Ahead of the curve: How Workable’s R&D culture drives continuous innovation

While other HR tech companies typically allocate 15–25% of their revenue to R&D, Workable invests 35%, significantly above the industry average. This commitment has helped keep Workable ahead of the curve for years, particularly in intelligent automation and AI. Long before the AI boom, over six years ago, Workable established a dedicated team specialized in the development of AI, refining the art of blending machine intelligence with human insight, and it’s paying off.

2025: Innovation in Action

The past year has been a showcase of how deep R&D commitment translates into tangible innovation across every corner of the Workable platform. Below are just some of the product updates we’ve released in the past year.

AI & Automation

• Natural Language Search, search for new candidates by writing the way you speak.
• Workable Assistant,provides your team with expert advice and guidance on how to make the most out of Workable, freeing you up from answering questions.
• Screening Assistant 2.0, delivers concise summaries of candidate profiles and match scores based on job requirements.
• Improved CV Parser, ensuring any resume is instantly and accurately parsed into useful profile data you can review, filter, and search by.

User Experience & Productivity

• Multi-location job posting, eliminating duplicate work by publishing global roles in one streamlined flow.
• Enterprise-grade reporting, enabling deeper insights into recruiting and HR performance, from building custom reports from scratch to filtering on any field in any data source.
• Custom access levels, reinforcing security with precise, role-based access controls across hiring and HR workflows.
• Requisition improvements, from editing hints and attaching documents, to tracking sources and filtering by role, we’ve upgraded your requisition management workflow.
• Mobile app upgrades, giving recruiters faster access to pipelines, scheduling, and approvals on the go.
• Improved search & filtering, enabling users to pinpoint candidates, jobs, and activities with greater accuracy and speed.
• Enabling bulk actions, reducing repetitive work with faster multi-candidate moves, tags, and communication.

HRIS Expansion

• Custom onboarding task creation, giving teams greater flexibility to design unique workflows.
• Enhanced time off management, time tracking, improving visibility, compliance, and employee experience.
• Built-in 360° performance reviews, streamlining the review process and making it seamless to gather feedback from every relevant team member.
• Shift scheduling within Work Calendar, giving teams real-time visibility to assign, adjust, and manage staffing.

Ecosystem Growth and Integrations

• Indeed Recruiter Extension + Talent Scout, extending sourcing reach and visibility.
• Upgraded LinkedIn Chrome extension, enabling one-click profile export and streamlining candidate sourcing.
• Apply with SEEK, providing a seamless application experience for candidates on the largest job board network in Asia and Australia.

To understand how this long-term investment in R&D translates into real product innovation, we spoke with Maria Filippousi, Workable’s Chief Product Officer.

Inside Workable R&D: A Conversation with Maria Filippousi, Chief Product Officer

As Chief Product Officer at Workable, Maria Filippousi has spent 12 years shaping the product strategy, leading hundreds of feature releases and the landmark launch of Workable’s HRIS.

“Workable’s R&D culture is built around collaboration, creativity, and shared purpose,” says Maria Filippousi, Chief Product Officer. “Our teams move fast because they’re tightly aligned around clear objectives, and they take pride in the quality and impact of what we build.”

On Building with AI, Responsibly

“Having a dedicated AI team for six years has shaped how we approach innovation. We don’t treat AI as a buzzword — it’s embedded in how we solve real recruiting problems. Every experiment aims to complement recruiters, not replace them.”

On What’s Ahead

“I’m especially proud of our work on reporting — we’re getting closer to delivering insights that truly matter. And our progress on access rights and 360° performance reviews reflects cross-functional collaboration at its best.”

“In 2026, we’ll take another leap: embedding AI directly into recruiters’ workflows. Imagine intelligence living inside the tools you already use — sourcing smarter, screening faster, and working with less friction.”

Innovation as a Commitment

For Workable, innovation is the foundation of how the company operates. It’s embedded in every decision, from how products are conceived to how customers are supported. R&D isn’t about chasing trends; it’s about anticipating what teams will need next and building for that future before it arrives.

This mindset has powered Workable’s evolution from an applicant tracking system to a comprehensive talent platform and all-in-one HR system—helping companies hire efficiently and manage and grow their people with confidence. Every release, every feature, every design choice reflects a long-term belief: technology should remove friction, amplify human potential, and adapt as the world of work changes.