Workday makes Sana its new Workday Home, unveils AI HR and finance tools and C1.ai acquisition

Sana will be the interface through which employees work directly to get things done, Workday said. Sana Concierge is a new service agent for human resources and information technology teams that can resolve employee requests. Workday said it can handle onboarding, leave and password requests without passing those 20-minute tasks to people, allowing staff to focus on issues that require intuition.

Workday said Sana now adapts to each employee with a Home experience that tailors itself to the employee's role. That includes a user interface that can generate interactive applications using Jev, a model from TypeSafe AI that can create forms, calendars, approval cards, visualizations and interactive experiences in real time.

"AI is the new UI," Chief AI Officer Joel Hellermark said. "Users shouldn't have to decide which agent to use, just as they shouldn't have to click between dozens of different systems. We're giving our customers an agentic experience that opens up a whole new way to work."

During a press briefing, Workday executives demonstrated a shift from "copilot to autopilot," part of an industry trend in agentic automation. In one example, a recruiter autopilot agent checks open requisitions before a recruiter logs in, prepares outreach and surfaces candidates. The employee reviews the outreach and chooses whether to advance candidates from the Sana interface. Interview scheduling then runs autonomously. When an interview happens, the agent joins to listen, prepare notes and use recruiter feedback to influence future recommendations.

Workday announced Work Intelligence and Decision Intelligence as platforms for teams interacting with AI agents, models and tools. Work Intelligence helps businesses build for AI by showing enterprise teams how AI tools and agents change work. Workday said AI rarely changes a whole job at once; it changes tasks, and as tasks change, the skills that matter also change. Every worker who interacts with AI becomes a data point for how a company can grow.

"Work Intelligence gives leaders the data to thoughtfully redesign roles, build careers and help people grow into what's next," said Nikki Helmer, vice president of talent management and insights.

Workday said it uses its understanding of skills through Skills Cloud, now used by more than 3,450 customers and built on an ontology of more than 75,000 canonical skills, to help leadership plan how to grow people as work changes. The company said AI will not only change existing roles but also create new ones.

Decision Intelligence lets HR and finance teams operate in the same space without curating and trading information through communication channels that often rely on periodic reports, Workday said. Hiring decisions and procurement are often based on analyst-produced reports that slowly go out of date; with an AI analyst, Workday said those decisions can be based on real-time business data. HR and finance need trustworthy workforce and financial data, but that data is often siloed.

Decision Intelligence performs analysis for both HR and finance, allowing them to make decisions and compare using actionable, real-time data based on business needs, according to Workday. For example, if HR wants to hire 50 people, it can ask whether the business still needs 50 based on the current workforce makeup. Decision Intelligence can look at composition, existing skills, roles that can be filled and how the hiring plan affects costs. Hiring managers and leadership can look at current workforce data instead of a static report.

In addition to the Sana updates, Workday said it agreed to acquire ConductorOne Inc., also known as C1.ai, an agentic identity platform for people and agents. According to SiliconANGLE, C1.ai provides a platform that governs people and agents.