HRTech Interview with Allyson Skene, Vice President, Global Product Vision and Experience at Workday

Allyson Skene, Vice President, Global Product Vision and Experience at Workday chats about the state of HRTech and what end users should most look forward to in this catch up:

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Hi Allyson, you’ve been in HRtech and Workday for a long time, share with us your experience and core highlights from your journey so far?

I have been with Workday for nearly 14 years now, and it’s never been more exciting than it is today. Having spent most of my career in HR technology, I’ve witnessed the space evolve dramatically, from paper-based manual processes, to the first wave of HR technology systems, to advanced automation, and now to AI, which is truly shaping the future of HRTech.

In my role as an HCM Strategic Adviser across Asia, what I value most is the rich diversity of perspectives and practices across the region. Each market represents its own unique challenges and opportunities, and that makes the work both dynamic and rewarding. I’m particularly enthusiastic about the opportunity to partner more closely with HR leaders in India. With its dynamic workforce and rapidly evolving business landscape, India is a truly exciting  place to be in the HR technology space right now.

I’ve been with Workday since we first started in Asia-Pacific, so I’ve had the privilege of watching different markets evolve, each in their own unique way, and I am especially excited about the massive opportunity for growth in India.

What’s most exciting about being in HRtech today?

The most exciting aspect about being in HR technology today is the transformative role of AI; particularly Agentic AI. We are entering a phase where the workforce will increasingly be made up of both human and digital employees, and that’s fundamentally changing the way organisations operate. HR has a pivotal responsibility in guiding this cultural transformation, ensuring employees feel empowered as the workplace evolves.

This creates a unique opportunity for HR leaders to elevate their position as true strategic partners. They can lead the way in preparing the workforce for the future through large-scale reskilling and workforce planning initiatives. By harnessing real-time data and analytics, they can make informed business decisions and quantify the impact of HR programs on productivity and profitability. Furthermore, by upskilling themselves in AI, they can increase their influence and ensure HR’s vital role in guiding the responsible use of this technology is  not diminished.

In India, this shift is especially exciting. With one of the world’s youngest and largest workforces, and a rapidly growing digital economy, the potential to use AI in shaping skills, productivity, and growth is immense. Indian organisations are already at the forefront of rethinking work models, and HR leaders have a unique opportunity to set global benchmarks in how technology and people strategies can come together.

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We’d love to hear about some of the latest Workday innovations of note?

One of the most exciting developments at Workday right now is Workday Illuminate, our new AI framework. It’s designed to embed intelligence directly into our platform by leveraging the scale and quality of Workday’s HR and finance data to take on complex processes.

At the heart of what we’re building at Workday is the use of AI to automate complex processes and align them directly with business outcomes. We see Illuminate not just as a way to tackle the complexity of managing work but as a tool to fundamentally change how work itself is performed. Workday Illuminate amplifies talent potential, boosts productivity, improves strategic decisions, and strengthens compliance.

In practice, this means Illuminate powers intelligent, autonomous agents that handle some of the more complex processes like expense reconciliation, talent acquisition, and financial planning. These are areas that typically demand time and effort, but with AI agents, they can be streamlined significantly. We offer an open, AI-native platform with extensive developer tools and a thriving ecosystem. This allows customers, partners, and external developers to innovate on Workday’s core applications, data, and technology, empowering them to build their own agents or integrate with other systems.

What’s truly powerful here is the shift from AI just helping with tasks to actually driving business outcomes. This allows organisations to operate with greater efficiency and agility, while focusing their people on the kind of strategic work that really makes a difference.

How are you seeing AI enhance the way businesses today manage their people resources?

AI is already transforming how businesses manage their people resources. By automating repetitive processes, it enhances productivity and frees up employees, including HR professionals, to focus on more meaningful, strategic work that adds value to the organisation. As human and digital resources increasingly work side by side, it is essential to manage them within a trusted, ethical framework that ensures enterprise-grade security and compliance.

That is why we introduced the Workday Agent System of Record (ASOR). This system provides the platform and governance framework to manage a fleet of AI agents alongside your human workforce, all without compromising on security, compliance, or transparency. ASOR makes managing AI agents a natural extension of how organisations already manage their people and finances, ensuring everything is unified on a single, trusted platform.

In what ways do you feel new age HRtech will create complete shifts in the role of typical HR teams? What type of roles would become redundant down the line?

