Workday for HR & People Teams
Signature Course No. 287 — A Signature AI Socratic Coaching Course.
No experience needed — your coach starts where you are.
A New Kind of Learning
Socratic coaching, delivered by an agentic AI coach.
Not a course you watch. An AI coach you work with.
The Lighthouse Coach begins by discovering how you think about the subject, teaches what is missing, and gives you realistic practice before asking you to prove that you can use it. You may test out of concepts you already understand, while capstones turn the learning into a practical plan, decision, conversation, or other real-world result.
The curriculum is deliberately authored; the AI delivers it through coaching. It is not an AI randomly generating lessons.
A coach that teaches by asking — not by lecturing
The Lighthouse Coach is an AI Socratic coach built on Cognosco Learning's Workday for HR & People Teams course, in the People, Culture & Engagement category. It does not play videos at you. It holds a conversation: it asks you a question, listens to your answer, names the misconception it hears, affirms what you got right, and asks the next question — the way a great coach works in the room.
Most people meet Workday as a set of surprises. A new starter who either appears on day one or does not. A transfer that either takes effect on the Monday promised or quietly sits in someone's inbox. A week of hours that either flows cleanly toward pay or comes back as a spreadsheet of corrections. This course teaches the working model underneath those moments, so none of them is a surprise twice.
You learn principles and structure over click-paths. Every person held as one worker record; organizations that place the record and route its approvals; positions and jobs that give it shape; business processes that move it from state to state; effective dates that decide when a change is true; security that decides who may see and do what; and reports only ever as honest as the records beneath them. Screens and release names change. That model survives every release.
Then you run the system every week. Processes governed instead of bypassed, access reviewed against current jobs, payroll readiness won before calculation day, report definitions written down so figures survive questions, integrations reconciled like the promises they are — and the HRIS standard that binds it all into a service people trust.
It works in two movements. First, Module 1 — How People Live in the System — work through Concepts 1–9, finishing with The Record Audit; then, Module 2 — Running the System Every Week — work through Concepts 10–18, finishing with The Weekly Service Plan.
Both capstones produce real artifacts — the record audit report, a counted verdict on a whole estate's records with remediation sequenced by risk; and the weekly service plan, a governed document that sets how the service runs for a year, each programme owned, measured, and candid about its refusals.
The honesty discipline is part of the course. This course makes no job, credential, or promotion promise, and no platform result is guaranteed for any learner's own estate. It invents no module names, screen names, or transaction names, and asserts no prices, edition names, or release names. Platform details are taught as published at the time of writing, to be verified against the current release and your own configuration. It runs on one invented company and one set of figures, so every worked number can be traced and checked with a pencil.
The course is self-paced and always on — roughly 30 minutes per concept, about 9 hours in full, taken in as many sittings as you like. You can type your answers, or talk out loud: the Voice Coach speaks its questions and listens to your spoken replies. Learners who already know the material can test out concept by concept.
Workday for HR & People Teams is part of The Lighthouse Signature Series — the online counterpart to the one-day, in-person learning Cognosco Learning has delivered since 2002.
Course Facts
One full concept, coached end to end — free: verify your email and we’ll send you a link to start.
Already enrolled? Enter the course →
Diagnose → Learn & Practice → Prove → Capstone
Every learner moves through the same discipline a Cognosco instructor would insist on in the room.
Diagnose
The Coach starts where the course starts: with what you actually bring. Every concept opens with three questions that locate where you actually stand — what you already understand, and where the common trap is waiting for you — and your answers shape how deeply the Coach works the concept with you. Everyone begins with Module 1 — no skipping the foundations you only think you have.
Learn & Practice
Work each concept in conversation with the Coach — spoken or written — then practice it against realistic situations until it holds up.
Prove
Every concept ends in proof: answer the check cold and demonstrate the skill. Know it already? Test out and take credit immediately.
Capstone
Finish with two capstones — The Record Audit for Module 1 and The Weekly Service Plan for Module 2 — that pull the whole course together, and earn the certificate.
