Whether you're leaving Workday, archiving it, or feeding a downstream system, getting data out cleanly is the challenge — Workday holds it in a rich object model behind RaaS reports and APIs, not simple tables. This guide covers how to extract Workday data, which HR and payroll objects matter, and how to map, validate and reconcile a migration to Oracle Fusion HCM or another HRIS.
Workday doesn't expose a relational database — its data lives in a hierarchical business-object model surfaced through Reports-as-a-Service (RaaS), web service APIs and report writer. Migration starts with getting that data out completely and correctly.
The practical extraction paths are RaaS (custom reports exposed as web service endpoints), the SOAP/REST web service APIs, and report writer outputs. Each returns Workday's nested object structures — workers with assignments, compensation, organizations, and effective-dated history — that have to be flattened and reconciled. Effective dating is the subtlety: Workday tracks the full history of every record over time, and a migration must decide how much of that history to carry and how to represent it in the target.
Once extracted, the work is the same shape as any HCM migration: map Workday objects to the target model (Oracle Fusion HCM, another HRIS, or an archive), load through the right interface (HDL for Fusion), and reconcile headcount, compensation and balances. The difference from an ERP migration is the dominance of effective-dated, person-centric data and the sensitivity of payroll and PII.
The objects that make up an HR/payroll migration.
Person records, employment and assignment data, job, position, location and manager relationships.
Salary, pay components, one-time payments, and where in scope, payroll results and balances.
Supervisory, cost-center, company and custom org hierarchies that give the data context.
Skills, performance, goals and talent data where the target supports it.
The time-sliced history of records — decide how many years to carry vs archive.
Worker documents, contracts and forms that must be retained.
A sequence tuned for person-centric, effective-dated data.
Decide the objects and history depth in scope, and design the extraction via RaaS/API to pull complete, effective-dated data.
Pull the Workday object hierarchies and flatten them into staged, typed records per object and effective date.
Map Workday objects to the target model — Oracle Fusion HCM business objects (for HDL), another HRIS, or an archive schema.
Generate the target payloads (HDL .dat files for Fusion) and load iteratively into a test environment, clearing validation errors.
Match headcount, compensation totals, and where relevant payroll balances against Workday per population and period.
Either cut over to the new HRIS with a parallel run, or stand up a compliant archive of the Workday data and retire the tenant.
What to get right with person-centric data.
Carrying all effective-dated history is heavy. Decide how much the target needs and archive the rest.
Workday data is sensitive — encrypt, restrict access and minimize PII in staging.
Match active headcount, terminations and compensation totals, not just record counts.
If payroll moves, run at least one parallel pay cycle and reconcile to the cent before cutover.
Define how time-sliced records collapse into the target's date model up front.
After migration, archive Workday data for retention so you can stop paying for the tenant.
Through Reports-as-a-Service (RaaS) — custom Workday reports exposed as secure web-service endpoints — plus Workday's SOAP/REST web service APIs and report writer outputs. These return Workday's nested, effective-dated object structures, which are then flattened and staged for migration. Workday has no directly accessible relational database, so extraction is report/API-based.
Worker and assignment records, organizations and hierarchies, compensation and (if in scope) payroll, plus talent and documents the target supports. Decide how much effective-dated history to carry into the new system versus archive for compliance — carrying all history is usually unnecessary and heavy.
Yes. Workday objects are mapped to Oracle Fusion HCM business objects and loaded via HCM Data Loader (HDL), with reconciliation of headcount, compensation and balances. The same extraction can also feed a different HRIS or a compliance archive.
Workday stores the full time-sliced history of each record. A migration decides how many years of history to carry and how to represent the effective-dated changes in the target's date model, archiving older history rather than loading all of it.
By matching active headcount, new hires and terminations, organization assignments, and compensation totals (and payroll balances where in scope) between Workday and the target, per population and per period, with an evidence pack for sign-off.
Yes — if you're retiring Workday, you can extract and archive the worker, compensation, payroll and document data into a compliant, queryable archive for retention, then decommission the tenant to stop paying for it.
Tell us your Workday scope and target — Oracle Fusion HCM, another HRIS, or an archive. We'll scope the extraction, mapping and reconciliation.