Spilling the Tea on HR Tech - AI agents, Workday's big bet on digital workforce management and the latest HR tech giants expanding through strategic acquisitions.

[00:00:00] And I think it goes back to, if we move more into agentic AI, the human roles are definitely shifted into judgment calls. They're definitely shifted into business insights and more importantly into that making sure the data is accurate before it goes into the system. Because no longer can I kind of have clean data because the human is looking at it and going to make a judgment call about that data as they're doing the analysis.

[00:00:25] The AI might have some parameters it can tell about what's clean or not clean data, but that's the big thing that human beings have, which is the ability to look and say, I know Susie didn't do what she needed to do to get this in the right way. Susie's never going to tell anybody. Nobody else in the department is going to say Susie did it wrong. So the AI bot won't know that Susie did it wrong. But I know because I had lunch with Josh last week and Josh said that Susie had it, you know, didn't put her data in it. Right?

[00:00:52] 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.

[00:01:11] Welcome everyone to Spilling the Tea on HR Tech, where we focus on the hottest HR tech news everyone needs to know to be in the know. We break down the news of the week and help you make sense of what it means for our industry and how it can impact your organization. We're recording today on February 13th, pretty close to Valentine's Day, Cliff. And we're bringing you all the news that you can use this week and hopefully into the next couple of weeks because it's been a busy, busy season.

[00:01:37] I'm your host, Stacey Harris. I'm the chief research officer and managing partner for Sapient Insights Group. And we are a research and advisory firm, if you aren't aware of who we are, in the industry of the HR technology space. And joining me today is always my illustrious co-presenter, Cliff Stevenson, our director of research here at Sapient Insights Group. Cliff, hello. Welcome back. How did it get to February already? I know, right? And luckily we are wearing pink. We were designed and always prepared for the holiday.

[00:02:07] I also want to say for regular listeners, viewers, that I really appreciated Stacey's ability to do all of this work. Having done it last week, I made the comment last week that this is a lot harder than it seems. So, well done. I'm amazed, as always, by your ability to do all of this. So, I'm thanking you in advance for being back.

[00:02:35] Got two little hosts on the front end, right? Like, script reading is harder than most people think. You can tell when I shift from script reading back to the in-person. But what I think is sort of interesting is it was nice to get a chance to hear Cindy talk a little bit about her experience and what she was doing while I was out with my family doing some wonderful things out in just north of Southern California, which was nice. So, I know there's a lot of people being affected by the fires even while we were there.

[00:03:02] But we had a great opportunity to get connected with my family out in that area. And we made sure that we invested in the economy and the people who are needing help out there. So, that was a good opportunity to travel a little bit and to let Cindy have a chance to sort of get involved in the spilling the TIHR attack. The other thing I think that prior to doing that trip, I also had an event that I went out to in Scottsdale, Arizona for Cornerstone. We'll talk a little bit about that today. And I had an event just yesterday that I went to.

[00:03:31] I just got back from late last night for a vizier in Scottsdale, Arizona. So, Arizona has been my home for the last couple of weeks, which would be nicer if it had been a little bit warmer. And both times I've gone there, I ended up having to wear a coat, which is not usual for Arizona, right? But it's a busy week this week, Cliff. What else? I mean, there are so many things coming down. There were things I didn't get to talk about over the last couple of weeks. What is going on this week that we're going to be chatting about before we dive right into it? Yeah.

[00:03:59] And I'll admit up front, we talked last time about a lot of the stuff that's happening in the U.S. And, you know, a lot of it not great, but a lot of positive movement if we consider all these acquisitions that happened this week. This was or the last two weeks have been this half month of acquisitions. And really this whole year, as you mentioned, how is it already February? And how has there already been, I think, eight or nine what I call major acquisitions, if not more? Predict last year that this year would be a year of acquisitions? You predicted it, yes.

[00:04:28] Well, I think our data predicted it, right? Like a large amount of organizations that were sort of servicing the same groups within our industry. And whenever you get that, you can be bound and sure that there will be an acquisition market coming up in a year or two. Yeah. Yeah. So we're going to talk about a number of acquisitions. We're also going to talk about some increased funding, some expansions in the global markets. Some of that coming through those aforementioned acquisitions, some of it through existing companies just going into new markets.

[00:04:57] We're going to talk about AI agents, a big topic that I remember we had to introduce and sort of define last year. And now it's so far that we're actually seeing Workday put in an agentic system of record, almost as if you have a system of record for your employees. So, you know, really going far with that, you know, spoiler alert.

[00:05:18] We're going to talk about some people moving in and also some friends of ours, friends of the show, industry friends, and some very exciting news involving reality television. So I always like to give a little hook to try and, you know, stick through at the end. It's not all just try business. We've got some good fun stuff, although I consider some of this pretty fun. And you were mentioning sort of the in-person thing, getting to see the family in person. We're going to start.

[00:05:45] You've already started, but I'm going to start joining you in this whole idea of going out and meeting people in person. We've got a number of events coming up. Is that right? Yeah, we do. We had a lot of events that we've been at, and we'll talk a little bit about those. But I think let's talk a little bit about a couple of things moving forward. One, and I think you and Cindy covered this, but I just want to make sure. Did you guys talk about our move on the platform to WorkDefined at all last week? I absolutely did not. And in fact, during the outro, I might have used the old group. So let's do that. Let's plug that.

