Workday
At Workday, innovation is at the center of our business. We take great pride in providing our customers with enterprise applications that help them tackle some of today’s most complex business challenges.
Finalist for:
Technology Company of the Year (30+ Employees),
Employer of the Year
Interviewee: Christina Gerow
What’s your company’s story?
In 2005, software visionaries Aneel Bhusri and Dave Duffield met at the Jax Truckee Diner outside of Lake Tahoe in California. They decided to form a start-up – one that would sell cloud-based applications for finance and HR. The two longtime friends had plenty of experience. Dave had founded PeopleSoft in 1987 and served as the company’s CEO and chairman of the board. Aneel had held a number of leadership positions at PeopleSoft, included senior vice president of product strategy. On that day in 2005, they resolved to build a company that would revolutionize the enterprise software market. The result is Workday.
Who do you work with? What are some interesting projects you’re involved in?
Passionate, committed employees. Meredith Foster is one great example among many. Over an extremely trying day—crying kids in the back seat of her car, no wifi at her parents’ house nor a nearby hotel—she scrambled into a sketchy parking lot with her dad’s iPhone 3 as a hot spot—to make an important presentation with customers. We never quit on a problem.
At Workday, we’re working on a machine learning strategy to develop applications that, when combined with human judgment, deliver better decisions. But we’re doing it by prioritizing trust to ensure responsible, ethical business practices.
What are you most proud of in the work that you do?
You can’t have a great work experience unless you’re able to share your thoughts and concerns and know that your manager and the broader organization are listening—and taking action—based on your feedback. One of our favourite initiatives is the Best Workday Survey. Every Friday employees receive a two-question survey through the Workday system. Managers have a dashboard to review summary results to better understand the level of experiences they are creating for their teams. To ensure reliability and confidentiality, at least three members of a team must respond to a question for their manager to receive aggregate results. Based on these insights, curated learning content on where a manager can improve or grow is sent to them through Workday Learning. These insights help our leadership team understand the pulse of the company in real time and meet employees where they are.
If your team had a theme song, what would it be and why?
“A Beautiful Day,” By U2, which serves as an inspiration to live the right life:
It’s a beautiful day, the sky falls
And you feel like it’s a beautiful day
It’s a beautiful day
Don’t let it get away
From our logo (a sunrise) to our core values (employees, customer service, innovation, integrity, profitability, fun) we inspire people to live their best lives every day, whether they’re at work or at home. A common expression around here is “not just another work day.”
What are some hopes and dreams for your company?
After Aneel and Dave met in a diner to dream up the kind of transformational company they’d like to run, the goal was to reflect a friendly, personal, and humanistic approach to apps. No one had done that well. And the hopes and dreams set out for Workday 14 years ago remain firmly intact: to build and maintain a corporate culture that would serve as the foundation for Workday’s success and our ability to truly revolutionize the enterprise software market. As Aneel has shared: we’re building an organization our grandchildren would want to work for.
Why is Victoria a great spot for your organization?
It’s been an incredible opportunity to grow our organization in Victoria and help attract diverse talent to our beautiful city. The Workday Victoria office (opened via the acquisition of MediaCore in 2015) has more than doubled the development team in the last year and plans to reach over 100 employees by January 2020. Workday’s investment in Victoria continues to be realized through the lease of 1515 Douglas Street, where we hold over 20,000 square feet and the entire top floor of Douglas House. Between the talent, lifestyle, and weather, Workday is sold on Victoria.