HR, We Have a Problem - Will AI Agents replace your HR tech stack? What every HR leader needs to know.

[00:00:00] You have to be competing globally, you have to have some sort of distributed work strategy. And that sets a real interesting ground floor for how and where AI can be implemented to engage with employees, to capture data, to bring insights back to the organization and to the employees.

[00:00:22] And I think there's a lot of movement in that direction. But I think right now, the focus has been on transactional opportunities where there's an obvious use case.

[00:00:37] So, you know, in talent acquisition, you've got, you know, high volume hiring where the criteria is very straightforward from a screening perspective, location, pay rate, similar job or translatable, you know, skills and availability from a shift and timing perspective. That gets you pretty far in the process.

[00:01:03] Welcome to the HR Huddle Podcast presented by Sapient Insights Group, the ultimate resource for all things HR. It's time to get in the huddle. Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the HR Huddle. I'm your host, Terri Zipper, CEO and managing partner at Sapient Insights Group.

[00:01:31] And I'm back for another exciting episode of HR, We Have a Problem. This is the show where we like to break down the big and most relevant HR issues of the day. We help you make sense of what they mean. And we talk about what you might do about them. Joining me today is George LaRoe, founder and chief analyst of WorkTech. George is doing a lot of research, identifying the WorkTech category. He's got a lot of experience in this area.

[00:02:01] So I know you work with users, developers, investors, providing market intelligence across that spectrum. And I've just had a lot of experience in this space. I know you're also the chair of HR Executive Investor Summit at the HR Technology Conference and a founding partner of Impact WorkTech, a global community of work tech executives and investors. Welcome, George. It's great to have you. Terri, thanks for having me.

[00:02:30] After that introduction, we can just end the podcast right there if you'd like. I really appreciate that. Thank you. Well, you've got a lot going on. I mean, you've been in and around this HR and work tech market for many years doing everything from leading HR, it sounds like, to advising tech vendors and investors and just looking at the market as a whole.

[00:02:55] So I was really hoping we could tap into that vast experience and talk about what you're seeing in the HR tech market in 2025 and beyond and discuss maybe some useful strategies for some of these HR tech leaders out there. Does that sound like a good plan to you? Sounds great. Let's do it. Let's get into the huddle then.

[00:03:16] So before we get into the detail, I wanted, I know I gave a little bit of your background, but you've done a lot of stuff. Why don't you just give the audience a little bit deeper dive into your background and what you do? It's impressive.

[00:03:30] Oh, thank you. Well, I've had the really good fortune of my career being timed with every major transition in the HR tech space. So when I started as a practitioner, I came out of the, this was the, this would have been the around 1990 or so. And it was on the, this would have been the around 1990 or so.

[00:03:55] And it was on the staffing side. And then I moved on to the employer side, shifting into a little bit more HR and then had a fairly large consulting firm in the Boston area that was in place just as the web emerged in the internet and the web in the mid nineties. And we were taking literally taking employers onto the web from a hiring perspective. This was a time when folks really didn't have jobs on their websites.

[00:04:22] You could count the job boards on one hand, literally globally, there were only one or two at that time. And then I moved on to the tech side as the world of SaaS and the cloud emerged and led go-to-market and global sales. I was employee number 10 at Brass Ring.

[00:04:42] I had a few good runs in the talent management space and across the category for another decade and then shifted gears into this world of analyst and advisory where it's been another dozen years or so now. And that was at a time when, while there were always startups in our space. I was at several of them.

[00:05:06] The amount of capital coming into the space, starting at about 2010, 2011 started to increase nothing like it was in 2020, but I started to watch where that money was going, what innovation it was funding, how buyers were reacting to it. And started to put a lot of content and research around where the buyers were headed, where the vendors were headed, and not just the startups and those getting that early stage investment, but the larger platforms.

[00:05:34] And so how all this comes together, trying to make sense of it for both sides. So that's the lens that I bring to the conversation. Yeah. And this might just be semantics, but I noticed sometimes you use work tech and HR tech not as interchangeable. What is your definition of work tech versus HR tech? Yeah. Well, I have a whole, you know, I have pages on that, but to make it- I need to do some studying.

