Workday AI for talent management and skills: PwC

Danielle White

Principal, Workday HR Transformation, Consulting Solutions, PwC US

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Picture the workforce as a living organism—constantly adapting, learning, and evolving in real time. In this new work world, old blueprints are obsolete. Roles are shifting, organizational models are flattening, and skills have become the new growth currency.

The pace of workforce change has arguably never been faster. Demographic shifts, hybrid work, new skill demands, and the rise of generative AI are pushing organizations to rethink the fundamentals of talent management. But perhaps the greatest innovation in the age of AI isn’t the technology itself—it’s how it can help us rediscover human potential. How? Where roles once defined people, skills now define opportunity, and traditional hierarchies are giving way to fluid, project-based work models. The question has shifted from “Who fills this job?” to “Who has the right skills to solve this challenge?”

PwC’s latest Pulse Survey shows that 80% of CHROs either have a plan in place or are already training existing employees on new technologies, signaling a strategic pivot toward building adaptable, future-ready teams. Yet many organizations still struggle with the basics — understanding what skills exist internally and how to deploy them effectively.

Skills-based talent strategies have been gaining traction for years, but AI has transformed the game, turning out what was once a manual process of mapping, analyzing, and connecting talent data into something exponentially faster and smarter.

Why AI is reshaping talent management

The influx of AI use is rooted in solving long-standing pain points. For example, many talent teams wanted to use data to predict needs and personalize development, but fragmented systems and inconsistent data often stood in the way.

AI is now helping to break that barrier. By automating pattern recognition across job data, learning histories, and performance trends, HR is now increasingly empowered to move from hindsight to foresight.

Workday’s embedded AI does just that—generating job descriptions, identifying related skills, and surfacing insights leaders can immediately act on.

Yet, as organizations adopt these tools, a new challenge emerges: Confirming the workforce can keep pace. The more AI becomes part of everyday operations, the stronger the case for cultivating the skills that help make it work. Think human judgment, digital fluency, and adaptability.

According to PwC’s 2025 Global AI Jobs Barometer, workers with AI skills earned an average wage premium of 56% in 2024—a clear signal that demand for digital fluency is surging across industries.

But success depends on balance, given the key is keeping a human in the loop. While AI can surface what’s possible, humans should define what’s valuable. And organizations should also decide which skills reflect their culture and strategy.

How Workday is helping organizations transform

1. Job Architecture Hub: Building the foundation

Successful skills strategies start with clarity. Workday’s owned and developed technology, Job Architecture Hub, gives organizations a single, structured view of their workforce by helping them organize, align, and maintain job data across roles, functions, and business units. It can connect each position to the specific skills, qualifications, and responsibilities required—creating a consistent framework that supports the downstream talent process, from recruiting to career development.

Enabled by AI, the Job Architecture Hub can also automatically suggest relevant skills for each job profile, identify overlaps or gaps across roles, and flag inconsistencies in job data. This automation not only saves time but also helps confirm that job information stays precise and comparable across the enterprise.

With this foundation in place, organizations can gain a clearer picture of their “skill DNA”—the unique capabilities that help power their business. That visibility enables HR teams and business leaders to plan more strategically, identify internal mobility opportunities, and design career paths that can align both workforce potential and organizational goals.

2. Career Hub: Empowering employee growth

While Job Architecture Hub provides the structure, Workday’s owned technology, Career Hub helps bring that structure to life for employees. It’s a personalized digital space where people can explore learning paths, short-term projects, stretch assignments, and open roles that align with current skills and future aspirations.

Also enabled by AI, Career Hub continuously refines recommendations as employee interests and organizational needs evolve. It can give employees a clear line of sight into how they can grow within the company—not only identifying where opportunities exist, but what skills to develop to get there.

For many organizations, Career Hub can be a powerful engagement engine. Each time employees update their profiles or pursue new opportunities, they contribute valuable, real-time data that enriches workforce analytics and sharpens talent visibility across the enterprise.

This two-way value exchange transforms HR data collection into an ongoing career conversation. Employees can see the personal benefit of sharing their skills, while organizations gain deeper insight into the capabilities already within their workforce.

3. Manager Insights Hub: Enabling fair, data-driven leadership

Workday’s owned technology, Manager Insights Hub complements Career Hub by giving leaders a holistic, AI-enabled view of their teams’ capabilities, readiness, and development needs. It helps consolidate workforce data into intuitive dashboards, so managers can understand not just who their people are today, but who they can become tomorrow.

This visibility enables leaders to make more equitable, evidence-based decisions about promotions, project assignments, and compensation. At the same time, Manager Insights Hub strengthens alignment between individual aspirations and enterprise goals. This gives managers the tools to identify growth opportunities that can benefit both the employee and the organization—turning talent mobility into shared success.

Driving outcomes

Organizations adopting AI-enabled Workday tools are already seeing results, including:

Higher internal mobility and reduced time-to-fill, as AI matches employees to open roles more accurately.
Improved engagement and retention, because employees see transparent, personalized growth opportunities.
Lower recruiting costs, thanks to sourcing talent internally rather than externally.
Faster workforce planning, as leaders use real-time skills data to redeploy talent where it’s needed.

These outcomes are especially valuable in today’s market, where many organizations are working with tighter budgets and limited hiring approvals. When bringing in new talent isn’t an easy option, the focus shifts to developing and redeploying the talent already inside the organization. AI helps leaders identify employees with adjacent skills or untapped potential, enabling them to fill critical gaps more quickly and cost-effectively.

Over time, these efforts can create a powerful ripple effect. Greater visibility into skills leads to smarter learning investments, which in turn foster stronger engagement, higher retention, and a more resilient workforce prepared to meet future demands.

The human side of AI

Even as technology transforms how organizations manage talent, empathy, context, and culture remain irreplaceable. Talent management, at its core, is deeply human—especially when it comes to supporting people’s growth, aspirations, and sense of belonging.

AI should, therefore, serve as an amplifier of human insight, not an autopilot for decision-making. The more effective organizations use data and algorithms to enhance leadership judgment, not replace it.

Equally important is empowering companies to use AI is used responsibly. Embedding principles of transparency, fairness, and accountability—from explaining how algorithms work to regularly testing for bias—helps build trust among employees. That trust is an essential currency in the era of intelligent talent systems, where success depends on blending technological precision with the humanity that defines great leadership.

Looking ahead

This next phase of innovation is helping organizations move past the operational heavy lifting of data management to focus on what matters: designing the workforce of the future. Deeper integration between Workday AI and PwC’s workforce analytics can help make it even easier to connect talent strategies directly to business outcomes.

For HR leaders just beginning their AI journey, the next-level approach is to start now. Pilot a single use case, measure the results, and refine from there. Progress in this space is iterative—and each step helps organizations better understand how to align technology, people, and culture.