HireRight scores $1.65 Billion, Upwards fixes the $23Bn productivity crisis, And is the term diversity polarizing?

[00:00:00] Building kind of left out at work on Monday morning, check out the barf.

[00:00:04] Breaking news, acquisitions, research and funding.

[00:00:07] It's a look back at the week that was, so you can prepare for the week that is.

[00:00:12] Subscribe on your favorite podcast app.

[00:00:15] So, thank you for watching the barf.

[00:00:23] Breaking news, acquisitions, research and funding.

[00:00:26] Ryan and I go through different stories that we saw this week. All right, so I do not know her, but I wish her well. Yes, you will. I think she'll do well. Yeah, she's done well everywhere she's been. So she'll be fine. Yeah. All right. So what search engine do you use most to search?

[00:01:42] Well, I'm actually asking you the question. It's not asked, Jeeves.

[00:01:43] OK, so that's out.

[00:01:44] Um, that was a good one, though.

[00:01:46] I know, right?

[00:02:43] So there's a lot of competitors, right? But I think Google has about 80%ish, right?

[00:02:45] They have about 80% of the actual search markets,

[00:02:49] but Bing, who's been just getting their Wazookay forever,

[00:02:54] right?

[00:02:55] They're back.

[00:02:56] They're here.

[00:02:56] And here's what's happening.

[00:02:57] So OpenAI receives a ton of support,

[00:03:03] financially, from Microsoft.

[00:03:05] Right.

[00:03:06] They're almost like brother and so I, the, this is going back and that we probably won't touch on during this bar. But, you know, again, what can they actually say and not say when they're in that new job is really also kind of interesting. But I like it. I mean,

[00:05:40] first of all, competition's good. If Google wants to be our default browser, which they do,

[00:06:45] a team or people from Walmart who already had this in place.

[00:06:47] And, but it just fun fact to ourselves. And it did the same thing with DHL and FedEx

[00:06:50] and a bunch of other players.

[00:06:51] I mean, again, it's, they're,

[00:06:53] they're still gonna build their own bit Amazon in this case.

[00:06:56] And so will Microsoft.

[00:06:58] It's not like they're just going to cut and copy

[00:07:00] what Google did.

[00:07:01] They're gonna try to improve what Google did.

[00:07:03] I mean, that's the, that's the real juice

[00:07:06] is to take some of that talent to Pryor's voice and it wouldn't do it because it's like, no, that's talking about death, we can't make fun of death. Where, what this article is that's a-a-r-x-i-v.org. And what it really talks about is building, building large language models and building AI

[00:08:20] to actually antagonize us.

[00:08:22] So ask us questions that we don't wanna answer. I'm not having another baby, but I do have a story about baby. However, I got it was the story upwards. Do you ever hear of upwards? The company upwards. We care. We care. Right. Right. So they just raised series B 21 million series B to scale childcare. And so I saw this

[00:09:42] I saw this the other day and I thought to myself, okay, where your school is closed. They work with you to go and find a backup in your local area. Right. So they handle this for the company. And I just thought it was such an amazing thing. Yeah. So I want to read some of these stats off here because I didn't realize

[00:11:03] that. And I'm sure a lot of other people don't.

[00:12:04] experience as well. I mean, like, let's just get past the productivity, productivity is pretty easy to solve that algebra because the more person works, especially as more

[00:12:10] zoned in, they are to work, the more productive they are, the more you kind of get where you

[00:12:14] pay for and maybe you pay for, et cetera. But if you think about the experience, the employee

[00:12:20] experience, like, letting people go and you

[00:13:40] have to do it virtually, so, yeah. Oh, yes. I don't understand why you're not giving me the answers to all those on video. I'm like, Oh, this is a nightmare. So for the audience, just just think about the way that we do layoffs. I mean,

[00:15:02] first of all, even if it wasn't virtual, how could we be more humane in human resources? How can we be more humane? And when

[00:16:05] We are going to have a round of really really difficult decisions coming up like

[00:16:08] communicating it well in advance

[00:16:15] Four weeks three weeks two weeks. Okay the week of that way. It's like if if you're one of those 400 people

[00:16:19] Yes, you're it's unfortunate, but it's not like you didn't know

[00:16:23] It's the you so you take the surprise element out of it

[00:16:26] Secondly, I faster you can as a company get them to their next thing. Their greatest opportunity, it's not with you, but it's with someone else. Right. Then their happiness goes up and they're less vengeful and there's less negativity around you because they're next on to their next greatest adventure.

[00:17:40] They're not thinking about you.

[00:17:41] And companies don't think about that.

[00:17:43] They don't plan for that.

[00:17:45] They just, you know, we got to allow 400 employees. So they announced that today that they've entered into a definitive agreement to be acquired by the Investment Fund General Atlantic and Stone Point Capital. These are two that were previously within. They think it was back in November, December timeframe when it first came out.

[00:19:05] But it was non-binding.

[00:19:06] Now it's official. play outside of the acquisition, just being a great acquisition. His SaaS players over the last couple of years have become SaaS plays. These background screening plays have become SaaS plays. When you and I were in that game, they were kind of one and done. You hired them to do the pre-employment background check and then you never have to talk to them again.

[00:20:20] If you like swiping, then head over to Substack and search up work defined.

