Spilling the Tea on HR Tech - Consumer privacy takes center stage as the HR world turns in a complex landscape of regulatory shifts, technology, and compliance questions.

[00:00:00] 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. Welcome to Spilling the Tea on HR Tech where we focus on the hottest HR tech news everyone

[00:00:24] 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

[00:00:33] recording today on January 26, 2024, bringing you all the news that you can use this week. I'm your host, Stacey Harris, Chief Research Officer and Managing Partner for Sapient Insights Group. We are a research and advisory firm. Joining me today for the conversation is

[00:00:48] my co-host, Cliff Stevenson, Director of Research and Principal Analyst for Sapient Insights Group. Cliff, welcome back. We're finally getting back into the groove of regular news this week. What kind of tea is it we have boiling this week? It's a lot of

[00:01:02] stuff going on. We're finally past the happy new year stage, right? That's right. I want to say we had the opportunity to try some rare tea just recently when we all met in person as we had mentioned last week that we are going to be going to Raleigh

[00:01:17] to meet with the company and we actually got some Oolong tea. We have the Chinese restaurant. It's really good. It's like black foot or something like that Oolong tea. It was really good.

[00:01:26] Yeah, amazing. Nice and subtle. As you said, we have a lot of news really getting to that mandate of things you need to know to be in the know. We're going to talk about

[00:01:36] DeGreed and a partnership they have. We're going to talk about some ideas that came out of this global L&D sentiment survey. We're going to talk about some results of another survey about the top people analytics conferences that one model did. We'll talk about

[00:01:52] some news from Ceridian, from Plum, from LinkedIn and some really interesting stats that they have. Also our friend Zova at salary.com are going to be talking about some predictions, what they expect to see coming in employment law. We love to talk about that. We'll talk about

[00:02:12] Textio and some interesting moves happening there from Workday from Mitra Tech. I mean, it is. It's a lot and it's a lot, but it's all very interesting. You'll notice listeners and

[00:02:25] to our audience that for the first time in a long time, there's no direct AI stuff in here. I think we'll still end up mentioning AI, but if you had it on your bingo card or for some reason doing this

[00:02:35] as a drinking game, you're out of luck or perhaps you're in luck depending on how you look at it. I think anybody who's doing AI as a drinking game is in trouble already. So let's just

[00:02:45] slide that out there. Also, before we jump into all the stuff going on because it's a lot, we're kicking back into sort of gear here at Sapey Insights Group. We just got done with our

[00:02:56] offsite meeting with our whole entire team, which was double what it was last year. So that was kind of exciting. If you want to see pictures of all of the team members, we can

[00:03:03] have it out on LinkedIn and we spent the whole three days going through a visual of a mountain and how we're going to reach the top of that mountain and all the different things

[00:03:11] we're going to do to get there. So that was kind of cool. A couple of the big things that probably everyone should be aware of that came out of not just that meeting, but the fact that

[00:03:19] other things that we're doing this year. One is if you missed last week, we just did a really great sort of recap webinar on the key trends that are happening in the 2024 year. Actually,

[00:03:31] I think it was a really excellent event called the HR Tech State of the Union with our partners at IMA. That I think will be posted by the time this broadcast goes live on their website. If not,

[00:03:42] hang us. Let us know if you want a reminder that was focused on companies 5000 and below, but we had maxed out the registration on that clip. We had half, more than half the people who

[00:03:52] registered who attended the event to listen and the conversations on the event were really cool. What were some of the, you were looking at some of the comments while we were talking, were there any that you thought were sort of interesting in that conversation?

[00:04:05] Well, as much as I promised that we wouldn't talk about AI, of course it was part of what we wanted to talk about in this HR Tech State of the Union. How can you talk about that

[00:04:14] without mentioning AI? The conversation was quite lively. There were a couple things that were interesting that may make it into the survey. Of course, if you're listening to this, we'd like to hear from you too just as that conversation was going. We

[00:04:25] love to hear from that. Someone had mentioned there are other ways of sort of now seeing AI as a concept on the rules and regulations you must follow, including having it in your employee handbook. How far we've come, eh? That we went from what's this AI thing to

[00:04:42] it's in your handbook. Here are the ways you use it. I found that fascinating. I also like to hear some of the discussions on, we've talked about payroll for quite a bit and it's one of those conversations continued from last year that how it ties into organizational

[00:04:58] culture or how you can use payroll in its day to day and tactical use to help bridge the gap between your work from home and your office workers or all your different types of,

[00:05:11] whether they be salary or contingent workers, that type of thing. That was really a pretty interesting discussion. What you really found out was some of these smaller companies, I'm doing air quotes which is great for a podcast, but when they make up, as we know,

[00:05:28] the vast majority of companies, but still the challenges they're facing don't sound that much different from what we're hearing from enterprise in their use of technology and the challenges they're facing, whether it be work from home, new ways of paying people that

[00:05:41] earned wage access or transparency of pay, DNI and B, DIMB. Those used to be big company discussions. Now here we are talking about with very small local companies and it's just as important and just as tied to their business results as anything else ever was.

