Workday introduces its next generation of artificial intelligence with Illuminate

Many professionals rely on enterprise management platform Workday to support operational tasks, including hiring staff, monitoring finances, dealing with payroll, and more. Now, the cloud-based platform is adding more AI-enabled services to meet its users’ needs.

On Tuesday, Workday introduced Illuminate, its newest AI-enabled technology that uses AI models based on the company’s HR and financial data. These models understand the context behind the data and are integrated into the platform to help employees save time by streamlining workflows and simplifying everyday tasks.

Also: Slack’s new AI-powered assistant aims to streamline your busy workweek

For example, Workday says Illuminate users can leverage generative AI to assist with everyday tasks, such as creating and summarizing job descriptions, messages, contracts, and more. Illuminate also offers users insights in key areas, like anomaly detection and automation tools, such as auto-filling.

A new Workday Assistant, powered by Illuminate, helps users understand how to deal with complicated HR and finance processes, giving real-time guidance on completing their tasks. Lastly, Illuminate includes new agents or AI assistants that employees can use to perform tasks. The new agents include Recruiter Agent, Expenses Agent, Succession Agent, and Workday Optimize. 

Also: Microsoft Copilot’s Wave 2 is here. Everything you need to know

The Recruiter Agent helps users automate recruitment tasks, such as sourcing candidates, reaching out to candidates, and recommending top talent. The agent also helps with administrative-related recruiting tasks, including creating job descriptions and scheduling interviews. 

The Expenses Agent automatically creates and submits expense reports, facilitating the process by prompting the employee to submit a transaction or automatically creating itemizations and expense lines. 

Also: What are o1 and o1-mini? OpenAI’s mystery AI models are finally here

The Succession Agent assists managers by proactively identifying future leaders, prompting managers to update succession plans, and helping to develop tailored plans for top talent. 

Lastly, the Workday Optimize agent identifies “bottlenecks” in business processes that can be addressed and fixes issues so everything runs smoothly. Workday also works with partners like Salesforce to build integrated agent capabilities. 

Also: IBM will train you in AI fundamentals for free, and give you a skill credential – in 10 hours

Recently, there has been a wave of AI agents in enterprise offerings. Microsoft unveiled its Copilot agents yesterday, following the launch of Salesforce’s Agentforce, a suite of autonomous and collaborative AI agents.

Workday’s Illuminate is already available to customers, but Workday said it will continue to evolve the technology as part of its three-year AI roadmap. The Recruiter Agent is now available in the talent orchestration platform HiredScore, with more integration in Workday coming in Spring 2025. The Expenses, Succession, and Optimize Agents are expected to become available in early access in 2025.