Training Recommendations FAQ
This page provides answers to frequently asked questions to support customers who are either deploying Workday HCM, Financial Management, or Payroll or who are already live on Workday. For questions regarding Adaptive Planning Training, visit the Adaptive Training FAQ page.
Don't see your question? Work with your Training Coordinator to submit a training case.
Workday Education offers training covering critical system configuration, maintenance, and transactions. The training is organized to support 2 primary audiences—Administrators, who will be configuring or maintaining the system and Business Users, who will be using the system on a daily transactional basis.
Most of our paid training, which includes credit-based courses and subscription libraries, are focused on the Administrator role. Training examples for this role include courses such as HCM Core for Administrators and Workday Reporting. All other roles at your organization including Business Users, deployment project teams, testers, and other staff can use our free content. For example, Workday in Action is a video series that includes over 50 videos targeted at Business Users in areas such as HCM and Accounts Payable.
We recommend you take training as close as possible to when you will be applying that knowledge. The exact timing of when this will be needed will vary based on your project. While every project is different, we provide general timeline guidance within our Deployment Training Planner.
For those on your team looking to start training as early as possible, Getting Started with Workday provides exposure to Workday early on for your project team. This 7-hour, free self-directed course is designed to prepare learners for the Workday training journey—whether they’re Administrators preparing for additional training or simply need a high-level overview.
Other recommended training includes Learn On-Demand videos, which have minimal time impact. You can begin to assign these courses once the Training Coordinator has created learner accounts and assigned them subscription access.
This depends on the course, target audience, and factors internal to your organization—such as the size of your support team, the level of separation between business units or countries, and budget. If you would like to discuss your training plan with Workday Education, work with your Training Coordinator to submit a training case.
Due to variability between projects, plan to work with your Workday or Partner Engagement Manager to confirm the training prioritization and timeline for your specific project.
The initial courses listed in the Deployment Training Planner by product scope represent the most commonly attended training by customers in deployment.
Finally, consider the Workday Platform Administrator course which covers core competencies in key cross-functional areas—such as reporting, security, business process, and integration in a flexible time frame.
Getting Started with Workday is a great introductory course for any team member who doesn’t have previous Workday experience. This 7-hour, free self-directed course is designed to prepare learners for the Workday training journey—whether they’re Administrators preparing for additional training or simply need a high-level overview.
Topics include navigation, organizations, security, business processes, and reporting. We also offer free self-directed, product overview courses, such as Absence Management Overview or Business Assets Overview. Check out the full list of free product overview courses on the Product Overview Videos page.
At a minimum, it’s essential that lead Workday Administrators attend the respective course to their product area of focus. HCM Core for Administrators and Financial Management for Administrators cover the core configuration options within the HCM and Financial Management products.
These courses support the Workday Administrators who make the configurations, handle ongoing maintenance, or who are responsible for making key design decisions for these product areas. These courses don't provide all of the details on how to use core Workday tools, such as the Business Process Framework (BPF) and Report Writer. However, we do provide information about these tools to help your Administrators determine what is possible within the context of their product area.
We also recommend these courses for anyone with limited Workday or systems experience who is going to take a specific functional course, such as Procure to Pay for Administrators or Compensation for Administrators.
It’s essential that your Administrators reach an appropriate level of knowledge in all areas so that your organization understands the full range of system functionality. This might require taking one or more Administrator courses in order to have knowledge of all the areas they will support.
If you would like to discuss your training plan with Workday Education, work with your Training Coordinator to submit a training case.
Any Administrators who are primarily responsible for these tools should take the courses specific to that topic area. For example, Security for Administrators would be recommended for your security leads or Workday Reporting for your report analysts.
For your functional product Administrators, we recommend Workday Platform for Administrators. This 1 credit, 40 hour self-directed course and Workday Pro certification establishes a baseline competence in cross-functional Workday concepts. Topics include navigation and business objects, tenant and release management, security, business processes, reporting, and integrations.
Our general strategy across all training recommendations is to complete the applicable training as close as possible to when you can apply the knowledge in Workday. Some of our classes also recommend certain prerequisite training. Taking courses in this recommended order helps to ensure success not only in future classes but with your overall understanding of the Workday product. We provide the recommended prerequisites on the course info sheets within the Training Catalog. If you need further guidance, submit a Training Case.