[00:06:00] Yeah, it was a really engaging conversation. I do think there was quite a few questions about compensation and what level at which are we seeing employees sort of make decisions about when is the compensation at a level that they're also looking for other benefits beyond just the

[00:06:14] compensation bump up. And I think those are valid conversations we have. I think everybody has to be having those conversations. So yeah, I was excited. I was excited by the audience.

[00:06:23] I was excited by the fact that we got a chance to support Caitlyn, who is our good partner over there at IMA and really showcase the work that both they're doing. But more importantly,

[00:06:33] that they had supported the survey and had distributed it. And this was a real big win because this was an opportunity to give back to the customers who had up to speed in the survey.

[00:06:42] So it was kind of cool. It could be you listeners. It could be you listeners next time. Remember that the surveys go live what date? Cliff, do we keep saying it? May 1st. May 1st. Remember May 1st. If you don't have your email already from someone else,

[00:06:57] make sure you get it from us. Go to the website. We'll also be coming up in the next couple of weeks. There's a lot of events going on. We're not sure if we're going to be at all of them.

[00:07:04] There is I think Transform is going to be an event that a lot of people are going to. There's an unleashed US event that a lot of people will be going to. I know there's a European HR Tech conference one that's going on. So lots of different events.

[00:07:16] We don't have exact plans because we're still kind of working on some client work right now that might conflict those events. But we do know for sure that we will be at two

[00:07:24] vendor events. So if you're in the area, we'll be out on the West Coast in April at the Workday Innovation session and at the Oracle Application Summit. Both of those are vendor specific

[00:07:34] and analyst and press events they put on each year to make sure that we have a chance to kind of really see what's going on. So we get a lot of detailed deep dives on their roadmaps.

[00:07:43] Always a good opportunity for us to make sure we're asking about things that customers are going to be seeing so that our survey has some of the earliest conversations about that. So if you're out on the West Coast and are interested in having a chat, let me know

[00:07:56] that's going to be at the last two weeks of April. We're also getting ready to kick off. And this is just for anyone who is in this process or working through this process. We have a few spots

[00:08:07] left not a lot because we put out some interest emails about it in December and we now have almost a full cadre of cohort, but we're starting a six month immersive education series. It's a cohort based learning program called Building an Adaptable HR System Strategy that

[00:08:22] works concept to business case to outcomes. Starting in March it'll end in September. It has both education as well as networking and cohort programs exercises. The goal is that when you complete this program, you will not only have built the skills inside your company,

[00:08:39] have a lot of coaching and mentoring programs, but you'll also have completed a full enterprise HR system strategy. And that's something we heard when we were delivering really short versions of this course over the last three years to over 800 different companies. We heard as people

[00:08:52] wanted this to be an extended program that basically walked them through creating a strategy. So Cliff, you and I are going to be part of the training program. We'll be actually delivering this content along with a couple other people from our team and some coaches

[00:09:03] and mentors that were bringing in on an executive level. But you saw this delivered at the HR Tech conference with the shortened version of it. We have a lot of people who are asking questions about how they can extend a version of this kind of program.

[00:09:14] That was probably our number one biggest request afterwards, of course, like any good program you should ask people what they want going in and how they felt about it going out. They said wish it was longer, right? Not something you've always hear

[00:09:27] with workshops and with training. You're like, I'm looking at the clock. They're like, come on, we want more. So okay, ask for an answer. So that is wonderful to see. And I'm glad you brought up the coaching aspect actually because that seems to be a hot topic.

[00:09:44] So much so that we may still have discussions. So let us know what you think. We may have that as a specific part of the HR Tech system survey this year. And it relates to our first story,

[00:09:56] which is DeGreed. They announced a partnership with BetterUp, BetterUp being a virtual coaching platform. One of the bigger ones out there. So that was pretty interesting. And it really does show that people are hungry for coaching. If DeGreed, I'm sure you've heard of them,

[00:10:15] are deciding that is a worthwhile partnership. Yeah. This is kind of exciting because I think DeGreed has been sort of a little bit in they've been adding a lot to the product and the

[00:10:25] tool. And we know that they've had some changes in how they're thinking about what that tool does in a sense that it's more on that career. That's why it says it's going to be part of their plans

[00:10:34] and pathways components. But I do know that in our survey, at least we're seeing a little bit of a dip in organizations buying a separate learning experience platform. We see a lot more of them now getting that from what is a more standard learning management application area.

