Spilling the Tea on HR Tech - Recent advancements in workforce planning tools and how they’re shaping organizational efficiency.

[00:00:00] I remember one of my first quote-unquote big jobs was one that I literally got from an ad in the newspaper.

[00:00:09] And so I'm having an AI moment because I'm reading this ad in the newspaper at the time, that's where we used to find our jobs.

[00:00:16] And going, oh my God, this is exactly me. That's me, I do that. Oh, I know how to do that. Oh yeah, this job description was written for me, right?

[00:00:27] So I took my little, you know, AI mind and wrote a nice resume to match it. But it's kind of like that, right?

[00:00:35] You're finding, trying to find exact matches. And in the real world, I think, you know, sometimes we overlook the, you know, the capabilities and the skills that people have that might work well for the job, even if it's, they haven't been in the exact kind of role before.

[00:00:55] 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.

[00:01:15] Hello, and welcome to Spilling the Tea on HR Tech, where we focus on the HR tech news that everyone needs to know to be in the know.

[00:01:24] Now, before we get started, you might've noticed my voice is a little deeper. I'm not actually Stacey Harris. This is Cliff Stevenson, because this is going to be a very special episode.

[00:01:35] Stacey Harris is out this particular episode. She will be back. She is out for medical reasons, but it is nothing serious and nothing to worry about.

[00:01:47] But I'm sure she would love to know that all of you are thinking of her, so feel free to write her.

[00:01:51] If you know the show, then you know that we break down the news of the week every week to help you make sense of what it means for our industry and how it can impact your organization.

[00:02:00] We're recording today on October 24th, 2024, but this episode will actually release on Halloween.

[00:02:07] So I am joined today by Terry Zipper, CEO and managing partner of Sapient Insights Group, to bring us an extra spooky set of news from the HR tech world.

[00:02:21] Terry, besides being the CEO and managing partner of Sapient Insights Group, I'd say more importantly is the host of our sister HR Huddle podcast, HR We Have a Problem.

[00:02:31] And that one, Terry, you normally interview people, prominent members from the HR and just business community.

[00:02:39] So welcome to the show, Terry. I know we've got some extra scary tea to spill today.

[00:02:44] I'm kind of hyping it up. It's just regular news, everyone. Don't be frightened.

[00:02:49] Thanks, Cliff. I'm glad to be here. And hopefully I can live up to Stacey's side of this this week.

[00:02:56] I'm a little intimidated for Stacey, but it makes you feel better. I think we got this under control.

[00:03:02] Yeah, if it makes you feel better, I think I'm the one who has to live up to Stacey as the host.

[00:03:05] You just have to be me. For those of you that are listening on the podcast and don't know, we also broadcast this on YouTube.

[00:03:12] If you just go to YouTube and search Sapient Insights Group, you'll be able to find this.

[00:03:15] And I recommend at least popping by because unplanned, Terry and I are wearing matching but opposite outfits.

[00:03:25] And inside out, right?

[00:03:27] Yeah. Seriously, it was unplanned.

[00:03:30] So, you know, just in case this is your first time, this is all very confusing to you.

[00:03:35] I've introduced Terry. My name is Cliff Stevenson, director of research and principal analyst for Stacey Insights Group, which is a research and advisory firm.

[00:03:43] A few promotional items before we get started.

[00:03:47] So, we've been talking quite a bit about our big 27th annual HR Systems Survey report that will actually be releasing on the day that you're hearing this.

[00:03:58] Assuming you're hearing it right when it releases on October 31st.

[00:04:01] And we're going to be having a special sort of promotional webinar that will air at 2 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, GMT minus five for all of our European and global listeners, where we're going to share results from the big HR system survey.

[00:04:19] Some of which we've sort of teased on this show before, but this will be hosted by HR executive.

[00:04:25] So, if you're hearing this early enough on the 31st, you can go over to the website, find the link, and we'll see you over there.

[00:04:33] A few other things. We're going to be traveling.

[00:04:37] I'll be in Philadelphia for Unit Force Conference on November 6th and 7th.

[00:04:41] Both Terry and I will both be at UKG's Aspire Conference on November 12th and 13th.

[00:04:49] Day Force Discover, I'll be going to right after that on the 14th.

[00:04:54] That will also be in Las Vegas.

[00:04:57] And Stacy will be at Work to Europe on November 12th and 14th.

[00:05:01] And I believe there's also a CHRO conference sort of wedged in there right around the time of UKG Aspire. Is that right, Terry?

[00:05:10] That's right. Yeah.

[00:05:11] Put on by HR executive.

[00:05:12] Susan will be leading the charge on that one and talking about change leadership.

[00:05:17] Wonderful.

[00:05:18] And we've just also wrapped up our first cohort education series that just happened earlier this week, the week of the 24th.

[00:05:29] I think it was actually on the 22nd when you wrapped that up.

[00:05:32] So I just want to say congratulations to any of the members of that.

[00:05:36] That was really wonderful, really great to be a part of.

[00:05:39] I think there might have been some tearing up at the end.

[00:05:42] But I know we're going to be moving on to the next part of that education series.

[00:05:47] Is that right, Terry?

[00:05:48] I don't know if we have specific dates for that yet.

[00:05:50] That's right.

[00:05:50] We have a couple of other things coming out of that.

[00:05:53] So there's a change cohort starting in January.

[00:05:56] And then the next HR system strategy cohort, I think we're targeting March.

[00:06:03] So be on the lookout for those options.

[00:06:05] They're already actually up on the website if you're interested in attending or being a part of one of those cohorts.

[00:06:11] It really was a great session.

[00:06:15] And I can't say enough about it.

[00:06:18] Looking forward to the feedback so we can go into that was the inaugural session.

