Approximately 75% of deskless workers spend the majority of their time at work using technology - but more than 60% report a lack of satisfaction or the need for improvement in the tech they currently use.
Your deskless workers need purpose-built solutions to enable them to do their jobs safely, efficiently, and satisfactorily. And Workday is no different.
If you’re using Workday in your organization, it’s time to utilize the Workday mobile app for your deskless workforce so they can carry out essential tasks wherever they’re working from, without the headaches.
The Workday mobile app is designed to give your deskless employees access to Workday’s most powerful features at their fingertips. Here are the top Workday mobile app benefits you need to know - plus examples of successful use cases to help you make the most of Workday mobile.
Follow along or skip ahead:
- What is the Workday mobile app
- 5 key features of the Workday mobile app for deskless workers
1. Time tracking
2. Expense reporting
3. Learning and development
4. Benefits enrollment
5. Employee management - 5 top Workday mobile app benefits - and why they matter
1. Minimize digital friction
2. Boost employee engagement and retention
3. Increase productivity on your frontline
4. Improve safety and compliance
5. Enable employee self service - How to use the Workday mobile app for maximum benefits
What is the Workday mobile app?
Serving over 65 million users worldwide, Workday is a leading HR solution that offers a one-stop-shop for workforce management. As one of the best-known human capital management software providers in the world, Workday is valued for its advanced data security, finance management, time tracking tools, and more.
But with more than 80% of the global workforce now deskless, Workday recognized the need for an intuitive, mobile-first solution to their desktop service for easier, more efficient employee management.
The outcome? Workday for Mobile.
The Workday mobile app gives frontline employees the flexibility and ease-of-use they need to do their jobs efficiently, without asking for help from managers or involving HR. Provide your deskless workers with all the top Workday features at their fingertips in the Workday mobile app - including time tracking, expense management, learning and development, and manager approval requests. Plus use Workday integrations to extend and enhance your employee HR solution.
Want to learn more? Here are the key features of the Workday mobile app - and the top 5 benefits you need to know about.
5 key features of the Workday mobile app for deskless teams
1. Time tracking
One of the top Workday features valued by organizations worldwide is their suite of time tracking tools. The Workday mobile app makes time tracking easy for deskless employees by combining all the most important time tracking features into one app for use on-the-go.
Workday’s comprehensive time tracking features allow workers to check-in and out from their mobile devices with real-time calculations and validations, while utilizing user location data. Admins and managers can benefit from bulk actions like automated mass approvals, editing, and exceptions too.
Here are more time tracking features to love:
- Voice-activated time-off requests (for when your workers have their hands full)
- Geofencing (to make sure employees are on-site and staying safe)
- Time accumulator (to instantly track the amount your employees have worked, without generating custom reports)
Time tracking with the Workday mobile app is intuitive, easy, and simplified. Give your deskless workforce a seamless way to log their hours - and make it easier for admins and managers to monitor employee hours and attendance.
2. Expense reporting
The Workday mobile app provides dedicated expense management tools to give your employees an easier way to log and submit expenses when they’re out and about.
Workday Expenses combines enterprise-grade functionality with a streamlined user experience, including mobile expense entry and approval and global receipt scanning using Workday AI - eliminating the need for employees to manually log and populate expense entries.
Other features include:
- Mobile receipt capture (snap a photo and go)
- International receipt scanning (say “au revoir” to arduous travel expense admin)
- Easy expense approval (to reduce delays for your team)
Managing and reporting expenses is simple with the Workday mobile app - for employees, admins, managers, and HR teams alike.
3. Learning and development
Onboarding and training deskless employees is one of the top challenges facing organizations today. Thankfully, the Workday mobile app includes built-in employee training software - including Workday Learning and additional microlearning integrations designed for deskless teams.
With the Workday mobile app, employees can learn in the flow of work, without needing to sit down at a desk or attend in-person training. That means minimal disruption or distraction from the work day - so learners can upskill on the job, without impacting productivity.
Learning takes place in the Workday mobile app, so employees benefit from flexible learning at the time-of-need, helping to increase efficiency and generate better outcomes for your business - including improving customer service, task execution, and safety and compliance.
Top features of Workday Learning in the mobile app include:
- Automated program assignment (based on role, location, and learner status)
- Personalized learning paths (for a more engaging experience)
- Notifications, app banners, Spotlight cards and more (so new training never gets missed)
The Workday mobile app is designed to make onboarding, training and upskilling easy for deskless employees, so they can learn on-the-job, minus the stress.
Related: How to train your frontline workers in Workday
4. Benefits enrollment
Workday provides organizations with a personalized benefits experience including intelligent tools to help employees make better decisions about their benefits. With the Workday mobile app employees can access all the benefits information they need in one place via the self-service benefits management portal.
