How to Build a Workday Org Chart Without the Paid Add-On

Q: How do I create an org chart from Workday?

Three paths in order of likelihood: (1) Use the delivered Org Chart task — click your name → Org Chart, expand all levels below, export to Excel. Works for the sup-orgs you have access to, no admin help needed. (2) Run an existing worker-listing custom report — search Workday for 'Worker Listing,' 'All Active Employees,' 'All Workers,' or 'Headcount Report.' (3) Ask your admin to build one on the All Active Employees data source. All three produce an Excel file you drop into Org Chart Studio, where the column mapper handles Workday's verbose headers as-is.

Q: Workday's org chart is awful for large orgs — what do I do?

You're not alone — that's verbatim from a VP of Talent Ops in the Lucid community forums. The Workday Org Chart task struggles past a few hundred people, especially with photos enabled. The fix: export the underlying data to Excel, import to a tool that lays out large charts well, brand it, and export a PNG. That's the workflow this article walks through.

Q: My Workday export has rows with no employee name. What are those?

Those are vacant positions in a Position Management tenant. Workday's position model lets a Position exist independently of a Worker — so when an unfilled position appears in your export, it shows up with a Position ID, Position Title, and Manager Position, but no Worker. Either filter them out (for an 'actual people' chart), chart them as 'Open Role' (for a hiring-plan chart), or leave them in if you're showing capacity intentionally.

Q: What about contingent workers and contractors in Workday?

Workday tracks them separately from employees via the Worker Type column. If your chart should show contractors (an embedded-contractor team, for example), filter Worker Type to include them. If it shouldn't, filter to Employee only. The chart looks very different depending on the call.

Q: What if I'm on Workday Adaptive Planning or Strategic Sourcing?

Out of scope. Workday HCM (the HR system) is what produces worker-listing reports. Adaptive Planning is the financial planning module; Strategic Sourcing is procurement. Neither has an employee-roster export in the same sense. If you need a chart of the workforce, the data lives in Workday HCM.

Five minutes from a Workday export to a clean, shareable org chart PNG. Put it on your team's wiki. Drop it in an onboarding deck. Walk through a "current state vs proposed" reorg with your boss.

The catch with Workday, what makes a Workday org chart harder to export than BambooHR or ADP, is there's no universal export. A VP of Talent Ops put it bluntly in a public community thread: "Workday's org charts are awful. The amount of manual manipulation is inefficient." You're not the only one frustrated. What you can pull from Workday depends on what your admin has built.

Three Workday org chart paths, in order of likelihood: the delivered Org Chart task (universal), a custom worker-listing report (if your admin built one), or asking your admin for one (template below). Same end result: an Excel file you drop into Org Chart Studio. Same workflow whether you're charting the whole company, a department, or just your team.

Key Takeaways

Workday has no universal export. Three paths, ranked by what's most likely available to you.

The delivered Org Chart task (top-right menu → Org Chart, or search "Org Chart") exports to Excel and works without admin help.

For a real export: ask your admin for a report on All Active Employees with Employee ID, Manager Employee ID, Name, Business Title, Email. Copy-paste template below.

Workday's headers are verbose (Worker > Preferred Name > Full Name). Don't rename them, Org Chart Studio's column mapper handles them as-is.

If your tenant uses Position Management, your export has vacant-position rows. Filter them out, or chart them as "Open Role."

Already have a Workday export? Drop it into Org Chart Studio → and jump to the import section.

Path 1: The delivered Workday org chart task (most likely available)

This is the path the top Reddit thread on create org chart from workday describes, and it works for most non-admin users today.

In Workday, click your name (top right) → Org Chart. Or search "Org Chart" in the search bar. You'll land on a visual sup-org tree starting at your manager's level.

Click the expand all levels below icon to drill down. Then click the print/export icon and choose Excel (PowerPoint is also offered; pick Excel, it's structured data, not a slide).

Workday exports the people visible in your tree to an .xlsx with columns including Worker, Manager, Business Title, and Supervisory Organization.