[00:10:48] And a lot of that's because a lot of those have been acquired by those vendors, right? So it's kind of going to any end. So I think this is an opportunity for DeGreed to really elevate

[00:10:57] what's happening in this market. And we know one of the things we're hearing is if we've got 54% of our HR and HR IT professionals who have less than three years on the job experience in their current roles, things like coaching and mentoring become really important in that

[00:11:12] environment, right? That's exactly it. And that's a lot of what we talk about in our research is sort of bridging the gap between things, right? And that's clearly what they're looking to do here

[00:11:22] is okay, there's learning and then just putting it into practice. And that's one of the reasons why we've been so interested in that here at Safe and Insights Group. So we do feel that's going

[00:11:31] to be a big topic this year and something we're going to be keeping a very close eye on and doing some work in that space. Another thing since we're still talking about learning is, as I mentioned, you ask people what they're interested in. And on LinkedIn,

[00:11:46] Donald Taylor had put together a video about a global learning and development sentiment survey. Now, again, this was an AI developed video. You were the one who said this to me, Stacey. So

[00:12:00] if I'm wrong, and it's I think worth watching, we'll have a link to Donald Taylor's LinkedIn so you can see this. One of the interesting things here as he's kind of going through

[00:12:11] this survey is this idea that he used the term word scapes. I think he's saying kind of like landscapes, but it's this context in which words are so he's saying there's these great ideas

[00:12:22] coming out. But it's always worth thinking that the sort of the strength of the idea is only part of it, right? So if you've got this really good idea you want to put across and

[00:12:31] you're learning or in your training, you also need to think about the context that goes out. So how those ideas are presented and understood. And he's upskilling and reskilling is an example that

[00:12:42] there was not that much interested in it. And then the World Economic Forum put something out at just the right time when people were going through sort of the economic crisis and starting

[00:12:52] to think about, oh, do I have to learn a whole new job? And that doesn't sound fun or reasonable, but reskilling and upskilling does all of a sudden this idea that had been floating around

[00:13:02] started really catching on because it was sort of the right place at the right time. Yeah, I mean language is something we oftentimes don't spend enough time thinking about. But like you said, the context of why are you're at and what you're doing in that language together makes

[00:13:15] such a big powerful impact. And yeah, if you get a chance to go to this link, Don Taylor's a good friend of mine, I've known him for many years. We don't get to talk nearly as much

[00:13:23] as we used to. But back when I was doing a lot more learning and development research in that space, I used to go and speak at his events. And I used to get together each year and he would

[00:13:33] teach me the proper way to drink tea in London, which was a whole other conversation. But he also has invested in a couple of AI companies and one of the ones that he invested in does this

[00:13:43] sort of artificial intelligent creation of a video of you sort of presenting something. And so it'll take I'm assuming take some level of video of your face and then it kind

[00:13:53] of puts it on a body and then you can see the body moving and it caught my eye on LinkedIn. I mean, Donald puts stuff out all the time. It's like this is kind of cool and a different

[00:14:01] use in the kind of that deep fake conversation about AI. Cliff said it was a little different when he was watching it, but he didn't know there was exact AI. So I would say go take a look

[00:14:10] because first of all, it's always great to see what Donald's doing. But look at the video. It's I think an interesting conversation on sort of how AI can be used in a different way to

[00:14:21] catch your eye to get some insight into what's happening and to give a sense of movement and flow in an environment where oftentimes it's just stagnant screens and slides. So that interesting thing. Yeah, that's a great example. And I like seeing that sort of technology used

[00:14:35] in these sort of positive and creative ways because often, right, the stories that you'll hear in other outlets are going to be of these sort of negative ways that sort of deep fakes

[00:14:45] or that AI is used. But as we always talk about there's good uses and bad uses or maybe we shouldn't even say that there's as many uses and you can just assume just because there's a technology that's automatically bad. But speaking of surveys, because this just seems

[00:15:01] to be the way it's flowing, a one model that's a people analytics platform. If you don't know them, they are one of the one of the larger ones that does people analytics. They wanted to do

[00:15:10] a little survey, say, you know, what people analytics conferences are people going to? And interestingly enough, those results which they shared on their blog, good one models website Psyop, that is for industrial organizational psychology, right? Society for that.

[00:15:27] Sapshikago, which is the big one this year, was number one, which was pretty interesting, followed by local meetings, local to the sort of Pittsburgh area, or at least Pennsylvania area, Wharton, Wharton school there at Penn, their people analytics platform and then the HR tech,

[00:15:43] which I think needs no introduction came in fourth for those interested in people analytics. I found that pretty interesting just that Psyop to me, it's always been one I've been interested in

[00:15:53] being an IO psychologist. Well, by degree if not is always been sort of a niche one. I know it, I know some people there, but it doesn't often kind of work into the HR tech space and see it

[00:16:05] be number one. Yeah, it's somewhat for its region, but also I think that's just where some of the more groundbreaking work is being done. So very cool. Yeah. And there's a lot of surveys

[00:16:17] going out this year from different organizations about what events people are going to. I think people are getting back out to events and they're trying to figure out is the local one's going to

[00:16:25] draw more? Is it an international one? Is it one on a specific topic or is it one I think on a broader space? So do you think you're going to see probably more of that? We just thought it was

