Tech giants, corporations and utilities are expected to invest around $1 trillion in generative AI over the coming years, according to a report from Goldman Sachs. HR and business leaders hope to benefit from this spending as a wave of new tools hits the market and legacy platforms announce advancements.

This includes financial management and human capital management system Workday.
At its annual user conference, Rising 2024, this week, the Fortune 500 company unveiled its latest innovations to customers and partners.

This comes at a time when many HR leaders are eager for actionable AI use cases that apply to their workplaces and teams. According to Workday’s co-founder and co-CEO, Aneel Bhusri, clean and reliable data plus applicable context are necessary for AI to deliver on user intent. To support this philosophy, Workday announced Illuminate AI technology, which allows customers to streamline tasks, support employees and transform business processes.

Shane Luke, head of AI and machine learning at Workday, told the audience that Illuminate will require no updates. “You turn it on and it just works,” says Luke, adding that it is available in all languages and regions. Illuminate uses generative AI to speed up content creation and summarization and offers automation tools to simplify workflows. A Workday Assistant supports routine HR tasks and guides users through complex processes.

Workday’s strategy for AI of the future

Aasha Kircher, group general manager of CHRO products, said that CHROs must adapt to seize new opportunities for innovation while building resilient organizations. To stay competitive, Kircher believes CHROs need to be curious and proactive in exploring cutting-edge tools and strategies—such as Illuminate—that can transform their companies’ operations. She advocated for HR leaders to embrace a growth mindset, characterized by continuous learning and a long-term focus on success.

Workday is betting on long-term benefits through Illuminate-powered functionality, which it has dubbed “agents.” Agents, which perform as digital business process experts, are AI-powered, conversational tools that can coordinate to assist users with inquiries and tasks. These are a cornerstone of the company’s customer deliverables. Workday’s chief marketing officer, Emma Chalwin, told a keynote audience that the company “truly believes agents are the future of AI.”

There are plans for agents to “talk to” other agents to deliver outcomes and answers mined from multiple platforms. Workday is integrating these agents with tools like Salesforce and Microsoft to support enterprise-wide use. Several new AI-powered agents of interest to HR leaders were introduced at the event, including:

• Recruiter Agent: Building on recently acquired HiredScore capabilities, this agent automates hiring processes, sources passive candidates and recommends top talent.
• Succession Agent: This agent facilitates planning by identifying future leaders and providing personalized development plans for high-potential employees.
• Workday Optimize: This tool identifies process bottlenecks and inefficiencies—such as delays in onboarding—and helps resolve them automatically.

In other announcement news, Workday Assistant now offers AI-powered, role-specific support to employees. It provides quick answers to HR questions and is accessible from any device. By leveraging Illuminate, the assistant also helps employees take faster action, offering company-specific guidance to complete complex tasks.

These tools come at a time when HR teams are busier than ever. Guest speaker Josh Bersin highlighted a voluminous shift in HR, with specialized roles increasing by 30% over the last three years. He noted that the current value proposition for HR is higher than ever, making it an exciting time to be in the field. Bersin said that today’s HR professionals must be “full-stack” experts, capable of handling an array of responsibilities.

Because of this, the analyst stressed the need for HR teams to adopt a problem-solving mentality by utilizing productive tools that address challenges effectively. In his upcoming HR Tech keynote, Bersin will dig into AI’s impact on HR systems of all types, including recruitment, employee experience and L&D technologies.

At Rising, there was more news on cross-platform collaborations. While Bersin was on stage, Workday announced a new partnership with The Josh Bersin Company. As a Workday Innovation Partner, this team-up will integrate Bersin’s Galileo platform with Workday, enhancing the range of insights available to HR leaders.

Additionally, Workday revealed its agreement to acquire Evisort, an AI-native document intelligence platform. Evisort’s AI capabilities will be integrated into Workday’s finance and HR suite, enabling customers to unlock insights from unstructured data—such as contracts and policy documents—for faster decision-making.