[00:06:22] So we'll be going into the second version of it, which will take into account everything we learned in the first version, which was a lot.

[00:06:30] Yes.

[00:06:32] Yeah, it was an education series ostensibly for the people taking it.

[00:06:36] But I'd say we learned quite a bit as well.

[00:06:38] I think that was my big takeaway is, you know, all of the data and everything that we provide and that we gather through the survey to see it actually take place in the work one was doing.

[00:06:54] Many of them were going through periods of pretty intense change.

[00:06:57] Either they had switched jobs or their particular workplace was going through a lot of change, which I know is your specialty, Terry.

[00:07:04] But it's fascinating to hear it when a lot of times I'm sort of behind writing, which for any of you again watching on YouTube that have noticed the scruff, that is because we have wrapped up that paper, which Terry, I don't know if I've told you yet, but we got the final count.

[00:07:19] It's 248 pages this year.

[00:07:21] So for those of you getting the receiving the paper, you know, that's your first bit of scary news.

[00:07:26] You've got a couple days of reading.

[00:07:29] You get points for reading the entire paper this year.

[00:07:35] That's right.

[00:07:36] So we've got some spooky news.

[00:07:39] We've got some acquisitions.

[00:07:41] I guess that can be scary, but it can also be pretty positive.

[00:07:45] We've got some promotions, some new people.

[00:07:49] We've got some renaming and just some, you know, new products coming out.

[00:07:55] Terry, what have you got for us?

[00:07:57] Yeah.

[00:07:58] Well, I'm just wondering, first of all, if we can make it through this episode without mentioning AI.

[00:08:05] You just did.

[00:08:06] I don't think we can.

[00:08:06] I was also just thinking, well, maybe we should, every time we say the word AI, we have to take a drink.

[00:08:12] Right.

[00:08:14] And then that would result in a really scary episode.

[00:08:17] So we won't do that.

[00:08:19] But I was laughing, listening to a couple of the most recent spilling the T's and just laughing at how, you know, just how much we're talking about that topic.

[00:08:30] So we will probably mention that a little bit later.

[00:08:33] Probably.

[00:08:33] The first story up for bid, if you will, is ADP acquires workforce software.

[00:08:41] Yeah.

[00:08:42] So, you know, everybody knows ADP, right?

[00:08:45] I mean, if you don't know ADP, you just landed on the planet.

[00:08:49] And workforce software, they're kind of known for, you know, global optimization for workforce planning.

[00:08:56] I think workforce planning is going to be a big theme of this conversation today.

[00:09:00] You know, they do time and attendance, scheduling, forecasting, leave of absence, but they've kind of been teamed up with SAP for like 10 years now.

[00:09:09] So I thought this was a really interesting move.

[00:09:14] And it is a gap for ADP, at least from my perspective.

[00:09:18] I think it's a smart move if they can integrate it properly.

[00:09:22] I know clients right now that, you know, use ADP have a need for this capability.

[00:09:28] So I think it's a pretty smart move.

[00:09:31] I'm interested in your thoughts on this clip, just given where they've been and now sort of, you know, in the ADP world.

[00:09:39] Yeah, it's pretty fascinating.

[00:09:41] So as you mentioned, you know, people know ADP.

[00:09:43] We've worked with ADP.

[00:09:45] We've worked with workforce software.

[00:09:47] And, you know, we sometimes get the question, well, how far in advance did you know about these sort of things?

[00:09:54] And I actually didn't.

[00:09:55] This one completely surprised me.

[00:09:57] I mean, I might have known a day or two before, but certainly not as it was brewing, despite how close we followed these companies and how well we know some of the people there.

[00:10:06] And as you said, workforce software, I remember going to conferences of theirs, you know, seven or eight years ago, maybe even longer.

[00:10:16] And, you know, it was quite small.

[00:10:18] It really felt like more of a time in attendance with some other things coming on.

[00:10:23] I'm sure they would not have described themselves that way.

[00:10:25] I just mean, as an analyst often would think of that.

[00:10:28] But, you know, that's like saying ADP is only payroll.

[00:10:31] You know, that's just simply not the case.

[00:10:33] It just might have been the public perception.

[00:10:35] But workforce software, especially in the last conference I went to a few months ago, you really sort of realize what they do best is handle these really complex workforce planning situations.

[00:10:48] You know, they most of their customer stories dealt with big acquisitions or mergers among really large, highly unionized or at least collective bargaining agreements that were in these environments.

[00:11:05] And it's just so much going on and trying to have everything under one sort of scope.

[00:11:11] And, you know, the importance of data nowadays, I think, is what drives a lot of the interest in having a solution like workforce software.

[00:11:20] Right. When you have these really complex, highly regulated groups that you're dealing with and then you're trying to figure out how do we have a sort of single source of truth?

[00:11:29] How do we have all this data in one place so we can do the type of strategic workforce planning?

[00:11:35] And that's what they really provide is creating that groundwork, getting that all there.

[00:11:39] And I think that fits in nicely with what ADP is trying to do, which is handle those sort of environments and create a centralized data environment to help you make more evidence based decisions and that type of thing.

[00:11:54] So I think it really works well with what they're trying to maintain for the future.

[00:11:57] Interesting enough, this is just my personal take.

[00:12:00] I think that the cultures of those two organizations will work well together.

[00:12:05] Both of them have a I wouldn't call it a an engineering background in the sense that, you know, it's engineers, but they have that mindset.

[00:12:14] If you've ever worked for like, you know, the Raytheons or or dealt with them where they take a very sort of, you know, just a sort of strict or maybe let's just say, you know, they don't have that kind of silly sort of high tech things that you sort of worry about in those worlds where it's like, oh, we're, you know, highly, you know, we're going to take risks

[00:12:34] or we're going to do very, maybe sometimes off the wall stuff.