Limitation: this only shows the sup-orgs you have access to. If your Workday security group only lets you see your manager's sub-tree, you can't get the whole company this way. If you need a wider view, you need Path 2 or Path 3.

Path 2: A worker-listing custom report (if your admin built one)

Search Workday for "Worker Listing," "All Active Employees," "All Workers," or "Headcount Report." If your admin has built one, it'll appear in the search results. Open it, run it, click the Excel export icon.

Typical columns: Worker (name), Employee ID, Manager (with ID and name), Business Title, Email - Primary Work, Supervisory Organization, Location.

If multiple custom reports show up, pick the one built on the All Active Employees data source (excludes terminated and pre-hire workers) over All Workers (includes everyone, including future starts and terminations).

If neither comes up, or only ones with the wrong column set, you need Path 3.

Path 3: Ask your admin for one (copy-paste template)

Most Workday admins can build a worker-listing custom report in ten minutes. They mostly don't realize a non-admin asked because nobody phrases the request properly. Send this:

Hi, I need to build an org chart from Workday. Can you either run for me, or share access to, a custom report on the All Active Employees data source with these columns:

Employee ID

Preferred Name (First + Last) or Full Legal Name

Primary Work Email

Business Title

Manager (Employee ID and Name)

Supervisory Organization

Location

Worker Type (Employee/Contingent)

Excel (.xlsx) output. One row per active worker. Thanks!

If your admin pushes back on building a new custom report, ask whether the Worker Listing delivered report covers it. Some tenants have it under their delivered-reports list and the admin didn't realize you didn't know.

Why not just buy a Workday org chart add-on?

Paid Workday Marketplace add-ons exist, and they're the right answer for orgs with a recurring workforce-planning use case and a real budget. They live-sync from Workday, model position-based reporting, and handle matrix relationships. They also cost real money and usually require procurement and IT review.

For a one-time chart, a quarterly board prep deck, a team-wiki page, or a department lead who just wants visibility into their org, the math doesn't work. The manual export takes five minutes once you have the right report, and you don't need procurement to approve anything.

Import to Org Chart Studio

Open Org Chart Studio. No account needed.

Drop your Workday Excel file onto the import dropzone. The column mapper opens. Workday's defaults are verbose:

Worker or Worker > Preferred Name > Full Name → combines into the Name field on each card
Business Title → appears under the name
Employee ID → the unique person key
Manager or Manager > Worker > Preferred Name > Full Name → falls back to manager-by-name
Manager Employee ID → the unambiguous parent reference; set this as the Manager column if it's in your export

If your export only has the manager name (not the manager Employee ID), Studio's fuzzy matcher handles small variations like "Sarah C" vs "Sarah Chen" during the import preview, but two people with identical names will need disambiguation. The fix is asking your admin to include Manager Employee ID in the report.

Click Import. The chart appears. Drag cards to reparent, double-click to edit, use layout presets to switch between dense and roomy spacing.

Export a watermarked PNG free, or a $1 export pass for a clean PNG you can put in a deck. See pricing →

Ready to try it? Drop your Workday export into the studio →

Workday org chart gotchas

Verbose column headers. Workday's default header for "Manager's full name" is Manager > Worker > Preferred Name > Full Name. Don't rename anything; paste the file as-is. The column mapper handles both Workday's verbose path-style headers and the aliased style (First_Name, Last_Name, Mgr_Emp_Id) some admins use.

Vacant positions (Position Management tenants). If your Workday tenant uses Position Management, your export may have rows where the Position fields are filled but the Worker field is blank. Those are unfilled roles. Filter them out, or chart them as "Open Role", both are valid; depends on what the chart's for.

Preferred Name vs Legal Name. Workday stores both. Most reports default to Preferred. Recommend Preferred Name for the chart unless you have a specific reason (compliance documentation, legal review) to use Legal.

Contingent workers. Workday tracks contractors and contingents separately from employees. The Worker Type column distinguishes them. Filter in or out depending on whether the chart should include contractors.

Effective-dated history. Workday tracks every change with effective dates. By default, a custom report shows as-of-today. If you need as-of-fiscal-year-end (for board prep), tell your admin to add an "as-of-date" prompt.

