Workday 2025R2's hottest HCM features

But before we do…

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👉 You can register HERE.

And to raise the stakes…

We’re gifting a $500, $1,000, and $2,000 Delta gift card to 3 webinar attendees ✈️ 💰 Find all the official deets here.

[1]

Feature: Bulletins in Onboarding Plans

Product: Onboarding

Setup Effort: Setup Required

Targeted Production Date: September 20, 2025

Summary: With 2025R1, Workday introduced Onboarding Plans—a real game-changer for Onboarding in Workday (we wrote all about them earlier this summer). Previously, there were 4 types of content you could add to Onboarding Plans: Announcements, Cards, Messages, and Videos. With 2025R2, Workday adds a 5th: Bulletins.

Bulletins are ultra configurable. They allow you to link tasks, custom reports, or external links in a neatly packaged way. And, you can control who sees which items within each bulletin by assigning an Audience or Audience Condition Rule. Here’s what 2 different bulletins look like on one of Well Built’s Onboarding Plans…

🔗 Release Note

[2]

Feature: Correct Action for Edit Government IDs, Legal Name Change, and Personal Information Change Business Processes

Product: Core HCM

Setup Effort: Setup Required

Targeted Production Date: September 20, 2025

Summary: Previously, you had to initiate a totally new business process event to change government IDs, legal name, or personal information 👎 This created a whole bunch of unnecessary approvals, notifications, etc. With this 2025R2 Feature, the Edit Government IDs, Legal Name Change, and Personal Information Change Business Processes get their very own “Correct” action 😍

Setup: To open up “Correct” access on these BPs, configure the Correct action on each Business Process Security Policy as desired.

🔗 Release Note

[3]

Feature: HCM Admin Hub

Product: Core HCM

Setup Effort: Automatically Available

Targeted Production Date: September 20, 2025

Summary: So much of life as a Workday admin has hinged on IYKYK [insert said task]. No more!!! The HCM Admin Hub just might be the release item of the decade.

Instead of hunting for scattered tasks, the most heavy hitting tasks for Core HCM, Recruiting, Comp, Benefits, Absence, Time, and Scheduling now live in one organized home. Each module has its own tab, with quick access to setup pages, reports, and common tasks.

If you recently hired a new HRIS team member, tell them to go click around this hub—it’s an HCM Admin starter pack! Once you get to know the tasks within and how the components fit together, you can start to route to specific actions directly.

Notes:

• Workday’s still ironing out a kink on security. Right now in Preview, the entire org can technically see the HCM Admin Hub, but what they can actually view and click into depends on their security access for each component. Workday is working on a fix—a single domain that will let you control overall Hub visibility.

🔗 Release Note

[4]

Feature: Job Architecture Hub

Product: Core HCM

Setup Effort: Setup Required

Targeted Production Date: September 20, 2025

Summary: ‘Tis the season for helpful hubs! You can access the new Job Architecture Hub through the HCM Admin Hub or route to it directly. The Overview tab gives you high-level stats on your job architecture, with handy filters tied to common job profile variables (read about some of them here). Each number is clickable, pulling up a pop-up report, and below that you’ll see quick links to the most relevant tasks.

But the real flex of this hub is the Job Profile Analysis section. Workday analyzes your current job architecture to flag missing data (“Data Gaps”), call out unused jobs (“Without Workers”), and even spot profiles that might be redundant. Wooo-eee!—regular maintenance and clean-up just got a whole lot easier.

Setup:

Enable the security policy domains Manage: Job Architecture Hub and Audit: Job Architecture Hub.

Notes:

• Some features within the Job Architecture Hub require Skills Cloud or an Innovation Services Opt-In for machine learning capabilities. You’ll have to take additional steps and turn on a couple more domains to access these features. Read the release note in detail!

🔗 Release Note

[5]

Feature: Manager Integrated Organizations (MIO)

Product: Core HCM

Setup Effort: Setup Require

Targeted Production Date: Sept. 20, 2025

Summary: In Workday’s setup, managers belong to the supervisory org above the one where they’re given the manager role—which can make visibility of these relationships tricky. With the task Edit Manager Integrated Organizations, you can link a manager’s position directly to the sup org they oversee. That link now shows up on the worker profile (Job Details + optional Profile Header card) and in a few reports.