[00:06:05] Yeah. But to simplify it. So I think the market has conflated HR tech and work tech to the point where it's hard to tell whether, you know, is Atlassian work tech, is, you know, workday work tech. And these are, you know, I view sort of enterprise software that goes across, you know, sort of categories or departments or across the enterprise. That's enterprise software. I view work tech as the evolution of HR tech.

[00:06:33] Now, HR tech will continue to exist with some, let's say, you know, older models, and it'll be just fine for a lot of organizations in different market segments and industries and so forth. But work tech represents this foundational shift to where data is really more relevant than the system. Interoperability is assumed. It's built sort of user first, employee first. It's designed without ego.

[00:07:03] So a lot of, you know, API as a product or data as a service, service as a software. And that, again, that doesn't mean that there won't be more traditional interfaces for HR tech. But it's, there are a number of principles that really define this evolution of work tech. And some legacy players are making the transition and have made the transition in large way to work tech.

[00:07:27] But it, it really speaks to this wave of new technology that includes, it's not all about AI, but it includes, it sort of set the foundation for AI. And those, it's not all about AI.

[00:07:57] Yeah. You're so consistent with your, your past history, right? You're going through another stage, right? We're, we're about to go through, I think, another big disruption in this particular market. It's kind of been happening. It's been bubbling under the surface, right? Like people trying to figure out what are we going to do with, with all this stuff? And what does AI mean? And how are we going to use it? And how are we going to be more productive?

[00:08:21] But, oh, wait, we got to make sure that we're ethical and we got to, you know, just sort of figure out all these other pieces first. But, you know, the stuff, it's happening. Like people were, it's being used. Even though people may not think they're using it, they're already using AI in important ways.

[00:08:41] But I think there's still sort of this, how do we in HR start to really build the models and the approaches that are going to drive, you know, drive us forward? And I think that's kind of the next big wave, if you will, of how these models and how these new platforms work. Right. I agree 100%.

[00:09:05] I think we're, you have to be really careful not to let yourself go too far into the hype. Because in that, where there's hype, if you listen to it, you would believe that we're already there. And it's, you know, everything that's possible is happening right now and you're missing out. It's not really true. But at the same time, the other extreme, those that are saying, you know, this isn't going to be as transformative as people think.

[00:09:35] It's not, there isn't going to be a lot of pain in the workforce or impact on jobs. That's also not true. So, but the answer is going to be somewhere in the middle and it's going to be different based on, you know, the market segment. So, you know, are you a small business? Are you a large global enterprise? Are you Fortune 50? Or are you a few thousand employees? Your, the platforms you use, the, your access to AI, your need for AI.

[00:10:04] And, and as, you know, automating tasks and looking at it as, you know, productivity replacement, if you will, for humans is greater in small businesses than it may be in larger enterprises where it's, that's more about the bottom line. And those opportunities are looked at differently. So, I think, I think you're a hundred percent right. I, there are really exciting things happening right now.

[00:10:30] But I think we're, you know, a few years away from really understanding how this is going to, to look across any enterprise of any size. Yeah. Yeah. Where, what are you seeing as having like the biggest impact right now? I mean, because some of work is still being redefined, right? Right.

[00:10:51] Not just from AI, but from, you know, the pandemic and, you know, where people work today and what's gonna, you know, some people are going back to the office. But there, it's still a pretty broad spectrum of people working wherever, whenever. And so, to some extent, there's still sort of this redefined, redefinition of work. Where do you see the biggest impact from an HR technology perspective? So, you brought up a really good point.

[00:11:20] And I always call out the fact that well before the pandemic, you know, 2019, we did a big international study, U.S. and largely the U.K., but Europe. And we looked at employees and employers. We had, you know, 4,000. It was a really good sample size.

[00:11:43] And one of the headlines that we came, we were looking at the workplace and the workforce and, you know, how and where people were working and what the future would look like. And one of the headlines was distributed work is the future.

[00:11:55] And that, again, pre-pandemic and most employers, like 55%, were providing employees some sort of flexibility, some sort of flexible option, anywhere from full remote to, you know, what we now call hybrid or even, you know, job sharing or, you know, things that created flexibility within the workplace.

[00:12:19] Because you're the, especially on the knowledge work side, you have to be competing globally. You have to have some sort of distributed work strategy. And that sets a real interesting, you know, ground floor for how and where AI can be implemented to engage with employees, to capture data, to bring insights back to the organization and to the employees.

