Maintain Workday data compliance with synthetic data that ensures employee privacy while enabling secure testing, analytics, and AI innovation.
Assuring worker confidentiality
Organizations increasingly rely on Workday to manage sensitive employee information throughout the HR lifecycle. At the same time, regulators are tightening requirements on how workforce data is collected, processed, and shared. HR and IT teams still need realistic datasets for testing, validation, and analytics – but using production employee data directly can create serious privacy and compliance risks.
Synthetic data generation is a practical solution, enabling realistic testing and analytics, while safeguarding confidentiality and preventing a potential Workday data breach.
What is synthetic data in Workday?
Synthetic data is artificially generated information that mirrors the structure and statistical patterns of real data but without containing any actual employee details. Unlike traditional Workday data masking, which obscures existing records, synthetic data creates new datasets that remove all identifiable connections to individuals.
According to the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), robust privacy protection depends on minimizing linkability and implementing strong governance for how data is shared and analyzed1. Synthetic data helps achieve both, maintaining analytical value while reducing privacy risk.
In Workday, synthetic employee entities can replicate realistic relationships among compensation, benefits, performance, and organizational structures. This apporach allows testing and analytics in non-production environments without exposing Personal Identifiable Information (PII).
Unlike traditional data masking techniques that simply scramble or hide existing information, synthetic data creates entirely new datasets that preserve the statistical relationships and patterns of original data without containing any actual employee records. With Gartner predicting that 60% of data for AI will be synthetic in 2025, the adoption of this technology in HR systems like Workday is inevitable.
Why employers are so concerned about privacy risk
Studies show that removing visible identifiers rarely guarantees anonymity. Latanya Sweeney’s research found that 87% of Americans could be uniquely identified using only ZIP code, birth date, and gender.2 More recent work confirms that deep-learning algorithms can re-identify anonymized data with high accuracy.3
Regulatory pressure is also increasing. The UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) recently ordered an employer to stop using facial-recognition timekeeping for lack of necessity and proportionality.4 In the US, the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA) now fully covers employee and applicant data, extending consumer-style protections to HR systems.5
These developments make Workday data compliance a top priority for organizations aiming to protect employee privacy and maintain regulatory confidence.
Evidence suggests that excessive employee data collection harms trust and performance. Harvard Business Review reports that surveillance used for control increases counterproductive behavior, while transparent monitoring for feedback supports engagement.6
Academic research echoes this sentiment in the sense that employee trust is a key determinant of whether workplace data collection is accepted or resisted.7 A UK survey found nearly one-third of employers use “bossware” to monitor digital activity,8 raising questions about fairness and proportionality under evolving privacy laws.How synthetic data helps prevent re-identification
Synthetic data in lower Workday sandbox environments contains no direct link to real employees, so it significantly reduces the risk of re-identification. Combined with good governance – including documentation of generation methods and validation of statistical accuracy – it supports both innovation and compliance.
This risk reduction extends to cloud analytics as well, where Snowflake data masking provides an additional layer of protection for any sensitive HR data replicated into Snowflake for reporting or modeling.
Under GDPR and the European Data Protection Board’s anonymization guidance, data is truly anonymous only when re-identification is impossible using all reasonable means.9 Synthetic data generation aligns with this data masking standard, ensuring safe testing and analytics in Workday environments.
Synthetic data in Workday enables HR, IT, and analytics teams to innovate safely while staying compliant. Common use cases include:
- Testing and configuration validation
Populate Workday non-production environments with synthetic employee data to validate business processes and integrations without using real PII. - AI and analytics prototyping
Train or validate AI models for workforce planning, attrition prediction, or talent analytics without exposing live employee records. - Privacy-compliant data sharing
Share HR insights across departments or with external partners without transferring real employee data. - Policy simulation and compliance auditing
Test compensation adjustments or diversity programs securely using synthetic cohorts
These privacy-driven use cases help organizations reduce risk while improving data agility, a cornerstone of long-term compliance and innovation.
The K2view approach to synthetic data in Workday
K2view provides a privacy-first approach to synthetic data generation that works seamlessly with Workday. The platform uses AI-powered data generation to create accurate, compliant synthetic datasets while maintaining referential integrity across systems.
K2view supports full synthetic data lifecycle control – including subsetting and masking of training data, synthetic data generation, versioning, and rollback, and provisioning to downstream systems – helping teams maintain continuous compliance and data integrity.
K2view also integrates synthetic data generation into DevOps and CI/CD pipelines, enabling enterprises to release higher-quality software faster, ensure Workday data compliance, and reduce testing costs – all while protecting employee privacy.The future of HR data privacy
As global privacy regulations evolve, synthetic data will become an indispensable tool for secure HR innovation. By decoupling data utility from personal identity, organizations can accelerate analytics and AI initiatives responsibly.
Workday combined with K2view Synthetic Data Management establishes a privacy-first foundation where employee confidentiality, compliance, and innovation coexist harmoniously.
Discover K2view Synthetic Data Management, the AI-powered
Workday data compliance solution that secures sensitive HR data.