Review the Training Recommendations page for general guidance on a training timeline. We recommend that you consult with your Workday or Partner Engagement Manager to confirm the most appropriate training timeline for your specific project. If you need further guidance, submit a Training Case.
There's no mandatory prerequisite training for any of our courses. Consider whether the person has sufficient basic knowledge of HCM, Financial, or Payroll concepts or sufficient knowledge of Workday to be successful in a more detailed course and review our recommended prerequisites.
We provide the recommended prerequisites or topic areas to be proficient in on the course info sheets within the Training Catalog. If you need further guidance, submit a Training Case.
Workday Pro is a certification program designed for professionals to build and validate expertise in Workday. We recommend courses in a particular order to ensure the program builds on a knowledge base as the learner progresses. For more specific recommendations, work with your Training Coordinator to submit a training case.
To assist your executives in understanding how Workday will benefit your organization and how to best structure your teams to support Workday, we have the Workday Briefing Series.
The Workday Briefing Series equips leaders and project teams with the strategic and product insights needed to maximize Workday value. The complimentary content features thought leadership from Workday experts and peers, so you capitalize on every innovation, see the vision of Workday products, and accelerate your business forward.
Whether you’re the jack-of-all-trades for your small team, or part of a larger IT support team, this course and Workday Pro certification provides learners a baseline competence on cross-functional Workday core concepts such as reporting, security, business processes, and integrations.
Functional Administrators in areas such as Recruiting or Procurement Administrators may also benefit from the Workday Platform for Administrators course even if they aren't the primary role responsible for maintaining these tools, for example to help understand how to create a custom report or edit a business process.
The Learn On-Demand subscription libraries contain short, topic-specific videos and job aids that Workday Administrators, Integrations Leads, Report Analysts and Security Leads can access for just-in-time learning. This training supplements instructor-led offerings and provides users with the knowledge they need to be self-sufficient in Workday. There are 5 available libraries:
HCM Core
Financial Management
Payroll, Absence, and Time Tracking
Cross-Application
Education and Government
While you don’t need to use credits to enroll in the Learn On-Demand courses, you must purchase a subscription to the relevant Learn On-Demand library. While you have an active Learn On-Demand subscription, your assigned users can enroll in any of the included content at no additional charge.
Training should commence with enough time to fully prepare for cutover from a previous solution and the move to Production, including a full range of testing. Also take into account the schedule of live classes over that period. If you would like to discuss your training plan with Workday Education, work with your Training Coordinator to submit a training case in the Workday Community.
For Workday Administrators, you’ll likely already have taken Business Process for Administrators, Workday Reporting, and Security for Administrators, plus the relevant functional product Administrator courses earlier in the deployment project. To deepen and strengthen this knowledge, consider taking further technical courses for areas such as integrations, complete training for any knowledge gaps, or determine if any bottlenecks have developed post go-live such as more custom report requests than anticipated.
We also recommend that you consider enrolling your Administrators in a relevant Workday Pro certification. For Business Users, the Workday in Action video series will be a great resource for them to understand the daily transactional activities required of their roles in Workday. If you would like to discuss your training plan with Workday Education, work with your Training Coordinator to submit a training case.
Training for a new hire depends on their role, responsibilities, level of Workday experience, and the level of in-house knowledge available to support them. As a starting point, many new hires benefit from Getting Started with Workday (Free), a self-directed course that introduces core Workday concepts and platform navigation.
If you would like to discuss your training plan with Workday Education, work with your Training Coordinator to submit a training case.
We recommend that you consider whether you have all areas of knowledge covered—functional, transactional, technical, and across all products. We recommend formal Workday training for self-sufficient ownership and value realization of Workday. We also recommend that you consider whether a particular course is a recommended prerequisite for another, more advanced course, or part of a Workday Pro certification.
If your team member completed Workday training with a previous employer, your Training Coordinator can submit a training case and ask for a transcript transfer. They’ll need to provide the employee’s email address from their prior employer. Any previously completed courses will be transferred over to the active account.