The Workday HR Reporting Playbook

Every Workday tenant reaches the same point: the delivered reports are not enough, spreadsheets are multiplying, and leaders want real‑time answers to tough HR questions. Workday’s reporting stack – from Simple to Composite Reports, powered by Calculated Fields – is designed to solve exactly that, if you treat it like a reporting architecture instead of a random collection of custom reports.​

This playbook walks through when to use each report type and which Calculated Fields almost every HR tenant should build.

Know your Workday report types

Workday offers multiple custom report types, each built on a Business Object such as Worker, Position, Organization or Job Application.​

At a minimum, understand these:

• Simple Reports
  • Best for basic lists on a single business object (for example, workers with key fields).
  • Limited filtering and no advanced joins, but quick to build and great for operational lists.​
• Advanced Reports
  • Your main workhorse for HR analytics.
  • Support complex filters, multiple prompts, sub‑filters and usage of most Calculated Fields.​
• Matrix Reports
  • Pivot‑style reports with row and column groupings, aggregations and charts.
  • Great for headcount by org, diversity metrics, or comp by grade and location.​
• Composite Reports
  • Bring together multiple Matrix (and related) reports into one output for multi‑period or multi‑subject analytics.
  • Ideal for dashboards, trend analysis and cross‑domain insights (for example, headcount + turnover + internal movement).​​

The rule of thumb:

• Start with Simple for quick, one‑object lists.
• Move to Advanced for “real” HR reporting.
• Use Matrix when you want to slice and aggregate.
• Use Composite when you want to tell a story across time or subject areas.​

Design a layered reporting approach

Instead of dozens of one‑off reports, design a layered approach:

• Operational layer (Simple / Advanced)
  • Examples: “Active Workers”, “Open Positions”, “Pending Hires”, “Workers on Leave”.
  • Used daily by HR operations and HRBPs.​
• Analytics layer (Advanced / Matrix)
  • Examples: “Headcount and FTE by Org”, “Turnover by Manager and Tenure”, “Comp by Grade and Gender”.​
• Executive layer (Composite + Dashboards)
  • Executive dashboards built on Composite Reports combining key metrics and trends.
  • Examples: Workforce overview, diversity scorecard, HC cost and movement.​​

By reusing the same core datasets as sub‑reports (Advanced/Matrix) inside Composite Reports, you keep logic consistent and easier to maintain.​

Calculated Fields: your secret reporting weapon

Calculated Fields (CFs) are where Workday reporting becomes powerful. They let you transform, derive and combine data without code.​​

Common types include:

• Date Calculations – tenure, age, days since event.
• Text Fields – concatenated names, formatted IDs.
• Boolean / Conditional – true/false flags like “Is Terminated?”, “Is Manager?”, “Is High Risk?”.
• Lookup and Related Object – pull attributes from related business objects (for example, worker’s manager’s organization).
• Aggregations – counts, sums, minima/maxima across related data.​​

Think of Calculated Fields as your reusable logic library: build once and use across reports, dashboards and even integrations.​

Essential HR calculated fields every tenant should have

While specifics vary, most HR tenants benefit from a core set of Calculated Fields on the Worker and related objects. Examples:​

• Worker Tenure
  • Business case: segment turnover, eligibility, and recognition.
  • CF type: Date difference between Hire Date (or Original Hire) and Current Date, expressed in years/months.
• Age and Age Band
  • Business case: workforce demographics and eligibility (for certain benefits or policies).
  • CF type: Date difference between Birth Date and Current Date, plus a conditional field assigning bands (e.g., “<30”, “30–39”, etc.).
• Headcount Flag
  • Business case: define what counts as “headcount” in your reports.
  • CF type: Boolean that returns “True” only for Active, non‑contingent workers meeting your criteria.
• Termination Risk Window
  • Business case: track leavers by tenure or after certain events.
  • CF type: Conditional on Termination Date minus Hire Date or last event.
• Manager Chain Attributes (for example, “Top‑Level Organization”, “Level‑2 Manager Name”)
  • Business case: slice reports cleanly by different leadership levels.
  • CF type: Related Business Object / Lookup fields walking up the supervisory hierarchy.
• Diversity Attributes (normalized)
  • Business case: DEI reporting with consistent categories.
  • CF type: Text or Conditional to map raw demographic fields into standard buckets used in analytics.

Each of these can be reused in Advanced, Matrix and Composite reports, which avoids re‑implementing logic in filters or Excel.​

From Simple to Composite: practical HR examples

To make the progression tangible, consider a common HR need: headcount and turnover by organization over time.

• Step 1 – Simple Report
  • Build a “Workers – Current Snapshot” Simple report listing Active workers with org, job and location.​
• Step 2 – Advanced Reports
  • Create an Advanced report “Headcount by Org and Month” using Effective Date prompts and your Headcount Flag CF.
  • Create another Advanced report “Terminations by Org and Month” using the terminations data source and a tenure CF.​
• Step 3 – Matrix Reports
  • Convert each into a Matrix report to group by Org (rows) and Month (columns), with counts as measures.​
• Step 4 – Composite Report
  • Build a Composite report that combines the two matrix reports into a single output with headcount, terms and turnover rate.
  • Use formatting and sections so leaders see a clean summary plus drill‑downs.​​

Now you have a reusable HR analytics asset instead of ad‑hoc Excel snapshots. The same pattern works for internal mobility, learning impact or compensation analytics.​

Security and performance: silent success factors

Two often overlooked aspects of reporting success are report security and performance.

• Report/Data Source Security
  • Ensure report writers have the right Report Writer and domain permissions, but limit access to sensitive data.​
  • Use Workday security to ensure managers see only their teams; avoid hard‑coding security filters into reports where possible.
• Performance
  • Avoid unnecessary fields and prompts; each join and CF can add load time.
  • Use prompts for date ranges and organizations to reduce dataset size for big reports.
  • Where possible, reuse CFs instead of building “report‑specific” ones that duplicate logic.​

Good security and performance make reports usable in real life – otherwise, people will export data and go back to spreadsheets.

Building your HR reporting playbook

Treat Workday reporting like a product with its own playbook:

• Document core reports (Simple, Advanced, Matrix, Composite) and their purpose: who uses them, how often, for what decisions.​
• Maintain a Calculated Field catalog with ownership, description and examples. This prevents duplication and confusion.​
• Provide basic training for HRBPs and analysts on report types, prompts and how to export responsibly instead of rebuilding Excel every time.​​

When you design HR reporting in Workday as an intentional architecture – moving from Simple to Composite reports, powered by a curated set of Calculated Fields – your tenant stops being just a transaction system and becomes a true analytics platform for people decisions.