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Enhancing Daily Operations with AI: Workday and Google Cloud Partnership Expansion

On May 28, 2026, Workday Inc. and Google Cloud announced an expansion of their strategic partnership, aimed at integrating AI agents into everyday applications for improved usability in HR and finance functions. This collaboration introduces the Workday Agent System of Record (ASOR) alongside Google Cloud's advanced enterprise agent platform, providing a trustworthy foundation where Workday, Google Cloud, and third-party agents can operate in a secure and governed environment.

The key highlight of this partnership is the direct integration of Workday's Sana self-service agent into Gemini Enterprise. As a result, employees can now easily retrieve information and answers from Workday based solely on inquiries directed at Gemini, with respect to internal policies and access rights. By adopting Gemini as the standard AI model for Sana for Workday, HR and finance professionals can expect a consistent and high-quality experience, addressing the complex tasks they encounter on a daily basis with more efficacy.

Moreover, enhanced collaboration between Gemini and Workday Data Cloud empowers companies to transition from static reporting to prompt decision-making and actions, without the necessity of transferring data outside Workday’s secure environment.

Seamless Integration for Daily Business Operations

Sana's self-service agent is now available on Google Cloud's Agent Marketplace, with plans to roll out additional AI agents from Workday within the year. Employees and managers will be able to utilize previously available self-service features directly from Gemini Enterprise, allowing them to work continuously within a single environment while the AI agent executes necessary background tasks.

The functionalities provided by the Gemini-integrated Workday AI agent include:

• - For Employees: Users can manage common self-service tasks such as checking remaining paid leave, updating personal information, viewing pay slips, confirming withholding tax documents, and submitting leave requests, all within one continuous dialogue flow.

• - For Managers: Superiors can approve leave requests, initiate performance evaluation processes, review team goals, and submit payroll-related information without stepping away from their interaction with the AI.

• - Financial Guidance and Policy Management: Financial staff can inquire about expense reimbursement policies and qualification checks for corporate cards, in addition to receiving assistance with application submissions or support case creations as necessary.

This partnership supports models like Agent-to-Agent (A2A) and Agent-to-UI (A2UI), allowing multiple AI agents to share information in real-time while autonomously handling task transitions within a unified workflow. As a further enhancement, Alphabet enables Workday administrators to create and utilize custom AI agents for optimizing and automating commonly used business processes.

Enhanced AI Capabilities with Gemini

Sana for Workday now provides a centralized environment for CHROs, CFOs, managers, and employees to perform inquiries, execute workflows, and collaborate with Workday's AI agents. With Gemini adopted as the standard AI model for Sana for Workday, users can leverage its advanced reasoning capabilities, support for multiple languages, and multimodal functionalities. These capabilities are closely integrated with Workday's security, business rules, and approval workflows, offering a sophisticated and secure operational experience.

The enhanced AI will enable HR and finance personnel to deliver higher support levels with refined understanding of nuanced internal policies, catering to employees in multilingual environments, and resolving intricate requests that surpass conventional pattern referrals. Importantly, the implementation of these capabilities can occur without altering existing Workday usage methods.

Sana is designed to accommodate numerous AI models, empowering customers to select and switch between models according to their business requirements.

Zero-Copy Access to HR and Finance Data with Workday Data Cloud

Workday and Google Cloud are also fortifying their data infrastructure, which underpins these AI experiences, allowing enterprises to safely combine Workday data with other business data for more advanced analytics. The advanced zero-copy technology enables sharing and query execution between Workday Data Cloud and Google Cloud Lakehouse, directly referencing data at its storage location without the need for transfer or replication. This helps maintain stringent access controls and business rules while allowing effective utilization.

This seamless integration equips organizations to analyze business trends and financial risks more promptly than ever before. Furthermore, Workday's AI agents can integrate insights derived from analytics into actionable steps, enabling secure automation of everyday tasks. The AI agents functioning on Gemini Enterprise will also introduce conversational analytics, allowing users to pose natural language queries against the data and receive immediate answers.

Accelerating Customer Value Creation with Global System Integrators

In ongoing endeavors, Workday and Google Cloud have strengthened relationships with leading global systems integrators (GSI) such as Accenture, Deloitte, and KPMG. These collaborators possess extensive knowledge in stakeholder management, governance, technology, and business processes, enabling mutual customers to achieve quicker benefits from AI implementation in enterprise environments. By utilizing Google's newly announced innovation fund, these partners work with customer companies to identify and implement the most effective AI agent utilization strategies.

Gerrit Kazmaier, President and Head of Product & Technology at Workday, emphasized, “What our customers seek is the ability to access HR and finance data and operations instantly when needed, rather than navigating through multiple applications. The expansion of our partnership with Google Cloud allows people to seamlessly retrieve needed answers and execute actions within their business environment while maintaining Workday's embedded security, business rules, and approval processes.”

Echoing this, Karthik Narain, Chief Product and Business Officer at Google Cloud added, “This partnership expansion aims to enhance the deployment and usability of AI agents throughout businesses. From the model layer to platform layer, Gemini and Google Cloud are set to support key daily business processes in HR and finance worldwide, enabling employees to not only gain faster and more accurate responses but also streamline repetitive tasks, letting them concentrate on what truly matters.”

Conclusion

The AI environment offered through the expansion of this partnership will start rolling out to select Workday customers, with full access to Workday Data Cloud expected to begin later this year. This collaboration marks a significant step towards a more intelligent workplace where automation and AI serve to enhance efficiency and productivity.