Workday
reviews and complaints

To be transparent. I’m a Workday employee. I’ve spent the past 17 years working within the enterprise software industry. What I’ve learned is that technology changes rapidly. Institutions need software that can adapt to new technologies as they are introduced.

I use Workday at least a couple times a week for processing expense reports. Recording time off and managing my performance evaluation among other critical functions.

I’m especially interested in using new functionality to support learning and the budgeting and planning process.

The products are great! At Workday we call it the “Power of One”. All customers are on ONE version of the software. There is ONE elegant user experience. ONE in memory object data model. ONE security model. ONE business process framework. ONE integration platform. It’s the “Power of One” that is different by design.

Enjoy, and have a great Workday!

The features are useless and irrelevant and the ones that matter DONT WORK.
Like “People” that lists every employee in the company, why?
Or “Org Chart”... useless.
And the functions you would actually NEED fall short of completing the task. For example, a VERY IMPORTANT one, Time Off Requests. It will tell you approved or denied but not the date, so you have no idea which days you’re off.
It’s unorganized. You can’t find anything within the app, it’s a giant mess. There’s a “Search” but it only searches other employees (why?) not functions or information you need.
Our company switched over to service from ADP because it’s “cheaper”. But every single employee is fed up.
It’s been such a flood of complaints errors and issues that management had to tell us to “hold off” calling the Workday help center because they have been drowning in employees needing assistance are “too backed up”
Garbage ...

I keep trying to use this app, as I don’t always wanna use a website on my phone. When I found out Workday is available as an app, I jumped on the opportunity to download and use it. The only problem is, what’s even the point of having the app if, when I put in my organization ID, (just as it appears on Workday’s website), it never give me the chance to log in. The app just freezes after I put in the ID, and it never gets to a log in screen. I’ve tried doing it on my company’s wifi, my home wifi, my cellular network, everything. And yet the app still doesn’t let me in. I’ve tried it off and on over the past few months, near year, since we switched to using Workday. Along with having any and all updates come in. I’m severely disappointed and hope that the development team can figure out what’s going on and fix it, cause this isn’t the experience I expected from what I can compare to the website proper.

I like this app ok and its convenient but can also be a hassle. It’s nice to have a lot of things conveniently in an app on hand. The hassle part was setting it up some but the office people in our company helped us. The biggest hassle I have is the requirement of changing the password every so often and not being able to do it myself without help. I’ve had to do it once and had to call our corporate people for help to get it done. It has a place in the app it says you’re supposed to be able to do it on your own but I have yet to successfully do this. The several attempts so far it always tells me that something is incorrect and wrong such as lately the old password that corporate gave me and I have logged in with and triple checked to make sure it wasn’t my error of entering it incorrectly. Doesn’t help it doesn’t give you the option to see what you’re typing as or after you’ve typed the passwords in.

Complete waste of time. I was having trouble getting their website to load so I thought I’d try the app. Install, set up, log in, security questions and the first thing I click on sends me back to their website so I can re-login and do the task there. What a load.

*Update*

After several more days of use, I can now say that this app is worse than I originally thought. Multiple tasks tell me that they’re unavailable on the mobile app. They all want me to go back to the web to finish them. Each time I go online with my pc, I’m reminded that I should try their app. This is the definition of insanity.

I couldn’t understand all the glowing reviews until I read a few. Obviously people don’t know what they are talking about. Half of the reviews appear to be from people who think they’re reviewing their employer; a quarter are total [censored]s; and the final quarter are obviously fake.

4.7 stars for a junk app? Please :(

5/19 - back down to one star this week. Looks like I'm getting a new error now "unable to load tenant. Check settings" ... setting have been checked and rechecked. It's just WorkDay being a crummy app again. I wouldn't recommend using this unless you have no other option. It's faster to go to the website.

After almost a month of not being able to log into the app and being told that it was: an issue with my phone, my provider, my company, my log in and a zillion other things - I finally went to Twitter and WorkDay responded quick. After directing the Workday staff to the App Store reviews page where many have complained about issues logging in with the same error message. My complaint was reported to my internal Human Resources department and over the weekend WorkDay pushed out an update that made it so that I can now log in. I hope this resolved the issue for others as well. I am pleased with the results experienced!

