Spilling the Tea on HR Tech - Spilling the Tea on major industry acquisitions and the implications of NDA and non-competes in HR tech.

[00:00:00] Spilling the Tea on HR Tech, Spilling the Tea on Spill the Tea on NDA and non-competes in HR wrote as some other, especially software environments, you know, Apple and Microsoft and Google are not friends in any sense. Welcome to the HR huddle podcast presented by Sapient Insights Group,

[00:00:46] 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 needs to know to be in the know.

[00:01:06] We break down the news of the week and help you make sense of what it means for our industry and how it can impact your organization. We're recording today on June 19th, 2024. So hopefully all the news will be just about a week old by the time you guys

[00:01:21] get to listen to this. And we're bringing you all the news that you can use this week, hopefully. I'm your host, Stacey Harris, chief research officer and managing partner for Sapient Insights Group. And joining me today is Cliff Stevenson,

[00:01:32] my cohost and director of research here at Sapient Insights Group. Cliff, welcome to the show today. Hey, happy to be here. Happy Juneteenth everybody. I know when you hear this, it won't be Juneteenth but some of you might've got the day off. So that's wonderful. Yeah.

[00:01:44] We have several people who have it often. It was a good celebration in certain states and organizations. And so I know a couple of our vendors have given this day off and I know we're moving towards that in a lot of organizations.

[00:01:56] But by the time everybody listens to this, we'll be heading into the July 4th holiday as well. So it's here in the United States, overseas, everybody else is getting ready for their big break holiday. Right?

[00:02:06] I do want to start bringing in at least a little bit in the HR community here in the U S the idea that we need to have summer breaks. Right? I love how the Europeans think about holidays.

[00:02:18] And so my big thing is let's hope we can get more holidays here for all of us. That's right. But it's a busy kind of week, Cliff, right? We've got a lot of stuff going on. How many are we going to try and keep it within 30 minutes today?

[00:02:30] I know that's always our goal, right? But is there a lot of tea to drink? We'll try. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's interesting. I think we were talking in the green room beforehand that, you know, we have some news items as we normally do.

[00:02:41] And lately you've been finding these really wonderful stories that are more thought provoking and deal with broader topics. And there's some great ones here and some that are even sort of maybe not rebuttals, but, you know, add-ons to other people's posts.

[00:02:55] And it truly is a conversation and we want to be part of that. We want to bring all of you listening into this as well. And viewing now. Yeah, we also have a lot of promotional things going on this week.

[00:03:05] So although it is summer and we're all sort of trying to get a little bit of time off with families, we have a lot of stuff going on still. So if you are kind of looking for some updated education going on in

[00:03:16] July is going to be a busy month. Not only are by the time you're listening to this, it should be the last day, maybe day and a half for the annual HR system survey to be open. So if you haven't had a chance to do it,

[00:03:29] Tammy who is our survey coordinator and senior research analyst on this may give you a few more days. So if you haven't already clicked the link, click the link. You'll only have a day or two after this goes live this week to finalize your annual HR system survey,

[00:03:45] get access to the 27th annual HR system survey research, which will be probably another 200 plus pages. Right? Cliff, we're already thinking we're going to be adding a lot of artificial intelligence on each category. We're going to be adding some data around the benefits vendors that's

[00:04:00] going to be expanded this year. So it's going to be a big report this year, isn't it? It's going to, it's going to be longer, but just like when you're taking the survey, you don't have to do the whole thing.

[00:04:11] Find the areas that are of interest to you. But if you want to read the whole thing and I've, and I've met those people and that's wonderful. Bless you for that. But you know, we really do a lot of work in not just when we're writing it,

[00:04:26] but during the editing phase and during when other people are going through it to make sure that it makes sense and works for those sort of specialized areas of interest and expertise while at the same time, keeping some flow throughout.

[00:04:41] So I'm very proud of the team that we have on this and making sure that it stays relevant. Yeah, I will have to say, I do love those people. So if you are one of them,

[00:04:49] feel free to always come up to me who bring me their printed out version with tabs on every page and notes and highlighting. I used to get this all the time at events. It's gotten a little bit bigger.

[00:04:59] I don't know if I get it quite as much now, but it always just warms my heart a little bit because people are like, Hey, well this data here, what is this from? So I'm a sucker for that kind of highlighting and tabbing. But besides that this week,

[00:05:10] we also have a lot of other things going on July. If you're looking for some new update and information on benefits and engaging and empowering employees with data and insights in kind of that benefit space, we're doing a webinar with PlanSource. That will be on July 16th.

[00:05:25] So if you haven't registered for that, be sure to register for that. We'll have the link in the notes here today. We also are in our midway in our six month immersive education series on building an adaptive light share system strategy that works.

[00:05:36] So we are going to be putting out a little blog and a little commentary sometime in July on all of our cohorts participants. It's really been a fascinating and great opportunity to really dive into building an HR system strategy in a different way,

[00:05:50] somewhere between a consulting project and an education program where people get a chance to sort of do the work while we're doing the education around it. So I'm excited to bring you some results from that going on this July. Also, if you're going to be in the Raleigh-Durham,

[00:06:03] North Carolina area and you're an HR senior leader, we are doing an invite only. So please be able to reach out to me if you're interested in this round table on leadership. And it will be at the Pendo's global headquarters on Wednesday, July 24th at 8 30 a.m.

