The "Great Culture" does not permeate throughout the entire organization - Manager Workday Employee Review

2.0
Dec 11, 2015
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Lots of snacks and bagels. Work life balance and probably good managers can be found if you are lucky enough to work in the right department. The company spends a lot of money on Workday Generation so if you are a young person, that is definitely a pro for you. The company has recently had a lot of various workshops for management skills, managing priorities, etc. which I think is a step in the right direction. There are opportunities outside of your department to move into. Things can be a lot worse.

Cons

In reading some of the more critical but most useful reviews, I realize I am not alone. I am only talking about my personal experience and not putting down anyone who has truly had an amazing experience here. This is a very political and clicky culture and people seem threatened by talent, and afraid to step on the wrong toes. Workday tries to give the appearance that they have this great culture but maybe what once were great ideals have warped into this superficial, passive aggressive one that promotes weak leadership, and a follower mentality. It would be a much more conducive to work in an environment where people are truly team players and want to do what's best for the company and the investors. When WD talks about being collaborative, they just mean shut your mouth and don’t ruffle feathers. They say they promote innovation and thinking outside of the box, but that's all lip service. And I sometimes wonder if the people who are coming up with product ideas and functionality have ever even used similar products. There are very basic problems in the product but no one is willing to listen and use the resources that they have right underneath their noses. There are too many leaders, but none willing to truly lead. You have so many different "leaders" in one end to end process. Leaders don’t get together to align their goals, resulting in very unscalable processes and frustrated employees; you can't report on useful metrics timely because the information input at point A isn’t defined and agreed upon. The decision that wins often is not the one that makes the most sense. Ideas that benefit the company or are innovative are disregarded if the top people in power are against it. People are not held accountable for their actions. Leaders don’t enforce any sort of discipline, which you need to have at any company in order to be successful. You have leaders who are incompetent yet they are let loose to run organizations the way they deem fit because they are friends with so and so, making things even harder to clean up as the company grows. There is no opportunity for promotion or growth. They hire leaders from outside of the org that have no clue as to how things are functioning specific to WD; and to top it off, the leaders from the outside seem pretty disengaged with their own departments when they get here. For a company who is all about HR, you’d think relationships among their employees would be a primary concern. The leadership here seems more concerned with making alliances with other departments to further their own position, rather than taking care of the people working hard directly under them. I read a review here that talks about how toxic and abusive the leaders of the sales ops org are, and I can see that. You would have to be blind not to, but once again, it's about weak leadership turning the blind eye. I read a review that one person was shocked about the negative reviews in the sales ops org – again, this type of myopia instead of trying to understand why people are feeling this way is the exact problem. I was once told by an employee about how this employee was being managed; I told my manager about it and was not believed.

Explore other reviews about Workday

5.0
Jun 5, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Great work life balance, great community and benefits

Cons

Forward mobility, growth, and momentum

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Workday Response
5d
Thank you for your review. We appreciate you taking the time to share your experience working at Workday. Our goal is to create an open and diverse culture at Workday and we value feedback like this as we strive to become an even better company for our Workmates!
2.0
Jun 10, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Flex work model- 50% in office Direct team is supportive- great people (hope they stay)

Cons

Constant churn in leadership and shifting priorities. Feels like we can’t get anything done. VPs and SVPs who only care about managing up. Vision is lacking Slow decisions and lots of layers of approval Women pushed out of leadership Feels like they are gaslighting people with talk of being employee first yet they hire leaders who do not live that value.

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