Too many “clicks” to get where you can see the whole picture... for techs it’s frustrating for managers it’s so much of a hassle I’d rather do it all by hand!
The worst part is the time crunching for techs. Looking to approve on call work, PTO time off, holidays, and/or instances of working outside of or longer than the normal work day schedule is nearly impossible. I used to be able to pull all of my techs up on a two week calendar view and review everyone’s time cards in one go, or drill down to individuals as needed. Now I get a date to one side that will skip around time blocks for PTO, weekends or holidays without showing why there’s a gap there unless you read another section somewhere else that says PTO was taken... good luck find that time off easily because that’ll take you three clicks to find on another screen that you have to write down or memorize when you go back to the time card you’re trying to approve.
In short this program needs a lot of work to be easy to use.

This is arguably one of the worst apps downloaded on my phone. Clocking in and out should be seamless, but this app (and even the desktop version) turns what should be a quick task into an inconvenience.

It often takes the app more than a few seconds to load the home page, and then every time I go on, I have to re-enter my username and password. I would love for this information to be remembered, or even for the app to use Face ID to let me log in.

I don’t like that I have to constantly tell the app what organization I work for, and the two-step verification is seriously the straw that breaks the camel’s back.

What’s worse is that I have to do this process at least four times a day to clock in, clock out for lunch, clock in after lunch, and then clock out for the end of the day.

I really wish this app was more efficient. It’s easier and quicker for me to get into my actual BANKING app than it is for this app.

Makers of this software, please, please, please do something about this.

I truly believe the new CEO of our company has some stocks in this app. It’s very confusing. It takes forever to log in at work. It takes forever to clock in or out. I don’t know how to use my Holliday pay. I can’t figure out how to put in person sick time. I am Not sure if I am actually getting paid for the work I do. The pay check comes to me up to 3 days late now. I don’t need all those different icons ... just let me see what hours I have to use, what I have used, and how I can apply my earned paid time off or vacation pay. I can’t fine any brake down my weekly checks? Did I get the extra money from open a CC? Or did I get cheated? Why didn’t the managers go through this as a new system update so we know how to work it? Very user UNFRIENDLY! Terrible system. I don’t know where to turn for help. HR? Labor Board? The ASM at my store made it very clear we could not ask questions about this at work unless we punched out of work day. I wish I could give this 0 starts! Terrible Terrible system!

This app is supposed to streamline my company’s time card submission and approvals and while it does work fine, it’s frustrating to use. Specifically, I have to log in every time I use the app. It used to work with FaceID until it stopped working and forced me to use a pin, which it kept saying was incorrect. I have had to uninstall and reinstall twice now to clear the “incorrect PIN” error.

Now, for some reason, it’s not even giving me the option to set up a PIN, nor prompting me to enter. This is really aggravating since it requires a lot of typing to enter my username and password every time. I may as well just use the browser instead. I noticed that there is an option to enable FaceID I’m the settings, but if I turn it on, it tells me i must have a PIN setup first and then logs me out. It never asked me to create one!

Again, super frustrating to use. Oh, and the “app support” link just takes you to their product sales page. How is that app support? Someone needs to fix the issues with this app.

With all of the variability of time type codes that my department utilizes and then limits set forth by the system or human resources, it is difficult for the employee to enter in accurate information so that they can subsequently review and submit their time accurately and according to the verbiage on the submit screen stating that the employee attests and agrees with the time that has been submitted. Examples are being on call without travel pay ( which used to be available to an employee), being able to clock in “on call” hours from start time to end time versus having to calculate the total number of hours that workday now requires (which also used to be available as of two January‘s ago and are used to be able to calculateThe hours out to the millionth place setting as the regular hours currently does ), and Holdover and critical bonus pay options to name a couple.For a system that requires you to do your time entries down to the minute, which rarely is an even amount, it is very non-user-friendly.

I don’t know the problem is but I’ve had it with this app. It worked fine for me for a couple of months and then somewhere it went to hell. I use it to clock in and out for work and a month ago it randomly (or so I thought) stopped recognizing my password. You can’t retrieve your pw and to change your pw you have to know your current password which I do but apparently the Workday app doesn’t agree. I couldn’t get in on the website either because it wouldn’t recognize my pw. A couple of days later IT was able to reset my password which I wrote down. Two weeks after that, same deal. PW randomly stops working on the ap and I can’t log in online either. After 2 more days of not being able to clock in or out of work IT gives me a new password again. I went to the Apple Ap store and looked up the version history for the app and compared it to my IT call log and yup, for the last two times when they’ve updated the version it somehow fubars my password or whatever madness it manages to do. I’m able to log in with my new password on the Workday website but not the app because it still won’t recognize my password.

