Dayforce vs Workday HCM

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Our analysts compared Dayforce vs Workday HCM based on data from our 400+ point analysis of HR Management Software, user reviews and our own crowdsourced data from our free software selection platform.

Workday HCM Software Tool

Product Basics

Dayforce is a cloud-based human capital management (HCM) platform that offers a full suite of tools for managing payroll, workforce management, career development, benefits and HR tasks.

It's a great pick for larger teams looking to streamline onboarding and training with performance management tools that support ongoing career development. Plus, its self-service portal gives employees more independence.

Ranked in the top five on our HR software list, Dayforce stands out as the Best for Reporting and Dashboards. It shines with features like employee engagement, succession management and compensation management.

With tools for workforce insights, personalized coaching, and mobile access, managers can enhance engagement and adapt more efficiently, which helps cut down on turnover and anticipate trends. Mobile time-tracking tablets and time clocks help minimize errors and ensure more accurate payroll.

The platform offers customizable dashboards, automated payroll calculations, centralized employee info and engagement tracking. Users love its intuitive, easy-to-use design and self-service options that lighten the admin load. However, some find the reporting feature a bit tricky; while reports are customizable, getting them set up can be complex.

Pricing varies based on the number of users and chosen modules, generally falling between $6 and $12 per employee per month, which is mid-range compared to other options out there.

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Workday HCM is a SaaS solution that unifies all aspects of managing the employee lifecycle in a single HRMS. The suite of modules allows organizations to operate globally, run payroll, administer benefits, manage talent and facilitate learning, among other things.

While designed for medium and large enterprises, the platform can support the needs of smaller businesses as well. A business process framework provides control for all internal processes. The software is also equipped with audit tools and built-in security capabilities, and it offers mobile apps for flexible access.
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$6/Employee, Monthly
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$42/Employee, Monthly
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Product Assistance

Documentation
In Person
Live Online
Videos
Webinars
Documentation
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Videos
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Email
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Knowledge Base
24/7 Live Support
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Product Insights

