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At Rising 2026, Workday introduced AI agents built to work on their own: sourcing candidates, catching payroll issues early, and keeping the books in shape for auditors. In the hallways, customers asked different questions. How do we stabilize after go-live? How do we govern agents before switching them on? Where do we find the people to scale?
Both conversations matter. The agents are ready. Whether organizations are ready for them will define 2027.
The Planet Group spent the week in Las Vegas meeting customers, attending sessions, and even leading one of our own.
Here are the seven topics we expect to matter most in the year to come.
1. Agents move from answering to acting
Most workplace AI waits for a question. The headline from Rising 2026 is that autopilot agents work in the background.
Autopilot, with people in charge
That changes the rhythm of the work. Picture payroll problems getting caught before a pay run instead of after an employee spots an error, or audit prep happening quietly all year instead of in a last-minute push. That's the promise behind Workday's new Payroll and Accounting agents, and a Deployment Agent brings the same idea to release management.
What we like most is that customers stay in control. You decide how much each agent can do on its own and where human approval is required. For most organizations, that line is what will make autopilot feel safe enough to try.
Most of these Workday AI agents reach early adopters in early 2027. That leaves a few months to decide where autopilot belongs.
2. Sana becomes the way work gets done
Sana took center stage in 2026, and it’s becoming the main way employees interact with Workday.
A new front door
Sana now serves as Workday Home and employees can simply ask for what they need. Submitting an expense, requesting time off, or getting back into a locked account becomes a quick request instead of a hunt through menus. Sana Concierge brings the same idea to HR and IT support and is expected to be generally available in Q1 2027. For service teams, that should mean fewer repetitive tickets and more time for the requests that need a person.
Wherever employees work
This is the part we expect employees to notice most. Workday Sana will also work inside Claude, Gemini Enterprise, Microsoft Copilot, Microsoft Teams, and Slack, backed by a new partnership with Anthropic. People can stay in the tools they already use all day.
And because Sana enforces each company's permissions first, IT keeps control without slowing anyone down.
Benefits that keep up
Workday Wellness caught our attention for a related reason. Real-time data exchange with vendors and pre-connected provider APIs cut down on custom integration work, and a cleaner interface helps both employees and the teams administering benefits. Less plumbing to build and maintain is always a win for HR technology teams.
3. Decision Intelligence brings analyst-grade answers to leaders
Workday Decision Intelligence, now available to HCM and Financial Management customers, could change how quickly leaders get answers.
Live data, real trade-offs
Think of it as an analyst on call, working from current data (workforce, finance, planning, etc.) In one example Workday shared, a plan calls for 50 new hires. Instead of approving the number as-is, HR can test it against the skills the company already has, then compare hiring, upskilling, contract talent, or retention by cost, speed, and risk.
What stands out to us is that HR and finance get to work from the same numbers. Better workforce decisions start there.
Weeks of work, on demand
"For executives, Decision Intelligence is the one to watch," said Jess Lampe, Global Lead Technologist at The Planet Group. "Analysis that used to take an internal team weeks to pull can now surface on demand, grounded in live data."
The same thinking is showing up in Adaptive Planning, where Decision Intelligence analyzes project scenarios using current planning data along with relevant external files, then produces an executive summary for leadership.
"This is the one I'd point finance teams to," said Cassandra Bolanos Espinosa, Global Director of Workday Administration at The Planet Group. "It works from the planning data you already have, so you can model a scenario and bring leadership a clear summary without standing up a separate analysis first."
4. Work gets redesigned task by task
Jobs rarely transform overnight. AI reshapes them one piece at a time, and Workday wants leaders to see it happening.
What stays human
Work Intelligence, in early access for HCM customers, maps each role task by task, along with the skills behind it. That gives leaders a clear answer to the question everyone is asking: what should AI handle, and what belongs with people? Paired with Workday Decision Intelligence, it also shows whether developing current talent makes more sense than hiring from outside.
We think this is where the AI conversation gets more human. Workday even expects new roles to emerge, like people who orchestrate teams of humans and agents.
HR 2030
The bigger picture came from Workday's new partnership with The Josh Bersin Company around HR 2030, a model for agentic HR in which HR teams work alongside AI agents and spend more time on strategy. Its playbook puts special focus on preparing workforce skills for AI-driven roles. That's the real assignment for HR leaders. Agentic HR changes the work, and HR is well placed to lead the change.
