Name: Breaking the Barriers to AI Adoption: 5 Behaviors of High Performing Companies
Uploaded: 2026-02-05T18:00:44.263Z
Duration: 32 min 24 s
Description: Breaking the Barriers to AI Adoption: 5 Behaviors of High Performing Companies

Transcript for "Breaking the Barriers to AI Adoption: 5 Behaviors of High Performing Companies": Hello, everyone, and welcome to looking forward with Workday webinar series. Today, we're going to be talking about breaking the barriers to AI adoption. Now during this session, we may oh. Hello, and welcome to the Looking Forward with Workday webinar series. Today, we will be talking about breaking the barriers to AI adoption, an exciting topic. During this session, we may share a few forward looking statements that are subject to change. So please note that these are covered under the product statement agreements. Now before we get started, a few housekeeping items from me. This webinar is being recorded and will be emailed to you within twenty four hours. If you have any questions, you can select the the q and a button on the right hand side. And and hopefully, we we have some time at the end to answer any of those. But we do have colleagues sitting backstage that are looking to answer those. And if we don't have time to to answer any of those, we will be following up via email. So don't worry about that. We've uploaded some resources for you to view. Just simply select the docs on the right hand side as well to be able to download those. And lastly, you will be prompted with a survey after the webinar concludes, and we'd love to get your feedback. We also have a poll coming up for you to complete too. So our goal today is simple, to to help you drive AI adoption at your organizations by sharing some really interesting stats on on what we're seeing in the market. Here's what we're going to cover. A few introductions in a minute. My colleague, Natalie, is going to to walk you through the the survey overview and then deep dive into the key learnings and insights. As I mentioned, hopefully, we have time at the end for q and a. But please do click on the q and a button to submit your your questions, and the team are online to help answer those. Awesome. So hello, everyone. My name is Liam Smees. I'm head of product value here at Workday. I sit within the AI strategy leadership team here, and I'm super passionate about the outcomes that organizations achieve or trying to achieve with AI. This webinar is designed for you and and where you are on your journey. So we know that everyone is at a different stage of their their AI journey. But this webinar is designed for people that have sort of started their AI journey. You you might have our. embedded AI, Thank you, Liam. Hi, formerly known. as Illuminate. My name is Natalie Dudhat, are here to help you understand the the value our today. customers are achieving through turning it, on. I've been, at Workday, for coming up on you get the. most out of the existing AI that time, have in have had probably hundreds. of conversations the star of the show, customers, is also here, and small I'm excited to hand over to her to introduce herself, on both the value all the great insights she's going to share today. they're thinking, about. new Workday investments. Okay. With introductions out of the way, what do you say, Liam? Shall we dive in? Yeah. Let's do Alright. So in this webinar, we will break down some specific behaviors that are correlated with high AI adoption and value as well as how to get started on them. Now let's first address or perhaps introduce this concept of an AI value gap. This is a conundrum that we're seeing, and perhaps you've experienced it too. And some new Workday research put. it pretty do. it. Basically, organizations are adopting AI. That's no surprise. This particular study found that 85% of employees are using AI at least once a week and to some success. However, only 14% of those employees are consistently achieving net positive outcomes when you take into account rework they have to do and whether or not they're achieving value beyond just time savings. So this is a pretty major gap, and the value management team has been on a mission to identify high performing Workday customers to understand how they are bridging this gap. Yes. This is super important stat for me because what we observe is that individual productivity doesn't always transform into organizational efficiency. So the most the most common impact that the AI is. having is had not heard. of the happier? dog theory and, just because it totally makes sense. a time and I think is doesn't necessarily to this gap attribute I wanna kind of kick us off with. that the organization AI is here. to attribute it to. using it. If you've delivering the the value of AI our organizations driving happier dogs, expecting? which is, that this what we're here to talk about today, if I'm how to bridge that, gap, how some organizations is taking my dog for. a walk, and and therefore, I've got a happier dog. let me now set the context for our own study that the value management team ran late last year. So in September, our team surveyed over a thousand individuals across 700 customer organizations. This was at North America Rising, so perhaps some of you listening attended Rising and took our survey. This survey included questions about organizational behaviors and business value. For example, we asked folks to rate their organizations on a scale of strongly disagree to strongly agree on questions like senior leaders at my org