As these shifts happen, we anticipate the emergence of new leadership roles, such as the concept of Chief Work Officers. These will be HR leaders who position themselves at the centre of AI-driven transformation. Their role will go beyond managing human workforces to strategically overseeing hybrid human–digital workforces, where people and AI agents collaborate seamlessly. Importantly, they will also be responsible for cultivating a culture of ‘Everyday AI’, ensuring that employees across the organisation are trained, confident, and empowered to use AI as an assistant, and not something to fear.  It also requires redefining work and roles, and encouraging proactive questioning of existing work processes; including anticipating how roles and skills will evolve, potentially leading to new positions like an “agent workflow architect”.

I don’t see AI replacing humans, but rather it is a powerful tool to enhance human productivity and free people up to do more meaningful work. There will always be a need for a human in the loop. What will change is the kind of work HR teams spend their time on.

In practice, many administrative and data-driven tasks will be managed by AI agents, while HR professionals will be able to focus more on human-centric tasks such as strategic and ethical decision-making, nurturing workplace culture, and driving creativity and innovation that benefits both employees and the business. This is a fundamental shift in how HR will operate: moving from transactional tasks to becoming the architects of how human and digital workers thrive together.

Can you talk about some of the most interesting global HRtech innovations (features/ companies/etc) that have piqued your interest from around the world?

Some of the most interesting innovations I’ve recently seen are coming from the Workday ecosystem – particularly Evisort and Paradox. Both are highly sophisticated AI companies that bring unique strengths to our platform.

Evisort is a document intelligence solution that uses AI to analyse unstructured data, from contracts and invoices to other business documents. Given that the majority of enterprise data worldwide is unstructured and often trapped in documents, Evisort’s technology is  a breakthrough. It can automatically read, understand, and extract valuable insights from these documents, turning them into actionable intelligence. By integrating this, we can extend the “system of record” to include data previously out of reach, making the platform more comprehensive and powerful for customers.

Paradox is a conversational AI platform that streamlines the recruiting and hiring process. With proven success at companies like Chipotle and McDonald’s, Paradox helps simplify high-volume hiring cycles by creating seamless experiences for both recruiters and candidates. This technology is especially relevant in markets like India, where organisations manage some of the largest employee populations in the world and operate at a rapid hiring pace. Whether it’s reducing the time to hire, enhancing the candidate experience, or freeing recruiters to focus on relationship-building, innovations like Paradox will resonate strongly with Indian enterprises.

Five thoughts on the future of HR and HRtech you’d leave everyone with before we wrap up?

As we look to the future, it’s clear that we are moving at an incremental pace. We are fundamentally reimagining how work gets done, how people grow, and how organisations are led. AI will be at the very heart of this transformation – not as a replacement for human talent, but as a partner that expands what’s possible. With that in mind, let me leave you with five thoughts that capture this vision:

1. AI as an “Agent System of Record”: Workday views AI not just as a tool to automate tasks but as a core system that can act autonomously. The Workday Illuminate framework is designed to have AI agents that can make decisions, plan next steps, and take action to drive business outcomes, going beyond simple automation.
2. Focus on the Human-AI Hybrid Workforce: The future of work is about collaboration between people and AI. Our vision at Workday is to help organisations manage this “human and digital employee” workforce by building a culture where people and AI can work together to achieve goals, with technology elevating human skills rather than replacing them.
3. Skills are the New Currency: The shift from a job-title-based to a skills-based workforce is a strategic imperative. Workday is building technology, like Skills Cloud, to help companies identify skill gaps, personalise career development paths, and match employees to new projects based on their specific capabilities.
4. Data-Driven, Human-Centric Decisions: HR is becoming a more data-driven, strategic function. Workday’s platform provides HR and business leaders with real-time insights and predictive analytics to inform decisions on everything from workforce planning to talent retention. This allows HR to move beyond administrative tasks and focus on high-impact, human-centric work.
5. A Redefined Employee Experience: The employee experience will be highly personalised and efficient, powered by AI. Workday is leveraging AI to offer tailored recommendations for learning and development, streamline workflows, and provide a unified, intuitive platform that empowers employees throughout their entire career journey, from onboarding to career growth.

In short, the future of HR is not about replacing humans with technology – it’s about reshaping the workplace so that humans and AI thrive together, unlocking new levels of productivity, creativity, and growth.

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