[00:12:37] No, they kind of play it by the book.

[00:12:38] And I think that that's a good, a good thing.

[00:12:41] They're matching those sort of things up.

[00:12:42] Yeah.

[00:12:43] And, you know, ADP is big and complex, but they also have a tendency to do a really good job of integrating solutions where they're bringing in a level of expertise that they don't really have today.

[00:13:00] And I'm not saying they don't have expertise to do time and attendance, but they have a number of time and attendance solutions, either through their, you know, primary platform or through their partner platforms that do not have the level of complexity that a lot of these organizations need.

[00:13:18] I mean, I personally am working with a couple of organizations right now who this is their biggest thorn because in order to do workforce planning and to integrate with financial services and invoice and do things like that, they're using multiple systems and doing a lot of manual work.

[00:13:37] So it's things like this, you know, what workforce software is doing if integrated well will be a really great add on for ADP because it's a gap.

[00:13:50] It is.

[00:13:51] Yeah.

[00:13:52] Yeah.

[00:13:52] And I think you're right that we're going to be hearing a lot more of it this year because I think it's all tied in.

[00:13:58] You know, I don't think it's necessarily that this is going to be sort of in lieu of the skills conversation or the AI conversation.

[00:14:07] I think all of those go together, right?

[00:14:10] Yeah.

[00:14:10] We're starting to see how all of this works as one to help us sort of achieve the business goals.

[00:14:16] I think it's really pretty telling that there's a lot of money being spent in these areas, which kind of proves that everyone sees it that way, or at least, you know, some of the innovators see it that way.

[00:14:29] Yeah.

[00:14:30] We're going to see that again.

[00:14:31] Yeah.

[00:14:32] Another spooky story.

[00:14:34] So iSIMS.

[00:14:36] Yeah.

[00:14:36] They're in the news.

[00:14:37] It's like they appointed Jody Kaminsky as their chief marketing officer.

[00:14:43] She's a real veteran, right?

[00:14:44] A lot of experience as a CMO.

[00:14:46] So she, you know, this is not her second gig.

[00:14:49] She's been on advising boards.

[00:14:52] She's been in the public and private tech.

[00:14:54] So she knows her way around this, this market.

[00:14:57] And this seems like a good move to me.

[00:14:59] I mean, iSIMS is one of the top.

[00:15:01] Well, okay.

[00:15:02] The top according to this year's voice of the customer in our survey.

[00:15:06] They have acquisition tools on the market, but I kind of think they have a little bit of a branding issue.

[00:15:11] And so that, you know, in my mind, that's kind of what I'm looking for, for Jody to come in and do is how do we get our messaging aligned and, you know, help people understand what we offer.

[00:15:24] And I don't know if there's anyone, you know, sort of better suited for this particular challenge because, you know, she came, comes from UKG and ultimate as well.

[00:15:35] No Jody.

[00:15:37] And, you know, it's hard to imagine a world where you don't know UKG or I would say ultimate before that.

[00:15:43] But that was an issue at one point, you know, everyone knew work day and it's there was a time when ultimate needed to sort of come up and develop their brand and really get across their unique cultural aspects.

[00:15:57] And that was the case of UKG as well, because, you know, they're unknown.

[00:16:03] All they knew that there was the merger between the two companies.

[00:16:05] And that was right when Jody was sort of at the helm there as the CMO.

[00:16:10] So being a part of that, I think will really help with iSIMS as they continue to grow.

[00:16:16] As you said, they were top ranked in the voice of the customer, well known brand, but they are known, as you said, for talent acquisition.

[00:16:25] And they're really more than that.

[00:16:27] You know, they are expanding.

[00:16:30] They have a lot of different offerings.

[00:16:32] You know, they show up as well.

[00:16:34] And for instance, in onboarding, which I know is often linked, but isn't, you know, does sort of provide that sort of next step within that development.

[00:16:43] And, you know, you know, are really groundbreaking when it comes to looking at things like, you know, skills again, bring it up.

[00:16:51] How do you acquire those and how does that work within both internally and externally to your organization?

[00:16:57] So I think it's a great move for both, for both Jody and for iSIMS.

[00:17:03] So I'm really, really happy to see it.

[00:17:05] Yeah, it's not, I mean, iSIMS of course is well known, but I think, you know, and you might have an opinion on this.

[00:17:12] This is just my thought.

[00:17:14] You know, some of it is they've grown pretty substantially and grown up market.

[00:17:19] And I think they have, you know, a sizable number of smaller clients that really aren't, you know, getting, maybe aren't seeing the opportunity for services and some of the things like, you know, the offering was just sort of, hey, here's this basic package.

[00:17:35] So I think there's some communication and some messaging to their existing clients.

[00:17:40] I mean, talent acquisition is another one of those areas that's, it's complicated, right?

[00:17:43] I mean, it's not just, hey, how do I, you know, it's not just recruiting and setting up appointments, right?

[00:17:49] Just the whole process of, you know, finding people and talking to people and scheduling meetings and finding the right person and then onboarding them into your HRMS.

[00:18:00] And, you know, there's a lot of touch points.

[00:18:03] So I think there's still a lot of things people are doing manually because they haven't quite figured out how to make it all seamless.

[00:18:10] And I know iSIMS has added a lot of capabilities over the years.

[00:18:15] How do we make sure as a client of iSIMS, you know, we're taking advantage of all those capabilities?

[00:18:22] And, you know, I'm hoping that's something that, you know, can get communicated and become part of the lexicon there.

[00:18:31] That's right.

[00:18:31] And not to just force people to drink, but they have instituted a lot of new AI features.

