Workday Peakon

Workday Peakon Employee Voice runs scheduled, benchmarked surveys, reaches staff without email and gives managers next steps. It links natively with Workday HCM. Limits include a fixed 0 to 10 format, AI training on customer content and two routes back to a name. Workday’s price list assumes three years and your whole workforce.

By Ashish Manchanda Published 28 Oct 2026 Last updated 28 Oct 2026

Peakon sets the survey method, and its price list assumes three years

In one line

Peakon is Workday’s listening product. It repeats surveys on a schedule, compares scores with a large benchmark set and summarises comments with AI.

Buy it if

You want surveys that repeat on a schedule you choose. You want scores compared with other employers on four question sets. You can work within Workday’s terms for the full term.

Do not buy it if

You need multiple choice questions. You cannot accept customer content training Workday’s AI. Check first what the documentation lets you manage.

Price

£14.58 to £50.10 a user a year on G-Cloud 14. Workday’s price list assumes a three-year term and your whole current workforce. Training and deployment cost extra.

Peakon runs recurring surveys, then gives managers AI help to act

Peakon is Workday’s product for listening to employees. Workday completed its purchase of Peakon ApS on 9 March 2021. Peakon keeps asking on a schedule. You pick how often, and the choices are weekly, monthly, quarterly or yearly. You can run several schedules and aim each at a group, such as a pulse for one group. Onboarding and exit surveys have their own schedules. In recurring surveys, an extreme score of zero or 10 triggers a follow-up question, if the question set has one.

Peakon compares your scores with other employers, but only for some questions. It offers nine question sets, and four support industry benchmarks. They are Engagement, Health and wellbeing, Diversity and inclusion, and Transformation and change. You can add your own questions. The benchmark set holds over 1 billion data points. Industry benchmarks update twice a year from the last 12 months. You cannot pick specific companies or countries to benchmark against. The onboarding and exit question sets have no external benchmarks.

Peakon reports by group, so it needs your people records before the first survey. Those records hold details such as tenure, department, job title, location and email address. Each employee needs a unique identifier and a way to receive the survey digitally. Text message notifications come at no additional cost. Customer Care enables the text message add-on if its tab is missing. Under Peakon’s Product Terms, the outside supplier that delivers text messages is a separate data controller of staff phone numbers.

Peakon’s AI works on comments, and mostly on English ones. Managers see summaries only from comments they have access to, as the administrator sets. AI Comment Summarization writes short summaries of large sets of comments, once 10 or more are available. At the end of a round, Peakon generates three summaries from new English comments that include scores. The summaries are in English, unless AI Comment Translations is used. AI Topics groups comments by meaning and gives each topic a title, a summary and a sentiment label. A segment qualifies for AI Topics only when it meets the visibility rules. It also needs participation over 25%. At least 30% of its employees must be in the round. AI Translations puts every comment into the reader’s language, with Google as an outside processor.

Some of Peakon’s AI needs a switch that your administrator controls. The Talent Sentiment Agent lets managers with a permission chat about why it gave an insight. An administrator must switch on outside data processing for the agent. The agent permission is on by default for Administrators and off for managers. Sensitive-comment monitoring flags a comment that contains a word from a watch list, and the match ignores context. Some features come only through early access programmes. Ask Workday which features in your order are generally available.

Peakon fits most closely inside Workday, and it also runs without Workday. It syncs worker data, organisation structures and demographic attributes from Workday HCM. It also syncs employee records from BambooHR, HiBob, Personio and Okta, or from an Excel upload. Single sign-on is supported. Workday suggests setting up Peakon with Workday Professional Services or a Certified Partner. Workday puts deployment at a matter of weeks.

Our guide to employee engagement software covers how the rest of this market handles these choices.

