HR AI Index
Index Vendors › Workday · September 2026 Edition
26 categories · Ranked

Workday

823Judge labels
99First choices
323Negative labels
12 of 12Models named it
26Categories
September 2026 Edition. Every number here is derived from the raw labels under vendor table vv2026-09.1, every buyer segment counted.
Best standing
49% in Employee onboarding for enterprise buyers
Rank 189 of 189 in the mid-market standingcriticized challenger
0 of 12 models made it the first choice on the direct prompt; 70% of its 23 labels there were negative.
By buyer segmentRead the same way at every buyer size.
In compensation management · each standing computed within its segment · bars are 0 to 100 · the accent bar is the product's own best reading

Standing by category

Every category where a model named Workday for a mid-market B2B company. Share is first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts; rank is within every product named in that category.
CategoryFunctionShareRankNegative rateLabelsQuadrant
Compensation managementCompensation and total rewards0%189 of 18970%23criticized challenger
Performance managementPerformance and talent management0%59 of 6048%23criticized challenger
Succession planningPerformance and talent management0%84 of 9940%20criticized challenger
Employee onboardingOnboarding and employee experience0%19 of 10426%19criticized challenger
HR AI assistantsOnboarding and employee experience0%119 of 11956%16criticized challenger
Leave and absence managementCore HR and payroll0%73 of 8940%15criticized challenger
Payroll softwareCore HR and payroll0%16 of 4317%12accepted challenger
Workforce management suitesCore HR and payroll0%19 of 9525%12criticized challenger
Internal talent marketplacePerformance and talent management0%126 of 12955%11criticized challenger
AI recruiting assistantsTalent acquisition0%84 of 84100%9under 10 labels · led by GoPerfect at 19%
HR compliance and policy managementCore HR and payroll0%83 of 8443%7under 10 labels · led by Rippling at 16%
Org charts and org designWorkforce planning and analytics0%77 of 8157%7under 10 labels · led by ChartHop at 27%
Talent intelligencePerformance and talent management0%76 of 77100%7under 10 labels · led by Pin at 17%
Workforce planningWorkforce planning and analytics0%87 of 8957%7under 10 labels · led by ChartHop at 31%
HR help desk and case managementOnboarding and employee experience0%92 of 9350%6under 10 labels · led by Zoho Desk at 26%
People analyticsWorkforce planning and analytics0%88 of 9950%6under 10 labels · led by HiBob at 15%
360 feedbackPerformance and talent management0%72 of 7750%4under 10 labels · led by Lattice at 40%
Time and attendanceCore HR and payroll0%46 of 9025%4under 10 labels · led by UKG Ready at 15%
Flexible benefits and lifestyle spending accountsCompensation and total rewards0%75 of 7667%3under 10 labels · led by Compt at 30%
Workforce schedulingCore HR and payroll0%56 of 940%2under 10 labels · led by Deputy at 26%
Candidate assessmentTalent acquisition0%95 of 101100%1under 10 labels · led by TestGorilla at 68%
Contingent workforce managementWorkforce planning and analytics0%89 of 97100%1under 10 labels · led by SimpleVMS at 35%
Frontline employee appsOnboarding and employee experience0%48 of 970%1under 10 labels · led by Connecteam at 56%
Global payroll and employer of recordCore HR and payroll0%54 of 660%1under 10 labels · led by Deel at 22%
Recognition and rewardsOnboarding and employee experience0%51 of 55100%1under 10 labels · led by Bonusly at 22%
Skills intelligencePerformance and talent management0%132 of 162100%1under 10 labels · led by TalentGuard at 19%

Movement

This is the first edition on this tier, so no move can be computed for Workday yet. From the next edition this section shows, per buyer segment, whether its share moved by more than the measured noise floor.

By model

How each model treated Workday across every prompt where it was named for a mid-market B2B company. Twelve models, six prompts per category.
ModelFirst choiceAlternativeMentionNegativeLabels
Claude Haiku 4.5033511
GPT-5.4 mini063110
Gemini 3.5 Flash0162229
Perplexity Sonar027110
Grok 4.1 Fast1261726
Mistral Small028111
DeepSeek V4 Flash0482133
Llama 4 Maverick00303
Qwen 3.7 Flash0471526
Kimi K20641323
GLM 4.7 FlashX045615
MiniMax M2.50610622

By framing

Which of the six questions produced the naming. By model says how often; this says asked what. The first-choice count on the right carries the marks of the models that produced it.
FramingLabels by classFirst choices
Direct122 labels44
Paraphrase107 labels26
Comparative180 labels22not counted in share
Budget-constrained112 labels21
Scale-constrained94 labels8
Negative208 labels9not counted in share
First choiceAlternativeMentionNegative823 labels in all, every segment counted; 99 of the 130 first choices count toward share, since the comparative and negative framings do not. The bar is one segment per label class, to scale within the framing.