When getting paid... you’d think more details are better, right? Knowing how and why you got paid.

Well.. this takes that concept so far that you aren’t sure what’s going on. Nearly every hour you work has some sort of line item that gives some sort of code that is totally irrelevant in language to what my actual job is.
Work an 8 hour day, doing the same thing for all 8 hours, and there’s a different code for EACH HOUR. And you better not work outside of 8:00-5:00 or else it will show your schedule incorrectly. How do you change that? No one knows.
And heaven forbid you work PAST midnight! Working into another day?! Well, you probably will just miss out on pay because Workday will think your times overlap somehow and just cancel your worked time. So you either manually go adjust it... or just don’t get paid.

Horrible and I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone. Unfortunately I work for a company that uses this system... so I’m stuck with it unless I leave my current job. Quitting my job almost seems worth it though in order to not miss out on pay and to spend 45 minutes every Monday fixing my schedule to try and make sure I get paid.

I was asked about doing a survey, answered a couple of questions. Not sure enough questions to get an accurate sense of whatever purpose the survey was intended. My two stars is due to, in my humble opinion, you have managers that maybe had previous job experience/success in convenience store work but does it translate to: good leadership, vision, and people skills? What if you wanted to build something “new” as far as convenience stores would it be beneficial to bring into your “new” vision, store or goals people that have let’s say your competitions “not new”: work ethic, vision, values, leadership or lack of? Wouldn’t you have to basically reprogram those who you were hiring from some of your competitors. Ask yourself why were they working for your competition and as a whole was your competition sorry to see them go? In a few years wouldn’t you basically be looking like what all the other convenience stores look like, unkept, don’t want to be there employees, non-inviting atmosphere, stressful vibe. Is it possible to make your place (company) a job employees want to go to rather than have to, is that possible. I guess like anything in life, the previously written would take work however it would exceed your expectations-from the cashier to the board room.

When our company announced that we were switching payroll services I was kind of excited. They announced this new app that had a lot of functionality for viewing pay, time off, etc. Big deal, right?
Well, um, no. As it turns out, this app is fraught with so many issues that I hate getting on it.
First of all the sign in is awful. I set up a pin to use instead of entering the password every time. Well, the pin never worked. Then I set up the pin to work with TouchID thinking that would make it better. Wrong again. It never accepts the pin and asks me to reset the pin every time I log on.
Second, please, please, PLEASE let me delete notifications when I don’t want them anymore! Seriously, the notifications icon has been something I ignore because I always have some message that I looked at before but still shows up as unread and then there are so many now it is ridiculous. Plus I get a notification every time my supervisor looks at my time or when my schedule changes or when I clock in or any number of other useless reasons. Stop with the notifications already!
Third, there is a little spot on one of the pages that gives me the information I need to log in on a web browser. I have copied that information word for word and still am not ever able to log in on a computer. Therefor, I now cannot print my pay stubs. Sometimes it’s very important to be able to do that, you know.
Bottom line. Get your act together! I hate this app and would rather just remain clueless about my work information than have to go to this app for anything.

I conduct child daycare during the day 5:00am - 5:30 pm and seem to be thinking a lot of the future during the evening. Having medical issues with family for the past 5 years and seems to be getting worse. But I’m assuming there will be a great release soon and our life will be much better.
We decided on me getting a second job at this time and Walmart was a light in the next months. After being hired by Darian, I have been loving my jobs, yes I work my day job then enter Walmart from 6:00pm to 11:00pm and work weekends also, I have kept my mind clear and in good thoughts. Walmart most definitely been a blessing to my family at this time, and I will preform up to my highest ability I can for Walmart.
Co-workers… well as in any job some are hates and try to get you down, I’ve no time for childish high school games. Others are blessing and become great friends.
Supervisors… they are great, Darian is wonderful at her job and as a person. Team leads, some are special then others, but they are always learning new things everyday and always sharing what they learn and how to make us better at conducting our job.
Main bosses…. I am just getting to learn who they are. I will stop him during the day and thank them, for the holiday meals they provided for their employees. (Yes, I am old school with respect). I have asked to speak to him and they will stop and speak to you. They will stop to give you thank you, when they notice your job performance.

