article, we explore the potential of artificial intelligence, and more specificallygenerative AI, coupled with Workday’s HRIS solutions.

For years, work organization has been based on qualifications, experience and job descriptions.

However, this type of operation no longer seems adapted to the new world of work, where skills become obsolete within 18 months, and the company’s skill requirements evolve faster than expected.

At the same time, research shows that investment in skills training could increase GDP by $6.5 trillion by 2030.
Despite this, only 0.5% of global GDP is currently invested in adult lifelong learning.

Our analysis is therefore that organizations must transform themselves to capture this value by focusing on skills, to gain agility and adaptability to change. In this article, we offer you our analysis of the subject, and put it into perspective using Workday HRIS functionalities.

What is a competency-based organization?

To begin with, it’s essential to define what a competency-based organization is, and to identify the criteria needed to make this transformation a success.

This essentially involves identifying the skills the company currently has and those it will need in the future, and then anticipating this gap in order to train and retrain its employees.

This means prioritizing talent retention, offering a continuous, personalized learning experience, promoting internal mobility as a new recruitment method, building flexible project teams, and shifting the role of managers to that of mentor or coach.

Workday, AI and skills: before generative AI

To better understand how this transformation can be accelerated with Workday and artificial intelligence, let’s first look back at Workday‘s history with AI.

Workday integrated AI and Machine Learning in 2014. In the years that followed, Workday increased its investments to offer personalized suggestions and improve the user experience.

More recently, in 2024, Workday acquired HiredScore, a provider of talent orchestration solutions powered by Responsible AI.

These solutions enable companies to better identify, rediscover and coordinate talent and make recruitment teams more efficient, while improving visibility of internal opportunities and offering them to employees according to their skills and preferences.

We believe this acquisition will have a significant impact on the Workday user experience.

In particular, we’re going to focus on the “Learning” & “Career Hub” areas, because they are at the heart of the transformation of competency-based organizations.

• The Learning domain, thanks to machine learning, can already offer a continuous, personalized learning experience by proposing training courses according to the employee’s skills, preferences and current role.
  Employees can register for the training courses proposed by machine learning independently, save them or place them on a “learning path” to complete them later according to their priorities.

• Career Hub” functionality is integrated into the Learning domain. Thanks to machine learning and AI, it analyzes skills, language preference, current role and training that has been done before to offer employees :
  • Develop in their current role, and decide what they want to do next, by listing the relevant skills to be developed.
  • Mentors to contact
  • People in the target role with whom they can exchange information
  • Gigs” or “flex teams”, which are short assignments that allow the employee to learn more and assess whether he or she has the necessary skills.

Generative AI, the new acceleration lever with Workday

SQORUS, Workday’s Advisory partner, was present at the Elevate event in Paris.
On this occasion, Workday presented several use cases showing howgenerative AI will create an ever more personalized and satisfying learning, professional development and internal mobility experience.

For example, the employee can chat with the system via conversational AI :

Provide individualized learning paths to enhance skills in the job
Tailor skills development recommendations according to preferences and career goals.

Here’s an illustration:

A) The employee can ask the conversational AI to communicate the skills needed for a targeted role in the context of professional development.

B)AI provides a list of skills, suggests training courses, puts you in touch with a mentor or suggests you take part in Gigs/Flexteams. This enables employees to change roles autonomously, while guaranteeing visibility of all available opportunities.

C) Once the employee has made his or her choice, theAI registers for training, sends a message to the mentor or requests participation in a Gig.

Conclusion on generative AI with Workday for competency-centric organization transformation

In conclusion, the potential opened up by this use of artificial intelligence is very significant. But to get the most out of it, it’s essential to take three factors into account:

• The quality of data has become more important than ever, and the democratization of data in organizations is the way to achieve this goal.

• Everyone in companies needs to be acculturated to AI, and work needs to be done on the associated posture and requirements.

• AI and its promises must not make us forget the predominant place of human governance in organizations

As a Workday partner, SQORUS supports your HRIS projects and the deployment of artificial intelligence. If you’re interested in this subject, contact us and we’ll put you in touch with our HR Council and Project Management teams.

See also our feature on "HR strategy management tools".

• What are the key issues facing HR departments today?
• Organization, talent management, recruitment: priority HR projects?
• Human resources management: what HR strategies for the future?
• Best practices to manage your HR strategy in an optimal way
• The different HR management tools to carry out your HR strategy
• HRIS software: the different areas of intervention for the HR function
• How to convince your management to invest in an HRIS tool?
• Is it necessary to be accompanied in the management of an HR strategy?
• What indicators should be defined to measure the performance of an HR strategy?
• HR strategy: how to achieve effective HR reporting?
• Who should drive HR projects in the company?
• Setting up a working group for an HR project: who should be involved?