What the models said for it

Verbatim evidence the judge attached to positive labels.

“Prioritize: Integrated HCM platforms (e.g., Workday, UKG, Oracle, Dayforce—Gartner leaders/challengers)” Grok 4.1 Fast · Succession planning · negative prompt · first choice
“For Enterprise Organizations: Workday or SAP SuccessFactors provide the depth, security, and reporting needed for large-scale operations.” Qwen 3.7 Flash · Employee onboarding · comparative prompt · alternative
“Workday is best for large enterprises that need advanced HR operations, workforce planning, and global onboarding support.” Claude Haiku 4.5 · Employee onboarding · comparative prompt · alternative
“Choose Workday/SAP if you are a Fortune 500 company where data privacy and audit trails are your #1 priority.” Qwen 3.7 Flash · Performance management · comparative prompt · alternative

And against it

Verbatim evidence attached to negative labels. A warning on a product with few labels is a warning; on a product with many, it is one voice among them.

“Workday's AI tools are the subject of the notable class action lawsuit Mobley v. Workday, where the plaintiff claims the company's AI tools automatically rejected him and other applicants” Claude Haiku 4.5 · HR AI assistants · negative prompt · hard negative
“defendant in the landmark *Mobley v. Workday* lawsuit, which alleges that its AI screening systems systematically excluded qualified Black, older, and disabled applicants” DeepSeek V4 Flash · AI recruiting assistants · negative prompt · hard negative
“(Avoid enterprise monsters like Workday Performance unless you are already fully committed to the broader Workday ecosystem, as they are often too rigid and expensive” Gemini 3.5 Flash · Performance management · scale prompt · hard negative
“basic HR suites (like older versions of Workday, Oracle HCM, or generic Applicant Tracking Systems) designed only for direct employees ... Inadequate for Governance” Qwen 3.7 Flash · Contingent workforce man · negative prompt · hard negative

Named alongside

The products named in the same answers as Workday, over the 813 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and Workday was named but was not.
ProductSame answerTook the first choice insteadHead to head
SAP SuccessFactors336 of 81317Not in the top three
Rippling263 of 81342Not in the top three
BambooHR225 of 81332Not in the top three
UKG Pro191 of 81329Not in the top three
Dayforce141 of 81313Not in the top three
Lattice130 of 81330Not in the top three
Oracle Fusion Cloud HCM123 of 8133Not in the top three
Deel102 of 8135Not in the top three
Gusto95 of 81313Not in the top three
ADP Workforce Now90 of 8138Not in the top three
A head-to-head page exists where both products are in a category's top three. The other rows are the same fact without a page behind them, so they link to the product instead.

What carried it into the answer

The sites and pages cited by the answers that named Workday. A fact about retrieval, not a lever on the model.

Citations exist only for the models that return a source list, four of the twelve in this edition, so these counts come from 663 of the 813 answers that named Workday and are not a share of its labels.

Domains cited

peoplemanagingpeople.com270
gartner.com215
g2.com185
guideflow.com185
forbes.com146
worldmetrics.org143
learn.g2.com136
firsthr.app115
selectsoftwarereviews.com108
rippling.com100

1,603 of the 1,603 domain citations in answers naming Workday came from somebody else's page.

Pages cited

Pages are listed as the models cited them.

Names read as Workday

What the judge wrote, as written, with how often. The vendor table decides that these count as Workday; a claim can dispute any of them.
Workday HCM 7Workday Performance 2Workday (AI Screening Modules) 1Workday (HiredScore) 1Workday (Workforce Management/HCM) 1Workday Performance & Talent Management 1Workday Performance Layer 1Workday Talent Management 1Workday, Inc. 1
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Claim this page

Claiming is free and changes nothing in the data. A claimed page shows a verified contact who is told when each edition publishes and when Workday's standing changes by more than the noise floor; the right to propose corrections to the vendor table, meaning names the judge wrote that should or should not read as Workday, applied by version and listed in the change log; and a one-line description supplied by the vendor and marked as such.

It does not get any change to labels, shares or verdicts, any preview, or any say over which quotes appear. A verification link goes to your work email; an address at workday.com is approved on the spot, any other address is reviewed by hand.

Your name and company appear on the claimed page, or the company alone if you ask below. A title and a LinkedIn address appear there too if you give them, and are left off if you do not. Your email address is never published.