Workday reviews

3.5

59% would recommend to a friend

(4,552 total reviews)
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Aneel Bhusri

61% approve of CEO

42% positive business outlook

Workday has an employee rating of 3.5 out of 5 stars, based on 4,552 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Workday employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Information Technology industry (3.9 stars).

Reviews by job title

5K reviews
2.0
Jan 30, 2016

S.O.S Dave Duffield

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

I've been at Workday for 3+ years. I have to say it still has quite a bit of smart and talented people. Workday still has a lot of untapped potential. The brand is now recognized worldwide and we are #2 as the best place to work.

Cons

Dave if you're reading this please come back and help ensure our culture is not being hijacked. If you are a fellow Workday employee please up vote thus if you agree. Where should I begin? There are an influx of Oracle-like managers. They are in development, sales, and director roles. They don't care about their employees. They spend all their time making themselves look good rather than worrying about the culture, its employees and the best for our company and customers. It's become really corporate and political fast. A lot of the original Workday people are being pushed out because of this. These managers are hiring senior, principal roles externally rather than promote within. Most likely hiring people who agree with their agenda rather than based on merit. In Support one Senior integrations engineer was overlooked for a managerial position. They hired some one much younger with no integration experience. HR has a history of not doing anything. I've had multiple colleagues complain to hr only to be reprimanded by thier manager after they found out. You have to complain to the head of Hr Kim roa to get anything done. Trying to change or improve anything is frown upon. VPs and directors are where they are at because they insist on using antiquated systems and procedures They don't support innovation since it makes their day to day activities obsolete. They strive in this broken system because thats how they remain visible and relevant. You improve or fix the system and they basically aren't useful anymore.

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.

3.0
Apr 12, 2023
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Individuals still believe in the culture that was present when we joined. Time Off flexibility is still good at least in the teams I've been part of. Great healthcare benefits

Cons

Lack of transparency and sense of company direction. We talk a good game but have lost our commitment to customer and instead are focusing on flashy sponsorships, company acquisitions, and developing large amounts of low-quality content to give the appearance of progress. Layoffs. We were told we wouldn't be laying off, then they said the layoffs would be limited, but we gave the laid off workers rules around what they could and could not say to give a flowery appearance while threatening the livelihoods of the talent we let go. Many job offers rescinded and forced to re-apply or kicked out due to the new back to office policy. Baseless 'return to office' requirements. Sheri is mandating new roles be located near offices significantly reducing talent pool. We have yet to see any real data supporting the claims for their decisions. Pay cuts disguised as updated compensation philosophy. Good ol' boy culture among Sr Management and above. The executive teams are very preppy and there is no defined path to leadership, only the in-crowd seems to get promoted.

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Glassdoor has 5,116 Workday reviews submitted anonymously by Workday employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Workday is right for you.