[00:18:37] Exactly.

[00:18:37] And, you know, how to get people to understand that.

[00:18:40] Because I think the one area where people might push back sometimes with AI is in the talent acquisition space, right?

[00:18:48] Because that's the one place where we've seen, maybe not the one place, but the main place where we've seen some of the negative consequences of using AI.

[00:18:57] Generally down to, you know, bias being built into the system to the data that's part of the foundation of that AI.

[00:19:06] Then being going on and recommending people that all sort of fall under one class, right?

[00:19:13] So you end up with a bias group and you're going, well, I don't want this sort of recommendation.

[00:19:18] Where does the human intervention come in?

[00:19:20] So instead, you know, they're going to need to help people understand this AI can be used to help with sort of repetitive tasks, not necessarily replacing, you know, the human mind, but also to identify the bias rather than perpetuating it.

[00:19:37] You know, it can help see that, you know, here is where these sort of trends are going and, you know, spot those things rather than being a recommendation engine, which, you know, really no one is looking for, right?

[00:19:50] But instead going, you know, how do we help improve my human skills rather than place them or, you know, make them worse?

[00:19:59] Yeah. And I just was reading something the other day, you know, recruiters basically saying that, you know, they can spot a resume written by AI and, you know, half a second, right?

[00:20:10] I mean, it's not hard and they're not loving that part of it, right?

[00:20:14] But on the flip side, I think we got to be careful as to how much we rely on AI to write the job description because pretty soon the whole process is just going to be morphed into one big AI, right?

[00:20:29] Right. Yeah. Good point. Just the job description, the selection, right?

[00:20:34] It's a perfect match.

[00:20:37] Whoever wrote this is a genius.

[00:20:39] I remember my first, one of my first quote unquote big jobs was one that I literally got from an ad in the newspaper.

[00:20:49] And so I kind of like, I'm having an AI moment because I'm reading this ad in the newspaper at the time.

[00:20:54] That's where we used to find our jobs and going, oh my God, this is exactly me.

[00:21:00] Like I, that's me. I do that. Oh, I know how to do that.

[00:21:03] Oh yeah. This, this job description was written for me, right?

[00:21:07] So I took my little, you know, AI mind and wrote a nice resume to match it.

[00:21:12] But it's, it's kind of like that, right?

[00:21:14] You're, you're, you're finding, trying to find exact, exact matches.

[00:21:19] And in the, in the real world, I think, you know, sometimes we overlook the, you know,

[00:21:25] the capabilities and the skills that people have that might work well for the job,

[00:21:30] even if it's, they haven't been in the exact kind of role before.

[00:21:35] Yeah. That, that reminds me of a conversation you and I had, I can't remember with whom,

[00:21:40] but they were talking about the sort of difference between skills and experience, right?

[00:21:46] Because sometimes you might not have the experience, but you have the skills, but traditionally,

[00:21:51] you know, as we're sort of become more advanced, we don't see as much, but traditionally,

[00:21:54] a lot of the TA town acquisition had to do with your experience, right? And how do we kind of overcome

[00:22:01] that? I think that there's possibilities for technology to help us as long as we're sort of

[00:22:06] mindful of it. Yeah. The scary, scary technology. See, I'm keeping us on the Halloween theme.

[00:22:12] More AI to come. I think we've said that about 27 times at least.

[00:22:16] There you go. Someone's passed out somewhere.

[00:22:18] Montage. So the next thing that, and we all experienced this, right? We were just at HR tech,

[00:22:26] not three, four weeks ago. I can't believe it's already come and gone at this point, but

[00:22:32] at HR tech, HR executive and HR tech introduced some new branding, the next generation of global human

[00:22:39] resources, media and events. And this rebranding is interesting. I really liked it. I think it's

[00:22:47] looks pretty cool. And, you know, I've heard varying opinions, but what I thought was interesting is

[00:22:52] the way that they unveiled it at HR tech. I felt like it was a little bit late in the, like,

[00:23:00] I felt like it could have been at the beginning and sort of framed the whole conference. And instead

[00:23:05] it sort of came at the end. And so now there's been just sort of a lot of social media about it,

[00:23:11] trying to, you know, really push it out there. I don't know. What, what do you,

[00:23:15] what did you think about that? I thought, so just for anyone that didn't see this,

[00:23:21] the name change is, and it's funny because we always said HR tech. So really it's kind of catching

[00:23:27] up with how people say it anyway. So technically the names for the two groups were human resources,

[00:23:34] executive, human resource, executive, and HR technology conference and exposition,

[00:23:39] which has colloquially long been known as HR tech. In fact, I constantly forget that it had a longer

[00:23:48] name and HR executive or sorry, human resource executive. I guess sometimes I would say the

[00:23:54] full, but almost always I said HR executive when referring to, you know, the publication or the group.

[00:24:00] So this is really sort of catching up with how people say it. And I honestly think that it was

[00:24:06] probably a conscious decision on their part to not sort of overshadow the paying customers by

[00:24:12] sort of stealing any thunder with a big name for theirs. I think that's maybe why they wanted to do it

[00:24:18] at the end because unlike some sort of rebranding exercises, as we kind of have been talking about

[00:24:25] that a little bit, I think in this case, they're, they might've been trying to fly under the radar,

[00:24:30] just like, just so you know that technically the names you're using are now the correct names sort

[00:24:35] of. So yeah, it honestly there, it is sort of a name change. There's a few other things too.

[00:24:44] HR technology Europe in Amsterdam is just HR tech Europe. The HR tech festival Asia in Singapore is now

[00:24:52] just HR tech Asia. That's a good if they ever want to move to take this sort of more generalized names,

[00:24:58] a few, you know, those are just some of the smaller things, but HR tech is, I don't know anyone who

[00:25:05] refers to the HR technology conference and exposition. Right. Unless they get paid by the word somehow.