  • Centralize Records: Store all your documents in a secure repository, using filters to easily find the forms you need. You can also monitor and manage compensation levels, performance metrics, and org charts. Dayforce’s document management gets an 81 out of 100, according to our data.
  • Improve Payroll Accuracy: Reduce timesheet errors for more accurate payroll processing. While payroll management scores a 75, Dayforce payroll calculates pay in real time as it's recorded, giving admins continuous data throughout the pay period and providing more time for verification, review and audits.
  • Enhance Engagement: Promote stronger team engagement and communication with TeamRelate. Managers can track employee engagement daily, tailor coaching, and gauge employee communication styles and motivators through surveys. Its employee engagement tools come in at a perfect 100.
  • Navigate Compliance: Access real-time information on all legislative rules globally, including monitoring regulations in over 200 countries, to ensure compliance. Configure what the system monitors based on specific needs.
  • Work Flexibly: Update availability, check schedules and submit time-off requests on the go. Users can preview earnings, clock in and out, and view the People Directory to contact coworkers.
  • Boost Communication: Enhance communication by highlighting managers and colleagues in interactive org charts. Build and arrange employees based on the company’s structure and hierarchy.
  • Manage Time and Time Off: Replace punch clocks with tablets offering accurate time and attendance information. Employees can record time, request time off or trade shifts, and view schedules via the mobile app.
  • View Workforce Insights: Track critical organizational indicators like turnover by location and age to understand operational trends.
  • Ease Benefits Management: Simplify benefits enrollment with side-by-side plan comparisons and smart recommendations. Employees can update their coverage via self-service.
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  • Deep Data Insights: Equipped with reporting and analytics tools, Workday HCM provides a complete view of critical KPIs to inform better decisions. It allows you to become familiar with your workforce, promote employee growth, foster diversity and prepare for the future. Workday’s Prism Analytics and Data-as-a-Service applications provide graphs, charts, benchmarking reports and more. 
  • Fast, Enhanced Recruiting: You can streamline and speed up the recruiting process with collaboration tools, task reminders and calendar syncing. A referral leaderboard encourages employees to refer other qualified candidates. 
  • Easy Expense Reporting: Mobile receipt scanning and approval workflows simplify the expensing process for employees and managers. You can also set spending controls and give employees the ability to start reports. With data analytics tools, you can spot trends and gain insight into expenses throughout your company. 
  • Efficient Absence Management: This feature uses a smart calendar for managing time off. It also provides tracking for different types of absences and the ability to analyze carryover. 
  • Simplified Time Management: Time tracking and approval is available on any device, and alerts surface items that need attention. The system automates rules and calculations to cut down on manual tasks and the risk of errors. 
  • Improved Hiring Decisions: Dashboards present all your talent acquisition data in one place for easy viewing, and machine learning suggests areas of improvement. You can also compare your company to peers via benchmarking and use compensation comparisons to create effective offers. 
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  • Core HR: Centralize employee info, manage performance, carry out recruiting, oversee payroll and get reports for data-driven decision-making.
  • Employee Self-Service (ESS): Let users enroll in benefits, view pay details, update personal information, access learning resources and stay current on announcements.
  • Payroll: Roll out a variety of payroll tasks, including tax management, employee verification and data entry for unique situations like retroactive payments. Dashboards provide insights and reporting tools support payroll reconciliation.
  • Benefits: Fast track enrollment by letting employees independently enroll for coverage. Admins can access enrollment totals, a library of qualification rules, on-demand calculations and streamlined COBRA management. It also integrates with hundreds of carriers and incorporates features to ensure ACA compliance.
  • Talent Management: Manage every phase of an employee lifecycle, from recruiting and onboarding to succession planning. Track performance in a holistic view, plan budgets effectively and reskill current employees with AI talent tools.
  • Workforce Management: Process payroll, manage sick days or vacation time, and view reports on key trends like spending for proactive planning.
  • Compliance Support: Safeguard sensitive information with role-based access and ease multi-jurisdictional tax filings with tax services for federal, state and local jurisdictions.
  • Customer Support: Get help with questions and concerns through live chat or phone. Access additional resources on the website like the help center and webinars.
  • Dayforce Wallet: Provide employees access to their earned wages before payday. This flexibility improves financial wellness and reduces employee stress associated with waiting for a paycheck. It also provides functionalities such as budgeting tools and financial planning resources. Note: The amount available depends on completed shifts and standard transfer time is between 1-3 business days. Faster transfers require additional fees.
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  • Payroll: Workday HCM offers payroll capabilities for the U.S., U.K., France and Canada. All transactions compile in the payroll module. It includes a calculation engine, which enables running reports and calculations for groups and individuals at any time. A compliance dashboard shows information about upcoming changes as well as the areas of greatest impact within your organization. 
  • Benefits Administration: The software supports a variety of plans, such as health, flex, wellness and retirement. Tools such as the ACA dashboard ensure proper coverage as well as aid managing forms and regulatory changes. The system supports integration with hundreds of providers. 
  • Talent Management: This feature includes onboarding and career and development planning components. New hires can access messages, videos and more from a single dashboard, and there’s also support for international and internal transfers. Pulse surveys and a skills cloud provide insight into your workforce. Additionally, you can set goals, perform reviews, manage succession plans, aid employee career development and pinpoint retention risks. 
  • Learning Management System: Equipped with LMS capabilities, this module helps your organization deliver and track a variety of training materials. Elements include scoring, quizzes, learning campaigns, video, learning paths and more. You can also offer courses to external groups. For extended training, the Workday Content Cloud grants access to third-party content directly from Workday HCM. 
  • Compensation Management: With this feature, you can build customized compensation packages for global use by choosing from over a dozen compensation plan types. It supports international currencies and allowance plans based on local limits. The toolset includes a grid worksheet, events coordination for things like new hires and promotions, pay-range segments, tracking of pay equity, configurable statements, and unified data from other Workday HCM modules such as payroll and benefits. 
  • Workforce Planning: The Workday Adaptive Insights Business Planning Cloud provides tools to create models, compare what-if scenarios and build hiring strategies. It also facilitates collaboration along with evaluation of metrics like costs and workforce breakdown. The platform provides review and approval workflows and integrates data from other organizational systems. 
  • Global Compliance: The solution’s flexibility enables you to configure the pre-built frameworks based on your company’s needs. It contains support for 240 countries, 1,500+ reports, 170 absence plans, geographic controls such as privacy preferences and date formats, and over 3,000 localized data fields. You can automatically translate into over 30 languages, receive free legal support across 58 jurisdictions and control all aspects of the setup. 
  • Workday Marketplace: You can extend the capabilities of Workday HCM by connecting it with third-party integrations for case management, hiring, training and other processes. Partner solutions include LinkedIn Learning, Salesforce Worker and Salesforce Chatter, Saba, HireRight Background Check, and Humanity Employee Shift Scheduling. 
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Product Ranking

