Workday & Anthropic link AI tools for HR & finance

Workday and Anthropic have agreed a partnership linking Workday Sana with Claude for the joint use of AI tools in HR and finance.

Users will be able to start tasks in either Sana, Workday's orchestration layer, or Claude, Anthropic's AI assistant, while keeping the same permissions and controls. Sana will also become the new Workday Home.

The partnership links Claude's reasoning with Workday's business process data and context. In practice, Sana can coordinate multi-step work in areas such as compensation reviews and financial close processes, calling on Claude for specific reasoning tasks when needed.

The systems exchange tasks and information through the Model Context Protocol, an open standard designed to let work continue across tools without restarting the process. Rules remain anchored in Workday's platform, without requiring a separate permission model or individual user setup by administrators.

That means staff can make requests in natural language, and Sana can assemble the relevant workflow elements, including forms, calendars, approval cards and task-specific screens. Workday said these interface components are generated dynamically by Jev, a model from TypeSafe AI.

HR and finance

The companies outlined several examples of how the integration could be used. In one, a hiring manager could compare open roles with current headcount and budget inside Claude, then create an internal mobility plan using existing team members.

In another, a finance leader could review invoice exceptions against purchase orders and either approve them in Claude or send them to Sana for further handling. Any action would remain subject to existing customer permissions, approvals and audit controls, and Claude would show only the information a user is allowed to see.

Joint customers will also be able to build their own agents directly in Claude using Workday Agent-Ready Tools, which include governance, security and an audit trail.

The announcement also extends Workday's broader push to let customers and partners build AI agents on its platform while keeping existing compliance structures in place. Agent-Ready Tools, Workday Data Cloud, Developer Agent, Custom Agents and Agent Harness are now generally available.

These products allow organisations to develop and run agents with their preferred development tools and models while retaining Workday permissions, approvals and audit trails.

Existing ties

The tie-up builds on an existing commercial relationship between the two companies. Anthropic already uses Workday Financials and Workday Human Capital Management for its finance and people operations.

Workday has deployed Claude Enterprise internally and plans to begin using Cowork. It said Claude is already used by its engineering and go-to-market teams, while Claude Code is used by product and development teams to build Workday products.

Workday also said its Developer Agent connects to Claude to help software developers build on Workday. The latest integration brings Sana and Workday Agent-Ready Tools to shared customers while preserving Workday's existing control structure.

"Customers want the best domain AI agents for both their people and money that understand the business rules they run on and leverage the extraordinary reasoning in Claude," said Gerrit Kazmaier, President, Product and Technology, Workday. "Together, Workday Sana and Claude unlock lawful AI across the enterprise to get real work done."

Anthropic described the partnership as focused on decisions at the centre of workplace administration and financial management.

"HR and finance decisions shape every employee's pay, role, and career. Workday is where that work gets done and where the rules governing it are built, for thousands of organisations. Claude brings the reasoning to help people make those decisions faster and with more confidence. Together, they let Workday customers plan a compensation cycle or close the books, with their own controls applied at every step," said Ankur Sinha, Head of Engineering, Enterprise and Verticals, Anthropic.

The Sana in Claude plugin is currently available to early-access customers. Workday said it serves more than 11,500 organisations worldwide, including more than 65% of the Fortune 500.