Salesforce, Workday To Introduce New AI-Powered Employee Service Agent

Customer relationship management company Salesforce Inc. is collaborating with people solutions provider Workday Inc. to deliver a new artificial intelligence employee service agent to automate time-consuming tasks, provide personalised support, and derive data-driven insights for employees.

Salesforce's Agentforce Platform and Einstein AI will be combined with the Workday platform and Workday AI to enable organisations to create and manage agents for a variety of employee service use cases. Supported by a company’s Salesforce CRM data and Workday financial and HR data, the AI employee service agents have a shared data foundation to communicate with employees in natural language with the objective of making onboarding, health benefit changes, career development, and other tasks easier. 

When complex cases arise, the AI employee service agent will transfer to the concerned individual for remediation, handing off previous history and context, Salesforce said in a press release.

Salesforce and Workday will integrate Einstein’s agent platform with Workday AI, combining two generative AI solutions into one employee experience accessible across the two platforms. The AI employee service agent uses large language models to communicate in natural language, and leverages the shared data foundation to deliver relevant responses to employee queries.

The companies will have one shared data foundation connecting Workday financial and HR data with Salesforce CRM data. For this, Workday will leverage the Salesforce Zero Copy Partner Network. This will allow customers to access financial, HR, and CRM data across both platforms without having to duplicate data or build custom integrations.

Workday said it will enhance its existing integration with Slack, providing a conversational interface for users to access and collaborate around Workday financial and HR records, such as tasks, pay, job requisitions, employee details, and general ledgers, directly in Slack.

The service agent will help with onboarding, including coordinating paperwork, resource provisioning, training, and getting new hires onboarded faster. The agent will help answer questions related to benefits and policies and enable self-service transactions like updating healthcare plans. Learning pathways based on an employee’s role, skills, and career interests will also be tracked in Workday.

For employers, the joint solution will help workforce planning by integrating skills supply forecasts from Workday with demand signals from Salesforce. It will feed unified employee and customer data into forecasts, scenario modelling, and operational analyses. Additionally, it will help guide sellers by analysing historical activity and recommending targeted coaching, the companies said.