[00:16:34] interesting. We've mentioned Richard before, he does a lot on LinkedIn and he's got a good following, but I think this conversation is sort of a bigger expectation of sort of how we're

[00:16:43] thinking about events this year. And I do think people are looking for a mix of solid education and networking together. They, I think back in the day, I know this many of you may not remember this,

[00:16:53] but there were days in the 90s, I'll say where you would go to a conference and you would base it off of what the location was and how many good drinks you were going to get and what kind

[00:17:05] of entertainment they had. And you don't see as much of that now. Now there's a lot more like, you know, PSI apps in an area where, hey, that's an opportunity to see something different, right? Education. So just yeah, it's interesting too, right? Because we had a bit

[00:17:17] of a recurrence of that because once people started feeling safe about gathering publicly, so these big boom and comments like you just go to anything, you just want to be around people. And there was nothing wrong with that. We all felt that way. And now it's okay,

[00:17:29] let's pick and choose. Winch is actually driving value. I've kind of gotten that out of my system of like, I just want to hug or whatever the case. So yeah, pretty kind of cool stuff.

[00:17:39] But as we said, lots of news to get through. So I do want to mention some acquisition news, something that was a little slow over the winter period, we'll call it, but we're back.

[00:17:50] Ceridian has acquired Illumi, L and D platform. So it seems to be the, I'm starting to sense a theme, coaching, learning and development. There's a lot of interest in skilling and reskilling, right? So that is pretty interesting. I noticed one of the stats that they used during

[00:18:07] this press release that Ceridian did was that they expect the learning management system market to reach 55 billion in the next about seven years. So they really believe that this is a growth market based on their research on outside research as well. So by taking Ceridian is sort of

[00:18:30] taking charge here by taking over Illumi and putting it directly into the day force platform. Kind of interesting because for the most part, especially in the early days, Ceridian developed everything in an else. So this is a bit of a departure for them, I think.

[00:18:44] Well, and it's, I think it's worth noting with, and it's also important to note that Ceridian is also being going by the term day force now. So we should say day force more than Ceridian.

[00:18:54] So something for me and Cliff to get used to because it's, it's been Ceridian for years. Hey, they call it so Ceridian in the press release. I agree. That's what they say. Right? Like, is that what they do that? That that's interesting, right?

[00:19:09] But I know they just have their sort of conference too that they were doing like their company or employee conference and they had a big day force conversation. So that's something worth sort of checking out is why is the press release saying Ceridian here.

[00:19:20] But one of the things we know is that, and it might be because of how they purchased it under the parent company that actually probably is more what it is with the Ceridian name. But day force has been, has created a strong partnership with Dochebo,

[00:19:33] which is a European based LMS. And this is also a LMS, a learning platform, I should say, because they're more of an experiential kind of platform that's based, I believe in Ireland, this is where they're located at or at least in the UK. For day force?

[00:19:48] Oh, no, for Ilooma. Iloomi. Sorry. Yes, I believe so, yes. Yeah. And so I think it's something to that's that could have an impact on Dochebo who has been growing rapidly as well, 4,000 plus customers. But it also I think shows that a lot of these

[00:20:03] systems that are traditionally payroll and HR had not made the effort to create their own learning system. Workdays when the last modules they really worked on outside of time management was learning. So we know they've got their own now Oracle built their learning solution

[00:20:19] sort of natively, but again, that took them quite some time after they had purchased all of the other LMSs that went with the Tileo acquisition. We know that SAP SuccessFactors has gone through quite a few LMS kind of purchases and then divestitures and their original versions are

[00:20:37] sort of built off of older platforms that they had acquired. And many of the paid cores, paid comms, paid lociities, paid by some of them have built their own and some of them have

[00:20:45] partnered and or acquired small versions and light versions. And I think that we're going to see a lot of this year, this acquisition and this conversation about learning and development, which actually runs into the conversation of the other margin acquisition we have this year.

[00:20:59] That's right. And it works right into the next story, the partnership between Plum and Radical. That's no A. So if you're trying to find this, it's Radical without the second A, that makes any sense. But recruitment assessment, if you know them, they are working with Radical

[00:21:18] and Radical I'll admit didn't know them too well, but they describe themselves as a people science and sort of employee or whole person experiences they term it. So taking the engagement side. So again, this is a continuation of the same idea of connecting two parts of the employee

[00:21:40] journey in this case very early on right as you bring them on, hoping taking that assessment and recruitment space and moving it into ideally how you begin work and starting off. I think

[00:21:53] this has a lot of application especially for the work from home group, although I do not know and they do not mention if that was a driving factor, but I could see it as part of getting

[00:22:05] people up to speed and getting them involved culturally as best they can and finding that people science, finding those ways that people work best even when they're not in a quote unquote traditional workspace. Yeah. And I think we should probably maybe jump from the acquisition

[00:22:22] conversation to the mineral one because to me that's the next biggest thing on this conversation about learning and what's going on there. That was a global compliance company, technology leader, Mitra Tech. I'm not sure if I'm saying that correct. It could be Mitra Tech

