Future of Work - A Workday Podcast

The walled garden model built double-digit-billion-dollar software companies, but it won't survive the shift from human users to AI agents. Rogerio Almeida and Tod Sacerdoti explain why traditional walled gardens fall short in an agentic world and how open standards like MCP redefine the future of enterprise ERP platforms.

Workday Chief Responsible AI Officer Kelly Trindel and SAS VP of AI Ethics, Governance, and Social Impact Reggie Townsend explore how the choices organizations make about AI today will shape how people work tomorrow. From preserving human judgment and developing future leaders to translating organizational values into practice, they discuss why responsible AI governance requires looking beyond what technology can do—or regulation allows—to what kind of workplace we want AI to help create.

AI usage is up across the enterprise—but according to Workday's Global Research, 82% of employees say their AI tools still feel disconnected from their actual, day-to-day work, creating the very friction AI was supposed to remove. 

In this episode of Future of Work, Nancy Weitl, VP of HCM Products at Workday, is joined by Stacey Harris, HR Industry Analyst and Chief Research Officer at Sapient Insights, to unpack why "busy with AI" isn't the same as productive, why most companies are tracking the wrong AI metrics entirely, and what it actually takes to close the value gap.

Most companies leave HR out of AI strategy until the big decisions are made, and then wonder why their tech investments yield minimal enterprise returns. Atlassian’s Avani Prabhakar joins Workday’s Ashley Goldsmith to explain why traditional HR models are becoming obsolete, and how human-first leadership is the only way to unlock AI value.

Most enterprise AI strategies chase the newest frontier model. Author and analyst Jon Reed says that's backwards. In this episode, Reed sits down with Workday's Jon Lexa to deconstruct why 90% of AI's real value comes from the system you build around the model, not the model itself, and what it takes to ground that system in real-time organizational truth.

In this episode, Workday leaders Dean Arnold and Jay Wieczorkowski reveal how a new era of agentic AI allows anyone to build custom, production-ready enterprise workflows using simple, natural-language prompts. Discover how open standards finally eliminate the trade-off between lightning-fast AI innovation and ironclad enterprise trust.

Paradigm CEO Joelle Emerson joins Workday SVP of Product Max Wessel to explain why treating AI as a budget-cutting tool is a mistake, and how governing AI intent turns adoption into real growth instead of headcount reduction.

Are you deploying new enterprise technology, only to realize the teams you intended to help are left drowning in bureaucracy? Join Adam Godson, General Manager of Talent Acquisition at Workday, to dismantle the friction of legacy workflows. While standard tools focus purely on volume efficiency, true enterprise value requires building from real user behavior, not boardroom assumptions.

In this episode, Workday Chief Learning Officer Chris Ernst and Censia Executive Intelligence President Monica Bua discuss how AI has democratized information, shifting the corporate premium from data management to human judgment. They argue that organizations must pivot from legacy workforce planning to capability planning to effectively redesign work for an AI-native future.

AI regulation is moving at breakneck speed, and for many organizations, the default response has been to wait, watch, and react. But in an era where trust is the ultimate currency, standing on the sidelines isn’t just passive—it’s a competitive disadvantage.

In this episode, Workday’s Chief Corporate Affairs Officer, Chandler Morse, and Aine Lyons, SVP & Deputy General Counsel cut through the regulatory noise. They move beyond the anxiety surrounding AI to explore how industry leaders can transform compliance from a burden into a strategic advantage.