Workday has officially opened its second office in Ireland, where its EMEA headquarters is located. Simon Coveney TD, Minister for Enterprise, Trade & Employment, officially opened ‘Dockline,’ alongside Michael Lohan, CEO, IDA Ireland and Professor David FitzPatrick, President, TU Dublin, and Graham Abell, Site Lead and Vice President, Software Engineering, Workday at a ribbon cutting ceremony. The new office is an 80,000 square foot high tech, high specification building in Dublin 1. Workday also announced a €2 million fund to establish a new Chair of Technology & Society at Technological University Dublin (TU Dublin).
Coveney stated, “I am very pleased to hear of Workday’s new ‘Dockline’ investment in Dublin and, as a first of its kind in Ireland, for providing €2 million to support the establishment of a new Chair of Technology & Society at TU Dublin. The new facility will house a range of functions including finance, sales, support, and HR and will be another platform to show off an extremely talented workforce. This is a further welcome investment and adds to Workday’s already well established and thriving presence in Ireland. I would like to congratulate all involved in this great initiative.”
Workday decided to build its EMEA organisation in Ireland 15 years ago and last year committed to employing another 1,000 people around Dublin. It already has 1,800 people from 70 nations working in the city. Abell said, “We continue to hire talented people as Ireland plays a crucial role in our innovation efforts at Workday. Such growth also means we can extend our community programmes and embrace new opportunities with TU Dublin, collaborating on projects that will have positive societal impact at both a local and national level.”
Workday will split its workforce between the two current buildings, moving to the new location with strategic EMEA functions such as finance, sales, support, and HR. The engineering and development teams will remain at the existing Workday office in Smithfield. The new office continues to allow Workday to expand in the region even as it works on the new 550,000-square-foot campus it bought last year. Whether these two offices are temporary until the new headquarters is unclear, but it will enable Workday to continue its expansion in the city.
Stronger ties with TU Dublin
The new campus is next to TU Dublin in Grangegorman, and the new funding deepens the relationship between the university and the global tech firm. Established for seven years, the fund will help fuel pioneering research that examines the intersection of technology and society across topics ranging from Artificial Intelligence to STEM.
The fund will support the Chair role and eight additional roles, including five PhD students and three staff members. Prof. David FitzPatrick, President of TU Dublin, said, “TU Dublin is grateful to Workday for this donation which will be used to conduct impactful research to solve problems in organisations and communities and to effect meaningful change. This underpins TU Dublin’s core pillars of People, Planet, and Partnership, and we look forward to working with Workday to ensure positive societal impact from this programme.”
Enterprise Times: What does this mean
Workday is putting down deep roots in Ireland. The new office indicates that it is planning to continue to grow in EMEA, using Dublin as a hub to support its other offices. It seems likely that expansion in other countries will remain a single office. What is clever about the approach is the funding for TU Dublin. It ensures that it will have a close relationship with the university and should continue to have access to the talent that graduates from the University.
The research fund will also see Workday access academic research into subjects critical to its customers and solutions. That it hasn’t decided to focus on Generative AI should be applauded. While a hot topic this year, other AI capabilities may be as relevant in the future. For Ireland, this is good news. Workday is forging close relationships with the Government that goes beyond many other tech firms. Most importantly, it continues to grow, bringing revenues to Ireland and ensuring that talent does not move abroad so quickly.