[00:22:40] acquired two things at the same time, Centrio and mineral both. Many of you might know mineral through our survey. Mineral is was part of what was Think HR and then I think there was another name that they had combined together and then they became mineral and they basically

[00:22:57] sort of a compliance HR help kind of solution with a lot of content around compliance tools and they also have their own learning tool that they had created. So they were sort of a mix of services and software. They've been moving more towards the application space,

[00:23:10] but they had consistently within our research and our data won a high level of user experience and vendor satisfaction for their compliance training tools, which is in the learning space around our research. And last year they run number one in the SMB space. And so it

[00:23:26] was really interesting because we were just talking about how they were really pushing to be more of a technology provider versus just a services provider in this space with someone. And then funny enough, we get this conversation about them being acquired and they're being

[00:23:40] acquired by a global company. They were much more US focused and then Centrio I think also does compliance, but they were a little bit more on the benefits space, if I understand. And the two together along with the global compliance technology leader,

[00:23:52] I think this is going to make a huge global sort of competitive organizations like the Lexus Netsus organization and a couple others, which is sort of knowledge based with learning built

[00:24:02] into it. I mean Cliff, you used to work with some of this kind of stuff when you guys were when you ran HR yourself, right? These are the kind of tools you would look up things like

[00:24:11] changing compliance requirements, right? Yeah, exactly. And then we're going to talk just in a bit. In fact, maybe this would be a good segue to get into some of that legal stuff, but it's Centrio is pretty interesting because that's a little more of the application, right?

[00:24:23] That's the compliance training. They have hotlines. They give you reporting avenues and technology for doing that. So it's kind of like the learning and the doing as we've talked about earlier. But

[00:24:34] as you said, and then bring that into the global reach, we've got a bit of a compliance juggernaut. And what's nice from that perspective is that everything can sort of be in house,

[00:24:44] right? You can look it up. You can take it as far as you want to do it, which is often the case with compliance is that you start off by going, okay, let me just look up the facts, figure out what's

[00:24:55] going on. And then you make a determination of how much help you need. Now you say this doesn't apply to me or maybe this will apply to me in a little bit. I need just a little bit of

[00:25:05] advisement to, hey, can you take this over? And that's what they've done is they've allowed you to sort of go from A to Z in compliance within this space, along with that whole DIY or

[00:25:17] self-learning if you want to do that. So I do think that's a pretty good segue into one of the other stories we saw. And one of our friends pointed out to us and this also came from Sari.com.

[00:25:27] And this was a review of predictions. So I do want to point out is we're kind of going through these are predictions, but they are based on what we know is coming sort of either on the

[00:25:38] docket or our sort of pending regulations. And I find them fascinating. I think most of these predictions, I would agree with number one, I mentioned there wasn't going to be an AI, but here

[00:25:49] we go. AI regulation will arrive. Yeah, I don't know if that's a prediction so much as stating a fact because we're already seeing that. I know we had talked a little bit about seeing those of latest

[00:25:59] updates on the New York Times copyright infringement suit possible alleged against open AI. I would say alleged. You're going to get yourself in trouble. That's right. Always alleged, always allegedly. Yeah, lawyers. Allegedly. So we've got to be very lawyer-like.

[00:26:14] That's right. That open AI allegedly committed some copyright infringements against the New York Times when they were creating that. And we talk about this a lot. Always be knowledgeable about how any of these generative AI tools are using the information that you're inputting.

[00:26:31] And of course, AI regulation will arrive. We don't have any new updates on that case besides that opening I said that is without merit. And that's not allegedly that's their quote, that they're going to fight that. There's a big Supreme Court case coming up,

[00:26:46] the Chevron deference. Basically right now, federal agencies have the final say on how laws should be interpreted if there's any confusion. And now this case, which strange enough was brought about by phishing boats, basically saying, do we have to pay for the

[00:27:00] EPA advisor that's on there or the watchdog, whatever they're called? Or shouldn't the government pay for that? But the idea being that if this gets rolled back, if they say no, it isn't really the government since the judiciary that will decide how these things are meant to be

[00:27:19] enforced or who gets the final say on this, that could have a lot of impacts on any HR person's job, speaking of compliance because that affects the Department of Labor, National Labor Relations Board, Occupational Safety and Health Administration, right? Because

[00:27:35] they kind of will not get that final say. Things will go to courts to determine whether violations happen. We could see rollbacks or changes or just things being in limbo, just a period of confusion. And limbo is never good in HR. This is not good.

[00:27:50] There's some other ones in here. We don't have to necessarily go through all 10, but an expansion, speaking of the NLRB, National Labor Relations Board, that they will be able to sort of expand the remedies. Meaning you can sort of get more. You don't just get

[00:28:06] what was lost to you back. It's almost like suing for damages, although that's a complete simplification. More consumer privacy laws. These are all again predictions. Yeah, I think consumer privacy laws is really a note because this isn't federal laws.

