Confidence in Controls: Confronting Occupational Fraud with Workday
Updated March 2025 - In 2024, occupational fraud cost organisations an average of 5% of revenue. Beyond the obvious financial impact, occupational fraud can erode employee trust and negatively impact a company's reputation. Additionally, the inadequate data protection that often facilitates fraud can lead to non-compliance with regulations like SOX, CCPA and GDPR, each with their own penalties.
Global enterprises are adopting cloud-based systems like Workday to centralise security, improve operations and streamline data management. However, the risk of fraud continues when businesses are reliant on manual processes to manage the systems they use.
Despite the governance and control safety net that Workday provides, it’s essential that companies understand the opportunities that still exist for occupational fraud and the solutions available to confront them. Here, we explore the key factors at play and how to proactively mitigate risk.
Rapid growth can open the door to fraud
Though Workday evolves as enterprises transform, growth and expansion typically mean more complex and demanding security and compliance management. As additional core and integrated systems are introduced, security controls and access policies must keep up with the pace of change to prevent opportunities for occupational fraud to occur.
But this can stretch Workday IT, HRIS, and compliance teams, resulting in prioritisation conflicts between focusing on key business priorities and managing vital compliance pillars like segregation of duties or user activity monitoring. If these controls preventing internal fraud or harmful actions are neglected, financial and reputational harm is almost guaranteed.
With the average occupational fraud case costing $1.7 million, organisations should seek to maximise Workday's security features by exploring automation to efficiently handle control requirements.
This approach frees teams to concentrate on strategic growth and daily operations rather than reacting to complex, shifting security demands.
Better oversight, quicker detection
In 2024, 32% of occupational fraud cases were caused by a lack of controls and a further 19% from users being able to override existing controls. Whilst poor controls give the opportunity for fraud to occur, a lack of oversight can allow perpetrators to conceal fraudulent activities for longer periods.
Although Workday provides robust security and compliance capabilities, administrators are still tasked with overseeing a complex web of conflict monitoring, data access policies and user permissions.
This can leave even the most well-resourced team scrambling to maintain the constant supervision required. The result is a reactive approach, where data breaches, non-compliance, and occupational fraud may lie undiscovered for extended periods.
A proactive, always-on strategy for security, alongside Workday’s in-built functionality, is essential to gain full insight into the events or actions that can lead to fraud. Not only does proactive data monitoring reduce the average fraud loss by up to 50%, it allows teams to stay one step ahead, maximising compliance and data security management with minimal resources.
Audits are never 100% effective
Organisations have to contend with a number of demanding audit requirements that vary based on their size, sector and company type. Compliance regulations establish the minimum obligations that must be met, however, conducting additional internal audits is one of the most effective ways to ensure full compliance, maintain data security, and prevent internal fraud.
Workday helps businesses to implement a more comprehensive security strategy by consolidating user and event information. Despite the greater efficiency offered at a system level, traditional audits are by nature resource-intensive, disruptive and prone to human error.
With 80% of occupational fraud cases occurring in companies with internal audit policies, it is clear that the impact of ineffective audits extends well beyond the obvious compliance issues. For organisations operating in multiple jurisdictions, with complex Workday configurations, trying to find a conflict or security incident through audits can be like trying to find a needle in a haystack.
Integrated, automated Workday security solutions are widely recognised as the most efficient way to maintain compliance and prevent fraud.
By simplifying complex, cumbersome evidence gathering processes, businesses can minimise the resources needed, eliminate human error, and make their audit strategy as impactful and accurate as possible.
Ensure compliance and eliminate fraud
Occupational fraud affects companies of all sizes across every sector and changes in remote working and cloud migration are giving perpetrators new opportunities to commit and conceal harmful fraud against businesses.
Taking advantage of integrated solutions like Kainos Smart Audit allows teams to leverage and enhance the power of Workday security to monitor, prepare for audits, and protect sensitive data more efficiently. Ultimately, it helps businesses to maintain compliance and minimise opportunities for internal fraud to occur.
With easily managed proactive monitoring and flexible data masking capabilities, Kainos Smart helps to uncover adverse incidents more rapidly, limiting their harm while ensuring access to sensitive data is restricted.
This proactive, automated approach reduces reliance on manual oversight that can be prone to malicious activity and human error, as well as burdensome on SMEs.
With simplified Workday security and data protection solutions like Kainos Smart, businesses can support security and compliance efforts, maximise efficiency, and begin to make occupational fraud a thing of the past.