[00:25:12] Yeah, no, that's a really good point. It is true. A lot of people are doing a lot of

[00:25:16] press releases and there's just a lot happening at HR tech. And so that that's a really good point.

[00:25:22] And I like the simplification of the name changes. I mean, it's like you said, it's what people have

[00:25:28] been saying. So it's kind of like, okay, we finally decided to call ourselves what people are calling us,

[00:25:34] which I think is, is, yeah, really a positive, positive move.

[00:25:39] Although we are still sapient insights group, everyone listening, not just sapient.

[00:25:45] Yeah. I like the colors. They're a little bit of an offshoot of our color. So of course I was

[00:25:50] attracted to that because I, you know, liked it.

[00:25:53] Yeah, of course. Again, if you're, if you haven't seen, I don't know why,

[00:25:56] if you're listening to this, you don't know, but we're known for our pink, our hot pink. We

[00:26:02] received a lot of attention for that at HR tech, which was lovely. And we love to see everyone in

[00:26:09] pink. We tried to take lots of pictures with anyone else that was wearing our corporate colors.

[00:26:14] Yeah. It's getting more calm. It's like becoming more common. I think people like being prominent.

[00:26:18] So we're probably going to have to change our brand in a couple of years.

[00:26:21] It's like a neon yellow.

[00:26:23] Get a new color.

[00:26:24] High viz.

[00:26:25] Yeah. Bright green, you know, I don't know, something. Right.

[00:26:30] I have way too much pink branded stuff for us to change it anytime soon, please.

[00:26:35] Yeah, I know. I'm telling you my closet's getting pinker by the, by the day.

[00:26:41] So coming back to workforce planning. So Paylocity debuted an integrated headcount planning solution

[00:26:50] just recently. And I think it takes advantage of the trace acquisition they made last year. Right.

[00:26:58] That's right.

[00:26:58] And again, like I said earlier, this is certainly a gap that we're seeing with organizations,

[00:27:03] especially those making the leap from SMB, like small business to some, you know, more mid market

[00:27:09] at scale looking for how do I, you know, I need to take this up a notch. Right.

[00:27:16] Yeah, exactly. And it may seem small. It kind of depends on where your journey and history and

[00:27:24] where you fall into HR, but it can sometimes seem surprising that something as quote unquote,

[00:27:31] simple as a headcount should need its own solution. But it really is the case that it is sort of

[00:27:41] fundamental to, again, having a sort of single source of truth, a centralized data repository that you make

[00:27:52] all other decisions on. Right. Because what could be more, you know, important to than knowing how many

[00:27:58] employees your company has, right? The headcount. And if you're new to this, if this seems strange,

[00:28:03] I'll give you some examples. I, I, and it's interesting because I met with a company called

[00:28:08] Ingentis, which does organizational management. You can think of it as org charts, but it's way more

[00:28:15] than that, right? Because it's really trying to figure out what, how is your company structured?

[00:28:21] And it, it comes back to a conversation I remember having. This was around the time of the

[00:28:27] economic collapse of around 2008, 2010. And I'm pretty sure this should be clear by now because

[00:28:34] it's over 10 years. So, but AIG, the big insurance group was one of the ones that was receiving

[00:28:40] federal bailout money that was meant to kept, keep these very large companies afloat was one of the

[00:28:46] things that happened at least in the United States. And as part of that, you know, they needed the

[00:28:52] government that was going to give them these huge loans needed to know how many employees they had.

[00:28:58] And as we're speaking to the CHRO, she was like, they were mystified that we didn't know. And we're

[00:29:04] like, well, how do you define an employee? That's the big question. Right. And that's what a lot of it

[00:29:09] comes down to. It's not going to be as simple as counting all of your paychecks because, you know,

[00:29:14] different kinds of people, you can be outsourcing to another company for certain tasks, right? And

[00:29:19] especially at large companies, that's going to be very common. You're going to have full-time and

[00:29:23] part-time employees. Which of those go into your headcount? Is there a certain hour threshold that

[00:29:28] they have to reach? What about people who are leaving in two weeks? Are they currently in your

[00:29:33] headcount right now? Right. They're, they've already put in the resignation or there's some other reason,

[00:29:38] you know, you might have, you know, sort of franchise agreements or spinoff groups. It can go on and on,

[00:29:44] you know, as, as you start to look into it, you realize just how complex this is and why it needs

[00:29:50] its own software and its own sort of solution to do. And then, and then like figure out how everything

[00:29:57] fits in. And then again, with the end goal, really, if not just being able to say, okay, we,

[00:30:01] we've got 22,112 employees, right? Instead say, okay, here's the employees have, these are all broken

[00:30:09] out and we now can do some planning, right? As you said, we're going to talk about workforce planning.

[00:30:15] All of that is so that you can sort of scenario plan. Obviously you want to know your present,

[00:30:21] but also you want to build a plan for the future. If you were to expand into certain areas,

[00:30:26] or if you were to change the line of business, what would that look like? And you won't know

[00:30:30] until you know where you're at right now. So I, I find it fascinating only because having been in

[00:30:36] that world, you're going, yes, this is really important. And I would imagine anyone outside

[00:30:40] going, you got to be kidding me software just to count your employees, but it's, it's much more

[00:30:45] complex. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's, it's weird, right? It's an age old problem.