[00:06:15] Let's talk about that. Yeah. So WorkDefined is a community of HR-focused, basically podcasts and other shows. It's an aggregator solution, sort of similar to some of the other aggregator tools out in the market, but focused in a specific area on workforce podcasts. And it was been put together by William Tincup. And I will not remember. There was another person, I think, who's involved in that, but I know William very well. And he reached out to us and said,

[00:06:43] Hey, I know you guys have got great traction on your HR Huddle podcast. You have a lot of followers. We would love to have you join us. It would bring a lot of value to our over-existing thing. And the idea of being in a community where you can kind of share sort of the awareness of all the other organizations. So there's a lot of other podcasts that are on there. Lori Rudiman's podcast is on there. We know some of the organizations, some of the George LaRocque's WorkTech podcast is on there, as well as some of these other ones that are more sort of practitioner-focused

[00:07:12] or have practitioners leading them. So I really enjoy their approach. Peter Payton-Conless, who's a good friend of ours, has his HR and payroll podcast on there. It was interesting because when we kind of looked at whether or not we should join the WorkDefined community, we get really great downloads. Probably one of the largest I've seen, at least with the amount of years that we've been doing this here at Safety and Insights Group. Because I've done other podcasts in the past for many people who know. So it wasn't really, we were like, well, it's not that we need so much more followers. We can always get more ears, more listens. That's always a value proposition.

[00:07:42] But it was being part of a group of other professionals who are also putting conversations into the market and sharing their ideas. That was really powerful for us. The community piece is really good. So if you're looking for us, we can be found in all the usual places, Apple, your podcast stores, those kind of things. But you will also now find us where we're actually hosting at, which is the WorkDefined aggregator on workforce-focused podcasts. Yep.

[00:08:09] And I'll make sure that there's a link to that because there's WRK defined, you know, if you're having any trouble finding that. But yes, it's wonderfully set up. There's an entire Slack group that William Timcup is very active in, making sure that everyone's information sharing. So it's really cool because for you listeners, it'll be easier to sort of find and branch out. You know, Stacey always talks about these clusters. We're seeing more clusters.

[00:08:33] Now we're seeing sort of clusters of podcasts, not just tech, but also allows us to share information that, you know, might be really of high interest to one sort of focus of a podcast that I'm like, oh, you know, I think I mentioned seeing that AppCast report on recruitment marketing. And it's like, okay, I did not, you know, I had not originally seen this and brought this up.

[00:08:55] So getting to share information both internally and then share it with you, the listener, is very important, but also just making it sort of easier and more relevant to your expanded interests. Yeah. And then I think the other thing to note is that some of you will also start to see that we are making some updates to our website and to our research center. So be on the lookout for that. So we'll have that update in the next couple of weeks. But a couple of quick things that we are getting ready to head into for events. We should probably cover those while we're kind of going through all the changes.

[00:09:25] One is we are getting ready to deliver February 18th, which is really coming up on Monday, Tuesday of next week, right? Like the time is flying by. We will have our second session basically on the key findings of the HR systems strategy or HR systems report with HR executive magazine called Where Are HR Leaders Spending Their Time and Budgets in 2025? We have a large audience already signed up for it.

[00:09:48] It will be a valuable session, I think, for both vendors, investors and practitioners because everybody wants to understand where the market is at. But more importantly, as a practitioner, we're going to be talking a little bit about how you think about negotiating and having conversations about how you're spending money with your internal organizations and your external partners. We'll be talking a little bit more about this idea of platforms and clusters and how organizations are thinking about changing their buying models. So it's going to be an exciting session.

[00:10:17] We would definitely recommend you attend. Also, Cliff, I think we're going to be going to a couple of other events coming up. So in March, we'll be at the iSolved conference in Scottsdale, Arizona. Again, my goodness, we are just doing a lot of that one is a user's conference where they have a vendor or an analyst event. And so we'll be attending that. We'll probably doing some podcasts there as well. So we'll do some small ones that we'll be bringing back for everybody. April 22nd and 25th, I'll be heading to the Workday Innovation Session.

[00:10:46] That is, again, another analyst-specific event. And that will be out in the California area, in San Francisco Bay Area. So let us know if you are in that area and would like to touch base or if you have some questions for Workday that you would like us to ask. We know there's a lot going on right now. Right the week after that, I'll be at the Oracle session where they'll be, again, analyst-only, where they'll be covering all of their new and updated information. With Oracle, it goes across their entire platform as well as their HR platform. That will be April 29th and 30th.

[00:11:15] That's out in Redwood, California. And so, again, questions for Oracle. The other things that we are going to be going to, I think, are I think you might be at Work Human, possibly, Cliff. We're still having that discussion May 12th and 13th, correct? I'll be there. Yeah. Leading a growing business, it's like building a plane while flying it. Team building, decision-making, and scaling all at once. At CPO Playbook, we get it.

[00:11:40] That's why our podcast, ranked in the top 10% worldwide, tackles the toughest leadership challenges with insights to help you lead smarter and grow faster. Tune in to the CPO Playbook podcast because leadership doesn't come with a manual, but we're pretty close.

[00:11:55] We're looking at a learn event in Minnesota on May 15th.

[00:12:35] And then we'll definitely be at the UKG Analyst Day, May 22nd. And I believe that is with their UKG event, correct? That's right. That's right. Down in Miami, Western area specifically. So just like Stacey said, any questions, anything you would like to know, upcoming plans, structure, especially, you know, that's going to be not too much separated from when we start finishing off the sort of survey. Not long after that.

[00:13:04] So, you know, as you're thinking about that and moving forward, this is a great time to sort of consolidate all that information before. The big one, HR Tech, earliest it's ever been this year, September 15th to the 18th. As far as their website says, they are moving it back to October next year. This should be the earliest we ever see it or have seen it. But we will be there in full force the full week. Nothing's changed there.

[00:13:29] And then we even have some travel going into the fall of 2025 where, you know, you mentioned the Oracle. That'll be more internal. Their full user conference, CloudWorld on 12th and 13th that I'll be at. Yeah, we have a lot of events that we're planning on the moon, but we're starting to try and give you guys a heads up because we know that we get a lot of requests for conversations or meetings. And we're getting them right before the event. We've already got things planned. So we're trying to give some early indication.

[00:13:56] Cliff, outside of that, let's talk a little bit about sort of where I've been at the last couple weeks and some of the key stuff that's going on this week because it's been a busy week. So let's start with the Cornerstone event. You went to their sales kickoff, right? That was one of the many times in Arizona you spent in the last couple of weeks. So tell me what were the kind of big things that stood out for you? Yeah, so I've done sales kickoffs quite a bit in the past.

