A new Workday study indicates employees are using 2025 tools within 2015 job structures

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While executives continue to chase the elusive ROI of AI, a fresh Workday study indicates employees aren’t positioned for success—due to outdated job structures.

Per the study, employees are leveraging 2025-era tools but remain trapped in 2015-style job structures, with fewer than half of job roles updated to incorporate AI capabilities. Workday’s survey gathered input from 3,200 full-time staff at companies with annual revenues of $100 million or higher.

Aashna Kircher, Workday’s group general manager for the CHRO’s office, noted that workers are increasingly tasked with applying human judgment and insight to the massive volume of content AI generates for them—and historically, such skill sets take a decade to develop.

“These are extremely advanced skill sets,” Kircher stated. “Currently, all the training I observe is centered on how to use AI—not on building and applying discernment and judgment to the output AI produces. That’s the gap for senior leaders, in my view.”

Kircher added that the initial step to bridge this gap is analyzing every business function to identify both the core skills required for each role and the tasks that can be automated.

The study revealed that HR leaders shoulder an outsized portion (38%) of the “AI rework” burden—fact-checking, reviewing, and editing AI-generated content. By contrast, IT professionals make up just 32% of those performing this work.

This discrepancy stems in part from differing work processes. “IT roles use AI as a starting point and thought partner to speed up creativity and iteration—while recognizing the output is imperfect and doesn’t require the same level of scrutiny,” Kircher explained. “In HR, however, accuracy, tone, impact, and how you frame information carry far greater weight.”

Kristin Stoller
Editorial Director, Live Media