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Administrator Guide
Last Updated: 2025-11-14
Concept: Purging Recruiting Data

Concept: Purging Recruiting Data

To meet privacy regulations and General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Workday enables you to purge Personally Identifiable Information (PII) from your tenant for data types you select.
You can purge specific PII from your Workday tenant for populations you select in a custom report.
Examples:
  • Active workers
  • Candidates
  • Pre-Hires
  • Pre-Hires with candidate profiles
  • Prospects
  • Terminated workers
Workday enables you to create and manage purge plans where you can specify data populations to include in a purge.
When you purge data, you permanently remove it from your tenant. Workday can't reverse or roll back the data deletion.
To protect against deleting crucial data, Workday recommends that you:
  • Grant the ability to purge data to users who understand the purging process and its consequences.
  • Only purge the data that you've tested and confirmed in Sandbox before you purge in your Production environment.

Person Data Purge

You can use the
Purge Privacy Data
 task to remove only the PII that you specify in the purge plan. You can use this task when you periodically need to purge sets of data. Example: For terminated workers.

Single Entity Purge

Workday enables you to purge a single entity like a candidate or a job application using the related actions menu of that entity. Security groups with access to the
Purge Single Entity Data
 domain can purge individual records.

Candidate Data Purge

You can purge candidates or candidate documents upon request or when you no longer need them. Example: Candidate job applications when they've accepted another job.
When you purge a:
  • Candidate who you don't hire, Workday removes the candidate PII, their Candidate Home username, and all documents associated with the candidate.
  • Candidate who you hire, Workday removes their Candidate Home username and the
    Candidate Documents
     section from their worker profile.

Worker Data Purge

Workday only purges workers who you:
  • Mark as
    Eligible for Purge
     in a custom report that you can create using the
    Purge Privacy Data
     task.
  • Terminate. You can't purge workers with an active worker position or a pending termination.
Workday doesn't purge:
  • Candidates for an open or frozen job.
  • Future hires.

Terminated Worker Data Purge

When you purge terminated workers, Workday no longer returns them in searches, and removes all their PII. For historical headcount purposes Workday:
  • Indicates the purged instance as
    Purged Person
     wherever their name normally displays.
  • Associates any remaining data with
    Purged Person
     instead of an identifiable person.