[00:14:22] We had, you know, it's a lot of times because our data is so focused on what are the buyers asking, what are they looking for? We get invited to come and speak to many of the sales kickoffs for many of the organizations and the vendors. Sometimes we also get brought in to talk to advisory boards or get brought in to talk to specific industry groups within an organization's vendor community. So it really just depends on what they're trying to get out of the data. The sales kickoff, though, for Cornerstone was interesting. One, I got to be on a panel with Mike Bollinger, who's a really good friend, longtime supporter of the research.

[00:14:50] And we did sort of an onstage upfront sort of opening keynote with their sales team around what were the changing both demographics of the buyers in the industry and the key themes that we're seeing that they are focusing on. And what was really interesting in that session with Mike was that, you know, it's when you look at the data about the buying community and more importantly about the user community. Right. We are already at a point where we have 17 percent of our workforce.

[00:15:19] That is what you would consider Gen Z in our data set. Right. And it's a little hard to tell. Every industry region kind of is a little different. But for in our data set, 17 percent of the workforce that everybody tells us they have is at least Gen Z at this point. Three percent of them are already making buying decisions on HR technology. So, you know, you know, we're we're at a point now where we have to consider. Again, we're back to five generations. We're at a point where we have a lot of decisions being made in the market based off of what's happening in AI.

[00:15:48] And so a lot of decisions based off of the skills gap that we see coming down the pipeline. And so it feels like a very weird time, particularly for sales, because they can, you know, one organization might be letting people off and yet they're still hiring or they're still making changes. Right. Because of what's happening in the space. And so I think this is a good opportunity to talk to sales teams about how they should be listening as much as they are asking questions.

[00:16:09] Right. Like they should be not just telling about features and functionalities, but they should be really understanding the economic, the government, the demographics of the workforce that is going on within those organizations that they're they're talking to and having that real life conversation about practical needs.

[00:16:29] And I was I was not only glad to see that that was happening at the Cornerstone event, but also there was a lot of focus as they were talking about what they'll be rolling out over the next months to a year. And I get a little bit of a sneak preview of what we'll be seeing in the market. And they gave me permission to talk a little bit about quite a bit of it. One is we're definitely seeing them kind of double down on this idea of skills and workforce agility, bringing their whole platform into sort of more of a galaxy kind of a model.

[00:16:57] And what was really interesting for that was that I was seeing them talk about skills in the sense of what they're calling a skills passport, which we've heard before. That's definitely been a conversation in the market. They're actually talking about how they're leveraging their skills passport through the Skyhive acquisition. That was a really big acquisition for them and working not only with larger companies, but also government entities on building out skills passports that might be able to go cross company or cross business unit in a way that we haven't seen in the past.

[00:17:26] So that was really interesting to see where their heads were at with that and talking about it in the sense of workforce planning, which puts them squarely in the HR conversation where they have oftentimes been but not been as seen as sort of on par with what we're seeing with the HR messes. And I think this is going to put them in a place where they are really at the table when we're talking about the HR technology as a whole.

[00:17:46] The other place I think that I really want to shout out is Anna Goldberg, who is their senior project product manager and Karthik, who is the chief product officer over there at Cornerstone. Their presentations, I think, were really spot on because they were talking about the pain and the need of their customers. What are we doing to address the customer needs?

[00:18:07] One of the big things that we saw was this consolidation of admin interfaces, consolidation of the user experience in a way that their AI was going to make the job easier and get the work done that needed to be done instead of sort of AI being an add on to the conversation. And that's the agentic conversation that we've been having all over the place. So it was really exciting to see that, really exciting to see the work that Anna has done. So explicitly about sort of tying skills into everything in the organization. So that was exciting.

[00:18:37] I got to sit through the most of almost the entire Cornerstone event. And so I got a chance to see sort of where they're shifting their priorities and what their focus is going into this year. This year, which I just got back from last year, I only got to do my keynote presentation and then didn't get to see the rest of the conversation.

[00:18:55] But there was a big focus there on the power of enabling HR and the power of enabling the people who are working with HR data, like the chief information officers, like the heads of businesses and business operation leaders. And that, I think, was really powerful because we hear a lot about how HR is going to use the HR data. What we oftentimes don't talk about is how the business is going to use the HR data. And that was really interesting to see their focus there on taking data analytics to the next level.

[00:19:23] Vizier is one of the few HR analytics platforms in the market that has brand awareness. In our survey and in the market, we know that there are some other emerging techs coming up. One Model Crunch are some of those that are rising pretty rapidly. But Vizier has definitely caught, I think, the imagination of a lot of organizations about how they can aggregate their data and leverage it in a way that is probably more holistic in the market. And they're the forerunner of doing that outside of maybe your HR mess.

[00:19:49] And what's really interesting, I think, with that conversation, and we're going to get into this a lot today, is Cliff, you and I have talked a lot about this, which is, yeah, I is only as valuable as the data that you have.

[00:20:00] And whether you're aggregating it in your core HR systems, whether you're aggregating it in a sort of third party sort of aggregation tool that's focused on HR outcomes like Vizier, or whether you're aggregating it in sort of an enterprise sort of data warehouse, it all has to have context built into that aggregation. Like you have to have some sense of big and small and importance and sort of the human beings that are part of that data.

[00:20:30] And that, I think, is the spectrum that we're all trying to balance. And what we're not seeing is that a lot of these AI and AI agents really can work within that context if you don't have the data cleaned effectively, right? And so that's the conversation we had a lot with the market here. And I think we'll get into that a lot today. So sorry to go on a bit of a tangent, but it was kind of fun to see the beginning of the process for some of these conversations versus a lot of times we get it sort of the middle of the road when they go to do these big launches, right?