[00:12:47] And I think there's a lot of, you know, the focus has been on transactional opportunities where there's an obvious use case.

[00:13:02] So, you know, in talent acquisition, you've got, you know, high volume hiring where the criteria is very straightforward from a screening perspective, location, pay rate, similar job or translatable, you know, skills and availability from a shift and timing perspective. That gets you pretty far in the process.

[00:13:26] Then on the HR side, we've got, you know, employee relations and anything that's, you know, analyzing large amounts of data like benefits enrollment or, you know, looking at summarizing complex options for employees and providing information from what used to be or is still in an HR manual or a policy document.

[00:13:51] And connecting that to whether it's the performance process and helping move transactions from a technical perspective along, if you will. I think that's where most of the energy has been, but we've got, there are incredible, you know, developments in process for, you know, real assistance with analytics.

[00:14:15] And right now what I see, I see a lot of cool stuff with natural language and using LLMs to request reports as well as deliver reports starting. But that's largely just some nice packaging on what we could do before. We've had natural language report generation for four or five years. It's, it's, it's heading to a place where, you know, the apps are able to anticipate your need.

[00:14:43] When you, you know, promote an employee, the platforms will start asking you, they'll start lining up all the transactions and maybe even automating and executing on them. You know, getting them there, whether it's their pay done correctly, any accommodations that come along with that promotion, any introductions from a leadership perspective, announcements to the organization, sort of teeing that up.

[00:15:08] A lot of things that, you know, just for a couple examples that are interesting, including analyzing, you know, if you wanted to know this, then would you, would, would this be helpful? You know, you wanted to know about, you know, pay equity in, you know, in London, do you want to see how your other departments in London also fare? How do you compare against the broader organization globally, et cetera?

[00:15:32] So a lot of things that we're not really doing yet, but we're, we're on the cusp. Yeah. I'm hearing from a lot of vendors, like they're really focused on this whole agent, agentic concept, right? And creating these agents that basically just become your, you know, your, your go-to for these questions. And I'm actually seeing vendors now that are selling capability. Like you can buy access to an agent online, right?

[00:16:02] To do something for you, which is, I think that's pretty cool. We'll see how that, how that pans. It's like anything else, right? It starts with something that looks really different than where it ends up. But I think that's really a model that we're starting to see take hold.

[00:16:19] And I think from an HR perspective, you don't have to be an expert in this stuff to, to make this work, but you do need to sort of understand how to, how to get the work done and what you can, what you can take advantage of with respect to AI or these, these automated capabilities. Capabilities and agents and agents and, you know, you need to know how to build the model that's going to work for you. Right? Right. Right. Yeah.

[00:16:48] I think that's a really good point. The, you know, as I said earlier, I think a lot, there's a lot of fear around, you know, job displacement. And so I think there's, you know, that, that probably plays into a lot of, you know, creates a lot of trepidation for folks as they evaluate these tools. My, what I've been saying is, look, this change is going to either come through you or happen to you. And it's a lot less painful when it's coming through you, when you're the one helping move it along.

[00:17:18] There's a, I can't remember his name, but I just read, there's a AI architect professor at NYU. And he was saying, what you really need to do right now is to start thinking about what are the, you need to, you need to understand 20 tasks that you can automate with AI and leverage AI to whatever the end game is, whatever your role is, right. To the productivity perspective.

[00:17:45] And if you've done that, then you're in a sort of like, I guess the implication is a defensible position from a job perspective, but also most importantly, you're in a position of really understanding how AI can impact your department, your team, your business. And, and you'll, you'll, you could be in a leadership position for that transition. I think the other thing that comes to mind is, as I was listening to you talk about agentic AI is it really underscores.

[00:18:15] I know that I've had conversations with you and your team folks on your team, and we're like-minded in this. We're seeing this shift back to platforms, focus on platforms. And, you know, it's, it's not that anybody ever moved off of an HCM platform or stopped using them, but that, that focus on HCM platforms, that's where the data is, right.

[00:18:38] And whether it's the core HCM or whether it's your HCM and your applicant tracking system and your learning management system and any other platform based on your business, that's where the data is that the agents need. And all of these platforms are, we see their roadmaps. They're all working on the roadmaps are basically AI at this point. I mean, it is all AI coming, you know, every quarter for the foreseeable future.