[00:30:50] I remember when I first got into HR and, you know, was doing, I was on the consulting side

[00:30:57] and working with a client on comp planning technology and them not being able to tell

[00:31:03] me how many employees they had. And I was like, how can you, how can you not know how many employees

[00:31:07] you have? Like, how is this possible? And then you get into it and you realize how difficult,

[00:31:12] you know, this is. I mean, it's, it's not a simple thing. And so when companies roll something

[00:31:17] like that out, some people might, you know, kind of, if you're not in HR, you're thinking,

[00:31:23] why is that a thing? If you, if you aren't in HR, you know why this is a thing.

[00:31:28] And it's a difficult thing, you know, and not to mention the, is this getting them into position

[00:31:33] management? So are they also looking at unfilled head count as well as part of this solution? I

[00:31:39] haven't, I haven't seen the details of it yet. So I don't know if you've seen any more on that front.

[00:31:45] Yeah, that, no, that's exactly it. Right. So it's looking at, you know, what is sort of the

[00:31:51] organizational picture filled, unfilled, you know, what you have internally, you know, you can

[00:31:56] obviously integrate it to a talent acquisition and figure out what needs to come externally.

[00:32:03] And so it really is about sort of the needs, needs management, but also sort of setting up

[00:32:09] any sort of processes and process improvements need to happen within the organization, right? Because

[00:32:15] you see bottlenecks where there's only a few people disposition and, you know, improve sort of

[00:32:20] throughout. So I, although the sort of the big thing there is the head count, really, it is

[00:32:27] setting up a baseline for some of the workforce management capabilities.

[00:32:33] Right. Yeah. And if you're in payroll, you, you understand this problem.

[00:32:37] And you can see why paylossity.

[00:32:40] Yeah. Yeah. It is, it is something that I think, and so, you know, more detailed workforce management

[00:32:47] and some of the stuff we talked about earlier will, will probably be a next step there.

[00:32:52] Yeah. Well, you promised AI.

[00:32:54] Interesting stuff. I did. I promised AI. We will not disappoint on that front. So,

[00:33:00] and of course, Workday.

[00:33:03] Workday.

[00:33:05] Introducing Workday Illuminate, the next generation of Workday AI. So a little bit different unveiling,

[00:33:12] which always comes with big fanfare, maybe not Apple fanfare, but HR fanfare at, you know,

[00:33:20] Workday Rising. You know, they always create a statement and people remember it. They introduced

[00:33:25] Illuminate.

[00:33:27] Yeah.

[00:33:28] Workday Rising this year. So

[00:33:29] AI, AI, AI.

[00:33:32] That's right. And there's, there's AI within the AI, right? Because Workday Illuminate is sort of the

[00:33:39] umbrella blanket AI, sort of more terminology because within it, there are new AI agents,

[00:33:48] recruiter expenses, succession and optimize that will all be in there. And, you know,

[00:33:55] most of those, I think kind of, you know, sort of have, they are what they say, right? It's pretty

[00:34:02] obvious to tell what they, what they do. And it does use a sort of agentic model, right? It's using

[00:34:08] these agents, which we've talked about before, which are really lots and lots of bits of AI software that

[00:34:15] are going across all of your different bits of data and working to both collect and, you know, say whether

[00:34:25] it's good or not, sort of assess it and then use it on to the next part, all happening behind the scenes.

[00:34:30] So that it's not just, you know, you think of just one AI doing something. It's really the AI agents are

[00:34:36] doing a lot of the testing and things that are going on. So, you know, you can do things like

[00:34:41] creating and submitting expense reports. So, you know, as we're traveling, I think any of us that

[00:34:47] dealt with that, I'm just going to use expenses because it's top of mind from here right now

[00:34:51] as one of theirs. But I think any of us have dealt with this where it's like, okay, you, you've paid for

[00:34:55] something and you kind of like, okay, now what do I have to take a picture of their seat and then

[00:34:59] maybe fill in some information, but it should be as simple as it's uploaded. It can figure out from

[00:35:04] the date and location what's going on and it just files it off. Right. And that's, that is the promise

[00:35:09] of that. And then you can as well through for anything like succession management or any of the

[00:35:16] business processes that would be through Optimize. Yeah. And I love their marketing. Like we're going to

[00:35:23] orchestrate business processes. And one of the phrases was they're going to accounting of all

[00:35:29] business transactions is touchless and accounts are self-reconciling. That's spooky, but great

[00:35:36] marketing. Right. And I mean, I think that's exactly what they're, they're trying to do is make

[00:35:40] this as touchless as possible, at least for those things that, you know, don't require or shouldn't

[00:35:46] require constant, you know, human intervention to make them go. That's right. We're

[00:35:52] starting to finally see some realization of these promises that we heard from AI, not in terms of

[00:35:58] their capabilities, but in terms of the results. You know, when we do our research, you know, any of

[00:36:04] the work we do, we always try and tie it back to business results. And when we heard about AI,

[00:36:09] we heard about all these cool things you could do, but it wasn't, we said, you know, ultimately it's

[00:36:13] supposed to cut down on these repetitive tasks that are prone to mistakes because of human fatigue

[00:36:20] or just repetitiveness. And, but instead they're writing job descriptions, which could have, you know,

[00:36:28] that do have mistakes in them or, or does have some issues, but instead these sort of things where

[00:36:33] it's just, okay, this is just a sort of more or less a mundane task that's susceptible to human error

[00:36:39] and doesn't have, and isn't of interest to most people. These are the things I think where AI and AI

[00:36:46] agents really can shine, right. With it's anyone that's heard this and heard me talk about is I

[00:36:51] always try and focus on the risk reward balance there. And it it's somewhat reward, but very low

[00:36:57] risk. And I think that's the place to be at, right. Yeah. Doesn't need to be like saving you,

[00:37:04] you know, 20 hours a week, just save me one hour a week. And already, you know, you might've paid for

[00:37:10] yourself. Yeah. You, you hit on one that everybody loves to hate, which is expenses. Right. And even

[00:37:17] things like, you know, timekeeping. I mean, how many, how much time do people spend a day accounting

[00:37:23] for their time? Especially if you're in an organization where you, you know, have to put in

[00:37:28] a client code and you're doing billable work and, you know, you really have to be very specific about

[00:37:36] what you're spending your time on versus, you know, just sort of traditional. I need to,

[00:37:41] I need to, you know, check in, right. My timesheet, I'm here. It's 830. I'm here.