actively champion the use of AI to achieve business goals. The survey also asked folks to identify the business outcomes they've realized and the magnitude of their impact. So for example, a customer working in the talent management space might have reported that their organization has reduced voluntary turnover by 7% since moving to Workday. We then joined those survey responses with other data that we have. Most notably, we brought in Workday AI adoption data. And the result was a really rich dataset that allowed us to ask questions like, why are certain companies getting more value or adopting more AI than others? And once we had this data in place, one of the first things we wanted to know was what what is the overlap of organizations who are delivering a lot of value and who are leveraging Workday AI well? And what we found was that of our dataset of 700, there were exactly 50 organizations in the top quartile of both of those measures. And these folks are delivering not just a little bit more value. It's actually a really large outperformance number, three and a half times the annual economic returns than the average in the study. And while we get really excited by numbers like these, we think this number in particular is really awesome, The real insight that I wanna drive here and what we thought was even more awesome was when we looked into the how. How are they doing this? What behaviors are driving their success? And this is where the data actually revealed a really compelling answer. But before I jump straight there, let me walk briefly through those organizational behavior questions that we asked in the survey. The first questions were on governance of risk. So they asked, how well is your organization mitigating the risks of AI, and how efficient is your governance model? Second was on operational readiness. And in our survey, this closely aligned to data readiness. Does your organization have a robust strategy for data quality and governance to support AI? Next, we ask some questions on sponsorship or leader buy in. So are leaders are your leaders using AI and changing how things have historically been done with what's now possible? Fourth was organizational knowledge. Does your org offer training to employees and encourage them to engage with AI? And last was strategy. And those questions were, do leaders at your organization regularly review the Workday road map, and is your org measuring the value of AI, the value of its AI investments? Okay. Now some of you might have guessed what's coming here, and I will click for my big reveal. What we found was that those 50 organizations, the ones in the top quartile of both value realized and AI adoption, had higher scores on every single behavioral question than the average. So what I'm showing here are the average responses in gray and the average top 50 response in blue. And now what's interesting is if you look at the delta between these top 50 customers and the average response, yes, it is positive across all of the drivers, but it is also not gigantic. And we actually think that this is really encouraging and a key point that I wanna drive home today To adopt more embedded AI and get more value on Workday, you don't have to overinvest in any one of these areas. But on the flip side, you do need to pay attention to all of them. In other words, AI value can be derived from small and consistent work across all five behaviors. So this is not about a massive effort in any one area or a silver bullet, but it is about building momentum and durability across the organization. Okay. So how do I get started, you might be asking, or at least I hope that's what you're asking because that's what we're here to talk about today. Consider this slide your cheat sheet. I'm teasing our top advice for each driver, and we're now going to go into each one in a bit more detail. Awesome. Thank you, Liam. That is so true. We're gonna be scratching the surface of these today, and they're very meaty topics. So we said earlier, your account team would love a different stage of their journey. this. Right? But let's get started. is designed for for you to learn from the best. practices and results our our customers two questions we've. put together with our insights. So if you need any additional robust on this, AI that you can always reach out to your account team, and they can help guide. you through it. And two, our AI governance structure allows us to evaluate and roll out new AI solutions in an efficient manner. Now many of you on the call, I believe, are part of IT teams and are probably not surprised to hear that risk and security came up as the top barrier to AI success. It was cited by 30% of our respondents. So it turns out we can't really get value from AI or move quickly if you don't have the right guardrails in place. This is really a table stakes category. But on the flip side, what is the value of getting this right? We found that our top performers are reporting much higher levels of HR and finance efficiency than the rest. And what is the connection between this type of efficiency and governance? I think it really goes back to the second question you see on the screen here. Ords who are adopting more AI or finding a way to empower their finance and HR teams to roll out solutions that drive localized value. Yep. Absolutely. There's a lot tied up, a lot of different types of risk to manage as we all know. And and on the flip side, a lot of different types of value and and cost control to be gained from getting this