Workday AI features, pricing and GDPR (September 2026)

Workday is a cloud platform combining human resources and finance for midsize and large organizations, with an AI layer called Sana from Workday that lets staff find information and complete HR and finance tasks through a conversational interface.

Workday covers HR and finance together on one cloud platform, built for midsize and large organizations, headquartered in the United States with a genuinely international customer base. It competes for the same enterprise deals as SAP SuccessFactors, selling HR functionality and its AI layer as one product rather than separate add-ons. Since acquiring Sana AI, a deal that closed in November 2025, Workday markets its AI platform as Sana from Workday.

• Finds company knowledge through natural languageSana's Find function answers plain-language questions across HR and finance data instead of requiring a report to be exported first. Employees and HR staff get a direct answer to questions like current headcount or policy details.
• Executes multi-step HR and finance workflowsSana's Automate function carries out complex, multi-step workflows end to end across connected systems rather than requiring each step to be triggered manually. Workday states one customer reached 90 percent adoption and retired 400 ChatGPT licenses within 40 days of rollout.
• Builds documents, analyses and dashboards on requestSana's Build function generates documents, analyses and dashboards from a plain-language request instead of a manual build in a separate tool. Workday's Sana page lists 62 percent prep time saved as a general vendor figure, without tying it to the Build function or to specific tasks.
• Centrally governs AI agentsThe Agent System of Record gives IT and HR a central place to manage and audit the AI agents running across Workday, rather than each agent operating without oversight. This gives compliance and security teams one place to review what agents can access.

• One AI platform, Sana from Workday, with an assistant and agents for HR, finance and IT work.
• Combines HR and finance data in a single platform rather than an HR-only suite, useful where both functions need to draw on the same workforce data.
• Holds ISO 42001 certification for AI management specifically, in addition to broader security certifications.
• Runs dedicated regional sites with named reference customers in markets such as Germany, France, Japan and India rather than a single global product page.

Workday is headquartered in the US, which made up 75 percent of fiscal 2026 revenue according to its 10-K; the company states it supports more than 35 percent of the FTSE 100 in the UK, runs a large HCM rollout at Siemens plus deployments at Deutsche Bank and Scout24 in Germany, counts CIBC and McGill University among more than 500 customers in Canada, and holds Australia's IRAP government security certification along with acceptance to the federal Digital Transformation Agency marketplace.

Anyone evaluating Workday should ask which Sana assistants and agents are generally available and included in the subscription. As with other suites automating performance or workforce planning, German employers should clarify works council involvement early, since Section 87(1) No. 6 BetrVG can apply to systems that evaluate employee performance. Confirm which data center region applies to your contract before signing.

• No federal employee privacy law, a state patchwork instead
• NYC requires bias audits for AI hiring tools
• Illinois bans discriminatory AI in employment decisions

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• UK GDPR reworked by the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025
• ICO consulting on new automated decision-making guidance
• No works councils, but a right to request consultation

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