Increase awareness of your company benefits program with personalized insights and communications in the Workday mobile app and empower employees to adjust and edit their benefits from their mobile devices.
Top features of Workday app benefits include:
- Review benefits options (always know what you’re entitled to and what’s changing)
- Compare costs (to help employees make informed decisions)
- Make changes to personal benefits plans (without input from HR)
5. Employee management
Stay up to speed with your employees’ activities, even when you’re not at your desk. Managers can use the Workday mobile app to view critical information about individual employees and teams as a whole at any time - including reviewing and editing information on performance management, compensation, calendar activities, and more.
With the Workday mobile app, remove barriers to efficiency by cutting the time it takes for employees to get approvals from managers - the Workday app offers easy, instant approvals, so employees don’t have to wait days to get your go-ahead. Take immediate actions relevant to your role and reduce the labor of daily admin tasks for your team.
Key features for managers include:
- Approve and reject requests (in just a few taps)
- Access dashboards and reports (to see all the information you need for every project)
- View individual and team profiles (so you know who you’re working with and where they fit in the organization)
Make informed data-driven decisions when managing your team. Whether you’re out of the office, at home or working on-site, the Workday mobile app puts the power in your hands to make employee management straightforward and simple.
These are some of the key features of the Workday mobile app - but how do they translate to the experience of individual employees, admins and managers? Here are the top 5 Workday mobile app benefits and how they impact your organization.
Prioritize employee health and wellbeing with in-built benefits management directly in the Workday mobile app, so your deskless workers can stay informed and take advantage of the benefits they need to feel better and perform better at work.
5 top Workday mobile app benefits - and why they matter
1. Minimize digital friction
As many as 43% of employees report spending an excessive amount of time switching between various digital tools - and people waste 59 minutes a day on average trying to locate the information they need to do their jobs.
All that wasted time impacts your organizations’ bottom line. Not to mention causing frustration among your employees. In fact, according to one report almost a third (29%) of workers blamed poor digital experiences for them wanting to quit.
That’s where the Workday mobile app comes in. All Workday tools can be accessed within the Workday app in just a few clicks using secure biometric authentication. That means no passwords, no lengthy log-in processes and no app switching. Your workers can access the tools they need instantly, so there’s no hold ups or interruptions to their flow.
Benefits for employees
Employees benefit from seamless, secure log-ins in the Workday mobile app to remove the pain of remembering passwords or app switching - whether you’re standing in the rain, in the middle of a task, or have a million and one things happening around you demanding your attention.
And if a device is ever lost or stolen, all employee data is secure thanks to automatic back-ups to the Workday cloud, so employees never lose access to essential information and project progress.
Benefits for admins and managers
Minimize digital friction for your team with quick and secure access to the Workday app and remove critical barriers to productivity - while limiting technology-fuelled frustration and dissatisfaction in your frontline teams. The result? A better experience for your employees and your customers.
2. Boost employee engagement and satisfaction
As many as 50% of frontline workers churn in the first 120 days at a new job. Why? Because it’s notoriously difficult to get new employees to buy into your business when they’re disconnected, disengaged and ultimately dissatisfied at work.
To reduce employee turnover rates, you need more ways to reach and engage your deskless workforce from day 1, no matter where they’re working from. The Workday mobile app is designed to hook your employees with user-friendly content including employee training, company updates, and an employee benefits portal that’s easily accessible at any time.
Benefits for employees
We all feel happier when we have technology that works. If you can provide your deskless workforce with an “all-in-one” app where they can access onboarding materials and training, as well as viewing and managing essential information like payslips, you remove one of the biggest headaches facing workers today - poor digital employee experience. Give your employees the tech they need to do their jobs efficiently to boost their satisfaction and sense of achievement at work.
Benefits for admins and managers
By providing your deskless workers with the technology they need at their fingertips, on the devices they use most, your teams feel more empowered, connected, and capable, helping to increase employee satisfaction. Happy and engaged employees mean better customer experiences, workplace efficiency, and ultimately more revenue for your organization.
3. Increase productivity on your frontline
In a 2021 survey of 1,500 workers, 62% of respondents agreed mobile devices played a key role in helping them be productive at work.
The Workday mobile app is designed to unlock productivity for your deskless workforce by bringing all essential HR and admin tasks into one app - and making organizing, executing, and documenting day-to-day activities intuitive and easy. Grant your employees the chance to spend less time on pen pushing and more time on what they’re being paid to do by providing the tools they need in the devices they use most.
Benefits for employees
The Workday mobile app offers an easy way for employees to manage tasks and activities on-the-go, without the need to be at a desk. They can view all their current work tasks in the Workday mobile app with embedded reports and dashboards to increase productivity every day, without interrupting the flow of work. That means they keep their head clear for completing essential tasks knowing they have mobile-led tools to back them up when they need them.