Reach, small-group settings and next steps for managers

Staff without email can answer

Kiosk mode serves employees with no email address on their record. Other channels are email, text message, Slack, Microsoft Teams and the mobile app. Workday suggests a QR code that links to the kiosk survey. For staff who do not use work email, Workday suggests text message or kiosk. For kiosk surveys, Workday advises talking to unions early where this applies.

Settings help stop guessing who commented

Peakon hides one of two heavily overlapping groups. That stops anyone finding a small group by elimination. Workday warns that switching this off raises the risk of identifying individual scores or comments. Peakon also shuffles comments, so those from one submission do not appear together on a manager’s view. Workday recommends switching off real-time comment access for managers of small groups.

Managers get a next step

After a round closes, Peakon suggests focus areas from each team’s results. Managers can accept them or set their own. Leaders can build improvement plans from their scores and share the actions with their teams. Workday reports that suggested actions improve sentiment twice as well as leader-set actions.

Named customers run from over 500 employees to over 41,000

Named Peakon customers vary widely in size. EDF Renewables UK and Ireland has over 500 employees. SoftServe has around 11,000. Sandvik has over 41,000. The cards below group customers by the situation they describe.

Teams that work away from a desk

WASH has 1,400 employees. It reports that 75 percent of its people are field technicians who start and end their day at home. WASH reports a 71% survey response rate.

Workforces spread across countries

BCD Travel has over 13,000 employees in 90 countries. Just Eat Takeaway.com has more than 10,000 corporate staff and over 26,000 couriers. Peakon surveys run in over 60 languages.

Employers that run Workday HCM

Peakon natively connects live sentiment with Workday HCM data. Joint customers send survey links to workers through People Experience cards. The Manager Insights Hub in Workday carries Peakon cards for managers. Peakon can also run as a standalone service.

Managers who act on comments

Sandvik has over 41,000 employees. In its first nine months, Sandvik reports 78,000 comments acknowledged by managers, 23,000 replies and over 1,000 actions created.

The answer format, AI training, who can see a name, attrition risk and hosting region

Five limits decide whether Peakon fits. They are the survey format, what happens to your content and who can attach a name to an answer. The other two are attrition prediction and where your data sits.

A fixed answer format

Peakon supports one answer scale, 0 to 10, and no multiple choice questions. Comments cannot be switched off on questions. Custom questions are capped at 5 for each standard driver or subdriver, the topic areas Peakon scores. In the Company questions set, the cap is 15 per driver. Peakon’s help centre counts one-off surveys as a limit of its methodology. Elsewhere, Peakon’s help centre lets customers launch as many surveys as they need, including a one-time survey. Accounts created from 31 March 2026 use the flexible listening question model by default. Eligible customers can upgrade themselves. Ask Workday whether these limits hold under the new model.

AI training on your content

Under Peakon’s Product Terms, customer content is used to train and improve Workday’s AI. That covers AI and analytics features for this product line. The customer can manage that use as set out in the documentation. Workday never shares customer data to train third-party public models. Under Workday’s release notes, AI Comment Summarization and AI Translations are switched on automatically. Customers can opt out in Data Control. The Product Terms tell customers that AI features may give new and untested results. The customer must assess suitability before users get access.

Confidential answers, and two routes to identity

Peakon treats all survey responses as confidential. This protects employee identity. Its Employee Guide tells employees that nobody in the organisation can see who gave an answer. It also tells them that responses are always aggregated, whatever the team size. The employer does not usually get identifiable information. That changes if the employer enables the Data Export API or requests an identity reveal. Survey Answer Export carries identifying email addresses or employee IDs. All customers can get it on request. An identity reveal goes through a customer case. Workday shares the identity with the customer’s Named Support Contact, and the decision stays with the customer. Workday’s messaging platform deletes the identity data on its own after 10 days. Workday advises telling employees how comment confidentiality is set. Then they can decide for themselves.