#9

among all
HR Management Software

#1

among all
HR Management Software

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Analyst Rating Summary

79
77
64
86
78
62
88
96
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Availability and Scalability
Employee Engagement
Platform Security
Reporting and Dashboard
Succession Management
Availability and Scalability
Platform Security
Employee Self Service
Compensation Management
Employee Onboarding and Administration

Analyst Ratings for Functional Requirements Customize This Data Customize This Data

Dayforce
Workday HCM
+ Add Product + Add Product
Applicant Tracking And Recruiting Benefits Management Compensation Management Document Management Employee Engagement Employee Onboarding And Administration Employee Self Service Learning Management Payroll Management Performance Management Platform Capabilities Reporting And Dashboard Succession Management Time And Attendance Management Workforce Management 64 78 88 81 100 74 78 82 75 83 86 100 100 87 90 86 62 96 70 72 92 98 63 81 55 81 92 83 79 50 0 25 50 75 100
55%
0%
45%
73%
9%
18%
79%
0%
21%
53%
5%
42%
92%
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8%
92%
8%
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86%
0%
14%
43%
29%
28%
100%
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60%
20%
20%
62%
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38%
86%
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14%
83%
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17%
100%
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0%
86%
0%
14%
57%
14%
29%
76%
0%
24%
76%
5%
19%
86%
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14%
50%
7%
43%
88%
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12%
75%
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25%
100%
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89%
0%
11%
100%
0%
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83%
0%
17%
82%
0%
18%
75%
0%
25%
91%
0%
9%
18%
45%
37%

Analyst Ratings for Technical Requirements Customize This Data Customize This Data

Dayforce
Workday HCM
+ Add Product + Add Product
Availability And Scalability Deployment Options Integrations And Extensibility Mobile Platform Security 100 50 61 100 100 50 73 100 0 25 50 75 100
100%
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100%
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50%
67%
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33%
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Analyst Ratings for Vendor Qualification Requirements Customize This Data Customize This Data

0%
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100%
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User Sentiment Summary

Great User Sentiment 3463 reviews
Great User Sentiment 3039 reviews
85%
of users recommend this product

Dayforce has a 'great' User Satisfaction Rating of 85% when considering 3463 user reviews from 5 recognized software review sites.

86%
of users recommend this product

Workday HCM has a 'great' User Satisfaction Rating of 86% when considering 3039 user reviews from 5 recognized software review sites.

5.0 (24)
4.8 (14)
4.2 (792)
4.0 (1144)
4.3 (969)
4.4 (836)
4.6 (541)
4.8 (605)
4.0 (1137)
4.1 (440)

Awards

SelectHub research analysts have evaluated Dayforce and concluded it earns best-in-class honors for Employee Engagement, Reporting and Dashboard and Succession Management.