[00:28:20] These are state laws. 13 states have passed consumer privacy laws, and more will follow in 2024. That means that each state is going to have a different version of a consumer privacy law. And it may not seem as important to HR until you think about the fact that every recruiting

[00:28:35] sort of data capturing tool is to some extent going to be held accountable to those consumer privacy laws. That gets really messy really quickly if you're doing it at a state level. Yeah, they expect that the non-competes, which are already in my opinion allegedly fairly

[00:28:51] toothless, will see them pulled back even further. So the lower wage earners basically cannot be subject to them. That's one that's actually working its way through now. The EO reporting changes will be pretty interesting because that has to do with

[00:29:06] DNI work. They will have the opportunity to voluntary self-identify as non-binary rather than male or female only. And there's some others on there, child labor laws, E-Verify, they expect that to streamline I-9 process. Of course, I think that was a prediction last year

[00:29:25] too. So we'll see. And kind of going along with that gender changes, we may see some race ethnicity categories change too as we've kind of just got a bit better understanding of how people self-identify. And I think it's important. I know we went through this pretty

[00:29:45] quickly and not normally for us to go through all that kind of list, but I know I reposted this. This got more attention than almost anything else that I put out on LinkedIn in a couple of months

[00:29:55] actually. So we know it's of interest to companies, particularly HR professionals, because this is the stuff on a daily basis that can really not just cause us issues maybe in regulatory sense, but also can cause our employees a lot of pain and issues if it's not handled

[00:30:10] appropriately. And so I do think HR really the regulations and you want to find a good advisor here. This is where that conversation about who you're using for this advice is important. Yeah. And just as Stacy said, not a lawyer. And there's possibility you aren't either. So

[00:30:27] always speak to legal counsel, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't be aware of these things and thinking about how they might impact your business. As we say, what you need to know to be

[00:30:35] in the know. A couple other things. So as long as we're doing lists, I found actually you said this to me, but I find it absolutely fascinating. This was LinkedIn jobs, their recruitment platform.

[00:30:47] They looked at the 25 fastest growing roles in the US. Now, caveat here is that this is from LinkedIn first of all, and it has to do with jobs sort of being posted. So we'll talk

[00:30:59] about why that point. As we see this as an increase in the amount of interest and activity around these jobs. Some really cool ones in here though, that I think spell a little if we're going to do some

[00:31:12] predictions of our own, I think show some positivity. Why? Because number one, a chief growth officer, right? That's the person in charge of expanding your market, ensuring that your growth is sustainable, that sort of thing. A government program

[00:31:25] analyst, sure. We were talking about health and safety, the environment health and safety manager, director of revenue operations, sustainability analyst. That's very much close to that growth. Advanced practice provider in nursing, vice president of diversity inclusion.

[00:31:39] Look at that. Number seven, artificial intelligence consultant. You know what? I cursed myself by saying we're going to mention AI. Before drinking game people, please stop now. Recruiter is number nine. I think that shows that we're expecting to be adding jobs and then artificial

[00:31:57] intelligence engineer. Not a big shocker. You can find this on LinkedIn jobs, on LinkedIn. If you want to go through the whole thing, there's some that probably aren't too different, although infection preventionists probably would not have appeared in the list prior to 2020.

[00:32:13] Let's say so that was pretty interesting to see that up there. And I do want to mention because it's also worth probably noting that they have this for every country. So it's not just the

[00:32:24] US, but so there's different updates for the different countries. I think that was quite, that was eliminating to me to see the difference between sort of which countries had like the European countries had a lot more of ESG roles and cybersecurity roles than what we saw here in

[00:32:38] the States compared to others having more AI. So interesting changes. Yeah. Yeah. And that's a fascinating discussion. And again, we'd love to hear from you. I know we have when we look at our metrics, we have quite a few international listeners.

[00:32:49] If there's some you'd like us to discuss more about these sort of things, we don't want to be totally US centric and I would love to hear that because that sort of thing is very fascinating to us as a data analyst is looking at those differences.

[00:33:00] Now, I do want to mention that if you've been following the news, they're not wrong. There has been a lot of layoffs. It's just that they're in some of the most high profile areas, right? Tech media gaming have just been getting, I think almost literally

[00:33:16] decimated, right? About a tenth out. So yeah, especially in journalism when we say media that you probably saw the Sports Illustrated story going through layoffs just today as of recording time as Stacy mentioned January 26 Microsoft laid off a good portion of their different

[00:33:33] gaming divisions including Activision Blizzard. So those might seem interesting, but then they make a note even in that Microsoft one that they still have a thousand jobs open. So there's some restructuring there, there's some streamlining. It doesn't feel

[00:33:48] that way if you're one of those laid off and my heart goes out to you. You work long enough, we've all been through that and that stinks, but sometimes it's hard to like say one way or the

