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Administrator Guide
Last Updated: 2026-09-18
Concept: AI-Generated Development Items

Concept: AI-Generated Development Items

Workday provides AI assistance to help employees and managers create detailed, structured, and actionable development items that align with employees’ career interests.
AI assistance is available in the
Manager Insights Hub
 and Talent Optimization in
Career Hub
 for drafting the
Additional Details
 field in a development item.

Feature Availability

With Talent Optimization in
Career Hub
, employees can access AI assistance when creating a development item on the
Plan
 page, and they can also view suggested development items based on Skills Cloud skills and their career interests.
In the
Manager Insights Hub
, managers can create development items for their direct reports using AI assistance.
Generating development item content isn’t available when:
  • Editing a saved development item in the
    Career Hub
    .
  • Creating a development item from the
    My Development Items
     report or from employee reviews.
  • Workday supports this feature in all languages supported by Career Hub. See Workday Product Translations and Languages.
  • Workday only supports generating and modifying development item content with AI on desktop. Employees can access suggested development items on desktop and mobile, however.

Output Format

The
Additional Details
 content for AI-generated development items has a standardized format including:
  • An objective.
  • Additional related skills.
  • Steps with examples.
  • A suggested result.

Generating Content with AI

Employees and managers can use the
Generate with AI
 prompt in the
Additional Details
 field after specifying 1 to 3
Skills to Develop
. Entering a meaningful title for the development item also makes the AI-generated content more specific.
They can preview the AI-generated content and choose 1 of these options:
  • Insert
    : Add the AI-generated content to the
    Additional Information
     field.
  • Replace
    : Replace the existing content in the
    Additional Information
     field with the AI-generated content.
  • Regenerate
    : Generate a new version of the content to preview.
  • Discard the AI-generated content and return to the development item without making changes.

Modifying Content with AI

Employees can enter their own content and then modify it using AI, for example, to make the generated content more specific to their organization, role, or upcoming projects. Employees can also edit the AI-generated content before saving the development item.
After generating or manually entering content in the
Additional Details
 field, users can modify it with AI using these options:
  • Make More Challenging
    : For advanced skill development, this option can increase the complexity of the steps, the impact of the results, and the need for data to show successful completion.
  • Make Easier
    : Makes the item simpler and easier to achieve, for developing skills at a more basic level.

Source Data

Source data for the AI-generated content includes:
  • The skills to develop.
  • The title of the development item, if you enter one.
  • The employee’s current business title.
  • The employee’s worker skills.
For transparency, users can view details about the source data alongside the generated content. See Workday AI Fact Sheet: Generate Development Items for details.

Creating Development Items for Direct Reports

In the
Manager Insights Hub
, managers can create development items for their direct reports, from the employee’s:
  • Development Items & Interests
    .
  • Career Path
    , if the employee has shared a career path.
When an employee receives a development item from their manager, the employee has full control over it, including editing it, deleting it, and updating its status.

Suggested Development Items

When you enable AI-generated development items, Workday surfaces suggested development items to employees in the
Career Hub
 based on Skills Cloud skills and employee career interests. Employees can view these suggestions in:
  • The
    Plan
    For Your Career Growth
     section, based on the employee’s skill interests, business title, and job title. These suggestions don’t use skills that are already part of an in progress development item.
  • The
    Begin Working Toward Your Next Role
     section of a saved career path in
    Explore
    , if enabled, based on the worker’s business title, their next role, and their skill gaps for this role.