Attrition risk starts with each employee

Attrition Prediction works out the risk of leaving for each employee first. It then averages by segment, and the heat map reports risk by segment. Workday builds the heat map to protect each employee’s identity. Risk levels show the predicted chance of an employee leaving within the next 6 months. A top-25% risk level does not mean a 25% chance of an employee leaving. Workday’s retention message is that the product can show who is at risk of leaving. Administrators see the heat map, and they can enable it for other groups with the Attrition prediction permission. Workday tells customers to consult legal counsel on their segment set-up. The advice covers whether the risk by segment meets their compliance requirements. Customers are responsible for the legal duties of using the model. These include assessment, testing or documentation under anti-discrimination laws.

Where your data sits

Peakon hosts each customer account in either the US or the EEA. Customers can confirm the location with their Customer Success Manager. Peakon’s help centre has new customers choosing a US or EU region during onboarding. Transfer between regions is not supported. A 2026 release note, labelled Coming Soon, adds a UK-based hosting region. Peakon’s G-Cloud 14 listing answers No to user control over data storage and processing locations. It gives the locations as the United Kingdom, the EEA and other locations. Some Peakon features may require data to be processed outside the EEA, UK or US.

A three-year price list, extras sold apart and a retrieval period on request

Workday’s price list is built around a long term and your whole workforce. It is based on a three-year subscription term and on the whole current employee population for the whole term. Extra employees are added at an extra per-headcount cost set in the order form. Workday notes that the price list is for guidance only and is not meant to be attached to the contract.

Workday sets per-employee prices in pounds a year by headcount band, starting at 600 employees. G-Cloud 14 is the UK government’s buying catalogue, and the range there is £14.58 to £50.10 a user a year. Employees with the survey inclusion checkbox selected count toward the company’s employee licence limit. On G-Cloud 14, Workday answers No to a free trial and Yes to a discount for educational organisations.

Several items sit outside the subscription fee. It does not include education, training or deployment services. It also leaves out additional tenants or instances, meaning extra separate copies of the product. A custom data retention add-on is needed to set a retention period shorter than 5 years. Renaming question sets and drivers needs an add-on. A Workday consultant or representative enables it. A Customer Audit Program for highly regulated customers costs £246 per hour.

AI agents add a usage cost to that list. Workday AI agents, including the Talent Sentiment Agent, use Flex Credits. Flex Credits charge for work the AI completes, not the number of employees. Workday tells customers to manage spend by choosing which users and segments have access. Customers can start with Complimentary Flex Credits to explore agents in production and test most agents for free outside production.

Which Workday agreement your order sits under decides the contract terms. The price list assumes a Master Subscription Agreement, a Security Exhibit, a Data Processing Exhibit and order forms. Workday-built agents need the Universal Main Subscription Agreement. A customer on the Main Service Agreement must opt in to it and enable the agent through Innovation Services.

Under the Universal Main Subscription Agreement, order forms are non-cancellable. Payments are non-refundable. The exceptions are termination or refund under the indemnification and termination clauses. Fees are due within 30 days of the invoice date. Either party can end the agreement on 30 days’ notice for an uncured material breach. A transition period follows termination. In it, monthly fees are 1/12 of the previous 12-month fee plus an extra five percent.

Two more terms decide what you can claim and how fast service returns. Under that agreement, each party’s liability is capped at fees paid or payable in the last 12 months. The limit rises to 24 months for breach of confidentiality, security or privacy obligations. G-Cloud 14 gives Peakon’s availability commitment as 99.9% for a calendar month. After a major failure, Peakon aims to restore service within 72 hours. It aims to lose no more than 12 hours of data. Support is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, by phone.

What you can take with you depends on what you switched on while you were a customer. Survey Answer Export covers only answers received after it is enabled. Comment export to Excel leaves out acknowledgments and conversations. Results can also export to Microsoft PowerPoint. Under the Universal Main Subscription Agreement, you can ask in writing for a retrieval period of up to 60 days. That period costs nothing extra. Content comes in a machine-readable format, as set out in the documentation. Workday recommends exporting your results screens before deletion.

