Overview

With thousands of customers, hundreds of partners, a multi-billion dollar market cap, and two of the largest HR conferences in the world, Workday is one of the global leaders in HR tech.

But Workday is more than an enterprise software provider. It is also a large enterprise with roughly 20,000 employees who need the very solutions that drive its business.

Among them is Josh Tarr, Director of Skills-Based Organization, on the People and Purpose team (HR). For the past few years, they have led the company’s effort to “drink their own champagne” and apply Workday’s technology as they transform into a skills-based organization.

That journey took a new turn in January 2024, when Workday became a TechWolf customer. Earlier this year, the collaboration expanded to help drive Workday’s goal of empowering organizations with skills at the core.

Today, Josh joins TechWolf’s Customer Community Lead, Julius Schelstraete, to share what the partnership means for Workday, how it is transforming their approach to skills, and what opportunities lie ahead.

Speed & scale, TechWolf x Workday at a glance

“By combining Workday's Skills Cloud with TechWolf's dynamic market data, we identified 10–12 critical skills for every job and cut time-to-hire by 15%.”
Josh Tarr, Director Skills Based Organization at Workday

Julius: To start off, Josh, can you recap: what have TechWolf & Workday done together so far?

Josh: We started our partnership with TechWolf with an initial use case to improve our hiring process. Our internal research showed that our interview teams were evaluating candidates on too many skills, so we wanted to understand which skills were most important to all of our jobs. By combining Workday's Skills Cloud data with TechWolf's dynamic market data, we were able to identify 10-12 critical skills for 100% of our jobs and use them as the foundation of our skills-based hiring process. 

The result? It's been almost a year since we implemented skills-based hiring, and we're seeing a 15% decrease in time to hire, a 39% decrease in new hires performing below expectations, and 14% faster time to first deal for Account Executives.

"We initially did a skills-based hiring pilot with a group of account executives. That group, about 500 plus, they’ve been enrolled for a year now. We’ve seen that they are closing their first deal at a 14 percent faster pace compared to the group that was hired just the year before.”
Marianne Herrmann, Principle Skills-based Hiring on the TechWolf Podcast

Julius: What has Workday gotten out of the partnership so far?

Josh: This partnership has accelerated our skills transformation. First, it has augmented the data we have about the skills that are critical for the jobs at Workday. This has been really important for getting our leaders on board with the shift to a skills-based organization. 

Second, we’ve worked with speed. Traditionally, identifying the skills in your workforce was a lengthy and costly process. With TechWolf, we achieved 85% workforce coverage in just three months, saving significant time and resources. 

Finally, TechWolf has been more than just a vendor; they've been a strategic partner, helping us accelerate our own skills transformation journey so that we can help Workday customers do the same.

“The TechWolf skill suggestions app went live to all 20,000+ workmates in October.”
Josh Tarr, Director Skills Based Organization at Workday

Julius: The collaboration started with talent acquisition. What else is happening and what’s next?

Josh: In addition to our success with skills-based hiring, we’ve integrated the use of skills data across the talent lifecycle, including upskilling, performance check-ins, and matching workmates to career opportunities. We’ve seen great results across internal mobility, how our workmates feel about their career growth, and an impact on retention.

Our next focus is to provide our workmates with even better career recommendations and our leaders with a deeper picture of the skills that exist across their teams.

This means we need skills data for our employees that's even more detailed and more up-to-date than it is today.

In October, we rolled out the Skill Suggestions App to all 20k employees. The app, co-built with TechWolf using Workday Extend, uses AI to suggest skills employees demonstrate but haven't added to their profiles yet.

The app works by leveraging AI to infer skills from a variety of sources, including learning, certifications, work history, etc. - as well as where employees do their work, in tools like JIRA and Salesforce. The app compares these skills to the skills listed on the employee profile, and then suggests skills to add.

This reduces the burden for employees to update their profiles while improving the accuracy, timeliness, and completeness of skill profiles throughout the company.

In just several weeks, we've had 600+ employees engage with the app, and are seeing a 91% acceptance rate for the skills suggested to them.

In the end, our employees benefit from a low-effort way to receive improved development and job recommendations through Workday applications like Career Hub, while our executives benefit by having an up-to-date view of the skills that exist throughout the company.

“By working with TechWolf to analyze skills data from sources like Jira and Salesforce, we can give leaders a comprehensive, real-time view of their teams’ skills & tasks, enabling smarter decisions on strengths, gaps, and how to deploy talent.”
Josh Tarr, Director Skills-based Organization at Workday

Julius: When it comes to skills and AI, another big theme is proficiency. How will the partnership address that?

Josh: When it comes to skills, organizations don't just need to know what skills they have, but it's also helpful to know how well they perform those skills.

We’ve implemented assessment in two ways:

First, we’re directly assessing skills using the Assess Skills functionality in Workday

We launched Assess Skills to 5k workmates in our Customer Experience and Sales teams as part of last quarter’s performance check-in, seeing an 83% completion rate by workmates and people leaders.

Second, we’re testing an AI-recommended proficiency in collaboration with TechWolf.

In our first test, users reported that the AI-recommended skill proficiency was "spot on" 77% of the time.

Julius: Lastly, Josh, as we look ahead, is there any particular aspect of the overall collaboration that you’re personally excited about?

Josh: Skills transformation is foundational to the question all business leaders are asking right now: ‘How will work and roles be redesigned with AI?’. We've learned so much over the past several years with our skills work that I feel we're extremely well-positioned to evolve the work to meet this moment, and help our workmates and leaders answer that question and succeed in the AI era. 

By doing this work ourselves (drinking our own champagne), we're better enabled to help customers succeed.. That’s why I’m looking forward to seeing our Workday customers leverage the Skill Suggestions App. 

If you’re exploring skills-based work, it’s important to start by grounding it in real employee value. We didn’t lead with “AI” or “data enrichment”; we led with a simple question: how can we help people see a fuller picture of what they’re capable of? That’s what makes it stick.

Find out more at Workday Rising!

Keen to learn more about the partnership?

Listen to the TechWolf Podcast episode with Marianne Herrmann who works with Josh.

Josh, his team and the TechWolf team will also be at Workday Rising in Barcelona, 18-20th of November!

During the conference, you several opportunities to meet TechWolf:

• Inform about our Spanish Buffet event with Josh and other TechWolf customers
  
  
• Schedule in-person meetings with the team
  
  
• Come to our booth (nr. 407) or schedule product demos here
  

See you in Barcelona!