Dayforce + AI: Productivity, personalization, and automation at your fingertips

Today’s organizations are facing a complexity crisis that’s changing the way we work. The workforce looks nothing like the past. It’s boundless: fluid, borderless, and always on. As a result, employers are in a constant balancing act between flexibility and rigorous compliance, empathy and productivity, and employee expectations and budget realities. Technology is key in addressing these competing priorities and complexities.

At Ceridian, we’re constantly innovating together with our customers to build Dayforce capabilities that help deliver simplicity at scale, increase efficiency, and allow for better people experiences. At INSIGHTS 2023, we announced some powerful artificial intelligence (AI) advancements toward these goals, powered by our global people platform. We sat down with Joe Korngiebel, Ceridian’s Chief Product and Technology Officer, to explore what these new innovations mean for our customers – and their people.

The introduction of AI has re-ignited debates about technology’s place at work. What is AI’s role in enabling a more informed and empowered workforce?

Joe Korngiebel: Innovations like Dayforce Skills Engine and Dayforce Career Explorer are great examples. We believe there is tremendous opportunity with AI to provide transformational benefits for companies and their employees by dramatically increasing efficiency, boosting creativity, and fueling productivity. That said, it is crucial to have a deliberate and responsible approach to AI and the underlying data that powers the technology. We do that by adhering to ethical AI principles coupled with a permission-based use of data that prioritizes trust.

Our approach to AI is supported by several key principles. Our use of AI technology is rooted in rigorous data privacy and security. We also believe that we must use these technologies in fair, transparent, explainable, and understandable ways. The data used to train the technology must be high-quality, diverse, and representative — and used with express permission. Lastly, we believe that human judgement is essential in using AI technology to review and correct AI-generated decisions or recommendations.

One of the biggest announcements was around Dayforce Co-Pilot. Can you tell us more about this innovation?

Joe: Dayforce Co-Pilot is a new suite of Dayforce features, powered by AI. Dayforce Co-Pilot helps transform work by automating certain repetitive tasks and serving as a hyper-personalized guide for employees. Simply put, Dayforce Co-Pilot is the AI teammate that helps supercharge productivity for individuals and teams. We believe it’s important to push the boundaries of technological capabilities. Whether on desktop, mobile device, or tablet, we’ve innovated how users experience technology to maximize productivity at work. And now, generative AI has provided us with a new modality to continue that legacy of innovation.

The value of Dayforce Co-Pilot is that it turns AI into an indispensable teammate. To achieve their full people potential, organizations require an intelligent, fast-moving, flexible, and connected people platform that is fueled by AI. Dayforce Co-Pilot enhances the Dayforce experience across the platform.

On stage at INSIGHTS, you talked about how Dayforce Co-Pilot supports efficiency and intelligence for leaders and managers. Can you share a bit about that?

Joe: Our focus when developing new AI tools is to help organizations work more efficiently and focus on higher value work. According to an online poll of employees in the U.S. conducted last month on behalf of Ceridian by The Harris Poll, nearly three quarters of surveyed American employees (72%) hope AI will allow them to do more of the work they enjoy by automating the tasks that they don't.¹ Dayforce Co-Pilot helps address this by helping remove certain repetitive tasks.

Dayforce Co-Pilot transforms many of the daily management tasks that are critical to get right, but which can pull leaders and managers away from meaningful work, such as coaching employees to reach their full potential.

This new AI innovation helps managers by offering in-context insights and answers to improve decision making. Dayforce Co-Pilot creates more personalized and specific experiences than a singular standalone AI co-pilot. Dayforce Co-Pilot is highly contextual, informing its responses based on the part of the Dayforce platform you’re working in and the actions being performed. It operates with three core functionalities in mind: answer and summarize, create and refine, and automate and nudge.

What does this look like in action? Dayforce Co-Pilot can help speed up the performance management process for people leaders. If a manager needs to implement a performance improvement plan, Dayforce Co-Pilot can help them do it by generating a draft based on the employee’s pre-determined annual goals and key performance indicators (KPIs). This technology also benefits employees by helping them draft goal setting and annual reviews. This means employees and people leaders can collaborate on more thorough and thoughtful reviews in less time.

That’s a great segue to my next question, which is about the employee perspective. How does Dayforce Co-Pilot enhance their efficiency?

Joe: One example is how AI is infused into Dayforce HR Service Delivery, helping to get the right information into employees’ hands at the right moments, while lightening the burden on HR teams to field complex HR questions. Dayforce HR Service Delivery taps into Dayforce Co-Pilot to generate suggested answers based on the corporate knowledge base. The platform will auto-generate an HR service ticket when more help is needed, self-learning along the way.

Imagine an employee wants to know more about the benefits their employer provides, but they don’t know where to start. They can ask Dayforce Co-Pilot something like, “Summarize my benefits.” In response, it will give the employee a run-down of their chosen benefits plan. They can follow up with a query like, “Are braces covered for my teenager?” Dayforce Co-Pilot can then respond using contextual information from Dayforce to generate a quick answer.

At INSIGHTS, you also talked about how AI is helping organizations create personalized, employee-driven career development. How does that work?

Joe: The recent Harris Poll I mentioned also found that roughly two in five surveyed American employees (43%) would spend the time saved from using AI in their work lives to take on additional projects/responsibilities. That opens up a huge opportunity to orient that time toward activities that benefit employee skill development and the future needs of the organization.

Our new innovations can help create those opportunities for your organization. Imagine an employee who wants more out of their job and is considering their long-term development. Dayforce Co-Pilot works alongside Dayforce Career Explorer to act as a career coach that can help guide employees toward the right professional development opportunities, identify upskilling projects, and suggest personalized development goals. And this works for every single employee you have, giving each person a tailored career experience.

When can customers expect to experience Dayforce Co-Pilot?

Joe: Dayforce Co-Pilot was announced at INSIGHTS 2023. We’re excited for users to start interacting with Dayforce Co-Pilot across the platform as it goes into charter with select Dayforce customers starting now and progressing into 2024.

Forward looking statement

This blog contains forward-looking statements that involve a number of risks and uncertainties. Statements that are not historical facts, and our expectations, hopes, intentions or strategies regarding the future are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are based on management's beliefs, as well as assumptions made by, and information currently available to, management. Because such statements are based on expectations as to the future and are not statements of fact, actual results may differ materially from those projected. We undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

This blog should be read in conjunction with the risks detailed in the “Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Information,” “Forward-Looking Statement,” “Risk Factors” and other sections of Ceridian’s Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, Annual Reports on Form 10-K and other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

[1] This survey was conducted online within the United States by The Harris Poll on behalf of Ceridian from September 7-11, 2023 among 1,303 employed U.S. adults ages 18 and older. The sampling precision of Harris online polls is measured by using a Bayesian credible interval.  For this study, the sample data is accurate to within +/- 3.2 percentage points using a 95% confidence level. For complete survey methodology, including weighting variables and subgroup sample sizes, please contact Nick de Pass (nick.depass@ceridian.com).