Workday

Review by eFreeware

Most workplace admin used to mean sitting down at a desk with a browser open. Timesheets, expense claims, time-off requests, payslips and the approvals that sit behind them were all things you handled when you got back to a computer, which meant small tasks piled up until someone chased them. Workday for Android is an attempt to move that work onto the phone, and it comes from Workday, Inc., the company behind the HR platform many organizations already run.

The app is free to download, carries no ads and offers no in-app purchases, which fits its position as a companion to an employer's existing setup. It has been on Google Play since April 2013 and currently sits at a 4.2 average from more than 267,000 ratings, with over 10 million installs. That scale tells you something about the audience: this is not a niche tool but the mobile face of a system used across large employers.

Built for people inside a Workday organization

The first thing to understand is that this is not a standalone productivity app you can adopt on your own. It gives access to the tasks and records held in your employer's Workday account, so its usefulness depends entirely on whether your organization runs on Workday and has given you access. If it does, the app turns a set of chores that normally wait for a desktop into something you can clear in a few minutes.

The split between employee and manager features is worth noting before you install. Regular staff get the self-service side: logging hours, filing expenses, reading payslips, booking time off, checking in and out of work, browsing colleague profiles, watching training videos and looking at internal gigs and job openings. Managers get a second layer on top of that, covering approvals, team profiles, role changes, payroll and compensation requests, performance reviews, an hours tracker, timesheets for their reports, and interactive reports and dashboards.

That means two people in the same company can open the app and see quite different things. If you manage a team, the value is in clearing approvals and checking attendance without logging into a laptop; if you do not, the value is in handling your own admin and keeping up with pay and leave.

Handling your own admin from the phone

For most employees the everyday draw is the self-service list. You can submit timesheets and expenses, view payslips, request time off and check in and out of work, all from the handset. Push notification reminders are part of the design, which matters for the kind of task that is easy to forget until a deadline passes, such as a timesheet that needs submitting before payroll closes.

There is more here than pure admin. The app includes training videos for learning new skills, profiles that help you learn about your teammates, and a route to internal opportunities through gigs and jobs.

The recent updates push in the same direction. The Career Hub gathers career development, performance reports and tasks in one place, personalized onboarding content has been added, and distance expenses can now be submitted with support for multiple waypoints. There is also Speech-to-Text in the chat panel for hands-free use, and a Workday Travel Agent for viewing, searching and booking corporate travel.

The manager's side of the app

Management features are where the app tries to earn its place on a supervisor's home screen. Approving employee requests is designed to take a tap, and the same screen area covers team and employee profiles, role adjustments, payroll management and compensation change requests. Performance reviews are handled here too, alongside an hours tracker and employee timesheets.

Interactive reports and dashboards round this out, giving managers a way to look at team data rather than only act on individual requests. I would expect this side of the app to suit people who are frequently away from a desk but still responsible for sign-offs, since the alternative is letting approvals queue up until they are back at a computer.

The caveat is that all of this mirrors what the organization has enabled in Workday itself. The app is a mobile window onto existing permissions and workflows, not a separate management tool with its own rules.

What it costs and how your data is handled

Workday is free, with no advertising and no in-app purchases. That is the whole of the commercial picture as presented: there is no paid tier to weigh and nothing to buy inside the app. Whatever your organization pays for Workday as a platform is a separate matter between the employer and the vendor.

The developer makes security a selling point, describing the app as protected by Workday's own security and by mobile-native technology such as biometric authentication. The company also states that information is stored in the cloud rather than on the device, which it presents as both a safety measure and a way of keeping records current. Those are the developer's claims rather than things a reviewer can verify from a store page, but they explain the design: the app is a window onto data held elsewhere, which is also why a lost or stolen phone is treated as less of a catastrophe than it might otherwise be.

How it compares with the alternatives

The realistic alternatives are not other HR apps so much as other ways of reaching the same system. A desktop browser session remains the fullest version of Workday, and for anything complicated, such as a detailed report or a long expense claim, a larger screen is still the more comfortable place to work. The app's case rests on the small, frequent tasks that are better done immediately than deferred.

Beyond that, the comparison is with whatever your employer actually uses. Plenty of organizations run on different HR and payroll platforms, each with its own mobile app, and a standalone time-tracking or expense tool can cover part of the ground for someone whose company offers nothing at all. None of those will show your real payslip, your real leave balance or your team's actual approvals, which is precisely what this app is for.

So the decision is less about features than about fit. If your workplace runs on Workday, this is the official way to reach it from Android and the question is simply whether the mobile version covers enough of your routine. If it does not, no amount of polish elsewhere will make the app useful to you.

A practical companion for Workday users

Workday does a specific job well: it takes the common workplace tasks and puts them on the phone, with a manager layer for those who need it. The breadth is genuine, from timesheets and payslips through to training videos, internal job listings, travel booking and a chat panel with speech-to-text. For employees and managers inside an organization that runs on Workday, that covers a lot of the admin that would otherwise wait for a desk.

The limits are structural rather than technical. Everything depends on your employer's setup and your permissions within it, and the app is a companion rather than a replacement for the full platform. A 4.2 average across a very large number of ratings suggests a broadly satisfied user base, though the audience is by definition people who already had access.

If you fall into that group, installing it is straightforward: it is free and carries no ads. If your workplace uses something else, there is nothing here to adopt on your own. That is not a flaw in the app so much as the shape of it, and it is worth being clear about before you spend time on it.

What's new in version 2026.10.0

* View, search, and book corporate travel on-the-go with the new Workday Travel Agent * Use Speech-to-Text in the Workday chat panel to get work done hands-free * Improved home card designs for Check-in/Out and Team Attendance * View new personalized onboarding content * Submit distance expenses with multiple waypoint support * View career development, performance reports and tasks in the new Career Hub