[00:37:48] There's a lot of things that we as employees have to do that could be much more automated.

[00:37:55] Yeah. And they provide, they remove things that don't provide direct value to the business,

[00:38:00] right? Right. Right. But that means, you know, it's how we get, if I don't, if I don't put my time in,

[00:38:05] I don't get paid and, or the company might not get paid if it's, you know, it's billable time,

[00:38:11] but it's, it's not value at a time to sit there and try to figure that out. Right. And,

[00:38:17] you know, having done that most of my business life in consulting, it's, it's, it's not fun.

[00:38:27] No, absolutely not. Having worked in directly client facing companies for most of my life,

[00:38:33] I know how it goes, but, and yeah, and that's a, that's a little scary, but I promised Terry,

[00:38:39] when I was bringing her on that, we're going to have some, have some Halloween fun. And I was trying

[00:38:43] to think of both of us, you know, having worked in HR, I was like this probably the scariest thing

[00:38:48] around this time of year, at least for me as head of HR was anything involving parties, which

[00:38:56] especially Halloween parties. I probably just caused someone to swerve off the road. That's

[00:39:00] listening to this. And I apologize. Truly the most frightening thing for any HR person

[00:39:04] is involving, yeah, costumes or especially alcohol. Imagine both in the workplace is like,

[00:39:12] oh man, of all the holidays, as much as I love it as a person, as an HR person, it's maybe the

[00:39:17] frighteningest time. So thought maybe if you, if you had a good story, some HR nightmares

[00:39:23] or stuff that would give people HR nightmares.

[00:39:25] Do you know, I, I've been reading a lot about some HR nightmares that are far greater than

[00:39:31] any that I ever experienced in, in my lifetime. Some of them just very bizarre. I follow the

[00:39:38] evil HR lady.

[00:39:39] Oh yes.

[00:39:40] The stories there are just unreal. Right. And, but you know, you're right. I mean, Halloween

[00:39:47] costume parties, any kind of parties where people are drinking. I'm reminded of, you know,

[00:39:53] my, my first sort of professional job and they put me in this office. I was in an office with like

[00:40:00] three other people. So it wasn't like I had one big office, but apparently it used to be this,

[00:40:05] the CEO or the president's office. And it had a bar in it, like literally in our office that had a bar.

[00:40:14] And, you know, I was just like, okay, this, this, this can't be good. Right. As much as,

[00:40:21] you know, we, we like to, to have a good time. I was like, are people day drinking?

[00:40:27] Work?

[00:40:28] Yeah. And I, I was tempted to say, oh, that, you know, that's sort of an old practice,

[00:40:32] but we're still seeing organizations get in trouble for this to this day.

[00:40:36] I think they do. But I mean, look, you know, Hollywood taught us that, that, you know,

[00:40:41] when you went in to do a business deal, somebody poured you a bourbon or a martini or,

[00:40:46] you know, something. Right. So I'm still that, I'm sure that still is happening, but not on the

[00:40:53] ground. I was doing like support services. Right. It wasn't exactly a help desk, but it was kind of,

[00:40:59] you know, like helping people with, you know, implementation and services and stuff like that.

[00:41:05] So we, we weren't the, we weren't the CEO or the, the executives in this office.

[00:41:12] Right. What about you? You have a scary home?

[00:41:15] Oh yes. Lots. I'm trying to think. I, I know that during the Halloween period, yeah. Any,

[00:41:21] anytime there was just any sort of office party involving alcohol, I pretty much just went ahead

[00:41:27] and prepared a, you know, the form someone needed for when they got released from the company.

[00:41:32] I just didn't know whose name was going to be on there, but Halloween was always a special one.

[00:41:38] I was looking through some photos and it seemed like I would always tell people, look, if you're

[00:41:44] unsure about what you're going to wear, just go ahead and ask me. I can tell you. And yet still

[00:41:49] people would show up thinking that there wouldn't be an issue with maybe they picked a character that

[00:41:55] has like, you know, it might've worked in a comedy, but they might've been doing something,

[00:41:58] you know, that is either sexist or, or making fun of some ethnicity. And they're going, no,

[00:42:05] no, it's funny. It's from this movie. And it's like, yeah, no, you can't do that. And of course,

[00:42:10] the overly revealing costumes that I think everyone is well familiar with at this point that you'd think,

[00:42:15] okay, this isn't like your excuse to go into work wearing this. There was, you know,

[00:42:23] one of Madonna's 80s or 90s getups.

[00:42:28] Yeah, absolutely. I had, I had, and I, this was by the way, for both, you know, you know,

[00:42:35] for anyone, you know, any sort of gender, but I had a gentleman come in and it was around the time

[00:42:40] of the, I think the movie is called semi-pro and I had Will Ferrell and he played an old-timey

[00:42:45] basketball player, seventies. And this gentleman thought it would be fun to wear the sort of old

[00:42:49] basketball shorts that leave very little to the imagination, let's say. And he had them even

[00:42:54] smaller than they were in the film. And yeah, and that was my CEO. So, so yeah. I'm now having

[00:43:04] these visions of people coming in as Magic Mike, right? Oh yeah. Yeah. Who knows? So I never

[00:43:11] personally witnessed that. So I have to say I've, maybe I've been lucky, but yeah, I, I can only imagine

[00:43:19] some of the things that, that people have been sent home for. Yeah. Well, any of you listening

[00:43:25] or watching, feel free to write us or just put it in the comments, any stories you've got. I'd love

[00:43:30] to see the conversation around this, this sort of stuff is, it's much funnier to me now that I'm not

[00:43:36] directly in HR anymore. So. You don't have to be the one doing something about it, right? Right.