Right now, you can only assign an MIO to one position at a time, but there’s an EIB (Put Manager Integrated Organization) if you want to assign it in bulk.

🤞 Fingers crossed Workday expands this feature further with a global “Top Sup Org” field. That would finally kill off those Evaluate Expression calc field workarounds for including execs in their own reporting chain.

Setup:

Create the security policy for Manager: Manager Integrated Organization.

Notes:

Creating this relationship link doesn’t have any impact on the Manager’s security.

🔗 Release Note

[6]

Feature: Remove Prior Compensation for Rehires

Product: Compensation

Setup Effort: Setup Required

Targeted Production Date: September 20, 2025

Summary: Up until now, a rehire’s new hire event would pull in comp from their previous job (unless you had offer details defaulting from your ATS). Kinda awkward—especially if that former comp was from years ago or for a totally different role.

Now, under the task Edit Tenant Setup – HCM, there’s a checkbox for Remove Prior Compensation for Rehires. Turn it on, and the old comp won’t default into the new hire event! But don’t fret—the former comp data can still be found in the worker’s compensation history, it just won’t sneak into the Propose Compensation for Hire step.

🔗 Release Note

[7]

Feature: Similar Existing Job Profiles on Manage Job Profile

Product: Core HCM

Setup Effort: Setup Required

Targeted Production Date: September 20, 2025

Summary: This 2025R2 machine learning feature helps you keep your job architecture tidy 🧹 Say hello to the new “Does this Job Profile Already Exist” panel within the Manage Job Profile BP, meant to alert you to potential duplicate job profiles—before they happen! So that IT Analyst 3, IT Analyst III, and IT Analyst Level 3 are caught before they send your job architecture into mass chaos forever 🫣

Setup:

1. You’ve gotta opt in based on your org’s service agreement for this one! Check out the Release Notes for more on what you need to enable here.

2. Enable the domain, Job Profile: Find Similar Jobs, and set up its Domain Security Policy.

3. Use the task, Maintain Find Similar Job Profiles to manage your settings for this feature.

Notes:

Workday warns, it may take up to a week to see results after turning this feature on!

🔗 Release Note

[8]

Feature: Trended Workers Data Source

Product: Core HCM

Setup Effort: Setup Required

Targeted Production Date: September 20, 2025

Summary: Now THIS is a big one 🤩 Workday enhances the Trended Workers data source by expanding the maximum look-back period to 72 months (6 years!), doubling it from its previous 36-month limit. As the Workday ecosystem matures, this one felt pretty needed. Now, customers with up to 6 years of tenant in their tenant can report on all that data—no 3-year cut-off!

Setup:

1. To generate your additional trended data for a greater look-back period, run the task Maintain Trended Workers. Update the Number of Periods field on the Configuration Tab to 72:

2. Run the task Update Worker Trending Data to generate your new data.

3. Check the Status tab on the Maintain Trended Workers task to confirm that your new data has been generated:

Reporting Impacts:

This enhancement impacts all reports built on the Trended Workers data source, both custom and delivered. Workday automatically updates its delivered reports.

For custom reports, however, you’ll need to update the following fields as such across all your Trended Workers reports:

• First Day of the Month Three Years Ago ➡️ First Day of the Month (Up to 72 Months Ago)

• First Day of the Calendar Quarter from 11 ➡️ Quarters Ago First Day of the Calendar Quarter (Up to 23 Quarters Ago)

• First Day of the Calendar Quarter from Three Years Ago ➡️ First Day of the Calendar Quarter (Up to 23 Quarters Ago) 

• Start Date Month ➡️ Start Date Month (Up to 72 Months Ago)

• End Date Month ➡️ End Date Month (Up to 72 Months Ago) 

🔗 Release Note

Say hi 👋 on LinkedIn — @ceciblomberg, @miaeisenhandler

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