[00:33:59] other right? It can seem very dire and you feel very pessimistic, you can feel overly optimistic. And I think it's just best to sort of present it all as what's out there and think

[00:34:08] about oh there's some things that are happening that could really have to do with how things are done and just the nature of business changing. Stacy, I mentioned that in that webinar that you talked about that should be available through IMA. You mentioned that the workplace is just

[00:34:24] weird now and I think that's the best word for it because we're going through changes just faster than we expected not just from work from home but in the style of work. There's much more subscription models not just as software as a service, we have

[00:34:37] platform as a service, we have all different changes and a lot more people are looking at recurring revenue models and streams. And so that's going to affect obviously tech and gaming much

[00:34:49] more in how we receive our news. So it's changed things. Yeah and it's important to note that if you look at what's happening in the labor market, our data shows, it's not our data, it's actually data from around the globe actually that shows in general we're actually

[00:35:05] having fewer and fewer workforces. Do you have your workforce actually available? So this is the number of people who are working in a market to support those who are over 65 or under 16 usually is the number. That number is going down and is continuing to go down and

[00:35:22] it's going to drop below 59% pretty quickly here in the next year or two in the United States and it's already below that in the European market in certain areas of Asia-Pacific. And

[00:35:32] what I think is the interesting, that's why we say this is a kind of confusing times, is that historical metrics aren't really working here. Like as we're having layoffs, we're actually not

[00:35:43] having a really bad economic time right now. GDP is up. We've seen sort of overall numbers up from a spending perspective. It's layoffs because they're thinking differently about what tomorrow is and that's a different thing than the whole economy is kind of crashing. And so I think

[00:35:58] it's worth having the conversation to say that these are talent conversations in some sense and workforce conversations and it's versus just everywhere and everyone is happening, which is what we saw in 2007, 2008, 2009 what happened right? Right. Yeah, we're not seeing some sort of

[00:36:14] systemic collapse due to a central thing. We're seeing ebbs and flows due to a changing workplace. Now you can never predict something like what happened in 2020 pandemic. So we're not saying, Hey, put all your money in every stock. It's just that it's worth noting the context things

[00:36:32] happen. Now, speaking of job changes, this one is certainly not negative. This is from Texio. I hope I'm saying that right. Now that was founded just about a decade ago from Kieran Snyder and

[00:36:44] Jensen Harris. And I'm going to just go ahead and read this because what's happened is that Jensen Harris has taken over as CEO and Kieran Snyder is stepping into a lower role or I

[00:36:56] guess I shouldn't say a lower role, but a different role. A different role or technology and science focused. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And I like her quote here is worth just reading verbatim. She said sometimes when leadership transitions happen, it's tempting to look for the story behind

[00:37:10] the story. But the truth is that nine years is just a long time. And last four have been unusually difficult time in the world to work and lead. I'm ready for a break.

[00:37:19] Aren't we all? Stay, see, I should have, I should have saved that for last, but I do want to mention the workday one. But I think that's a great sentiment.

[00:37:26] Well, I think it's a great story. And let's be, so one of the reasons why I think this is worth noting is that Kieran was one of the few female owners, leaders, presidents right in this market.

[00:37:36] And it is women in general who oftentimes do step back as they move up the ranks and leadership. That is something to be aware of. And similarly we're seeing in the workday environment, Neil Isar, who's run work day for a long time after him and Dave Duffield

[00:37:51] split roles. And now he's been the sole CEO and then he had co-presidents. Now, he's getting ready to do kind of a similar thing that we just saw happen here. Well, he'll

[00:37:59] be stepping back this year into a more technical role. He's going to stay on the board. He's going to do all the things right. And he's got Carl Eskivan who's going to end up becoming sort of the sole CEO. And those are important distinctions that happen. Founders oftentimes,

[00:38:15] it is really hard to get a business to a certain level. And they oftentimes want to go back into doing the work that they enjoy. And then you see them bringing in people who they feel

[00:38:23] can get the company to the next level. And that's what we see happen in a lot of these organizations. And I think work day is a good example of that as we talk about what's happening with text.

[00:38:32] But also, this is a new era and there's a lot of stuff going on with AI. And so this was an interesting commentary. We've seen other vendors put out announcements about their AI environments. But Cliff, you run through this and I think the thing we just

[00:38:45] wanted to sort of wrap up on is that they actually have put a whole sort of website and a statement out, which you and I have been talking about for a while about their AI ethics

[00:38:55] at this point, right? Yeah, it was so called Responsible AI. Their term, I think that's a great one as their headline says, ensuring trust in leadership and innovation. And that whole idea around ethics and AI, that was one of the big data points that came

[00:39:09] out of our survey is how few organizations had a policy in place. And we go from that to now it being part of not just the employee handbook or however you do it, but the providers themselves

[00:39:22] taking it upon themselves to say, hey, we're going to lead the way. We're not going to wait for these regulations that we already are talking about earlier. But we're going to say,

[00:39:30] hey, this is just the right way to do it. This is to use another term we've used for sustainable. It is based on transparency, which I think is always the biggest thing, right? You've probably heard us mention this kind of understanding how the algorithms work,

[00:39:46] understanding where the data comes from, how it's being used. That's how many of the regulations, early regulations, because it's a safe starting place. And I think they've done a great job of saying, let's start now and not wait and find a sort of public sentiment statement.