right. Yeah. And and the other risk here bit about what we're seeing for when speaking to customers doing this well. employees then look for their own ways to drive efficiency with AI. to? lean into compliance not be compliant built also drives not risk of things. like shadow IT. And if you wanna read about how Workday is different, we've included a lot of reading in the document section. But the point is when your strategic vendors do a lot of the heavy lifting, you can move more efficiently. So I wanna share some tangible examples from our customers about what this has looked like. One has shared that they've been able to combine multiple review steps to reduce bottlenecks and rolling out AI features without jeopardizing security. So part of what's implied there is that we're seeing some more mature customers. Thank you, if whoever clicked that. We're seeing some more mature customers that are continually evaluating their governance and rollout process. So in other words, incorporating lessons learned as they adopt more AI and getting more efficient with their rollouts, knowing where they can combine steps. I wanted to share another customer in the higher ed sector who who shared with us that they went from approving in the earlier days every AI feature one off to having an always on mentality for new features once their strategic vendor has been fully vetted. Okay. Our next behavior is operational readiness. And in our survey, this closely aligned to data strategy. So the top 50 customers were more likely to have a robust strategy for data quality and governance that supports their AI. And you can see that this delta at 14% is a little more pronounced than the previous driver. Now one really simple example of how customers are addressing data readiness is by looking at their systems and seeing how they can consolidate. In fact, we found that our top 50 customers are reporting one and a half times greater economic returns from system consolidation benefits than the average. Yeah. I mean, not not to man it or not to mention the competitive advantage that's gonna come over time from from having the the right data to answer AI queries. So we we really think that these, system consolidation benefits don't do. justice to the importance and a half times, though, though they are strong numbers. fewer vendors to manage, and so kind of on that note, we found, functionality. I guess, some early. signs in the data that this question correlates to higher levels of industry value. So what is industry value, you might ask? This was another question in our survey. So based on your industry, it gave you a multiselect of different outcomes and asked if you were realizing any of them. And at the bottom of the slide, I have included the top answers by industry. But the real takeaway here is this is the stuff, getting the data lineage right, that drives competitive advantage over the long run. So let's talk about this. Our key takeaway is to protect your data lineage because with AI with AI, we all know that output quality is very much determined by input quality. So what is a practical tip here? First, know who your strategic tech vendors are and drive departments to consolidate their technology there. But on the other side of this, sometimes you do need to bring in a best in class point solution. My colleague, John Hanschke, will talk in a webinar later this month with HR at Intel. Intel finds that the eighty twenty rule applies here. In other words, if Workday can manage 80% of their business needs, they believe the value of having everything in one system is justified. And when it comes to the other 20%, they're asking themselves how important is the need. Can Workday Extend cover it? Is there a workaround? So in other words, with that 20%, they're really challenging themselves and prioritizing data cleanliness. So that brings me to the second part of this advice. When you bring in point solutions, make sure that you can ensure a clear data lineage back to the source. Source. Because when it comes to AI, this will help ensure that AI prompts yield quality responses while also ensuring data security. Okay. Our next driver is sponsorship. And if the first two drivers were more technical, these next ones are more behavior based. So there were some clear connections between getting this one right and delivering a lot of value. In the survey, we asked customers these two questions. Senior leaders actively champion the use of AI or agents to achieve business goals, and leaders at my organization encourage reinventing our processes to maximize the impact of AI. And what we found was that a one point higher response rate on these questions correlated to a 33% uplift in Workday AI features adopted. So this is pretty major. Customers who are doing well on these questions are also adopting significantly more AI. And we could also drill into the specific features that HighScores here were using. That included many features in the talent space, like skills and succession planning. Usage of that work.ai feature alone is leading to over $1,000,000 in annual value per year for the average organization. So there is a lot of value correlated with getting sponsorship right. Let's drill into a bit what this looks like. Mhmm. Strategic growth initiatives, and I hope happy dogs too. I love? this. And the the importance of having leadership aligned, it ties back to our earlier, comments around maybe there's room for both in this answer. organizational efficiency. Yeah. I I? When agree, you when. you