The "Great Culture" does not permeate throughout the entire organization - Manager Workday Employee Review

2.0
Dec 11, 2015
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Lots of snacks and bagels. Work life balance and probably good managers can be found if you are lucky enough to work in the right department. The company spends a lot of money on Workday Generation so if you are a young person, that is definitely a pro for you. The company has recently had a lot of various workshops for management skills, managing priorities, etc. which I think is a step in the right direction. There are opportunities outside of your department to move into. Things can be a lot worse.

Cons

In reading some of the more critical but most useful reviews, I realize I am not alone. I am only talking about my personal experience and not putting down anyone who has truly had an amazing experience here. This is a very political and clicky culture and people seem threatened by talent, and afraid to step on the wrong toes. Workday tries to give the appearance that they have this great culture but maybe what once were great ideals have warped into this superficial, passive aggressive one that promotes weak leadership, and a follower mentality. It would be a much more conducive to work in an environment where people are truly team players and want to do what's best for the company and the investors. When WD talks about being collaborative, they just mean shut your mouth and don’t ruffle feathers. They say they promote innovation and thinking outside of the box, but that's all lip service. And I sometimes wonder if the people who are coming up with product ideas and functionality have ever even used similar products. There are very basic problems in the product but no one is willing to listen and use the resources that they have right underneath their noses. There are too many leaders, but none willing to truly lead. You have so many different "leaders" in one end to end process. Leaders don’t get together to align their goals, resulting in very unscalable processes and frustrated employees; you can't report on useful metrics timely because the information input at point A isn’t defined and agreed upon. The decision that wins often is not the one that makes the most sense. Ideas that benefit the company or are innovative are disregarded if the top people in power are against it. People are not held accountable for their actions. Leaders don’t enforce any sort of discipline, which you need to have at any company in order to be successful. You have leaders who are incompetent yet they are let loose to run organizations the way they deem fit because they are friends with so and so, making things even harder to clean up as the company grows. There is no opportunity for promotion or growth. They hire leaders from outside of the org that have no clue as to how things are functioning specific to WD; and to top it off, the leaders from the outside seem pretty disengaged with their own departments when they get here. For a company who is all about HR, you’d think relationships among their employees would be a primary concern. The leadership here seems more concerned with making alliances with other departments to further their own position, rather than taking care of the people working hard directly under them. I read a review here that talks about how toxic and abusive the leaders of the sales ops org are, and I can see that. You would have to be blind not to, but once again, it's about weak leadership turning the blind eye. I read a review that one person was shocked about the negative reviews in the sales ops org – again, this type of myopia instead of trying to understand why people are feeling this way is the exact problem. I was once told by an employee about how this employee was being managed; I told my manager about it and was not believed.

Explore other reviews about Workday

5.0
Apr 18, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Excellent software makes it easy to support.

Cons

Focus on AI distracting from real work.

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Workday Response
1mo
Thank you for your review, we appreciate you taking the time to share your experience at Workday. We're committed to fostering an open, inclusive culture, and feedback like yours helps us continue to grow and improve for all our Workmates.
4.0
Mar 31, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Great people, benefits, culture, and pay. Lots of "workmates" with long tenures (10+ years). I truly wanted to retire from Workday!

Cons

Leadership changes freaked a lot of people out. Things felt unstable within the org for the last year (2025). The culture shifted from one that focused on employee growth to adopt all AI at all costs, and do it yesterday! It was extremely stressful to learn so much, so quickly, and create your own use cases and custom workflows - then to ultimately be laid off despite significant contributions.

1
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Workday Response
2mo
Thank you for your valuable input. At Workday, we pride ourselves on fostering a transparent workplace, maintaining the highest ethical standards, and promoting innovation. It's heartening to hear about your positive journey as a Workmate. We continue to be committed to delivering exceptional experiences for our Workmates.
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