Benefits for admins and managers
Manage your teams more efficiently by creating a direct channel of communication with your deskless workforce. Utilize timely in-app notifications and alerts to engage employees and keep them up to date on key changes in your organization - including edits to compensation, working hours, benefits and more.
With the Workday mobile app, you can ensure your deskless employees stay informed and complete essential admin tasks on time so your organization is working at maximum efficiency.
4. Improve safety and compliance
Safety and compliance is a key priority for organizations but many lack the tools and technology to ensure that their deskless workforce is up-to-date on essential training - especially when regulations and protocols are continually changing.
The Workday mobile app aims to guarantee safety and compliance for deskless workers with a range of features - including built-in employee training to help keep your frontline informed on safety and compliance rules and attendance tracking software to make sure your employees are working within safe and legal limits.
Benefits for employees
Empower your employees to work more safely and efficiently with timely training in the Workday mobile app. Integrated learning content allows your employees to complete training wherever they’re working from to ensure they’re equipped with the knowledge they need to work safely and within compliance guidelines. Training content is always close-at-hand so employees can upskill on-the-go to build safer workplaces for everyone.
Benefits for admins and managers
Track your deskless employees’ time and attendance in the Workday mobile app to guarantee that they’re working within legal limits and adhering to safety and compliance guidelines. Built-in geofencing technology also ensures that employees can only check-in and check-out when their location corresponds with their work site. Don’t leave employee safety and compliance up to chance - use the Workday mobile app to make sure you always stay on top of what’s happening with your teams on the ground.
5. Enable employee self-service
With the Workday mobile app, employees can complete tasks independently - without input from managers and HR teams. Employee self-service has been shown to reduce the time spent on employee inquiries related to pay and benefits by as much as 50% and increase employee engagement by 25%.
Benefits for employees
Empower and engage employees by giving them the opportunity to access and manage key admin tasks independently and in their own time, with minimal input from management. This helps employees to feel more in control, helping to boost satisfaction and improve employee loyalty.
Benefits for admins and managers
Employee self-service removes the need for your HR managers and admin teams to manually deal with numerous tasks that your employees can complete on their own. The result? You give back much-needed time to your HR teams by eliminating a range of administrative tasks, so they can focus on employee engagement and more impactful initiatives instead.
Employee self-service comes with significant cost benefits too - according to one study, organizations that implemented employee self-service saw 23% reduction in costs associated with HR-related tasks.
How to use Workday mobile app for maximum benefits
Example 1: Implementing employee self-service
The Workday mobile app allows employees to take control of daily admin tasks and requests, including requesting time off, accessing pay information, and updating contact information. And all requests can be approved in just a few taps by managers and admins.
Target utilized Workday’s HR solutions and the Workday mobile app to implement employee self-service solutions across 1800+ stores in the US to allow their 350,000+ team members manage key HR processes on their own. Workday notification prompts also allowed efficient communication throughout the organization between admins, managers and frontline workers, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic. The result? More informed and engaged employees, even during challenging times.
The usability of Workday - especially in its mobile capabilities - continues to pay off in how our team members get information and how we engage with job applicants.
- Dana Klein, Director of Technology at Target
Example 2: Training frontline teams in the flow of work
For frontline workers, the Workday mobile app offers an engaging, simplified way to learn and train on the job and in the flow of work. Organizations can benefit from the eduMe Workday microlearning integration with highly interactive short-form training content embedded in a ‘worklet’ in the Workday app, so frontline employee training becomes pain free and personalized.
Leading US retail chain Pet Supermarket partnered with eduMe to provide microlearning content to their frontline in the Workday mobile app. Using QR codes placed at relevant points in-store, training was made instantly available to retail staff just a scan away. With no app switching or downloads required.
Thanks to the engaging, impactful content delivered directly in the Workday mobile app, Pet Supermarket saw a 79% average completion rate, 2 minute average course completion time and a 98% workforce satisfaction rate.
Take advantage of the Workday mobile app for your organization
You don’t need us to tell you managing a deskless workforce is hard. If you have frontline workers, you’ll know how many barriers there are to simple but essential admin and HR tasks. From time tracking to expense management and everything in between, organizations face an uphill battle to try to keep track of, engage, and upskill their deskless workers.
The solution? Meet your workers where they are, not where you hope they’ll be at some point. The Workday mobile app is designed to make Workday’s top HR and finance tools accessible for everyone, including your deskless employees.
And now the eduMe Workday integration makes onboarding and training your frontline workforce easier too with social-media style microlearning content that your employees actually want to complete, including “TikTok-style” guides, scenario-based activities, and a Knowledge Hub to keep all your training content in one place. 
Empower your deskless workforce with the right technology to learn better, perform better, and be better at work.
Want to see how the integration works? Book a slot with the team for a personalized demo 👇