Using a different HR system?

Same shape of workflow, different menu paths:

BambooHR, Custom Report with the calculated Supervisor email field.
ADP Workforce Now, the Custom Report path that skips ADP's paid Marketplace add-ons.
Build an org chart from CSV, the general method for Gusto, Rippling, Paychex, an in-house HRIS, or a manually-built spreadsheet.

Frequently asked questions

How do I create an org chart from Workday?

Three paths in order of likelihood:

Use the delivered Org Chart task. Click your name → Org Chart, expand all levels below, export to Excel. Works for the sup-orgs you have access to, no admin help needed.
Run an existing worker-listing custom report. Search Workday for "Worker Listing," "All Active Employees," "All Workers," or "Headcount Report." If your admin built one, it appears in the results.
Ask your admin to build one on the All Active Employees data source (copy-paste template above).

All three produce an Excel file you drop into Org Chart Studio, where the column mapper handles Workday's verbose headers as-is.

Can I export the Workday org chart to Excel?

Yes. From the delivered Org Chart task, click the export icon and choose Excel. The output is structured data, one row per person in the visible sup-orgs, with Worker, Manager, Business Title, and Supervisory Organization columns. PowerPoint is also offered but exports as slide objects, not data.

Why doesn't my Workday have an "All Employees" report?

Workday reports are tenant-built, not delivered. Unlike BambooHR or Gusto, there's no canonical "employee export" baked in. Your admin builds reports on data sources like All Workers or All Active Employees. If your tenant doesn't have one yet, ask your admin to build it, they can do it in about ten minutes (template above).

Workday's org chart is awful for [N] people, what do I do?

You're not alone, that's verbatim from a VP of Talent Ops in the Lucid community forums. The Workday Org Chart task struggles past a few hundred people, especially with photos enabled. The fix: export the underlying data to Excel, import to a tool that lays out large charts well, brand it, and export a PNG. That's what this article walks through.

My Workday export has rows with no employee name. What are those?

Those are vacant positions in a Position Management tenant. Workday's position model lets a Position exist independently of a Worker, so when an unfilled position appears in your export, it shows up with a Position ID, a Position Title, and a Manager Position, but no Worker. Either filter them out (for an "actual people" chart), chart them as "Open Role" (for a hiring-plan chart), or leave them in if you're showing capacity intentionally.

What's a supervisory organization in Workday?

A supervisory organization (sup-org) is Workday's unit of reporting hierarchy. Each sup-org has one manager and contains workers. Sup-orgs nest, the CEO's sup-org contains the VP sup-orgs, each of which contains their direct-report sup-orgs, and so on. Most worker-list exports include the Supervisory Organization column; you can use it as a department-equivalent for color-coding the chart.

Should I use Preferred Name or Legal Name in the export?

Preferred Name. Workday stores both, and most reports default to Preferred. People's preferred names are what their team calls them and what should appear on the chart. Use Legal Name only for compliance or legal documentation specifically requiring it.

What about contingent workers and contractors?

Workday tracks them separately from employees via the Worker Type column. If your chart should show contractors (an embedded-contractor team, for example), filter Worker Type to include them. If it shouldn't, filter to Employee only. The chart looks very different depending on the call.

Does Org Chart Studio sync with Workday automatically?

Not today. The current flow is export-then-import: pull the report, drop the file into Studio. For quarterly board updates, onboarding decks, and team-wiki pages, that's the right rhythm. If you specifically need live sync, paid Workday Marketplace add-ons exist for that.

What if I'm on a non-Workday product like Workday Adaptive Planning or Workday Strategic Sourcing?

Out of scope for this article. Workday HCM (the HR system) is what produces worker-listing reports. Adaptive Planning is the financial planning module; Strategic Sourcing is procurement. Neither has an employee-roster export in the same sense. If you need a chart of the workforce, the data lives in Workday HCM.

Free PNG exports include a small orgchartstudio.com watermark. For the clean version, a $1 export pass removes it. No subscription. See pricing →

The hard part with Workday is the report, once you have an Excel file with names, manager IDs, and titles, everything after is a column dropdown and a click.