have, clear know, that this one is really, important, you can set clear strategy about, what it is you want to that with that personal gap. that we talked about at the beginning. freed up time is allocated to strategic me share. a bit about what we're seeing? here. In some cases, we're seeing organizations bring in new leadership. Yeah. May maybe perhaps more commonly, what leadership wants, we're seeing the remit have happier existing. leaders change. And in all cases, the goal is for leadership to move from simply approving AI budgets to being accountable for transformation. Part part of leadership's challenge, I'll also call out, is just learning the AI technology. And I wanted to mention that reverse mentoring is a trend we're seeing to help with this. So in other words, pairing up a leader with an individual contributor or manager who knows more about the technology so that the leader can learn. I've included on the right some resources to explore because this is an interesting one. Depending on your scope of responsibilities, those of you listening, this might be outside of your control. So here's what we'd recommend. Identify a part of the organization that does have high leadership buy in and work with them. So start locally to identify high value AI use cases and build momentum from there. And I'll also call out that there are paid services offerings such as Workday success plans that support executive education. So our main takeaway is don't wait for a consensus or the perfect buy in to get started with AI, but figure out where there is strong sponsorship and apply your efforts there. Okay. Let's take a look at organizational knowledge. Now this behavior is largely about employee engagement. Many of us carry a lot of fear about AI and how it might replace or eliminate jobs. So the question I wanna pose here is, how is your organization addressing this head on and moving employees to the other side of the coin, which is excitement about AI and its ability to make work better? And in this survey, we asked two questions. One, at my organization, there is a well established and embedded program that encourages employees to explore and engage with AI. And two, when we roll out a new Workday AI feature, my organization provides clear and actionable training to the end users. And in the data, here's what we found. The first question on a well established program is particularly important. So it is correlated with higher usage of certain AI features, including flex teams. Now flex teams help organizations assemble short term project teams from their existing workforce. This prompts employees to explore new skills and opportunities and can lead to greater internal mobility. Relatedly, we have found that this translates to big numbers. Specifically, our top performers are realizing four times greater value and improved internal mobility benefits than the average, which can result in big bottom line impact. Yeah. We and and going back to the to the gap and to, you know, what what do we measure? How do we Yeah. I mean, internal what types been such a key focus are we after beyond time savings last, say, and happy. dogs? But, I mean, it's set to continue internal organizations, look agree, to really, adapt one that we've, seen, retain their top performers. can really move the needle on right so. good to see that adoption my team helps actually increasing the returns on internal walk. others through, collaborate on what internal mobility can mean for their organization, and it can be very impactful. So let let's talk about what what we're seeing really work well here. And first, I just wanna share that in the survey, we had some free text questions, including what has made your AI effort successful? Peer driven and clear use cases were two things that came up a lot. And so what we're seeing is that organizations doing this well are showcasing employees, their specific AI use cases, and the value that they're delivering in their training programs. And they're often using employee you know, employees are speaking in their own words. They're getting a getting a platform to to talk about what they're doing. And we actually saw firsthand the power of this approach program, which achieved an 80% employee usage rate. So it turns out that when training strike the right tone, this goes a long way to shifting employee mindset from fear of replacement to to excitement. Okay. Our last behavior umbrella is strategy. And in our survey, we assess this with a few questions. One, my organization has an effective way of tracking the value of our broader AI investments. And two, decision makers at my organization pay strong attention to our Workday road map. And what we found is that our top 50 customers are adopting nearly three times more Workday AI features than the average, which demonstrates their ability to stay on top of the road map because a lot of these features are relatively new, and they're getting a lot of value from what they're adopting. Now this for me is saving the best till the end. So having the right strategy and identifying what you're. trying to your AI. investment what we're seeing, is crucial a transition the overall success more proof project. of concept investment, What I'm also seeing is organizations. And and I know there was a survey at the beginning of this. I'll be really curious AI. to see kind of after the taking these kind of small scale call, experiments where POCs we're at kind of limit the AI investment. of the impact, that you can have, I completely