Workday layoffs: HR enterprise software maker is cutting hundreds of jobs amid AI push

It’s been a rough week for the tech industry. First, Salesforce announced it would lay off more than 1,000 employees, and now another enterprise software maker has announced even deeper job cuts.

Yesterday, Workday, Inc. (Nasdaq: WDAY), maker of cloud-based human resources software, announced that it would lay off 1,750 employees—or roughly 8.5% of its global workforce. These layoffs add to a rough start for the tech industry in 2025, which has seen major tech giants, including Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon, trim their workforces.

Here’s what you need to know about Workday’s layoffs.

Roughly 8% of Workday’s employees are impacted

Workday yesterday announced that it was eliminating 1,750 roles at the company. That equates to about 8.5% of its total workforce, which stood at about 18,000 employees as of January 2024, as Reuters notes. Workday was founded in 2005 and is based in Pleasanton, California. The company makes enterprise software for HR management.

Workday announced the layoffs in a memo from CEO Carl Eschenbach. In the memo, Eschenbach said the company would realign its resources in fiscal 2025 in light of the increasing demand for artificial intelligence and its “potential to drive a new era of growth for Workday.”

This realignment means that Workday will invest “strategically, helping teams work better together, bringing innovations to market faster, and making it easier for our customers and partners to work with us,” Eschenbach said. But in order to achieve this realignment, he continued, job cuts would be necessary.

Announcing the layoffs yesterday, Eschenbach “encouraged” employees to work from home or, for those already in the office, to head home. He said Workday’s goal was to inform as many impacted employees as possible on that day.

Workday’s restructuring plan

The layoffs are part of a larger restructuring plan for the company, which includes prioritizing investments in strategic areas, including AI and the development of its platform. 

However, while the plan includes cutting around 8.5% of its workforce, the company “expects to continue to hire in key strategic areas and locations throughout its fiscal year ending January 31, 2026,” according to a FORM 8-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). That filing also revealed that Workday expects to “exit certain owned office space” as part of the restructuring.

Workday says it expects its restructuring plan to cost the company between $230 million to $270 million, with roughly $145 million to $175 million related to severance payments, employee benefits, and other related costs.

As for the employees getting laid off, Eschenbach said those in the U.S. will be offered a minimum of 12 weeks of severance pay with additional weeks of pay based on tenure.

WDAY stock rises on news of layoffs

While layoffs are devastating for the individuals affected, investors generally see things differently. The company’s stock price jumped after Workday announced its layoffs yesterday. WDAY shares closed trading yesterday over 6.3% higher than they opened.

With yesterday’s post-layoffs stock price jump, WDAY stock is now up just over 7% year-to-date. However, looking back a full 12 months, WDAY shares are negative for the period, having declined 5.3% over the past year. As of the time of this writing, in premarket trading, WDAY shares are currently up 0.3% to around $277 per share.

According to tech layoff tracker Layoffs.fyi, 42 tech companies have now laid off over 10,800 workers since the beginning of 2025.

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