5. Hiring gets faster on both sides
Hiring is our world, so these two announcements got our full attention.
For recruiters
The Talent Acquisition Agent keeps watch over open roles, highlights strong applicants as they come in, and warns recruiters when a search is falling behind. Recruiters still sign off before anything goes to a candidate, and we think that's the right call. Outreach is where trust gets built, and it should stay human.
For candidates
Anyone who has applied for a job knows the pain of retyping the same work history again and again. Workday Candidate Profile lets job seekers store it once and bring it to any employer that hires through Workday. Workday says about 80% of standard fields will be prefilled, cutting application time by roughly 40%. Both capabilities reach general availability in early 2027.
Faster tools will speed up hiring. The right hire still comes down to capability and connection, and that part takes people.
6. Governance becomes the foundation
Nearly every announcement at Workday Rising 2026 came back to trust. It's the least flashy topic on this list yet maybe the most important.
Every agent, same rules
Workday's Trusted Agent Platform now runs “headless”, so teams can build agents in the tools and AI models they prefer. No matter who builds an agent, Workday's security, approval rules, and audit history still apply. For IT leaders, that means one set of rules instead of a separate policy for every tool.
Data without copies
Data teams got good news too. A new Workday Data Connect connector from Databricks, now in beta, lets them query Workday data where it lives, with no duplicate copies to manage.
"Integrations were my biggest highlight," said Lampe. "Zero-copy access through Databricks lets data teams explore what's in Workday before committing to a complex ingestion strategy."
Identity for agents
Workday also plans to acquire C1.ai, which controls what systems employees and agents can reach. The timing makes sense. C1.ai's research puts autonomous agents in 95% of large U.S. companies, while Deloitte found just 21% of organizations have mature governance for them. Closing that gap is where AI readiness work will focus next year.
7. Readiness and ROI decide who benefits
If one message came through in every conversation we had, it's that AI readiness takes more than switching on a feature.
What customers showed
The customer stories made the point well.
BMO prepared carefully before launching Workday's Self-Service Agent to 55,000 employees, building a responsible AI forum, aligning stakeholders, and bringing its policies into Workday.
Intermountain Health tested agents in a sandbox to build confidence before scaling. Those stories matched what our team heard all week.
"Workday Rising made it clear that AI is the future, and Workday put the right emphasis on doing it responsibly," said Jim Brashear, SVP of Strategic Accounts at Planet. In his conversations with customers, he heard a few consistent themes:
- Many are excited about AI but not yet ready. They need a guide through governance, training, and adoption.
- Others just went live and are asking how to get stable and prepare for Phase 2.
"Across the board, talent was a big topic," Jim said, "with customers looking to scale the right people across their organizations. AI is a big step forward, and we can't forget the customers who still need support after go-live."
From our session: AI Isn't Magic
Our own session took on the same question from the inside. Cassandra Bolanos Espinosa, Global Director of Workday Administration, and Jess Lampe led AI Isn't Magic: Choosing the Right Workday Use Case, built on a pilot with TPG's own finance team.
A few highlights:
- The goal is ROI, not AI.
Rank use cases by revenue, hours saved multiplied by salary, or what you would pay to never do the task again.
- Check Workday first, then let ROI decide.
The team adopted Workday's AI-powered account reconciliation and built a rules-based workflow for cash processing.
- Pilot a few things and measure them.
Early results show team members getting back about a week’s worth of time each month.
- Measure impact, not headcount.
AI should support your team, not replace them. Time saved goes to stronger controls better auditing, and the next process worth fixing.
What comes next
Workday Rising 2026 showed that AI agents are ready to take on real work. So what should you do about it? Most of what Workday announced lands between late 2026 and early 2027, which gives you a few months to bring policies into Workday, pick the use cases worth the investment, build governance, and line up the people to scale.
AI isn't magic. The organizations that prepare now will be the ones that see the results.
"There's so much happening with AI, automation, and new capabilities, but organizations need the right expertise to take advantage of it," said Christine Belmonte, President of Technology at The Planet Group. "We help Workday customers bridge the gap between innovation and execution, optimizing what they have today while preparing for what's next."
Planning your next move after Workday Rising 2026? Connect with our Workday team to talk through your roadmap.
