Workday performance reviews

Workday performance reviews are one part of Workday Talent Management, a larger HR system. They run review rounds, self-evaluations, ratings and rating meetings. Sana Coach, Workday’s AI assistant, is in early access. Its Performance Review skill drafts reviews for managers and workers. Workday sells a multi-year agreement and does not offer a right to end it early without giving a reason.

By Ashish Manchanda Published 16 Oct 2026 Last updated 16 Oct 2026

Workday performance reviews sit inside a larger HR system

In one line

Workday performance reviews are one part of Workday’s HR system. Its new AI assistant, Sana Coach, is in early access.

Buy it if

You want reviews, rating meetings and pay links in one HR system. You can commit to a multi-year contract.

Do not buy it if

You need to leave early without giving a reason. You need an AI assistant that is past early access.

Price

Ask Workday what performance reviews cost. Its AI agents run on Flex Credits. Flex Credits charge for the work the AI completes, not the number of employees.

What Workday performance reviews do in a review round

Workday’s performance reviews give feedback on how people work and help with coaching and development. The reviews sit inside Workday Talent Management. Talent Management puts hiring, onboarding, learning, performance and internal moves on one platform.

Workers can evaluate themselves as part of a review, and their manager completes an evaluation too. Up to two more managers can add comments. Further reviewers can comment only on the Competencies section. Competencies are the skills and behaviours a role calls for. Workday does not show the main manager’s comments to additional managers in the Additional Manager Evaluations report.

An administrator sets who can start a review. The choices are workers, managers or HR partners. Reviews can also run at any time outside the scheduled review period. Workers can add goals when the review includes a Goals section.

Review templates can require fields and weight items and sections. They can include a rating for each item and a calculated rating. Ratings use Workday’s rating scales or your own. Those scales can be linked to calibration, compensation or succession. Succession means planning who could take over key roles. A template cannot be changed once reviews using it are under way. Workday advises copying it before launch.

Workday supports performance calibration and talent calibration. Calibration is a meeting where leaders compare ratings and change them. You can set up reviews with calibration. This supports calibrated ratings across the organisation. Reviews can also be connected to compensation.

You choose what workers see and when. One option, View Only On Completed Review, holds back review data. Workers then see it only after the period end date and completion of the process. For workers with positions in several countries, a review can go to the home-country manager or the host-country manager.

Sana Coach is Workday’s coaching tool for employees and managers. It is in early access. It coordinates the performance process. Workday completed its acquisition of Sana on 4 November 2025.

Sana Coach’s Performance Review skill drafts first versions of reviews for workers and managers. Drafts can use Workday data, documents you upload and data from supported outside tools. Drafting goals and check-in recaps is Coming Soon. Check-ins are short progress updates between reviews.

Sana Coach’s Feedback skill turns a spoken or written feedback interview into a themed report. The report keeps the people who gave feedback anonymous. Sana Coach also connects to Workday Peakon Employee Voice, Workday’s employee listening product. It turns employee sentiment into insight for leaders.

What Workday does well

A manager approves every Sana Coach draft before it goes anywhere

Sana Coach keeps every draft in the manager’s hands. The manager reviews it, edits it and approves it before it is shared or finalised. Workday’s AI practices hold that AI features should let humans make the final call on critical decisions. Sana can also ask a person to check or approve a sensitive step before anything changes.

Workday publishes fact sheets for its AI features

Each AI Fact Sheet covers what goes into a feature and what comes out. It also covers limits, testing, privacy, ethics and bias. Under Workday’s terms, Workday will make AI Fact Sheets available to you. Its responsible AI programme is certified to ISO/IEC 42001. That is a standard for managing AI. An outside party also attests that the programme aligns with the AI Risk Management Framework. That framework is a US guide to AI risk.

Workday never shares customer data to train third-party public AI models

It excludes sensitive attributes from AI scoring inputs. It sorts AI uses into tiers. One factor is whether a use can make predictions about a worker or put a worker in a group. It checks laws such as the EU AI Act and Colorado’s AI Act against its responsible AI programme.

An agent stays off until an administrator turns it on

Each agent is switched off by default. An administrator must turn the agent on before anyone can use it.

Life Fitness moved from 29% to 78% of employees in the process

Life Fitness has 3,500 employees. The share using the process rose after the new system started. It moved from a once-a-year process focused on ratings to a process of continuous feedback in cycles.

Workday’s AI assistant is in early access and its contract is long

Two things matter most before you sign. The AI assistant is new, and the contract is long. The fees, Service Credits, liability cap and exit periods on this page are from Workday’s terms for the Americas. Ask for the terms that apply where you operate.

Sana Coach is in early access, and one part is Coming Soon

Its capabilities cover performance reviews, feedback and employee sentiment. Goals and Check-Ins is Coming Soon.

Order forms are non-cancellable and payments are non-refundable

An order form is the signed document that sets what you buy. Under Workday’s terms, order forms are non-cancellable. Payments are non-refundable except under the indemnification clause or the term-and-termination clause.

Workday does not offer termination for convenience

Termination for convenience is the right to end a contract early without giving a reason. A multi-year agreement is a fundamental element of Workday’s model. Both sides are committed to it during the order term. Suppose you end the contract for any reason other than a serious breach by Workday. The breach counts only if Workday has not fixed it. You still owe all future amounts due under every order form.