[00:20:59] Yeah, honestly, I consider that some hot tea because you're ahead. You're sharing the stuff that's out there. And I think a big part of this story is, as you mentioned, sort of the brain awareness, not just in HR, but in the business itself. And analytics is one of those places. That's important to every aspect of the business and not just for AI, but as you said, for making business decisions. And we're going to see some of that in the stories, too. I think we're going to see a lot of, you know, blending over when we start talking about these acquisitions.

[00:21:27] So we'll start with ADP, alphabetical, also a very large company. So they acquired a company out of Mexico, Processimento Externo de Informacion, which at the risk of sounding like, you know, the high school kid who's just come back from Mexico and therefore has to overpronounce everything. I'm just going to call them PEI. I just didn't want to do that at the beginning. Shout out to Prince Edward Island and your wonderful oysters and people.

[00:21:54] But yeah, so ADP, I don't think they need a introduction. They, in fact, refer to themselves as a technology company, not just payroll anymore. They acquired PEI. And obviously that is important for getting into Mexico. But it also has sort of some specializations that are specific to the Mexico market.

[00:22:15] So it really helps get some of this geographical reach, but also get into local regulatory and local employee needs that will help support ADP. So that was very exciting. We saw another one, Phenom acquired EDGE, all caps, E-D-G-E if you're trying to find it.

[00:22:37] Phenom that we've known as a sort of a recruiting software has gone even further into expanding their reach, right? Probably don't want to be thought of just that. So EDGE is a more of a resource management, but also internal mobility, talent mobility. And they've seen some wonderful results of this, an increase in the number of internal fills, a faster internal fill time by using this technology.

[00:23:07] So, you know, not just looking at external sources, but how do we take expertise that Phenom has built up and their technology, but then add to it by turning that inward, right? And filling inward, replacing contractors with existing staff was one of the highlights that they pointed out.

[00:23:26] So, again, if we think of ADP as sort of looking at where can we go geographically, this is where can we go with different types of clients, different needs of clients with this acquisition? Yeah, both of those I think are interesting because they're about taking the market. One is going sort of more regionally sort of deeper. Another one is going more functionally deeper.

[00:23:52] And what I really like about both of them from an acquisition perspective is that they fill in some holes for those organizations, right? And I think those are the kind of acquisitions we see that are the quickest to get up and running, are the easiest to sort of make sense of in the market. And in particularly in what Phenom's doing with Edge is that they're giving Phenom a step into the skills space, which I know they've been working on.

[00:24:18] But in a way, I think once you add ontologies and you add internal mobility conversations, right, it gives you more of a use case for that conversation. So I think it'll be interesting to see if Phenom can sort of wrap themselves around that with a lot of what they're one of the forerunners in the AI space conversation, right? Yeah. And I should say that when I first saw them, I thought of them as more on the talent acquisition, but they've really expanded over the years. And they're really a full talent management already were.

[00:24:46] And this just kind of extends it further, right? When we think about, though, certainly that is more focused on the hiring and talent acquisition space paradox. That was a pretty interesting one. They had an acquisition. They took up Equitable. That's interesting spelling. E-Q-T-B-L-E. Because as we know, we can't have vowels when talking about modern companies. And Equitable, though, is a not leading, but a known analytics platform, right?

[00:25:15] That's a people analytics platform. We've seen it come up sort of organically in our survey. In fact, this was brought up in a conversation we were having with Richard Rose now over at OneModel, who found this very interesting because it really shows, again, the power of data in all sorts of different ways, right?

[00:25:32] If a talent acquisition and a company like Paradox works with a very large amount of employers is really seeing the value so much in providing this data, not just in, you know, we're going to give you some recruiting data, but also how does this data help you with everything else? Maybe scheduling, you know, maybe bringing in when do we hire versus what we know will probably happen largely with our business, right? With the market in broader strokes.

[00:26:01] That was a big point of, you know, how do we connect this to the entire business and not just how do we provide, you know, better recruiting, let's just say, but, you know, how do we use recruiting in a way that supports the business? And what it comes back to over and over again is that it is the data that has the value. And so I want to emphasize that for our practitioners out in the market.

[00:26:24] Whenever you think about your relationship and your negotiations with the vendors, realize your workforce data and their ability to use it even in anonymous fashion to help develop their AI solutions is a negotiating tool for you. There is value in that because these tools don't run. It's sort of like the engine, the gas for these tools is data.

[00:26:52] And what we're seeing with some of the existing tools out there, this, what would they call eating the tail, right? Issue, which is, you know, if they have to create what we call training data, and it's basically they use data to create clones of that data to then extrapolate out other ways of data. And then they retrain and what they're what they're getting are these sort of cycles of training data that is sort of artificially created, that then creates more higher percentages of hallucinations in the AI, right?

[00:27:21] So it is the actual data that they can get from real human beings that make the difference in sort of decreasing the amount of hallucination, hallucinations and decreasing the amount of incorrect information in the market. It doesn't mean that it is all good, because you still get a lot of biases from real data, you get a lot of challenges with real data that need to be cleaned, but that it is the real value of where we're at with this. And that definitely was shown with the Paradox acquisition of Equitable, right? Absolutely.

[00:27:45] And, you know, and then that data can also be used to strengthen Paradox's core product, right, with their sort of AI assistance in talent acquisition space. Yep. And now keeping it going, our friends at HiBob acquired Mosaic. That actually news broke, I think, just what, two hours ago as of the time of recording. I haven't even read this one yet. Yeah, yeah. This is boiling. This tea has not been steeped yet. Let's go with keeping the analogy. But yeah, so this is pretty wild.

[00:28:13] So Mosaic is an FP&A platform, a financial planning and analysis platform. So this is something we have seen with a lot of companies that I would say I would equate with HiBob, right? When we think about a Rippling or maybe even iSolved and certainly HiBob, the up-and-comers that are the small to mid-market that are kind of bringing the enterprise level of service and functionality to smaller companies.