[00:19:09] And that means that the, the agents will really, the agents don't care which platforms they tie into. So it starts to look like, well, you know, do I, do I pull back from apps that I'm plugging some gaps with right now, or do I keep them in place until this agentic model becomes more tangible for my business.

[00:19:33] And then I can start to work with agents that are displacing apps because the platforms are developing more capabilities. The agents promise to automate a lot of the transactional minutia that, that keeps me from the strategic aspects of my work or more impactful aspects of my work. So you could see this world where the, on one hand, the platforms are more valuable.

[00:20:00] On the other hand, moving from a platform becomes easier if I'm leaning on agents to do all of the workflow and all of the transactions, if that makes sense. So I'm really curious which, where this ends up.

[00:20:12] I know the platforms think they'll be more valuable, but if they're the compliance and system of record, you know, back office filing cabinet for the agents, then the agents sort of take on this, you know, the platforms are going to want to own those agents is, is where we're going to, that's for certain. I'm not clear if that's how it'll play. Well, and I think, you know, I think that's going to have an impact.

[00:20:37] And I think we're seeing some of that with the, some of the acquisitions, some of the partnerships, some of the ways that these vendors are trying to get deeper into some of these areas so they can bring that expertise in house and deliver those agents. Right. Right. I mean, you can replace the app, but you've got to, if your agent's going to replace the app, you kind of have to know, kind of have to have the expertise to do that. Right. Right.

[00:21:05] So I think, I think we'll see more of that as we think about a platform. It might be beyond that sort of core platform and include partners and people who have deep API into these other systems. Right. Right.

[00:21:22] So it'll be less of a hodgepodge of, you know, just best of breed, this whole best of breed concept where I'm going out and buying, you know, a different platform or a different solution for every part of my HR function and more of a platform with an ecosystem. Right. Yeah, I agree.

[00:21:42] And I think IT is going to have a lot to say about, especially for the larger enterprise, about, you know, they're going to have agents that they approve from a security perspective, privacy perspective. So, you know, you're going to have a Microsoft shop. You're going to have, you know, folks that you might have a Workday shop where they are, you know, if Workday is offering agents and they will be that they're, you know, they're, that's what's blessed.

[00:22:11] But you're not able to bring in, HR may not be able to bring in their own agent to plug in because IT is not going to support, you know, that level of integration. I mean, these systems are, you know, in order to be effective, they've got a lot of access and there's a lot of data. They're basically integrating with whatever systems are needed as a human would, what is doing it today, if you will. Yeah.

[00:22:38] I'm kind of thinking about our sapient blueprint and how that might actually get blown up a little bit, look a little bit different in the next couple of years. But what are you seeing at the, at the vendor level? Like, what are some of the big issues that, you know, they're grappling with around this? Because, you know, obviously we're all trying to optimize our workforce.

[00:23:02] We want to add, we don't want to add more work to the plate of our people, right? We want to add less work. We want to make it simple. And we, you know, we don't, there's so many things from an HR perspective that people do so infrequently that, you know, this is the, this is the kind of stuff that's going to, I think, make a huge difference.

[00:23:23] Just so vastly different than anything we've seen before, because, you know, how many times do you need to, have you had to make a life event change? And you're like trying to figure out where to go to do that, what to do, how to get through it. Ideally this, there's no more looking, right? This, this is going to be a conversation with your agent to say, here's what I need to do. And it's going to go do it for you.

[00:23:51] Well, it's a really good point because if you think about all of those unique aspects of any, like you, as you said, we'll use life change as, as an example.

[00:24:01] I would bet that those unique aspects don't show up in the competencies, skills, or even job description of the HR professional who is now sitting over, you know, the, those, the, you know, those transactions.

[00:24:22] So if it's not, you know, we need to have all of that in order for the AI, or even in order to build the AI, integrate the AI to, to be having access to the data that it needs to get the job done. And if we're, if, if, if it's done improperly, or we come at it with a sort of, you know, just a pure accounting mindset, like, you know, we're increasing productivity with a machine versus a human.

[00:24:49] We could find ourself in hot water and potentially out of compliance, potentially, you know, looking at, you know, fines and lawsuits. It's some life changes come along with some regulatory oversight. So I think that's, that's one thing to be concerned with the, there's so many things that are, I think both HR, all of HR and the vendors are grappling with right now.

