Workday Outage Locks Workers Out of Pay, Time-Off and Benefits Tools
A failed backup-system test at HR software maker Workday left employees at client companies unable to clock in, check pay or enroll in benefits.
A widespread outage at Workday, the California-based company whose cloud software many large employers use to run payroll, scheduling and human resources, left workers at client organizations unable to clock in or out, view their pay, request time off or sign up for benefits starting Friday evening, Nov. 13. Workday blamed a problem it found while testing its backup systems. As of early Saturday it had not said when service would be fully restored.
What happened
Problem reports on Downdetector, a site that tracks user complaints about online services, began climbing shortly after 5 p.m. Eastern time on Friday, according to Engadget, which put the spike at about 5:19 p.m. UC Today, a trade publication that covers workplace technology, cited LiveNOW from FOX as reporting nearly 3,000 outage reports soon after the disruption began.
Workday said it had found an issue during testing and put some of its systems into maintenance mode to deal with it. The company said the problem had left some information inconsistent, which could cause errors when users tried to open their accounts or finish tasks, Engadget reported.
UC Today quoted a notice on Workday’s community status page that went into more detail. According to that notice, while checking the weekly maintenance window for its disaster recovery tenants, Workday found that services at its disaster recovery site had unexpectedly connected to production databases. Disaster recovery systems are backup copies of the service that are kept separate so they can take over if the main systems fail. The notice said the resulting data mismatch could cause access errors and could also make jobs, integrations and tasks fail. Workday said it was placing all production tenants in its WD1 data center into maintenance and would post updates every 30 minutes, UC Today reported.
In a statement given to local broadcasters and cited by UC Today and Startup Fortune, a Workday spokesperson said that “some of our customers are experiencing a service disruption” and that the company was working urgently to investigate and fix it. The company also apologized to affected customers.
Who was affected
The exact scope of the outage is still unclear. Workday says more than 11,500 organizations worldwide use its platform. Engadget and UC Today both stressed that this is the company’s total customer count, not a confirmed number of affected clients, and that it was not clear whether every customer lost access. Engadget’s headline said millions of employees were locked out, but its article did not give a specific figure. Startup Fortune, a business news site, described the outage as hitting employees at about 11,500 businesses, though it also said the reports did not show which clients were actually disrupted or for how long.
The outlets listed several well-known Workday clients, including:
- Retailers and restaurant chains such as Walmart, Target and Chipotle
- Financial firms including Charles Schwab, Nasdaq, Morgan Stanley and PNC Bank
- Public-sector customers such as the U.S. Department of Energy and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Being a client does not mean an organization was hit, and none of the sources confirmed outages at specific companies. UC Today said social media posts naming Walmart and Target as affected had not been verified.
Universities were among the few customers to post public updates. Emerson College, a private school in Boston, said Workday had taken its system offline for unplanned maintenance affecting several customers, and it extended its employee benefits open enrollment deadline to Monday, Nov. 16, UC Today reported. Washington University in St. Louis said early Saturday that the outage was still ongoing and that Workday was not expected back until after an overnight maintenance window. Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia said a possible fix was still being tested.
Why it matters
The timing hit a sensitive part of the year. Many U.S. employers hold benefits open enrollment in November, when workers choose health insurance and other coverage for the coming year, and some users online said they had been in the middle of finishing enrollment when the system went down. Hourly workers who clock in and out through Workday also faced questions about how their time would be recorded during the outage.
Startup Fortune said reporting so far showed no sign of a cyberattack, and Workday has not suggested one. The company’s own explanation points to an internal error in how its backup and live systems were separated, the kind of safeguard that is supposed to keep a test from affecting real customer data.
What comes next
As of Saturday morning, Workday had not announced that service was restored. UC Today noted that the company had not posted about the incident on its X account. Customers will be watching for an explanation of how the backup environment came to connect with live databases, and whether any payroll, timekeeping or enrollment records need to be corrected once the systems come back.
This is not the first major disruption for the platform. In November 2023, a power failure at a Workday data center in Oregon knocked the service offline for many customers for much of a day before it was restored.
