The new tool breaks roles into individual tasks and links them to skills, helping employers decide where AI can assist, where people must stay in charge, and how to prepare staff for emerging roles.
Workday has introduced Work Intelligence, a new offering designed to show companies how artificial intelligence is changing the work inside each job and which skills employees will need next. The launch was announced on October 14 at Workday Rising 2026. The company describes itself as an agentic platform for HR, finance and IT.
The tool divides each job into the tasks people perform, maps those tasks to the skills they demand, and helps leaders plan how to develop their workforce as work evolves. It draws on Workday Skills Cloud, which the company says is used by more than 3,450 customers and rests on an ontology of over 75,000 canonical skills.
Why tasks, not jobs
Workday argues that job titles and organisation charts reveal little about how AI will affect work, since AI seldom transforms an entire role at once. It changes individual tasks, and as those tasks shift, the skills that matter most shift with them. Work Intelligence is meant to show leaders and employees where this is happening, who already has the skills rising in importance, and what training could help others catch up.
The company cited its 2026 Global Workforce Report, which found that 76 per cent of heavy AI users expect the technology to create new career opportunities.
Most firms can see headcount, reporting lines and job titles but not the tasks that make up each role, Workday said. Work Intelligence aims to close that gap using the people, jobs and skills data companies already store in the platform. It is positioned as an ongoing view rather than a one-time workforce study, so planning can continue as business needs and AI agents change.
Nikki Helmer, vice president, talent management and insights, Workday, said: “The basic building block of work is shifting from the job to the task – and without that view, most companies are left guessing whether to hire, build skills, automate, or redesign roles, with no way to know which guess is right. Work Intelligence gives leaders the data to thoughtfully redesign roles, build careers, and help people grow into what’s next.”
Preparing for new roles and building skills
Workday expects AI to create new roles as well as alter existing ones. These could include positions focused on designing how people and AI agents collaborate, measuring AI impact, managing agent performance, or deciding where AI should and should not be used. Work Intelligence is meant to help leaders spot such needs earlier.
The tool is designed to work with Workday Decision Intelligence, which can show which employees already hold adjacent skills. That helps quantify the time and cost advantages of developing talent internally versus hiring externally. Workday stressed that neither tool makes decisions about people; they show how work is changing, and people decide what to do.
Through Workday Learning, powered by Sana, companies can turn those insights into personalised learning paths. For example, a financial analyst whose manual reconciliation is increasingly supported by AI could see the forecasting skills that matter most for their next step and receive a path to build them.
Measuring the impact of AI
Workday says Work Intelligence also lets leaders gauge whether AI investments are paying off. They can track how tasks change, how employees’ time shifts to new work, which skills are growing and whether staff are moving into new roles. This, the company says, helps tie AI spending to business value instead of relying on assumptions or one-off studies.
Availability
Work Intelligence is currently available to early access customers of Workday Human Capital Management (HCM).