So it’s been nice working at Walmart and most definitely I would recommend Walmart to anyone.

My company recently transitioned to workday and it had been a bumpy road in regards to helping everybody with getting access let alone assistance on how to use the app. Now I’m not entirely tech savvy but I know how to use an app and was doing actually great with all the details on workday. I actually really like the layout via website. The app however… it doesn’t give you the whole access like on their website and even then you have to know the right website link with logging in which I discovered on my own. That being said, the app will kick you out every few days if you’re not constantly logging in everyday which is entirely unnecessary and frustrating. Being 4 months in with this app, I check it every other Friday when I get paid or if I put sick days/vacation. Well recently, workday changed my original email given to me to my other work email without informing me of the change. I only realized this when I was struggling to log in. I was a little annoyed but decided not to worry as I at least have good enough memory to know my emails. Now, 3 days after the change of my email address, I have no access at all on the app. None of my emails work to get in! It’s ridiculous as I’ve not even done anything on my profile to permit this change. It’s so frustrating because majority of my coworkers(the older ones) will come up to me for guidance in the app and now this has been a problem for me?! How am I suppose to get access to my pay stubs, schedule, hours, vacation and tax information if workday keeps changing my email without telling me. It’s truly ridiculous, wish my company hadn’t chosen such a mess of an app that you can’t even access online properly either.

The program has potential, but for off-campus smartphone users line myself, it is quite cumbersome in its current format. In an effort nit to whine, but instead to present the problems with potential solutions, I submit the following:

Problem 1: Workday probably works ok on desktop, but having to sign in with complete email address and password is just over 50 key strokes, which all have to be exactly perfect. Unless you text like a 15 year-old, using a tiny keyboard on the phone comes with lots if errors.

Solution: access and utilize stored username and passwords. If thats nit felt to be secure enough, how about utilizing fingerprint ir facial recognition. Its not futuristic technology anymore, most smartphones already have it.

Problem 2: If time punches are forgotten or missed, there is no way to make a correction. This now requires I stop what I’m doing, again, and open the college emsil and write an email to my timekeeper to confess the error if my ways. Now she has to stop whatever other responsibilities she has, to log back into Workday (not sure how many keystrokes that is for her, but at least its on a proper keyboard) go in and make any adjustments, whike undoubtedly rolling her eyes in my direction.

Solution: allow the employee to simply enter their own times and make corrections. The time keeper and program director still have to review and approve all timecards anyway. Should this avenue not be utilized, how about adding a direct link in the payroll area of Workday, that immediately links to an open email to my timekeepers email address.

Problem 3: I work fir several departments at the college, each with their own time keeper. I just received an email from one if my directors asking if I had been paid fir a CE class I recently taught, which was separate from the medic program i usually teach for. Upon reviewing that week, I have no idea if I got paid for that, as there is no breakdown by department or reference numbers, only total hours for the week.

Solution: payroll summaries broken down like line items, not merely summary totals

Since I've spent a bit of time writing this, in hopes if improving it, i hope it gets read. A little feedback would be nice too, so I look forward to your rebuttal comments.

Respectfully submitted,

Malcolm

Completely rubbish application. Tried to log and had problems with password, so went down the route of forgotten password. It then asked for the 6 digit authentication number from the mobile authenticator app. Downloiaded the app and according to the instructions I could scan a QR code. But I can't get to the QR code. Tried to follow the FAQ's guides and it's as if it's relatinhg to a completely different application. No one to call, no one to chat to.Complete failure to provide a service. Only using this route because of my employer, otherwise I would have given up ages ago. Waste of my time...

Not the most user-friendly app and without notice, kicks you out under 30 days and tells you that you have to create a new password and/or pin. Very tedious to search for specific things on app and keeping track of your time/pay isn’t the easiest.

Workday appears to be designed by bureaucrats with no appreciable input by user interface designers. Too many clicks required to complete the most basic of tasks, lots of jargon that's incomprehensible to anyone, and a confusing interface to navigate.

I used to love this app, it made checking in and out so swift. All of a sudden this option disappeared without warning... why would you do that to the best feature of this app? Please bring this back, this app is virtually useless without this option.

I can get on the website just fine but the thing I need is on the app, can’t log in. Changed my password so many times but can’t get an email to change it from the app only the website. There’s no help line on the app and it’s not something my job can help fix.

