Sana and Workday's Employee Agents

Most employees won't see a list of agents. They'll see Sana.

Workday got Sana when it acquired the Swedish company, led by Joel Hellermark, who is now Workday's Chief AI Officer. In October 2026 Workday made Sana the new Workday Home, a single place to ask questions, approve things and check what agents are doing. Bhusri calls the self-service agent Workday's "killer agent."

This is the first time most employees will interact directly with Workday's AI. The HR team configures agents behind the scenes, but Sana is the interface that 100% of employees see. That makes it the most visible test of whether the tenant is ready for agents.

The agents

Self-Service Agent

An employee help desk built on Sana. Ask in plain language, get an answer or an action. It's generally available in Microsoft Copilot, Teams, Slack and Gemini Enterprise, with Claude in early access.

Bhusri says it deflects 25 to 30% of HR cases today, and he expects 80 to 90% as it improves.

The Self-Service Agent handles the questions that fill HR inboxes every day: "How many vacation days do I have left?" "How do I change my direct deposit?" "What's the policy on parental leave?" "Who approves my expense report?" Instead of an employee emailing HR and waiting for a response, the agent answers instantly from the data and policies in the tenant.

When it can't answer a question, it routes it to the right person — an HR business partner, a benefits specialist, a payroll administrator — with context about what the employee asked and what the agent already tried. This means the HR team gets fewer tickets overall, and the tickets they do get come with better context.

The availability across Microsoft Copilot, Teams, Slack, and Gemini Enterprise is significant. Employees don't need to log into Workday to get answers. They ask through the tools they already use, and the agent handles the authentication and data retrieval behind the scenes.

Sana Concierge

HR and IT requests such as onboarding questions, password resets, leave and app access. It's with early adopters, and general availability is expected in Q1 2027.

Sana Concierge goes beyond answering questions — it completes requests. An employee can ask to submit a leave request, and the Concierge walks them through the process, pre-fills the form based on their profile, and submits it through the configured business process. An IT request for application access follows the same pattern: the Concierge identifies the right approval workflow and initiates it.

For new hires, the Concierge can serve as an onboarding guide — answering questions about benefits enrollment windows, directing them to required training, and helping them navigate their first weeks without requiring constant hand-holding from HR.

Sana Coach

Coaching for performance and feedback, in early access.

Sana Coach helps managers prepare for performance conversations, suggests development goals based on skill gap analysis, and provides structured coaching prompts. It can also help employees reflect on their own performance and prepare for reviews.

The coaching agent reads performance data, skill assessments, and development plans from the tenant. Its suggestions are only as relevant as the competency frameworks and skill data in the system.

Why answers go wrong

Sana answers from your tenant. If the data is wrong, the answers are wrong — and unlike back-office agents where an HR analyst might catch the error, these wrong answers go directly to employees.

Wrong worker data means wrong answers. If an employee's manager, location, eligibility or balance is wrong in Workday, the answer is wrong too. An employee asks "How much PTO do I have?" and gets an answer based on a leave balance that didn't carry over correctly from the old system. An employee asks "Who do I report to?" and gets a name that hasn't been updated since a reorg.

Stale policies mean misleading guidance. The Self-Service Agent answers policy questions from configured policies and knowledge articles. If your leave policy changed last quarter but the Workday configuration still reflects the old policy, the agent confidently gives outdated information. This is worse than no agent at all — at least without the agent, the employee would contact HR and get the right answer.

Broken business processes mean failed requests. A leave request started by Concierge needs a leave process that actually completes. If the approval chain has a missing approver, or the routing rule sends the request to a terminated manager, the request hangs. The employee sees a "pending" status and doesn't know why.

Over-permissioned security means data exposure. Security has to keep employees to their own data and managers to their team's. If the Self-Service Agent inherits a security configuration that gives it broader access than intended, employees could potentially surface information about other workers through carefully phrased questions.

What to get right before rolling out Sana

Worker records. Every employee's manager, location, job profile, pay group, and benefit eligibility need to be current and correct. For tenants in migration, this means validating these fields record by record.

Leave and absence. Balances, accrual rates, and time-off plan assignments need to match the source system. Leave is one of the most common self-service questions, and wrong balances are immediately visible to employees.

Policies and knowledge. Review every HR policy that the Self-Service Agent might reference. Ensure that Workday's configured policies and any linked knowledge articles reflect current practice.

Business processes. Test every business process that Concierge might initiate — leave requests, expense submissions, time entry, profile changes. Verify that they complete end-to-end, including edge cases like absent approvers.

Security. Configure Sana's access using role-based security that limits visibility to appropriate data. Test with different user profiles to verify that employees only see their own information and managers only see their team's.

Channel integration. If you're deploying the Self-Service Agent through Teams or Slack, test the integration end-to-end. Verify that authentication works, that responses render correctly in the channel format, and that actions initiated through the channel complete in Workday.

How we help

ValidateIQ checks worker data across the source system, workbook and Workday, so Sana is answering from correct records. We configure the HCM business processes that self-service and Concierge requests run through, set up role-based security, and connect Workday to the tools employees already use. Sana serves employees. Our AMS team and Assistly serve the Workday team behind it, so self-service keeps working.

Frequently asked questions

Can Sana answer questions about benefits? Yes. The Self-Service Agent can answer questions about benefit plan details, enrollment status, coverage levels, and dependent information. The accuracy depends on benefits data being correctly configured and, for migrated tenants, correctly converted from the source system.

Does Sana work for employees who don't have Workday access? Sana is available through Microsoft Copilot, Teams, Slack, and Gemini Enterprise. Employees interact through these channels without needing to log into Workday directly. Authentication is handled through the channel integration.

What happens when Sana can't answer a question? The Self-Service Agent routes unanswered questions to the appropriate HR or IT contact, with context about what the employee asked. Bhusri says the deflection rate is 25 to 30% today, meaning 70 to 75% of questions still go to a human. The expectation is that this ratio will improve over time.

How is Sana different from a Workday chatbot? Previous Workday chatbot capabilities were keyword-based — they matched user input to predefined responses. Sana uses AI to understand natural language questions, retrieve data from the tenant, and take actions through configured business processes. It also learns from interactions, improving over time.

Rolling out Sana? Talk to AssistNow.