[00:40:06] Here are the rules that we've put forth for ourselves. And it's a good place if you're looking to maybe create policies around your own workplace is probably a good thing to look at and take a look because I think it's good to just have this as you said,

[00:40:20] as a webpage you can go to and read that. You don't have to dig around and figure out what their policies are. And that's really good. And I think a good positive thing to think about,

[00:40:30] especially and I mentioned we were going to talk about AI, but I tricked you. That's all we talked about. It's always there in the background. But yeah, the other thing I think that this echoes is

[00:40:41] we would love to see, I think other vendors have done this in different ways, whether putting it on your website or putting it in the booklet or stating it in your conference or event. I do think that we're going to be looking as analysts and as media to

[00:40:56] the vendors themselves to step up as much as possible. And we've seen this from almost every vendor we've talked to. I don't think vendors are shying away from this, but I do think it is

[00:41:05] going to come in on all of us to really push to see are you walking the walk are the behaviors of what you're saying coming through. And so we'll be on the clock watching for you guys

[00:41:14] and let you know what we're seeing as these vendors start to put out more of these sentiments. But I think this is a good first step for most organizations. Right. Absolutely. And I know this is a little longer, but as we mentioned in the last episode,

[00:41:27] there was sort of a fallow period during the holidays, but we're back and we have got tea, all sorts of tea, legal tea, global tea, you name it. Tea everywhere. Yes. And hopefully as we get in the next week, we'll have some more updates

[00:41:42] on where we're heading with the survey because we'll be working on that in the next couple weeks. And then we'll be talking to me about some other events that we'll be attending because we'll have solidified hopefully some of the events we're at as well, right?

[00:41:52] That's right. And as always, can reach out to us at any time. We love to hear from you. We love to engage. And as Stacy mentioned, the survey is coming. We desperately want to hear when we

[00:42:02] put out the survey. Of course, we want to hear from you. It's a great time to reach out now and say, are you going to be asking about this? I just want to make sure

[00:42:08] please do that because there's all sorts of topics and all sorts of areas of interest we need to know. It's a large survey, the largest and the most comprehensive there is. So this is the time to make your voice heard early.

[00:42:20] Yes, it's time to make your voice heard early. Yeah. So as we wrap today, just a reminder that the full annual HR system survey white paper, if you're looking for that to make your HR

[00:42:29] technology decisions or to understand what's in your HR system strategy or to find out how people are using change management or what the latest AI investments are, it's a great place to go. It's in our research marketplace. It's a great gift and a great tool

[00:42:43] if anybody is out there looking to add that to your conversation on the HR technology landscape. We had over 200 HR vendors covered this year in their report and input from over 5,000 HR practitioners. I'm going to challenge you all that we want to get more this year.

[00:42:57] So just let me know. Come on. We need it. We need to up that number. It's always fun to up the number every year. Also, go to our website to sign up for our newsletter to get

[00:43:04] ongoing updates on our research launches where we'll be speaking your visiting and when you are participating in the survey as well as for some of our new education programs. That's a big thing that we're starting. Our focus here really is to keep these education programs

[00:43:17] with more networking, more human components and a more focus on what you need to be a leader and how you need to interact as a leader with a lot of coaching and executive mentoring as well as the content. It's something we think is important. We kind of missing

[00:43:31] in some of the other things out in the market right now. Be sure to listen to our sister HR Huddle podcast, HR We Have a Problem hosted by our CEO, Terry Zipper.

[00:43:38] And these HR Huddle episodes are hard to get out in the market. And if you really like them, please let us know. Make sure you support them through our subscribing and leaving ratings and reviews wherever you grab your podcast. Stay up to date with immediate breaking

[00:43:52] HR tech news and get all behind the scenes content. You can follow us at SavedBeat Insights on LinkedIn, Instagram and that X thing or Twitter, whatever it's called right now. And finally, a big thank you to Cliff who pulls all of these things together and figures out

[00:44:06] ways to weave them into one conversation. So I appreciate that. Thank you to our production team, including Brand Method Media Group, who helps us produce our podcast run by amazing founder Kelly on our marketing team, Lisa Renko and Summer Orlana, who make this

[00:44:20] possible at all for you guys to get everything and access it. And thanks most of all to our listeners and communities. We couldn't do this without you. As Cliff says, please be sure to

[00:44:30] send some commentary. And that's it for this episode of Spilling the Tea on HR Tech. Cliff say bye to everyone. We're going to see him next week. Bye to everyone. We hope it's been the best brew that you can have this week. And then it gives you just

[00:44:44] the things 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.