[00:25:16] You know, I made a comment earlier about focusing on the more strategic work and we, that's been said a lot. We've heard that everybody says that, but I, what I'm finding is that's a, that's almost like a lot of things. Like an unknown for 90% of the HR world. And just, I would say, if you told me that you're going to take away 50% of the administration that I'm doing, and it wasn't happening organically, but tomorrow I had all this time.

[00:25:45] What would I do? I'd have to, you know, really think about that. I'd have to really, I'm not sure that I have those answers. And I think HR is, that's the struggle in envisioning. Okay. So if tomorrow that's where we're headed, what does that look like for me? What does that look like for my team? What does that look like from a resourcing perspective? I think a lot of vendors are struggling with defining that or, or helping educate or helping, you know, illuminate what that might look like.

[00:26:12] And I think we've got a real, I wouldn't call it a disconnect because I think everybody's intent is to get to that same place. It's more of just a lack of, we maybe need to slow it down for a beat and really think about that. And it's going to be one-off, you know, every, every HR leader, every organization is going to look a little different. That I'm hearing more and more on both sides.

[00:26:38] It's been interesting because that, I think the, from the vendor's perspective, the thought of, you know, just that value proposition of, you know, you'll have all this time. It's not moving as much software as quickly as they thought it would. And it's because there are a lot of implications around that, that the HR leader needs, needs help with. Yeah. It's interesting. I saw a study the other day, HR executive study, that the top five things that are keeping HR up at night.

[00:27:08] And in that top five was three that I felt like were really tied together. So HR technology, clearly, this is it. And a lot of that is the AI question, employee engagement and change management. Because when you, I mean, when you put all this stuff right. What we've been talking about. Yeah. Exactly.

[00:27:32] I think that that's going to be huge for, for people as they think through this, because, you know, you don't just change the model. It's still going to impact people. And we're still going to have people doing, doing plenty of work, but how they think through, not just how they implement this, but how they then anticipate the change across the organization and what that ripple effect looks like.

[00:28:01] I think that's going to be really interesting. And I can see why that's keeping HR up at night. A hundred percent. There's another one that I want to make sure I put out there for you. And it's starting on the vendor side, this challenge, but it has an immediate impact for HR leaders everywhere. And that is what they're, the vendors are struggling with pricing right now. Yeah. So AI comes with some unique cost implications.

[00:28:30] There are, you know, tokens that are used for transactions on the, with the AI. At the same time, a lot of the, when you think about automating a lot of administrative steps, that things become invisible, that becomes invisible to the user, right? If I don't have to do something, I'm just getting the output. So the number of, while the overall enterprise is benefiting, the number of users is different, starts to look different.

[00:29:01] Classically HR, in our HR world, it's largely in the cloud and it's largely a subscription model, price per employee per month. This shift to AI has everyone thinking about more results-based pricing, more usage-based pricing. So when the AI is used, you're paying, you know, pennies or dollars or whatever the, however they model this.

[00:29:26] That's a, that is a 100% variable pricing model, which most procurement organizations wouldn't like, or would really need to understand what kind of limitations there are. Most buyers like predictability. They've got a budget they've got, they can see for, you know, a year and they want to know that they can get the job done with the tool.

[00:29:48] They, they licensed for a certain amount of dollars, but the, the promise of, you know, paying per a transaction or paying for a result, that sounds really great because then I'm getting the value that I, that I bought. But it's a, it is a, there are certain areas like, you know, a, in the recruitment world, you know, posting a job, right?

[00:30:11] That's a very straightforward transaction, number of candidates that are coming back, very straightforward in the HR world, you know, it's open enrollment and we want to meet a certain goal and have all of our folks enrolled and confirmed by a certain time or ahead of a certain date.

[00:30:27] And these are things that can be measured and can be, you know, and you can even get into employee engagement and engagement with the, the survey instruments or other things that, that help us get a better view. So there are some things that you can monetize and that would make sense to a buyer.

[00:30:47] But I think every, this needs to be a conversation that everyone's having, not just the vendor community, because they're looking to cover everything from their energy costs to their actual AI tokens, because all of those things are, are pricey, will be, are pricey and will get pricier as we move forward. So that's one that everybody should get on their radar, I think. Yeah, I think, I think that's huge. That's a good point.