agree, means. that they I've they is an achieve bit of an inflection, business benefits that align to what they'd expect bolder organizations. between the proof of concept investments to the bigger bigger bets. And, of course, with with more investment comes more responsibility to track and report on value. So our main takeaway with this one is to institutionalize the value loop. And what does that look like? First, this is about getting the most out of what you already own. So in the case of Workday, each release has a ton of new features, including embedded AI. Yep. Do you have guiding principles that govern rollout decisions, or is there a feedback loop between the business and the features that that get prioritized? And I'll make another plug for my colleague John's webinar with Intel on February 26. He'll be getting deeper into this topic of governing your Workday investment. And then second, this is about regularly tracking metrics or KPIs associated with new AI solutions. So if you're just getting started here, your Workday account team can provide some common metrics that we recommend you track both by Workday product as well as Workday AI feature. And if you're a WSP customer, be sure you're taking advantage of all the services your plan has to offer because this this category, investment of your or or governance of your Workday investment and continual alignment to to your business strategy is extremely important. Okay. So in this thirty minutes, we covered five behaviors that are leading to higher Workday AI adoption and value. Like we said at the beginning, I know we scratched the surface of these. So please engage with your account team if you wanna dig deeper and also check out the resources that we've curated for this session. Liam, I will turn it back to you to to close us out. Thank you, Natalie, and and thank you for those amazing insights. I think I'm I'd certainly found it extremely useful and and feeling smarter about how organizations implement AI already and and and the value that they can achieve for doing so. So so thank you for going through that, sharing your insights, and and giving us such such great talking points. So as promised, please feel free to make use of the additional resources on the docs tab, and we can send out this recording to you as well. And, yeah, hopefully, the team has been sort of answering the questions in the background there for you as well. In terms of what's next, so do scan the QR codes to join us for our next. session. featuring our our customer Intel on beyond software, how Intel support model unlocks five times ROI. Certainly sounds exciting. Doesn't sound like one to to miss. So please do take a look at that. So as we come to q and a, we don't have a ton of time left. I think we've got one minute. So so so probably time for for one question, That is a really good with. you, Natalie. So I have a couple of thoughts on this. at what we've, got coming through. the analysis. that we did did not focus organization just starting of operation, with and that, low, level of AI maturity, been tough to do. which of the five behaviors that we walk through today should we should five tackle first? in my mind. I do I there a specific thoughts on this one. operations to see the fastest all, ROI? governance question. is table stakes, and you, of course, need some level of protection before you get started. I don't think anyone on the call would disagree with that. And depending on your industry and your organization's risk tolerance and profile, you you have to do some baseline work here. So so that that's an obvious, kind of initial answer. But beyond the obvious, there are a couple other things I'd wanna point out. So the questions, on operational readiness, which, again, corresponded to data readiness, and then the question on does my pro or does my organization have a robust program to that that encourages employees to engage with and and explore AI? Those two taken together were correlated with high amounts of AI adoption. So I think there is something there to explore. When when you focus on your data lineage and you focus on fostering this environment of employee expert exploration, there there is a loop there that's worth investing in. And then real quickly wrapping up on the last two because they're kind of important as well. I would consider sponsorship like a a superpower. If you have leaders with the right mindset in place, they can really supercharge, you know, the the overall efforts. And then lastly, strategy, I consider kind of a wrapper around this. So tracking the the KPIs associated with your investment and and aligning investment to business goals. Hopefully, that's something you're already doing, and and you can kind of migrate those efforts from your general tech investments to specifically your your AI investments. So? that that yeah. The those would be my thoughts there, but it's a really it's a really good question. Amazing. Thank you, Natalie, and thanks for those that have been sending in the questions. Apologies. That that is all we have time to to address live, but we've been answering them as we go. And and any that we haven't had a time to get to or or address at the end of this section, we will definitely follow-up with. Anything that wasn't covered, any other questions that you might have, you, please. do reach was a pleasure, to your account thanks. everyone for spending the half hour with us. up the the QR code again for the next session. Please do join us to find out more. But thank you again