Workday, Salesforce Partner to Aid Employers’ Return to Work

Workday will offer a new integration with Salesforce to help joint customers plan for the safe reopening of their workplaces in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The integration will link Workday with Salesforce’s Work.com, a suite of solutions and resources designed to help businesses reopen and re-skill their workforce. Unveiled earlier in May, Work.com includes tools for employee wellness assessment, shift management, contact tracing and emergency response management.

To plan their returns to work, many companies rely on data. However, pulling together multiple data streams is complicated, observed Salesforce President Bret Taylor. Through the integration, “we’re making it easier for employers to centralize critical data and get their businesses up and running again,” he said.

The integration seems intended to address several employer concerns: The need to manage a remote workforce, address the health and emotional concerns surrounding COVID-19, remain in compliance with changing regulations, and encourage collaboration and communications.

Data for Return to Work

Using the connection, which will begin rolling out in June, customers will be able to synchronize Workday’s worker and skills data with Work.com’s safety, health and workplace information, the company said. In the future, integrations will help employers:

• Assess workplace readiness and track regional health considerations as they reconfigure offices and redeploy workers to assure safety.
• Review their employees’ location preferences, screen workers and track completion of health and safety training.
• Create phased approaches to reopening based on factors such as criticality, shift management and location capacity and the results of contact tracing.
• Identify skills that will be needed as the workplace changes, as well as determining the best opportunities to upskill and reskill the workforce.

Workday and Microsoft

Separately, Workday and Microsoft announced a partnership that prioritizes cloud-based enterprise planning and expands the solutions customers can use to optimize everyday work.

Through the partnership, customers can run Workday Adaptive Planning on the Microsoft Azure cloud. In addition, Microsoft’s global finance team will begin using Adaptive Planning for its planning, budgeting and forecasting work.

The companies also unveiled new integrations between Workday’s suite and Microsoft Teams and Azure Active Directory. They said these integrations will help customers simplify day-to-day tasks and improve collaboration, productivity and security.

On May 27, Workday announced fiscal 2020 first quarter revenue of $1 billion, an increase of 23.4% from the year-ago period. Subscription revenue rose 25.8%, to $882 million. The company’s operating loss was $144.5 million, or negative 14.2% of revenues, compared to an operating loss of $123.4 million, or negative 15% of revenues, last year

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Image: Workday