Employee Engagement Award
Reporting and Dashboard Award
Succession Management Award

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Synopsis of User Ratings and Reviews

Easy PTO Tracking: Dayforce simplifies requesting and viewing PTO and tracking employee hours.
User-Friendly Interface and Features: Dayforce receives praise for being easy to set up and navigate.
Comprehensive: Dayforce is effective for managing payroll, benefits, and workforce management (WFM), providing real-time data and streamlined record-keeping. Custom reporting, time management and compensation planning are highlighted as strong features.
Consistency: The system integrates well across various functions such as HR, payroll, and time management, helping to consolidate processes and improve efficiency.
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Intuitive: 95% of users who mentioned ease of use observed that the software has an intuitive interface, making it easy to navigate and find information, even for novice users.
Multiple Functionality: 90% of users who mentioned functionality state that Workday HCM acts as a one-stop shop for many HR tasks.
Payroll and Benefits: All reviewers who mentioned payroll had a positive experience, with the ability to track hours, collect tax forms, log pay stubs and more.
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Reporting: Report creation can be cumbersome and not very user-friendly. The ability to convert fixed reports into customizable formats and access more diverse formats is limited.
Outdated Employee Self-Service: Some users found this feature outdated without improved auditing and traceability features for payroll elections.
Frequent Updates: Some updates lead to slow down and create a learning curve for some users.
Implementation Process: Users reported implementation can have high up-front costs, take longer than expected and cause frustration.
Customer Support: Users experienced long response times and additional fees.
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Slow: Of reviewers who mention user interface, 5% noted some processes are slow, causing the system to show errors.
Requires Training: For first-time users, there’s a bit of a learning curve to get started, requiring training.
Clunky Mobile App: 85% of reviewers who mentioned the app noted that it has issues quite often and doesn’t include schedules, forcing users to use a separate app.
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Dayforce, a popular AI-powered HCM solution, caters to businesses across various industries on a global scale. It’s perfect for large teams and companies needing a scalable and adaptable platform. Most of its features are user-friendly, making it relatively easy to learn and navigate.Dayforce stands out with its mobile time-off requests, smart benefit enrollment recommendations, TeamRelate, Dayforce Wallet and automated payroll calculations. It also offers robust support for day-to-day operations, including reports and dashboards, org charts, shift trades, and compliance.The mobile app and self-service platform give employees the freedom to handle tasks like accessing pay stubs, viewing schedules, and submitting time-off requests independently, which reduces the need for admin intervention.Dayforce tackles common HR challenges like managing varied payroll and compliance needs, dealing with tricky reporting, and making employee self-service easier. While users appreciate its mobile features and schedule management, they’ve mentioned that reporting can be a bit complex and time-consuming, sometimes leading to long waits for customer support.The demo reveals a comprehensive hub serving as a centralized dashboard, providing news updates, team objectives, pending tasks, and recommended applications like performance management and recruiting.Personally, I thought the scheduling module looked a little cluttered/complicated for beginners, but you can use filters to narrow down results and make it look less busy/cleaner.Payroll processing demands a hawk's eye when it comes to details. I thought Dayforce had a reasonably straightforward payroll design.Engagement surveys offer compact insights into employee sentiment and effectiveness, while customizable dashboards and scorecards display key metrics on workforce dynamics, such as availability, recruitment metrics, and turnover rates.Automated alerts and integration with job boards enhance recruiting, and self-service features support career development, HR and benefits enrollment.The chatbot provided a brief welcome and directed me to the Help Center after I chose support. The chat ended there, and I encountered the issue of the conversation not clearing when the page was reopened.Pricing is competitive, based on user numbers and selected modules (charged per month).Overall, Dayforce is a comprehensive HCM software that effectively supports managing people, pay and compliance.

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Workday HCM is suitable for businesses of all sizes. It is a simple and easy-to-use product with multiple functions that contain all HR data in one place. Payroll and benefits are easy to view and verify. Some improvements are required in the mobile app and system speed. Otherwise, its payroll, timesheet tool, ease of use and unified structure can bring a lot of benefits.

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Screenshots

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