[00:43:41] Exactly. So I'd love to hear more of that, whether you see this, you know, on LinkedIn or you can write

[00:43:48] always. Yeah. Happy Halloween, everybody. Yes. Happy Halloween. As I said, you know,

[00:43:54] Stacy will be back for the next recording. That's one thing you don't need to be scared about just a,

[00:43:59] sort of a routine thing, but I know she'd still, again, love to hear from any of you love to know

[00:44:05] that you're thinking of her. Well, wish is always, you know, appreciated and you can send them into

[00:44:10] the show and you know, that'll be that. So thank you so much, Terry, for joining us. Is there

[00:44:15] anything else that you wanted to go over before you leave? I know we're going to talk.

[00:44:21] This is great. I appreciate the opportunity and I hope I, hope I did Stacy proud.

[00:44:27] I hope so too. You did, you did me proud and hopefully our listeners loved it. I know we're

[00:44:32] going to mention, and we've mentioned the show before, right? HR, we have a problem. You've had

[00:44:37] just always, every guest you have is, is the best guest ever, but what do you have upcoming that you

[00:44:42] know of? Which guests should people be listening out for? Oh my gosh. So I've kind of got quite a

[00:44:48] few in the can. One of them that just came out today, which was now a week ago when you're hearing

[00:44:53] this was Ashley Goodall, who wrote a book on change, which really eyeopening. If you haven't

[00:45:00] listened to that one, go back and listen to that one. I think it really will change the way you think

[00:45:06] about change in the organization and the things that you need to do to, to make things better and to

[00:45:12] really manage your teams. So that's a good one. And a couple of the others that are coming out,

[00:45:19] I've got some stuff coming out on workforce management, AI. I'm setting up my first quarter

[00:45:25] at this point. So if you guys have suggestions or ideas for what you want to hear about, there's some

[00:45:30] things coming out in the first quarter that'll be pretty exciting. That's wonderful. Another exciting

[00:45:37] thing for everyone to be aware of. We've talked about it a few times, but the full annual HR system

[00:45:42] survey report is going to be available by the time you're hearing this. It is now available in our

[00:45:50] research marketplace. It's a great gift for anyone, you know, as we're getting into that sort of season

[00:45:56] that's looking to assess or purchase new HR technology, whether they're building an HR system

[00:46:01] strategy or just looking to understand the competitive HR technology landscape. There are

[00:46:06] over 200 HR vendors in this year's report. We heard from over 5,000 different practitioners.

[00:46:13] There are over 3,000 unique organizations represented. And as I said, it is about 250 pages.

[00:46:22] So it's a powerhouse. It's a powerhouse of information. And as you're reading it, think about

[00:46:29] the other questions you could ask of that data because there's, it's 248 pages or whatever

[00:46:36] it is, but my God, it just literally scratches the surface on what we know about and what we can

[00:46:43] talk about with respect to what's happening in this HR technology space.

[00:46:47] Yeah. I would say that if we tried to write about every single question we ask, and this isn't even

[00:46:53] counting all the comments, the comments alone would put it over a thousand pages, but I think it would

[00:46:57] be a thousand pages. No joke. Yeah. So imagine that, that you're seeing less than a quarter.

[00:47:02] You know, we're really just trying to find the things that would stand out the most, but it could

[00:47:07] mean different things to different people. You might have a different size or industry that you'd like

[00:47:11] to take a look at. We can do that. Another thing you can do is go to our website, sign up for our

[00:47:15] newsletter. That's where we do ongoing updates on research launches. We mentioned some of the places

[00:47:20] we're going to be speaking or visiting, but all of those are within that newsletter.

[00:47:24] It also keeps you updated on that survey. So you can be a part of that, be counted for those of you

[00:47:29] that already did. Thank you very much. But the 2025 iteration of this, I know it's weird to be

[00:47:35] thinking about it just so we're releasing it, but that will be open May 1st for all of you survey

[00:47:40] takers. And of course, make sure to listen, as we said to our sister HR huddle podcast, HR,

[00:47:46] we have a problem hosted by this wonderful person right here, Terry zipper. And you want to help support

[00:47:53] this podcast, please subscribe, leave a rating and review wherever it is that you grab your podcast.

[00:47:59] Same as if you listen to it on YouTube, watch us there. And if you want to stay up to date with

[00:48:05] immediate breaking HR tech news and get all the behind the scenes content, you can follow us

[00:48:09] at Sapien Insights Group on LinkedIn, X slash Twitter on Instagram. We're always at Sapien Insights.

[00:48:17] So thank you. Thank you so much, Terry. And thank you to our production team, which includes brand

[00:48:23] method media group helps us produce our podcast run by their amazing founder, Kelly Kelly, our marketing

[00:48:29] team, especially to find work done by summer Oriano. Hi, summer. The people over at kick motor,

[00:48:34] including Mark Moschetto. Hi, Mark. And thank you most of all to our listeners in the community.

[00:48:40] We couldn't do this without you. Thank you so much. And that's it. This episode is splitting the T on HR tech.

[00:48:46] Hope it's been just the spooky brew you needed to start the engines running this week. And we'll be

[00:48:53] back in two weeks with another pot of boiling hot HR tech updates and insights. Bye everyone.