[00:28:42] There's been a number of those, and they're always, I would say, performing very well when we look at our voice of the customer ratings in our survey. I put it in there. So they all seem to have components that speak to things that we would say outside of HR traditionally, whether that be IT or, you know, analytics and whatever else it might be. Now we're seeing this move from HiBob to bring in FP&A type work, right?

[00:29:10] To blend in, you know, your workplace strategies. We were just talking why you were doing this sort of stuff to your business outcomes, to your financial outcomes. So we always emphasize in our survey, we bring our own background of knowing what it is like to work in HR. You are there supporting the business, helping people succeed so the business succeeds, right? That is the ultimate goal. So why not bring those two levels together? Truly merge that data. That is going to be a big part.

[00:29:39] And I think that sort of running theme is no coincidence, right? This is the whole idea of, okay, you know, let's consolidate. Let's take this data and really start thinking strategically. 55 by 25, shout out. Yeah. And I think what's really interesting in this is this puts HiBob in direct competition with what we're seeing at the enterprise HRMS space. So this is a direct competition to adaptive planning over at Workday.

[00:30:09] It's direct competition to SAP business analytics and planning tools. It is direct competition with Anaplan, which is moving into the HR space, right? This financial plan, this, and this is the first step in being serious about workforce planning as well, right? You cannot get into workforce planning unless you have a financial component to your data set. We have not seen this product yet. We haven't been briefed on this product. I've seen it in the past when we were doing some financial things.

[00:30:35] So I am interested in seeing how far HiBob is going to take this. We should note that they do say that the acquisition is pending closing conditions, subject to closing conditions. So we know there might be still some hurdles that they're trying to get through. But I think this is a pretty big move. But we said there was going to be big moves this year, right? Like just acquiring customers and just acquiring another module that fills you out from an HRMS perspective is not what the market wants. They don't want more of the same. They want unique thinking.

[00:31:04] And unique thinking isn't always just more AI. It is really rethinking your business model in a way that you can take now financial workforce planning at the mid-market level that gives you so much power in thinking about value-driven conversations with HR, right? Yeah, exactly that. It's interesting because I kind of just did a quick 55 by 25, right?

[00:31:28] But that is, and if you're unaware, that's CIPI and Insights Group pushed to having 55% of organizations recognize HR as contributing strategic value. Well, what's going to happen? You know, now that we've already crossed the 50% mark, the next logical endpoint of that is that you're tied to the business outcomes, right? Not just the HR outcomes, important, but only as it relates to success.

[00:31:52] And now we're seeing, you know, as those people are the generation, as you mentioned before, coming up in HR, the mindset, the job is shifting. Well, then that means that vendors need to respond. And we're seeing that with these types of acquisitions, with these types of moves that are being made. Say, okay, you're looking for something different. We're going to give it to you.

[00:32:13] Yeah, and we're going to see, you know, it is worth noting that High Bob's focus and where they get the highest ratings is their ability to sort of be a front door to the businesses, particularly on a global front. And so, you know, their ability to go cross country and to work globally at that level and at the complexity. This will be interesting to see where it goes, right? Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. So a lot of acquisitions, but we're seeing growth in other ways.

[00:32:42] Deal, that's D-E-E-L. Hopefully I said too many E's, but just to separate it from the other way, you might spell deal if you don't already know them. They announced new investors and financial milestones. So General Catalyst, as well as a national, you know, investor from representing a country, they didn't say which one, have purchased close to 300 million in deal secondaries from investors.

[00:33:06] They've also achieved a run rate of 800 million, speaking of those financial milestones, which represents 70% growth year over year. Deal, which I don't think I realized until I was researching this story, came out of Y Combinator, which is a relatively new sort of startup incubator. In fact, deal just came out of 2019.

[00:33:30] And I had known them, you know, we've seen a few companies come out, but they had mostly been in the broader tech space. And to realize that they're sort of an HR, directly HR focused company that came out of the Y Combinator group and relatively recent, six years ago, right? So. Yeah. They're fairly new. Yeah. And they're starting to show up in write-ins in our report. Yes. They'll show up more. We've been talking to them about distributing to get some more of their customers. But they started out of the, they had a lot of focus on EOR, right?

[00:34:00] And then kind of an HRMS and they've expanded what they're doing. So I think, you know, we're going to see more of them. They are, have been in some interesting confrontations, I think, right? This is the one that also had the confrontations with Rippling and with some of the other guys in the market, I think, correct? That's exactly right. So, yeah. And I, I do want to point out really quickly something that I should have mentioned. You mentioned we had been in a briefing on the high Bob Mosaic that is still subject to closing conditions. Yeah.

[00:34:29] I think I, yeah. Just covering it outside. It's something that it's that new that we're kind of breaking. It is already out there in the public record. By the time you see this, hopefully that'll have been closed. But I just wanted to throw that out as we're moving forward, because that's just so new. I don't think we've ever had one breaking that quickly. But yeah, so we talked about those type of expansions and another place we're seeing some expansions from SDWorks.

[00:34:54] You know, as we talk about sort of these global companies, as you did with the high Bob, SDWorks, a European based, is extending SDWorks buddy with new payroll technology in the German market. It has already passed its audit by the ITSG. I can't do my Spanish pronunciation thing with the German group, but that is the sort of German oversight group, as I understand it. Feel free to look that up for you German speakers. Let me know how that's supposed to be pronounced.

[00:35:22] But it will bring basically the entire SDWorks payroll component of SDWorks into Germany. So that's all of the major aspects of it. Obviously, cloud-based, doing that sort of up-to-the-moment, continuous, real-time work with payroll and automation benefits that will help them compete in that market. And it's focused on that SDWorks buddy, right?

[00:35:50] Yes, that's why I wanted to mention it was that aspect. Yeah, it's interesting. It's just as we saw with ADP, right? It's not consolidation. It's expansion, as we said, into other markets. But it's the ability to sort of not have all your eggs in one basket. It's taking an existing product and bringing it into other places. As we're seeing a little economic volatility, I think we're going to see more of this. You know, obviously, there's always global expansion for growth.

