--- title: "How Workday embraced a data product mindset" url: "https://atlan.com/regovern-watch-center/workday-data-product-mindset/" description: "Workday reimagined governance by making it an invisible strength within their data products." keywords: "atlan, data governance, regovern 2025, regovern watch center" --- > Atlan is hosting Context Conference, bringing together the leaders and builders at the frontier of giving AI the context it needs to understand their business. It runs online on October 28, 2026, from 11:00 AM to 2:00 PM ET. Atlan co-founder Prukalpa Sankar opens and closes the day. Leaders from AstraZeneca, BNY and Verizon share why they invest in context and what they get from it. Registrants get early access to The AI Context Gap, a new study from MIT Technology Review Insights. Register: https://atlan.com/context-conference/ **How Workday Embraced a Data Product Mindset** is a highlight from Re:Govern 2025 (online, Nov 4-5, 2025) in the Atlan Re:Govern watch center, featuring Joe DosSantos of Workday. Workday reimagined governance by making it an invisible strength within their data products. Watch it at [https://atlan.com/regovern-watch-center/workday-data-product-mindset/](https://atlan.com/regovern-watch-center/workday-data-product-mindset/); the player asks for an email to keep watching after the first two minutes. All sessions: [Re:Govern watch center](https://atlan.com/regovern-watch-center/). ## Speaker **Joe DosSantos**, Vice President, Enterprise Data & Analytics, Workday. From EMC and TD Bank to Qlik, Joe has built data foundations at scale. At Workday, he leads AI readiness - creating semantic layers that transform the world's largest and cleanest HR-and-finance dataset into precise, trustworthy, organization-specific AI insights. **Company:** Workday is the enterprise AI platform for managing people, money, and agents - powering 11,000+ organizations including half the Fortune 500. ## What's inside Workday's approach is simple but radical: if you want people to use trusted data, make it the path of least resistance. They build production standards into every data product from the start - business definitions, security tags, observability rules - so that by the time data reaches users, it's already reliable. The result: 6 million assets cataloged, 1,000 shared terms everyone actually uses, and hundreds of people across the company speaking the same language. Key takeaways: - Treat data like a product with trust built in from day one, not bolted on later - Set clear production standards: no code gets promoted without definitions, security labels, and observability - When trusted data is easier to access than messy data, adoption takes care of itself - Shared glossaries and catalogs turn tribal knowledge into common language across the company - Tools like Atlan make these standards automatic, not aspirational ## Chapters From the page's video metadata: 1. Data as a product, trust by design - Why trust must be embedded in every data product from the start. 2. Production standards for reliability - How Workday enforces definitions, security labels, and observability before deployment. 3. Adoption through trusted access - When reliable data becomes easier to find than messy data, adoption follows naturally. 4. Glossaries that unify the company - How shared catalogs and terms align teams on one language of data. 5. Automation with Atlan - Making governance and trust automatic through Atlan's platform. ## More from Re:Govern 2025 - [Virgin Media O2: Context for All](https://atlan.com/regovern-watch-center/virgin-media-o2-context-for-all/) (session recording) - [DigiKey: Context Readiness](https://atlan.com/regovern-watch-center/digikey-context-readiness/) (session recording) - [CME Group: Context at Speed](https://atlan.com/regovern-watch-center/cme-group-context-at-speed/) (session recording) - [Mastercard: Context by Design](https://atlan.com/regovern-watch-center/mastercard-context-by-design/) (session recording) - [Workday: Context as Culture](https://atlan.com/regovern-watch-center/workday-context-as-culture/) (session recording) - [How Regulated Business are Moving Governance Beyond Compliance](https://atlan.com/regovern-watch-center/regulated-industries-beyond-compliance/) (highlight) - [Why Workday is Building a Semantic