[00:20:24] W.R.K.

[00:20:26] Defined and subscribe to the weekly newsletter.

[00:21:21] This is just a, we're gonna hold it and it just, it's off a ton of cash, right?

[00:21:23] Everybody wins or are they gonna,

[00:21:25] is there a different strategy that's,

[00:21:27] that they're not gonna tell us.

[00:21:30] No, I'll find out.

[00:21:31] Yeah, if they deal list, yes.

[00:21:33] Okay, then we clear indicator.

[00:21:35] They deal list, we know what they're gonna do.

[00:21:37] We know that model.

[00:21:39] But I love the, first of all,

[00:21:40] I love the acquisition and I would not

[00:21:42] bet against general athletic.

[00:21:44] No, and I love the space.

[00:21:45] The space has just been, is taking into a different level and a different medium because again, it's all about mitigating risk. If you've got somebody on TikTok, let's use that as the, for example, and they're just blasting brands after one after another. Verizon is an AT&T that may seem to this. That's their bit on TikTok. I'm going to bash brands. I had a bad experience. I'm going to tell the world.

[00:24:03] Jack in the mountains and get off the grid and not have a driver's license.

[00:24:06] I don't mind any monitors.

[00:24:09] I want better ads.

[00:24:12] I'm like on the other end, like I want you to really know me so well that you don't put dumb shit in front of me.

[00:24:15] Like so I don't need it, you know, on my Instagram feed.

[00:24:18] I don't need tampon ads.

[00:24:20] I'm good.

[00:24:20] I'm not there.

[00:24:22] Don't need that.

[00:24:22] I, if that takes, that means that you're listening to every conversation I'm

[00:24:26] having.

[00:24:27] Fantastic.

[00:25:27] up one day and they're a global payroll provider and they're competing with all kinds of the folks that we know and love. But pay attention to this payroll, this acquisition in Pinto,

[00:25:32] because Pinto already had a good brand and they bought it. So they bought a company with good tech,

[00:25:38] I say, it's a great tech and a great brand and adding it to Bob, I think, is just really,

[00:25:44] really start playing for them. Good work. Yeah. And one if you're ready. Yeah, let's do it. Because you're a part of Gen X Ryan and I know you're proud to be a Gen Xer. Let's define Gen X the ages because yesterday I was called a zenial. Yeah, is that really a thing? Not sure. Anyhow, here's the title. Here's the title they got.

[00:28:02] and some of that knowledge, et cetera. So I think it's actually a nice thing to think about in HR

[00:28:06] and even in training and development is okay.

[00:28:09] We need to be thinking about Gen X in the same way.

[00:28:12] They're gonna be around a lot longer.

[00:28:14] You know, for first, for Gen Z and for millennials,

[00:28:18] they're gonna wish we were gone.

[00:28:20] Yeah.

[00:28:21] However, it turns out our circumstances are so horrible,

[00:28:27] we're gonna going to die

[00:29:43] in the field. I haven't changed any of that mentality. I just think of it in advance and you start programmatically building things to leverage that generation. Right. Okay, another one, if you're ready. Let's do it, what do you got? All right, here's leaders. This is quotes, sorry, I'll do air quotes. Leaders evaluate generative AI, but few use it.

[00:31:05] So, this is a bit...

[00:31:07] That makes a lot of training, later internal training, extra training, how to use Facebook, how to use LinkedIn, how to use

[00:32:22] Twitter, how to do this. And some of it, yep, was just as bad as it sounds like as I said it. Posting or an article or something like that. We're talking about like like building and automating and running your HR function right okay, here's how to leverage Twitter, and that learn, if you will, would last a year, maybe two years, you can kind of do the same things, okay, make sure that you do this and don't do that, blah, blah, blah. But, gender divide, Moore's law, it's like, you know But wait, there's more. You were just a bucket of knowledge in here. Oh, yeah. Can't watch football today because football is over. So over is down. There's some sorry. All right. So I got three things. One is ran across a report from Deloitte and most of the things that come out of Deloitte are really good,

[00:36:25] especially when it deals with human capital things. What it really made me think of is the divisiveness now of the word diversity.

[00:37:42] Like this is such a nice word, it has no cruel intentions whatsoever,

[00:37:45] but it's become abortion, like some of the same sex marriage, etc. I think diversity is one of these things it's a culture war. I've actually just pulled away from the word diversity and moved to inclusion. And the reason I've done that personally is because I don't think there's a counter-argument to inclusion. Not that there's a good counter-argument to diversity. It's just

[00:39:03] it's become polarizing. So I think going to, you can get equity, equality, belonging, and diversity. You can get us. All of that, right? Yeah. You can get there. I just think we need to use a different word or think about potentially using a different word to get to the sum of the same outcomes. Because if not, we're going to get tied up

[00:40:20] in this cultural world of diversity and what's diversity

[00:40:25] and who gets to decide what diversity is and blah, blah,

[00:40:27] blah. And so if you're thinking about your talent portfolio, you're thinking about kind of how you look at gig And the gig economy you're thinking about okay. There's I mean I looked at that list Ryan I didn't know a single firm on that list And that's just 10 that they pulled out these are Companies hiring gig workers. These are companies that know do the gig technology. They do the game. I got technology. Okay. Gotcha. Yeah