[00:36:20] But there's also using it as a bulwark against what could be economic downturns in certain countries. Now you've got an avenue to not just sort of look at that area. So, you know, I'm not trying to be doom and gloom. I just think that there is a little of a defensive structure to some of these things as well. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, very much so. So you mentioned interesting EORs earlier. This is kind of cool. This is, as far as I know, the first I've seen this.

[00:36:49] Stacey, correct me if you've seen something new. And it definitely is on brand for Workday. Workday unveiled an agent system of record, right? So an ability to sort of look at, as we do with our HR systems blueprint, is kind of my vision of what they're doing. Look at all of your AI agents. This is obviously appealing to very large companies that have so many AI agents. How do you put them in a system of record, right, for your AI agents?

[00:37:17] Understanding where you have AI agents, which is an issue that we have seen. I think Workday, in fact, led in the number of customers that realized they had certain AI capabilities, but still wasn't as high as, you know, it wasn't a one-to-one. Not everyone knew that. So how do you discover them, right? How do you best use them just as you would with employees? This isn't the same as what we saw last year where there was a company saying, let's treat them like employees. No, no, no. They're just saying, how do you sort of, like you would do with skills, right?

[00:37:47] How do you find them, categorize them, and deploy them? And I just found that fascinating. You've always got the great insights into Workday. What do you know about this? Yeah, this is interesting. I did get a briefing on this, an early briefing while I was on vacation. But it was interesting enough to sort of go off vacation for a half hour and hear what Anil Lusri and David Summers were going to talk about. Because one, Anil kind of came back out of being behind the scenes a little bit to have this conversation.

[00:38:16] So I think that just shows the importance of this to the Workday piece. David Summers, who heads up there as their chief product officer in those areas. Because definitely, this is a big part, I think, of his vision for where Workday is heading. It's a little bit of a shift away from where Workday has definitely solidly always been, which is AI supporting or enabling HR to a broader sense. And I should say, or supporting and enabling not just HR, but finance and the other areas that they cover.

[00:38:42] But to a broader sense of this sort of digital workforce conversation, right? Which I think is sometimes scary in the market and can be a little overwhelming. We saw the backlash to Lattice's approach to giving them an employee ID. That didn't go very well for Lattice. This idea is about thinking about them a little bit more, I think, on the infrastructure side. Because you already create a lot of, inside of the big HRMS is one of the big powers of these solutions.

[00:39:09] Is you create a privacy and a security infrastructure, right? You're giving everybody in the organization a level of access to different business systems through your IT platform, your HR platforms, and through your business platforms. And part of what David Summers was really honing in on is, well, you could now take these AI agents and tie them to that same security and privacy framework.

[00:39:33] So that depending on who created the agent or managed the agent, it would allow them also the access to the appropriate systems or not systems, right? Oh, okay. That was also the power. It's not just seeing them all in one place and aggregating them and having access to them. It's also connecting them to that security. The other side of this, I think, that's sort of interesting is that, you know, we think the way our research has shown that people are thinking about these artificial intelligence levels, right?

[00:40:01] Is that there's sort of this, there's tools that are aggregating and cleaning your data for AI so that you make it more accessible. And then there's a series of either AI intelligent insights that are being shared at the highest levels in the organization being driven by AI. Looking at all the data, crunching it and giving you some insights. There are a series of tools that are more like a help tool, which is we're looking at all the things you get. You ask a question, we give you an answer back based on all the data we can find, all the information we can find.

[00:40:27] Agents and agentic AI, that is they go and connect all the dots. You give them some parameters and they go and do the work for you, which means really important component here is human oversight into these tools. Validating what they're doing, making sure that what they're doing is the outcomes are what you want. Because an agent, unlike basically a workflow, which is a robotic process automation where you're directing everything it does.

[00:40:52] It has the autonomy to change when and how sometimes it accesses information and the information it uses to do the job. Which is a positive because workflows only get you so far and robotic process automation only gets you so far.

[00:41:09] And a lot of these agents are still some level of RPO, but true agents actually have the ability to decide what information is taking in and not taking in and educate itself as it goes along. Right. Which means, again, you need some human oversight in that. Right. Because it has the capacity to change the outcome based off of how what it decides to include in its analysis. So I'm interested in seeing where this goes.

[00:41:34] I think it is very telling that we saw this announcement come out literally the week after Workday did their most probably, I think this is the largest. I don't think it's the first layoff they've ever done, but it is the largest layoff I believe they've ever done. Where they eliminated 1,700 jobs, which is about 8.5% of their existing workforce. 1,750, I should say, because every job is important.

[00:41:59] And their CEO, Karl Eskivan, basically said, look, this is because we're moving investments and we're prioritizing investments in AI. The interesting thing will be to see where did they see those reductions? When we saw the similarly large reduction from the UKG environment, we saw a lot of removal in marketing, a lot of removal in customer care areas and overlapping admin and support areas.

[00:42:25] I haven't got an analysis yet on where Workday's reductions were at and then in all of their commentary. But they were following suit with what we saw with Salesforce and Meta, who have done a lot of layoffs and have focused on the AI prioritization in that layoff mentioning. Yeah. Yeah. And they're not the only ones. As you mentioned, Salesforce and Meta, like I said, moving towards this investments in AI.

[00:42:50] We're seeing other investments in AI from Oracle, in fact, specifically rolling out some AI agents. So, you know, it's happening across the board. I mean, not just the layoffs, of course, but this move towards the agentic model that you very well described. And, you know, no, I think it's good. I know that we took a stab at defining it last year, but I think now that we've seen some use cases, you did a much better job of clarifying that.

[00:43:17] And ideally, ideally, it's here to support the employee experience, not a replacement. And that is, I would say, not just how it's marketed, but a lot of this is how it's designed. Because as much as there's a lot of hype about AI, I think people are realizing that it just can't. It's not a matter of we don't want it to.

