Workday Named as a Market Shaper in the 2026 Gartner® Emerging Market Quadrant for AI Agents in Human Resources -- Established Vendors

Workday Named as a Market Shaper in the 2026 Gartner® Emerging Market Quadrant for AI Agents in Human Resources -- Established Vendors

PLEASANTON, Calif., Oct. 8, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Workday, Inc. (NASDAQ: WDAY), the agentic platform for HR, finance, and IT, today announced it was named as a Market Shaper in the inaugural Gartner Emerging Market Quadrant (eMQ) for AI Agents in Human Resources.

With Workday agents, organizations can speed up frontline hiring, cut case volumes, and resolve payroll issues in minutes instead of weeks, freeing HR teams to focus on strategic work, giving managers more time back to lead their teams, and lifting productivity across the workforce.

Workday agents are designed to anticipate what needs attention, advise on the best next step, and act to get work done, all within the policies, permissions, and business processes organizations already rely on. In HR, that means support across the full employee lifecycle, helping move candidates through hiring, answering employee questions, and finding missing payroll information before it creates a problem. These agents work together behind the scenes so employees and HR teams always have one simple place to ask for help. The results are fewer routine questions landing in HR's support queue, more time for managers to spend managing their people instead of paperwork, and a measurable productivity lift across the entire workforce.

"In HR, the margin for error is effectively zero," said Max Wessel, senior vice president of product at Workday. "That's why Workday agents are built to anticipate what needs attention, recommend the right action, and act — across hiring, payroll, and talent — within the customer's policies and approvals HR teams already rely on."

Automation Inside the Guardrails Organizations Already Trust

Workday's agents are lawful by design. They inherit the same policies, permissions, and approval chains already governing recruiting, payroll, and talent processes, so they can anticipate what needs attention, recommend the right action, and act within those guardrails, with a human always in the loop. This is Workday's broader vision for agentic HR: connecting every stage of the employee lifecycle, from hiring to development to retirement, into a single AI-powered system built for trust, transparency, and scale. By automating routine and repetitive work, Workday agents give HR teams back the time to focus on strategic priorities, like talent strategy and workforce planning, rather than case management.

Delivering Measurable Customer Outcomes

These results show that agentic HR isn't only about speed — it's about giving HR teams the accuracy and trust to act with confidence. With Workday agents for HR, customers have been able to:

• Automate 95% of frontline hiring, cutting time-to-hire by 70%, giving store managers significant time back each year to use towards operations.
• Surface relevant internal hiring leads to recruiters, resulting in a 15% increase in internal hires.
• Resolve complex payroll questions in under a minute — work that used to take far longer.

For More Information

• Read a complimentary copy of the Gartner report on the Workday website.
• Read more about Workday's vision for agentic HR.

Gartner Disclaimer

Gartner Report, Emerging Market Quadrant for AI Agents in Human Resources — Established Vendors, By y Ranadip Chandra, Eser Rizaoglu, September 2026.

Gartner is a trademark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates.

Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner's research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

About Workday
Workday operates at the heart of the enterprise – HR, finance, and IT – where the margin for error is effectively zero. By tightly coupling AI with the context, guardrails, and trusted processes that run the business, Workday goes beyond AI that assists work to agents that are capable of driving measurable outcomes. More than 11,500 organizations worldwide, including more than 65% of the Fortune 500, trust Workday to deliver. For more information about Workday, visit workday.com.

© 2026 Workday, Inc. All rights reserved. Workday and the Workday logo are trademarks of Workday, Inc. All other brand and product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.

Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements including, among other things, statements regarding Workday's plans, beliefs, and expectations. These forward-looking statements are based only on currently available information and our current beliefs, expectations, and assumptions. Because forward-looking statements relate to the future, they are subject to inherent risks, uncertainties, assumptions, and changes in circumstances that are difficult to predict and many of which are outside of our control. If the risks materialize, assumptions prove incorrect, or we experience unexpected changes in circumstances, actual results could differ materially from the results implied by these forward-looking statements, and therefore you should not rely on any forward-looking statements. Risks include, but are not limited to, risks described in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC"), including our most recent report on Form 10-Q or Form 10-K and other reports that we have filed and will file with the SEC from time to time, which could cause actual results to vary from expectations. Workday assumes no obligation to, and does not currently intend to, update any such forward-looking statements after the date of this release, except as required by law.

Any unreleased services, features, or functions referenced in this document, our website, or other press releases or public statements that are not currently available are subject to change at Workday's discretion and may not be delivered as planned or at all. Customers who purchase Workday services should make their purchase decisions based upon services, features, and functions that are currently available.

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SOURCE Workday Inc.