What You'll Learn
If the record is wrong, everything downstream is wrong with confidence. Every workflow, clock, pay run, and report in this course is only as good as the worker records underneath it — so the course returns to record truth in every module, because the system cannot fix, in a report, what was never true in a record.
Module 1 builds the record's life. The record itself, the organizations around it, the position it fills, hiring, job changes, leaving, time, absence, and pay inputs — in the order a working life actually flows.
Module 2 runs the system every week. Business processes and security, effective dates and compensation structures, payroll readiness, reporting, data quality, integrations, and the HRIS standard that keeps the system a service people trust.
The process is the promise. A business process is not bureaucracy around the real work; in this system it is how the work is guaranteed — who must act, in what order, with what checks, leaving what evidence. When a process is bypassed, the guarantee is gone even when the outcome looks the same.
What you will learn
- Read the working model: the worker record, organizations, positions, and the dated history that makes a record trustworthy
- Run the employment life cycle in the system: hiring workflows, job changes, leaving, time, absence, and pay inputs entered correctly the first time
- Govern the engine: business processes, security, effective dates, compensation structures as configured, and payroll readiness before calculation day
- Serve and protect the estate: reports people can rely on, data quality and audits, integrations watched honestly, and the HRIS standard for a system people trust
Everything in the course
- All 18 concepts of Workday for HR & People Teams, in 2 modules
- A starting-point check first — the Coach finds where you actually stand before teaching
- Learn, Practice, Prove for every concept — no passive video watching
- A test-out on every concept: prove you know it and move on
- The Voice Coach: talk with the Coach out loud — it speaks, listens, and replies
- A personal Learner Record of your work across the course
- Two capstone exercises: The Record Audit and The Weekly Service Plan
- A printable session summary whenever you pause
- The Lighthouse Coach completion certificate (Signature Series)
- Your progress is saved as you go — stop anytime, resume where you left off
Built for people who run Workday
HR and people-team members, and HRIS leads and system administrators — who work in Workday daily, configure and support it, and need to judge records, workflows, and reports rather than merely process them.
Payroll and time administrators, and HR managers and business partners — whose work begins where time and pay inputs end, who request reports and approve workflows, and who need to know what they are actually approving and asking for.
Professionals moving into an HR systems role — from generalist HR, operations, or another enterprise system — who need the Workday working model quickly and honestly. The course assumes ordinary workplace experience in an organization with an HR function; it assumes no prior Workday administration, no programming, and no mathematics beyond ordinary arithmetic.
Prefer to learn live and in person? The same material anchors Cognosco's one-day programs — browse the in-person catalog.
Start with The Record Audit
$195 — introductory price. One payment. No subscription, no password to manage.
Here is exactly what happens when you enroll:
- Pay securely with Stripe — you are taken straight into the course
- Create your learner profile and begin the Module 1 starting-point check
- Save the access key you are given — it restores your enrollment on any device
- Learn at your pace; your progress is stored in your browser on your device
For the full voice experience, use Chrome and allow the microphone when asked. Typing your answers works everywhere, all the time. Questions before you enroll? Email hello@cognoscolearning.com.
Before you enroll
What is a Socratic coaching session?
A conversation, not a video. Your coach asks a question; you answer — out loud by voice, or by typing — and the coach responds to what you said: naming the misconception it hears, affirming what you got right, and asking the next question. You advance only when you have mastered each concept, so a finished course means the learning held.
How long does it take — and how long do I have?
About 30 minutes per concept. Learn in sittings of any length; your progress is saved as you go. You have a full year from purchase to finish, and you can revisit and retake within that year.
What does the certificate verify?
That you completed every concept and both capstones of this course. Anyone can confirm a Cognosco certificate online — enter its certificate ID on our verification page.
What if it isn't for me — what are the refunds?
If you have not started, cancel for a full refund within seven days of purchase. Once you have started, there is no cash refund — stop before finishing and we credit the full amount you paid toward any other course in the library (credit valid one year from your original purchase). Once you complete the course, no refund or credit applies.
More Signature Courses are coming
Workday for HR & People Teams is Signature Course No. 287. Leave your email and we'll send you news of future Signature Courses and Lighthouse updates as they are announced — nothing else.