[00:31:14] I was going to ask you what other things you think buyers should be thinking about or considering. I think that's obviously one of the things, and I think that's one of the things that probably is going to make people nervous. Like what, you know, what is going to happen and what is this going to cost me? Because I can't control, you know, how many transactions people are going to try to process, right? Right, right.

[00:31:38] You know, I think for the most part, folks are, you know, executing like a three to five year license agreement, making sure that they're locked in, making sure that, you know, changes can't happen unless, you know, they're, they're mutually agreed upon. And that's, for the most part, that's probably covered in most, most agreements. But I think the, what's happening right now is a lot, it's like the Wild West and a lot of products are, new products are coming out.

[00:32:06] So you may be, you know, using a platform today. And as they release their agent, the agent may come with a different pricing model or may be free for some time and then not free. And you need to be able to anticipate, you know, if it's a, if it's a usage-based or results-based pricing model, you need to be able to anticipate what, what impact that's going to have.

[00:32:30] Similar to, you know, there was an Indeed debacle with, they went to a results-based pricing model last year. I think it was last year. And they had to roll it back because the, the customers just weren't ready for it. They're, they're used to paying for applicants and they had a pretty good understanding of that.

[00:32:49] But when it became, or paying for candidates, when it turned into applicants and Indeed was setting the threshold for what that was, you know, there were customers with, you know, five, 600% increases in their monthly bills. They weren't ready for that. And it's that, that's the kind of surprise that may be waiting for you. And it would be a much bigger surprise if it were your HCM platform. So, yeah. So be talking to your vendors, right?

[00:33:16] About what the, what they're thinking about from a pricing model perspective and give input because they need it, right? Because they'll do things that have to be undone later because they just like you described, they just kind of blow up. So yeah, give your vendors, give your vendors advice. I know you do a lot of work with startups as well.

[00:33:39] Do you have any guidance or advice you'd give anyone who's looking at some of these new companies before or as they're making, making a buy decision? Yeah, I think it's, you know, the same advice that I would have given a few years ago that I would give today. You want to, you want to look at your tech stack as an investment portfolio.

[00:34:04] And so there are certain places where you may be willing to take more risk, where startups, early stage startups may be a great opportunity to, you know, grab some really leading edge technology and move something forward in a way that's interesting. Get some experience with AI for, for a team or, or the whole company. But there are other areas where you wouldn't, right?

[00:34:29] You wouldn't, I wouldn't necessarily go with like a nascent payroll platform that that's emerging, right? But I, but I might go with a financial wellness company that has an interesting model. The way to think about it is if it disappeared tomorrow, how much pain would the organization feel? Would we be able to keep things, you know, moving forward? So I think that starts to get into the risk profile internally for you. And then looking at any of these decisions, you know, look at the team always.

[00:34:59] The investors look at the team. You should be looking at the team. Do I trust them to, you know, what's, what's their background? Do they understand our needs? Also, you have the right to ask about their financial profile. You know, how much money have they raised? How long ago did they raise it? You know, are they profitable? You know, what are, what are their plans? And getting that picture again, against that risk profile is, is important. And I think the, there are great opportunities to be an early customer with a startup that where

[00:35:28] you become, you have a lot of weight on their roadmap. You had a lot, you have a lot of weight on where they go based on being there for them in early days. So I, I, I'm a big fan of that ecosystem, but from the buyer side, you just need to, you know. So do your work. Yeah. Yeah. Always homework. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. So I think I, you know, heard you say a couple of things.

[00:35:55] One from an HR tech leader perspective, start thinking about and, and give this task to your team, right? What are, what are the 20 tasks that they need to be thinking about automating? Like push people to volunteer, to do things. I know volunteering for stuff that you have no idea how to do is one of the best ways to learn how to do this shit. Right. I mean, just raise your hand. It doesn't matter if you know it or not.

[00:36:23] Nobody, nobody else knows that much better than you do. Right. Right. And then, you know, start thinking about pricing. I love your, even if you're not looking at, you know, startups, you still should be looking at your HR tech portfolio as an investment strategy. I mean, that's, you know, that's one of the, that's, we pitched that as well. I mean, that is critical to how you think about your HR technology and how you bring things in and out of that stack. Yeah.