The standard retention period for Peakon data is 5 years. The minimum is 2 years. Comments are deleted 5 years after submission. If an organisation stops using Peakon, data is deleted or de-identified. That happens no later than 6 months after the service period ends.

You could also run survey steps with agents built on your own systems. We have mapped what that looks like. The HR Agent Map

Eleven questions for the demo

Which AI features switch on by themselves for us, and who can turn each one off? Good answer: A written list of AI features, their defaults and the Data Control setting for each.
Can the order form limit how Workday uses our comments to train its AI? Good answer: A clause that names what is excluded, including content already held.
Which hosting region will hold our data, and can we move later? Good answer: A named region in the order form and a written route for moving.
What is the full price across the term for our headcount, with every add-on? Good answer: One figure for licences, training, deployment and any shorter retention.
Does the three-year term in your price list apply to us, and can we start with part of our workforce? Good answer: The term and headcount basis written into the order form.
Who approves a Survey Answer Export or an identity reveal, and how do staff hear of it? Good answer: Named approvers on our side, and a note to staff before it is switched on.
Will our order sit under the Universal Main Subscription Agreement or another agreement? Good answer: The agreement named in the order form, with its termination and retrieval terms.
Do we get the flexible listening question model, and do the 0 to 10 limits still hold under it? Good answer: A written answer for our account, tested in the demo.
Does our planned survey fit the 0 to 10 scale, and can we run it once? Good answer: A live test of our own questions in the demo, run once.
What would the Talent Sentiment Agent cost us each month in Flex Credits? Good answer: A price per use and a spending cap.
How do we take our data out when the contract ends, and in what format? Good answer: Machine-readable files, comments and replies included, with dates in the contract.

Alternatives to Workday Peakon, including buying nothing

If Peakon comes off your shortlist, three products each answer a different point where it stops. They are Leapsome, Windmill and Effectory. Buying nothing is a fourth route.

Look at Leapsome if the fixed answer format is the problem. Its custom questions can be open text, multiple choice, scaled statements or combinations. Scales run 0 to 10 or 0 to 5. Surveys can recur from weekly to yearly, or run once. There is no benchmark or NPS for a 5-point scale in Leapsome, so check which scale you would use.

Look at Windmill if counting your whole workforce is the problem. Peakon’s price list is based on the whole current employee population. Windmill bills on the seats you have set up. Inviting an employee counts as a seat even before they log in. The standard plan includes 10 free seats, and some plans include a different number. Windmill runs pulse surveys, which are regular check-ins on team sentiment, engagement and wellbeing.

Windmill bills monthly at the start of the period, and its fees are non-refundable. Its terms auto-renew for terms equal to the plan. They need 30 days’ notice before the end of the term to stop renewal. Ask Windmill how long its plan term is.

Look at Effectory if the use of your content to train AI is the problem. Effectory never uses customer data to train its AI models or those of its suppliers. Ask both vendors for their AI clause in writing before you compare.

Buying nothing avoids a price list built on three years. It avoids non-cancellable order forms under Workday’s Universal Main Subscription Agreement. It also avoids a fee that counts your whole current workforce. It avoids the legal obligations Workday leaves with customers who use its attrition model. You give up recurring schedules aimed at groups, follow-up questions after extreme scores and AI summaries of comments. If you run Workday HCM, you also give up the native link between sentiment and your HR data.

If your HR system already includes a survey, our guide for HR system owners covers that route.

More in this guide

The Employee engagement guide
Compare the 40 researched products how each asks staff, who sees the answers, what it costs and the contract terms.
Mid-market companies which engagement products suit 200 to 2,000 people, what they cost and what to ask.
Enterprise companies which engagement products suit 2,000 people or more, what they cost, how contracts run and what to ask.
Companies whose HR or performance system already runs surveys what the survey part of an HR or performance system covers, what it costs and what else exists.