Fees, late charges and the liability cap

Fees are due within 30 days of the invoice date. Workday may charge late charges of 1% of the outstanding balance per month on overdue payments. The liability cap is the most either side must pay for a claim. Each side’s total liability is capped at the fees for the service behind the claim. The fees counted are those paid or payable in the past 12 months.

Service Credits start at the second failure

For applicable applications, Workday keeps a policy on how often the service is available. Under Workday’s terms, a first failure to meet the monthly service commitment earns no Service Credit. A second, third and fourth failure earn Service Credits of 10%, 20% and 30%. The failures count within a rolling six-month period.

Ask for a price and read the exit terms before you sign

Ask Workday what performance reviews cost. Ask what Talent Management as a whole costs. Get both figures in writing, with the contract length.

Workday sells its AI agents through Flex Credits. Flex Credits are a pay-as-you-go model. They charge for the work the AI completes, not for the number of employees. Each capability uses Flex Credits from a rate card, which is a price list. Workday’s example is 1 Flex Credit and 5 Flex Credits per action for the Self-Service Agent.

Customers can turn capabilities on or off and redirect Flex Credits. Workday offers Complimentary Flex Credits each year, based on company size. They let customers try agents in live use. Most agents can be tested for free in a test environment.

You can download your content at any time during the subscription term. Ask in writing before the contract ends. Workday then gives up to 60 days of limited access at no cost to retrieve your content. Your content is made available in a format a computer can read, as described in Workday’s documentation.

You can also ask in writing for a one-time transition period of up to three months after termination. Monthly fees in that period are 1/12 of the preceding 12-month fee plus five percent.

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

Ten questions to ask Workday

Which parts of Sana Coach can we buy today, and which are early access or Coming Soon? Good answer: A dated list, with a release date for the Goals and Check-Ins part.
What do performance reviews and Talent Management cost for our headcount? Good answer: A written price per employee for each year, with the contract length.
Can we stop paying for performance reviews early if they do not suit us? Good answer: A written right to end that part alone, with a refund for unused months.
What does each Sana Coach action cost in Flex Credits, and how many Complimentary Flex Credits do we get? Good answer: A rate card for every action we plan to use and a written yearly Flex Credits figure.
Which service level applies to the performance reviews, and what Service Credit do we get if it fails? Good answer: A written monthly availability figure for our reviews and a Service Credit table.
Mobley v. Workday, Inc. is a US federal court case in California, filed in February 2023. Does it concern any product we would buy? Good answer: A written answer from Workday’s legal team on whether performance reviews are covered.
Can we see the AI Fact Sheet for each Sana Coach feature before we sign? Good answer: One sheet for every feature we plan to switch on, with its limits and bias testing.
Which version of the terms applies in our country? Good answer: The terms for our region, with the same Service Credits and liability cap or better.
How do we export all review history when the contract ends? Good answer: The file type, the fields it holds and a trial export of our own data before we sign.
Who on our side can switch an agent on, and what is logged when they do? Good answer: Only named administrators, with a record of every change.

Alternatives to Workday

Alternatives to Workday performance reviews include SAP SuccessFactors, ADP, Betterworks, Lattice, Leapsome and PerformYard.

SAP SuccessFactors and ADP also sell reviews inside a larger HR system. SuccessFactors Performance & Goals is an AI-powered performance management product. Its AI-assisted performance insights need an AI units licence. SAP asks buyers to request a quote. A UK reseller, NTT DATA Business Solutions, priced the product per user per month. The price runs from £2.53 for 1 to 2,000 users to £0.57 above 200,000 users. The prices exclude VAT and rise 3.3% each contract anniversary.

ADP builds Workforce Now for midsized and large businesses. Its performance product has guided setup, dashboards, reminders and notifications for managers and employees. Compensation decisions finalised in the product go to ADP Workforce Now payroll and HR. Workforce Now suits organisations based in North America with fewer than 100 employees elsewhere.

Betterworks, Lattice, Leapsome and PerformYard are separate review products that connect to Workday. Betterworks is designed for mid-market and enterprise organisations. It layers over the main HR system. It updates user profiles from Workday. Lattice sends downward performance ratings and weighted scores to Workday and reads employee data from Workday by SFTP. SFTP is a secure file transfer. Review comments and review packet PDFs are not synced to Workday.

Changes made in Workday appear in Leapsome automatically. PerformYard connects to ADP, BambooHR, Gusto, Rippling, UKG, Workday and Paylocity, and supports SFTP for other HR systems.

You can also decide to buy nothing. Weigh a multi-year commitment against how you run reviews now. To see Workday next to every other product, start with the performance management overview.

More in this guide

The Performance management software guide
Compare the 33 researched products how each of the 33 researched performance management products runs reviews, what its AI does, what it costs and what its contract says.
Mid-market companies which performance management products suit a company of 200 to 2,000 people, what they cost and what to ask before signing.
Enterprise companies which performance management products suit a company of 2,000 people or more, what they cost, how the contracts run and what to ask.
Frontline and deskless teams how performance reviews reach staff who do not work at a desk, what that costs and what to ask vendors.