- In today’s CEO Daily: Diane Brady talks to Workday CEO Carl Eschenbach about fear of AI in the workplace.
- The big story: CEOs are secretly angry at the Trump administration.
- The markets: Broadly up.
- Plus: All the news and watercooler chat from Fortune.
Good morning. Workday CEO Carl Eschenbach knows his employees fear AI. About half of U.S. workers (and many CEOs) do. Never mind that the cloud software company’s headcount has stayed steady at roughly 19,500 over the past year as it has pushed to become known as “the enterprise AI platform for managing people, money and agents.” As he told me this week at the Workday Rising customer event in San Francisco: “They think their jobs are going away.”
What sparked a “massive sentiment change” within his company is a new approach to training. Along with communicating that AI is a priority and a plus, Eschenbach greenlit an “everyday AI” training program about six months ago that forced everyone on staff to confront their fears. “At the end of it, each of our employees had to write down their own AI training roadmap,” he said. “So now every manager has a roadmap and an AI plan for every employee to make sure they’re embracing it and they’re learning about it and they’re leveraging it.”
Surveys following that exercise showed higher levels of trust and engagement around AI, which points to a simple lesson for leaders: “We need to embrace the technology and make sure our employees know it’s safe. It’s safe to lean in, it’s safe to engage and it is what’s going to drive a massive change for them in their careers if they embrace it.”
“It’s all about making sure the human remains in the center of everything we’re doing, that AI is just a technology,” said Eschenbach, who is also rolling out new AI agents and developer tools for customers. “We’re not talking about that enough: that this is about how to change your career. It’s about how to go work on things that you’re excited about, as opposed to doing mundane tasks. This is all about opportunity. Employees today believe they’re competing against AI. They’re not. They’re competing against their peers who are using AI.”
Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at diane.brady@fortune.com