Workday makes you change your password way too often. I’m all for security but the amount of times I’ve been forced to change my password for Workday is just outrageous. No use even trying to remember them because it’ll just need switched in a month again anyways.

Every couple of weeks I have to re enter my password and set up a new pin. For some reason, it’s connected to my log-in for my work computer and messes up all those passwords also. Not sure if this is an IT thing or what. Very frustrating, ADP didn’t have these issues.

I shouldn’t have to sign in every time I use the app on my iPhone. My phone is secure and signing in to the app every time is a waste of my time. Having to reset my pin, password and fingerprint access is also a waste of time. I don’t have to do that for banking apps.

Every couple of months this app crashes or signs people out or whatever it is doing to where they can no longer log in with their 4 digit passcode and have to reset everything. I’m not that familiar with this OKATA whatever but I DO NOT LIKE IT. It needs to stop logging people out of the system.

I recently installed Workday for my job. Can’t get it to work on my iPhone XR with the new IOS 13. Not sure if that’s the problem or it because my company uses 2 Factor authentication. Once I sign in to my company the screen is white when it’s supposed to allow me to choose the 2nd authentication.

Whatever the bug is that’s causing me not to be able to login through the app for my employer, find a way to fix it. It’s literally my first time trying it and, unfortunately, it’s already off to a terrible start. After I type in my organization, it doesn’t even take me to the Home Screen. It just keeps loading and loading and loading.

It’s hard to just navigate around. To do one simple task you have to click on tabs after tabs and if you click wrong you’ll have to start over. Theres no possible way to change my direct deposit or see my information on it. It would help if the search button searched more than just people and tasks. So frustrating I miss the old website.

I had it on my phone since I went to work for this company that uses this app. I used it everyday I worked to clock in and for lunch and clock out. I guess since y’all updated it it won’t let me use to clock in and out. It’s saying I have to be close to where I work I think and it still won’t let do it. Sorry but it’s useless to me now!

The expense report page is ridiculous. So not user friendly. You have no idea if you submitted a report or not. Can’t see all previous paid expenses… some are there, others disappear.

Please please fix it. It’s just terrible. Where are the developers who created this? Have they ever submitted an expense report?
It’s way too cumbersome. Needs a complete makeover.

This app has so much potential but stops just short. Horrible UX. For example, if you received feedback, the user is presented a five step process to get to the feedback page. A link to go to the feedback page would be so much better.

Also, on a cellular network, the app is so slow. I don't know what data is being sent, but it's sending way too much or making too many calls to the back end to retrieve data.

More than half the people at my company are no longer able to access workday via the app and are told we can only access it on a web browser. This is ver annoying an in inconvenient. You guys give us no way to contact you. Mine was working until the most recent update which I did today 12-16.
-19. Our HR rep says it’s an issue on your end. Can still access work day on safari but not the app itself. Please fix this issue.

ZERO STARS. I have never reviewed an app, but I feel the amount of frustration I have with workday is worth the time I’m going to put into doing this review. This is the worst app I’ve ever had to work with. Over half the time when I try to log on it gets “stuck” on the loading screen. Then it never gets passed that loading screen and lets me login, so over half the time I am not able to get on to do anything I need to do. How terrible that employers MAKE us use this app and then we cannot even depend on it to work when we need it.

what happened to the thumb scan login option ? after some update you guys did, the scanning thumb option just dissapeared and i dont remember my Username for this app... or my password either and theres no alternative way to login other than forgot password link? If this app doesnt answer the needs of employees to keep up with the world technology user-friendly accessibility then your company will enevitably FAIL and get replaced with another app sooner than realized.. please fix this its very inconvenient and frustrating when i need to schedule a day off or access my payslip and i cant login ..

Workday recently partnered up with Microsoft. First, I can no longer access the app as it says I need to use a browser on a desktop computer. What’s the point of a mobile app that doesn’t work? I can’t enter things when I’m away from my desk and it has to wait til the next time I’m in office. Second, when you’re using the desktop version, you are stopped 3 times before you actually reach the home page: one for your email, one for your password, and last a prompt to remember your password to save time. NO MATTER HOW MANY TIMES I CLICK “REMEMBER ME”, THE NEXT TIME THE ICON IS OPENED IT REPEATS ALL OVER AGAIN. I lose time every morning when I’m trying to clock in. Get rid of 3 prompts!