Workday 2025 R2 Top Features: Your Ultimate Checklist for a Smooth,
Stress-Free Transition

With major enhancements delivered twice a year, staying ahead of Workday releases is essential for optimizing your investment and maintaining a competitive advantage.

Workday releases aren’t just routine system updates; they are strategic opportunities

• Driving innovation
• Accelerating growth.

And this can be seen in the upcoming Workday 2025 Release 2 (R2), which promises to introduce significant enhancements across the platform.

While exciting, these enhancements also pose a challenge for most organizations. Managing the release process from impact analysis and testing to configuration and deployment can be a complex and resource-intensive task.

Our team of Workday experts at Jade Global understands these challenges and is here to help you navigate the Workday release 2025 R2 with confidence, by offering Workday release management services .

The Challenge of Self-Managing Workday Releases

Most organizations try to manage Workday updates in-house and soon discover they are spread too thin. The twice-a-year releases, particularly Release 2, scheduled for go-live on September 20, 2025 require a significant amount of time, effort, and skill. The five-week preview window that starts on August 16, 2025 is a critical window for:

• Impact Analysis: Assessing how new functionalities and updates may influence your current business processes, integrations, and reports.
• Regression Testing: Ensuring that all of your current configurations and custom workflows continue to function as expected after the update.
• Feature Adoption: Evaluating the hundreds of new features and deciding which ones to enable to drive value for your organization.
• Change Management: Communicating changes to users and providing the necessary training to ensure a smooth transition.

Lacking a clear and proactive strategy, organizations may face a rough ride, potential system disruptions, and lost opportunities to capitalize on the platform's latest innovations.

A Look Ahead: Workday 2025 R2's Key Enhancements

Workday upgrades in 2025 R2 are poised to deliver a suite of new features focused on enhancing user productivity, expanding workforce management, and streamlining financial processes.

AI and Machine Learning at the Core

Workday continues to incorporate AI into the platform to improve efficiency and smart decision-making. Major Workday AI features in 2025 R2 are:

• Machine Learning for Job Profiles: Workday uses machine learning to help you identify similar job profiles while you create or edit a job profile. This feature scans your existing job architecture to find potential duplicates of the job profile you're working on.
• Generative AI for Feedback: Workday now utilizes Google Vertex AI to help employees provide more effective feedback using the Situation-Behavior-Impact (SBI) framework. This makes writing feedback easier, faster, and more structured, resulting in clearer, more actionable responses that enhance communication and overall performance.

User Experience and Productivity Enhancements

The R2 release focuses on making the platform more intuitive and efficient for all users:

• Quick Actions on Workday Home: Users can now create up to 10 custom shortcuts for reports, tasks, or external links, boosting efficiency and personalization.
• Configurable Hub Navigation: This feature provides a more intuitive and user-friendly interface, enabling a better authoring experience and a cleaner layout.
• Workday Assistant for Adaptive Planning: The Workday Assistant is an AI tool that lets you use simple language to work with Adaptive Planning. It helps you get quick answers, useful suggestions, and guidance for tasks like making forecasts or setting up calendars, making planning faster, easier, and more accessible for everyone.

Workforce Management Enhancements

The release brings a number of key updates to support a modern, flexible workforce:

• Flex Teams for Contingent Workers: Organizations can now integrate contingent workers into their internal gig marketplace, expanding collaboration and flexibility.
• Multiple Jobs for Contingent Workers: This feature simplifies scheduling and time tracking for the extended workforce, reducing manual complexity.
• Absence Calendar Improvements: Employees can now submit multiple time-off entries on a single day with a single request.

A Focus on Financial Management Efficiency

For finance professionals, Workday 2025 R2 provides tools to improve efficiency, streamline processes, and enhance financial control:

• Automatic Intercompany Matching/Unmatching: Workday now automatically matches most intercompany journal lines posted to the Actuals ledger, reducing the need for manual matching, speeding up reconciliation, and improving accuracy. New “Intercompany: Automatic” reporting options make it easier to track these matches, though some journal types, such as payroll and certain reversals, still require manual matching.
• Skill Assessments as a Skill Level Source: Workday now includes skill assessments as a source for calculating worker skill levels, showing the latest assessment rating, assessor details, and how it impacts the overall rating. This update gives talent administrators more flexibility in calculations, improves visibility for workers, managers, and HR, and adds reporting fields for detailed insights into individual skill ratings—enhancing accuracy and confidence in skill data.

Partner with Jade Global for a Flawless Workday 2025 R2 Rollout

Getting ready for a Workday release doesn’t need to be overwhelming. Our seasoned Workday specialists seamlessly integrate with your team, delivering full-spectrum release management support, from planning to execution, and helping you with seamless Workday release management.

As a Workday AMS partner, we offer a complete service package that covers every stage of the release lifecycle, including

By partnering with Jade Global, you can transform the Workday 2025 R2 release from a burden into a powerful lever for business success. Our proven methodology ensures a smooth, stress-free transition, allowing you to focus on what matters most; running and growing your business.