[00:36:52] Is there any other advice you might give HR tech leaders today that just things they need to be thinking about as we go into 2025 and beyond, you know, might sneak up on them or might not even be something that's on their radar at this point? Yeah. I think what I've been thinking about lately is this more agile world that we're in now

[00:37:16] looking like what used to be a, you know, nine to 12 month window that we might have realistic planning for is like a 90 day window. Yeah. And, and I think I would be, many may be doing this, but based on what I'm hearing, especially now as we're moving into a new year and you've got, you know, mixed, you know, is it, is it optimism? Is it cautious, cautiously optimistic?

[00:37:46] However you feel about the future, there's much more uncertainty beyond like a quarter than there used to be. And I think building from a, from a budgeting perspective, from a resourcing perspective, not, not getting to the point where you're just, you know, frozen in place and too conservative, but realizing that the realities can change that, that quickly. We watched it with the pandemic. We watched it with the economy, the job market.

[00:38:16] I think it's right now, I think it's important to be keeping some powder dry, as they say, in the investment world to, to be able to react, to be able to pivot, to, to respond, if you will, and not have, you know, gone so far that you can't, you can't move in one direction or another based on whatever those external forces are that impact you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, the hype, as you mentioned earlier, there's, there's a lot of hype, but there's

[00:38:45] also some, you know, reality to that. So, so don't sit back and wait, reevaluate your plan every 90 days or every day. If you can spend, I tell people spend 20 to 30 minutes a day, just reviewing your plan. Right. Right. And because it could, it really could change on a dime in this, in this market and you don't want to be caught flat footed. Yeah.

[00:39:15] And, and it takes you right back to data. Like you really need, you need to be looking at the right things to know that you're, you know, reviewing that plan in the right way that you're, you're, you know, where are we from a hiring perspective? Where are we from an engagement perspective, et cetera? You know, what do we need to make some changes or, but I, around AI what's interesting is,

[00:39:41] you know, not that, not that waiting is a good strategy most of the time, but if you, if you didn't jump on the hype cycle two years ago and you gave it, you know, a few quarters and you were implementing something last, you know, end of last year, that, that would have been genius because in many ways. And I saw some vendors who weren't as quick, but the capabilities they're bringing out are far greater.

[00:40:06] A lot of what we saw the first year was really sort of like gimmicky, you know, help me write an email, help me write a job description, help me, you know, you know, reformat a presentation. That's wonderful. Saves a lot of time, but that, those, that's the, we're so far beyond that now. I think, I think there's a, there, there was something strategic about maybe not reacting to the hype. Yeah. Yeah. The first few quarters. I agree. I think sometimes waiting is a strategy.

[00:40:37] Just don't wait too long. Right. Right. Right. Right. Oh my gosh. So this is, there's a lot of exciting stuff happening. This conversation has been really interesting and got my brain thinking about some other things. So we may have to do this again in a couple months as we see some of this stuff unfold. Yeah. I'd be happy to. Thank you, George, for joining me today. This is, this has been a really interesting conversation. Oh, thanks for having me. I really enjoyed it.

[00:41:05] Where can people find you online? Like get your research and analysis, just tap into the stuff that you're doing. Yep. The website is one, the number one, worktech.com. And I'm on LinkedIn and, and engage a lot there. So yeah, you'll, you'll find me in either of those places. Awesome. Awesome. Well, I want to thank our producers, the brand method media group, Kelly Kelly, our marketing team, Summer and Cindy. And I want to thank you for tuning in.

[00:41:35] Just a couple of reminders. Our annual HR system survey report is out and talks about a lot of this HR tech, as well as what's happening from an AI perspective. So go to the website at sapieninsights.com and check it out. Also be sure to listen to my partners, Stacey and Cliff next week while they spill the tea on HR tech. A lot of interesting things happening there. And they'll go into a little bit more depth on some of these vendors and things like that.

[00:42:03] And we also have some big news coming soon on our podcast platform. So stay tuned for that. That is all the time we have for this episode of HR. We have a problem. If you enjoyed the episode, you can subscribe to it on your favorite podcast app. Appreciate it. If you'd leave us a review, we'd love to hear what you're thinking about or other topics that you might want to hear us talk about on the show. And we will be back in two weeks with another episode of HR. We have a problem. Thanks, everybody.