[00:43:38] It's just most of the types of jobs just can't be done, but they could definitely be supported if everything is working well, if everything's working just planned. Because, you know, again, those jobs that we've seen cut isn't because they're being replaced by AI. It's just that they're hiring people to focus more on AI or taking existing resources towards that direction rather than putting it towards non-AI type functions.

[00:44:02] And I think it goes back to if we move more into agentic AI, the human roles are definitely shifted into judgment calls. They're definitely shifted into business insights and more importantly into that, making sure the data is accurate before it goes into the system. Because no longer can I kind of have clean data because the human is looking at it and going to make a judgment call about that data as they're doing the analysis. The AI might have some parameters it can tell about what's clean or not clean data.

[00:44:31] But that's the that's the big thing that human beings have, which is the ability to look and say, I know Susie didn't do what she needed to do to get this in the right way. Susie's never going to tell anybody. Nobody else in the department is going to say Susie did it wrong. So the AI bot won't know that Susie did it wrong. But I know because I had lunch with Josh last week and Josh said that Susie had it, you know, didn't put her data in. Right. And that's the human component that, you know, is a reality of cleanliness.

[00:45:00] So a lot of this, this is where the data cleanliness and the data aggregation is going to become a bigger conversation because AI agents don't work unless your data is accurate. Yes, absolutely. And I think accuracy and also another place where we're seeing a lot of, I don't know, interest or growth or understanding of where that sort of line is drawn and where humans can help is in relevancy. Right. It can give you all the information you want.

[00:45:27] But, you know, when you have a meeting with someone else, think about how often you listener or viewer. Hi, YouTube people say, OK, here's what you're asking. Right. You kind of rephrase it. You understand, OK, I see what you need. You know, and you'll you'll you'll have that dialogue to really understand what's important. What are you trying to get to? You're not just going to read them the Wikipedia page article on this, no matter how much cool. You know, so you have that accuracy, but also the human needs to understand what how what is really going on?

[00:45:56] What are we trying to do? What does this person need? Because it's often more than just what it sounds like. So, you know, some really cool stuff. I want to do a couple of things about people just before we wrap up. So we've seen a lot of movement and I swear we're not picking and choosing. It's just I've noticed a lot of female leaders that we've been talking about. And sometimes we are choosing. We like to see that women found her Wednesday. But also this was just a greenhouse.

[00:46:24] We've talked about before they welcomed Meredith Johnson as their new CPO, chief product officer. She had prior to this prior to moving into Greenhouse, she'd been a Litera, which is a legal software for support for legal professionals. Right. One of the big ones. If you're in that legal space, you can see why it's important to sort of have that background.

[00:46:48] I don't mean just legally, but the idea of, you know, what is this idea of this content or this technology that is ultimately serving professionals in their role? There's not a lot of variation between the skills needed to understand market needs in that space and moving on from that. So I think that that's really neat. So congratulations. And I'll just, you know, reading the tea leaves on this one just a little bit. I think one recruiting is is always a bit litigious. Right. There's there's so much compliance in that.

[00:47:18] But I also think that they really emphasize that the global product suite at Litera. Greenhouse at this point has been I mean, they do global, but but they've been highly sort of centered on on U.S.-based recruiting models. Right. I think that this might be a nod towards them looking to expand into that global market as well. So it'll be interesting to see. Right. Oh, yeah. We've already seen some of that. So you'd be right. And I think I appreciate you doing the tea leaves for spilling the tea. And then here's here's a fun one. But, you know, is relevant to HR tech.

[00:47:48] Jackie Clayton, our good friend, colleague, just a wonderful person. If you don't know her, I'll make sure that we have links to her LinkedIn or any of her work. She's going to be joining season 37 of The Amazing Race. And not only that, she's going to be on there with her sister, Lauren Forster Walls. So this was huge. I will say now this is a little this is just me. I have my own interests and stuff. I have heard of The Amazing Race.

[00:48:18] I think my dad has watched it. I saw season 37 and I went back because I was like, what happened with the cut and paste? That can't be right. 37 seasons. Has TV been around? Certainly not reality TV. So I'm not really familiar with it, but I know it's big. So please, please tell us how why this is huge. First of all, Jackie Clayton is one of the first people I met in my early industry analyst days. Same. Where she was working at that point in time.

[00:48:44] Jackie's been in a lot of of the vendors and as a practitioner and in a lot of spaces. Right. She's the first person who sat me down and helped me understand the recruiting, like all the different pieces and parts that went into recruiting technology. So Jackie's experience is, I think, at a depth and a level of understanding the learning, the recruiting technology space that I think few people have in the market.

[00:49:07] And secondly, Jackie has been on this journey over the last year, year and a half of basically, I think she calls it her journey of, oh, I can't remember. It's a really good term. If you look at Jackie's postings, you'll see it's like reawakening or reimagining or something like that. But indecisive. It's a really great term she uses. And now I'm bummed that I can't remember it. But she's been on this journey of like re-understanding who she is and knowing that we don't have all the answers. Right.

[00:49:34] So when I saw this come out and I've been watching Jackie do a lot of like she's been posting about her, how much she's been running and how she's completed her first, you know, marathon level runs and all of that kind of stuff. So when I, on a health level, I've been like, oh, cheering her on. Right. On this level, I did not realize that she was probably preparing for the Amazing Race stuff. Right. So I have been a big fan of Amazing Race, not since 37 years ago. It was one of the earliest. It is something to note.

[00:50:01] It is one of the earliest reality TV goes as far back as some of the other like things, which, you know, Project Runway and, you know, those kind of exciting things have been around for 20 plus years as well. And what's really interesting about Amazing Race is one, it's had the same main sort of presenter for and producer for all that time. He's very invested in it.

[00:50:26] I got an opportunity to learn more about it because my son, Cole Harris, and his wife introduced me to it and had me watching it one season with them. And I really enjoyed it. And I thought, oh, this is great. It visits all these cities. They get to do fun things in every city, around the world and around the country. So you get to see a lot of different places. More interestingly is two seasons ago now, maybe I think it's two seasons right after COVID. So 2021 and 2022 or in the middle of the COVID. The Holderness family, which is a influencer. They do influencer.