Layer](https://atlan.com/regovern-watch-center/workday-building-semantic-layer/) (highlight) - [Workday's Learnings From its First Talk to Data experiment](https://atlan.com/regovern-watch-center/workday-talk-to-data-learnings/) (highlight) - [How Workday Connects Context Across Business Tools](https://atlan.com/regovern-watch-center/how-workday-connects-context/) (highlight) - [How Mastercard Designs Context at Scale](https://atlan.com/regovern-watch-center/how-mastercard-designs-context/) (highlight) - [Mastercard's Federated Architecture for Agentic Commerce](https://atlan.com/regovern-watch-center/mastercard-federated-architecture/) (highlight) - [How Protocols and Tools are Evolving for Agentic Governance](https://atlan.com/regovern-watch-center/protocols-agentic-governance/) (highlight) - [How CME Group Evaluated Vendors for its Context Layer](https://atlan.com/regovern-watch-center/cme-group-evaluation/) (highlight) - [How DigiKey uses Atlan as a Context Operating System](https://atlan.com/regovern-watch-center/digikey-atlan-context-operating-system/) (highlight) - [How Data Roles are Evolving: From Modelers to Context Engineers](https://atlan.com/regovern-watch-center/data-modelers-to-context-engineers/) (highlight) - [Why VMO2 Invested in Business Layers and Context Before Conversational AI](https://atlan.com/regovern-watch-center/vmo2-business-context-layers/) (highlight) - [How VMO2 and Atlan are Partnering on AI-powered Data Discovery](https://atlan.com/regovern-watch-center/vmo2-ai-powered-discovery/) (highlight) - [How VMO2 Built a Data Product Flywheel for 16,000 Employees](https://atlan.com/regovern-watch-center/vmo2-data-product-flywheel/) (highlight) - [How EasyJet Scaled Governance with an MVP Approach](https://atlan.com/regovern-watch-center/easyjet-mvp-approach/) (highlight) - [Nasdaq's "Anchor Client" Rollout Strategy](https://atlan.com/regovern-watch-center/nasdaq-anchor-client/) (highlight) - [How Invitation Homes Measures Data Product Success](https://atlan.com/regovern-watch-center/data-product-success/) (highlight) - [Nasdaq's Core Governance Reporting Metrics](https://atlan.com/regovern-watch-center/nasdaq-reporting-metrics/) (highlight) - [Mastercard's Team Model Behind Modernization](https://atlan.com/regovern-watch-center/mastercard-data-governance-blueprint/) (highlight) - [ROI Before AI: How Leaders Make the Business Bet on Foundations](https://atlan.com/regovern-watch-center/roi-before-ai/) (session recording) - [Contracts, Context, and Cars: General Motors' Governance Blueprint for the Agentic AI Era](https://atlan.com/regovern-watch-center/contracts-context-and-cars-general-motors/) (session recording) - [How Mastercard is Building AI-Ready Data Products](https://atlan.com/regovern-watch-center/mastercard-ai-ready-data-products/) (session recording) - [The Evolution of Trust: Building the Foundations for Future-Readiness](https://atlan.com/regovern-watch-center/evolution-of-trust/) (session recording) - [Top-Down or Bottom-Up: The World's Largest Exchanges Show Two Paths to AI](https://atlan.com/regovern-watch-center/top-down-or-bottom-up-cme-dbg/) (session recording) - [What Forced Mastercard to Modernize Its Context Stack](https://atlan.com/regovern-watch-center/mastercard-context-stack-modernization/) (highlight) - [How Invitation Homes De-Risks the Business by Certifying 350 KPIs](https://atlan.com/regovern-watch-center/invitation-homes-data-product-success/) (highlight) - [How Nasdaq Measures Governance ROI: Time to Insight, Time to Resolution, and Adoption](https://atlan.com/regovern-watch-center/nasdaq-governance-metrics/) (highlight) - [AI-Ready Tech Pioneers Share their Single Most Effective AI Readiness Strategies](https://atlan.com/regovern-watch-center/ai-readiness-strategies-pioneers/) (highlight) - [GitLab's Learnings from its First Experiment with Conversational AI](https://atlan.com/regovern-watch-center/gitlab-conversational-ai-learnings/) (highlight) - [How CME Turned Vendor Selection into a Data Strategy](https://atlan.com/regovern-watch-center/cme-vendor-selection-data-strategy/) (highlight) - [Workday's Semantic Layer Strategy](https://atlan.com/regovern-watch-center/workday-semantic-layer-strategy/) (highlight) - [Modern Data & AI Governance Blueprint](https://atlan.com/blueprint) (resource) Talk to Atlan: [Book a Demo](https://atlan.com/forms/talk-to-sales-contact/).