[00:50:55] They do musicals and they're a comedy kind of influencer in the North Carolina area. They live in the Raleigh area. Was on Amazing Race and they won it. And we knew they were going to be on it. And I didn't realize like they have, they shoot these year, a year in advance. And they can't say anything like under contract, which is all the reality TV shows, which means Jackie Clayton has been on. She probably knows, but she can't say where she's at in the process. All right. I didn't even think of it. So first thing is, I think it's, I think it starts in March.

[00:51:24] I, one, watch it. It's fun. You will enjoy it. We are going to probably have HR watch parties all over the place for Jackie. So we just, let's, let's start this. Whoever's on, on my friend group. Second of all, the work that Jackie does, and I think the work that we've seen come out of, of her ability to sort of be honest and open with the market about where she's at in her own transformation and what's happening in the recruiting space. And she has a really depth of knowledge in how bias is impacting the recruiting market. Get to know Jackie.

[00:51:53] I think if there's anything is this is a fun way to get to know Jackie through this process. And we're going to be cheering on her and her sister. I can't wait to see the story they pull from this. I think their colors are purple. So you're going to see purple everywhere. It's just fun. So, so this is the win-win for the whole community. I looked up it's March 5th. It'll be the premiere. I, I, I think the, the term you might've been thinking of earlier with Jackie, she has this idea of the pursuit, which is so on brand then to do the amazing race.

[00:52:21] Cause as I understand it, it's like a global thing where you go to different places. I don't think it's quite a scavenger hunt, but you follow clues or you have to do certain tasks in different ways. Is this right? I don't, I don't know if that, no, this was her, this is, it was something she's been doing in blogs for quite some time. Oh no, but I've just went to the amazing race though. Is that what it does? Oh yes. Yeah. It does. You go and you're, you are looking for clues at every place you go.

[00:52:45] You got to do different puzzles or endurances or heights or like it, it, it is not, it is. There are times I'm like, there's no way I put my spiders and things. And there are other people who go dive right in where I would be happy to zip line across any level of heights. Right. Like, so I think everybody has their own fears, their own challenges. And, and the Holderness really focused on Penn Holderness has ADHD and he's late diagnosis of it.

[00:53:11] And it was one of the things that got me to start searching out the ADHD diagnosis because the things that he was struggling with, which made him both good and struggled at some of the things in the amazing race. I was like, Oh, this is a bit of my life. And so it was an interesting thing. So there's a lot you can get out of it. Not just wonderful. Yeah. We'll set up something. Maybe if we don't, if we can set up maybe a watch party or a way for us to connect with all of you listeners, we'll have links, whatever we have. We'll be up by the time you hear this. We'll figure something out.

[00:53:40] Maybe we just do a recap, but I think that would be wonderful. And probably we'll be able to get Jackie on once she gets past that sort of NDA period to talk about it because that's so fun. Well, that is what we have. I know that it was a lot more, but we didn't get to it all. Yeah, of course there's more. There's always more, right? As always, links will be both in the notes. Best place really to find those when I mentioned that because there's so many different podcast platforms.

[00:54:08] But if you just go to the LinkedIn page for St. Payton Insights Group, we always post this. You can still listen to it on your own, but if you're really saying, I miss that name or I'd like to find that link that Cliff and Stace talked about, that's there. And if you're looking at the link on our YouTube channel underneath those same notes, you can follow the links if you're just trying to figure out those terms or see where you can learn more. Yeah. And as we wrap today, just a couple of big things. One, the full annual HR System Survey white paper is now available in our marketplace along with all the segments.

[00:54:36] If you haven't had an opportunity, if you're just looking for payroll or just looking for recruiting or just looking for learning, you can get that data in our segment reports. Also, if you have any needs around transformation work that you're doing, consulting work that you're doing, and or in the HR technology space, you need to understand a little bit more about what's happening in that market. Let us know. Give us a call. We're interested in having those conversations. We had over 200 vendors in this year's report, and we are in the process right now of pulling all of our distributors.

[00:55:05] So if you are a vendor who would like to participate in the research, everyone can be in the research. We get data from everywhere else. But if you're someone who would like to get more insights and more understand what your customers are thinking about, a good way to do that is to participate as a distributor and you get a chance to get your aggregate data back. So that's in process right now. Also, go to our website to sign up for our newsletter or to get ongoing updates of our research launches where we'll be speaking or visiting. As you know, we've already mentioned a little bit of that. And when you can participate in the annual survey, which will be open in early April this year.

[00:55:34] So just keep your eye out for it because of the holidays. Be sure to listen to our sister HR Huddle podcast, HR We Have a Problem, hosted by our CEO, Terry Zipper. If you like these HR Huddle episodes and want to do more, please be sure to subscribe. Now at Work Defined, as well as leave ratings and reviews where you grab the podcast. It really means a lot to us. Stay up to date with immediate breaking HR tech news and get all the behind the scenes content. You can follow us at Sapient Insights at LinkedIn and Instagram. We're not on the other ones yet, but I think we're working on what else.

[00:56:04] I am personally on Blue Sky. You're on Blue Sky. Yeah, I just put on Blue Sky, but I'm not working on it yet. So we'll let you know where we're going on all those. Thanks, Cliff, as always, for helping us pull all this together. I couldn't do this without you. Thank you for the production team, including Brand Method Media Group and Kelly Kelly, their amazing founder, our marketing team, Summer Rolano, as well as Cindy Murat, as well, who is helping us pull all this together. Thanks to our listeners and community. We couldn't do this without you. Anything you want us to talk about, let us know. Send us your insight.

[00:56:33] And then finally, that's it for this episode of Spill in the Tea on HR Tech. We hope it's been just the brew you need to start the engines running this week. We'll be back in two weeks with another pot of boiling hot HR tech updates and insights. Bye, everyone. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.