[00:06:18] So if you're interested in doing a round table with some of the most senior leaders in the HR market, we're going to be doing that there. It will be coinciding with our research team meeting cliff that will also be that same week.

[00:06:29] We'll be taking the data and starting to do our analysis work. So just to have anybody will have some sneak peeks, maybe at the round table of some of the things that we're seeing, particularly around change and leadership and how that's happening in the HR

[00:06:40] space. And then finally, just a reminder that if you don't get a chance to fill out the annual HR system survey, which we think you should really work hard to try and do, but if you don't,

[00:06:48] you will be able to get to find all of the findings at the annual HR at the technology conference. Thank you, Cliff. My mind was starting to freeze on that. I kept saying the survey itself at the annual HR technology conference and

[00:07:00] expo in Las Vegas in September this year. Not only will we be having on Tuesday morning, a great panel with Terry Zipper and Daniel Bichon on women in HR tech, but then due to all of your great comments from last year session being

[00:07:17] on the annual HR system survey sort of voice, the customer session that we run each year at the annual HR technology conference. We've got a lot of feedback that Friday was too late. You didn't get a chance to use the data while you were in the event.

[00:07:28] So we are now have the keynote mega session on Wednesday, I think, which is the starting day for HR tech conference. And I think it's the like a one o'clock session. So please mark your calendar, make sure you're there.

[00:07:39] That's where you get all the updated information and the first findings from the session. So lots going on, Cliff, even though, you know, it's middle summer, right? Yeah, yeah, exactly. So, and a lot going on in the news too.

[00:07:51] And in fact, you mentioned some events for those of you that join us in the last episode, you'll remember that I had just been at the cornerstone event that they had. I had been there sort of on the first few days,

[00:08:05] I did sort of an analyst specific track, but Stacey, you got to be there for the big event and with the customers and spend a lot more time with that. I, anything you want to add to what we talked about last week?

[00:08:19] Yeah, it was like, I mean, it was, so they, cornerstone this year and so doing their big convergence, which they do sort of have done for many, many years. One of the first analyst events I had ever gone to was a big convergence

[00:08:28] event. They decided to sort of regional convergence events. And so they had done a round the world global event. I did got to go to the Chicago, which was the first one they had done. And now this one in Orlando,

[00:08:38] I think they only had like two or three more left, but they were doing them in London and Australia and you know, everywhere around the world. And it was nice because you did get a little different flavor from each

[00:08:47] one. I will say that Hamachi who is the CEO there, I think, you know, his presentation for this one here, you could tell that they've been really working hard to understand the story of what's happening in the HR technology space and their role in it.

[00:09:03] And they've very much clarified that story. And so the keynote that he did walk through not only sort of how important it is for them to help HR professionals and learning professionals sort of ground their world, have a place where they can keep their data solid and straight,

[00:09:21] but also to be a connector of information for the organizations. And so you heard a lot about connecting data, integrating data, bringing data into the environment. Definitely the Skyhive acquisition, which had just been announced before the previous session was more embedded in the conversation.

[00:09:38] And so probably the most interesting takeaway I had from that was different from what I had seen in the event in Chicago was they had started to show how they were going to leverage the Skyhive data with the cornerstone data and create these wonderful management sort of dashboards

[00:09:53] on skills. And I've always been a big proponent of, you need to start taking this data and getting it in front of people before it has any impact. And so these were dashboards that they could show and sort of executives on

[00:10:05] what was changing, how the skills were morphing, how they were moving, how many jobs had been filled before them, how many mobility opportunities they had. And I thought this was a really good way of showing the value of the investment in the skills management work,

[00:10:16] which I know is really hard right now and really has a lot of questions in the market. So I thought it was, you know, not only did we hear a more clarified message from Manchu, I think Harthik who is their product strategy officer really

[00:10:29] did a really good job sort of explaining how he's going to connect the HR conversation to the learning conversation and make it much more of a workforce agility conversation. Are you, are you workforce ready? Are you workforce capable?

[00:10:44] And I think that's going to be a real conversation for them. I'm excited to see where that goes, because I do think we're going to start to get out of the HR and non-HR conversation. We are going to get more into the conversation about the workforce and are

[00:10:56] they ready to do the things that we need them to do? That's where AI is going to take us. It's where the market's going to take us. And I think that, you know, they're really catching on to a conversation that will put them at the

[00:11:06] center of this discussion. So I was excited and I thought it was, I got a chance to meet several of our customers who were there as well as have breakfast and dinner with some really good friends. So it was, it was a nice little break out in Orlando.

[00:11:17] And I did get to see a beautiful view of the Walt Disney World as you're coming in with the fireworks site. By the time I got in on a Monday night when you were leaving Cliff,

[00:11:26] I got a view of the fireworks that was coming in. So you can't beat that. Yeah, that is wonderful. And hopefully you didn't get caught in too much of those torrential rain pours that we're coming into. So speaking of now,

[00:11:38] and I, we're kind of going to circle back to that because some of this ideas of, you know, putting this data in front of managers will actually be relevant to something coming up. But I think one of the biggest pure news items

[00:11:51] was probably the SAP entering, you know, at this point they're still saying entering into an agreement to acquire WalkMe, but you know, that's, you know, that's well underway. So WalkMe, I mean both of these organizations we've known for some

[00:12:06] time and literally just talked to WalkMe what a month ago? And so, yeah, that is just really, just really interesting stuff I think. And you know, I was, I was, I guess a little surprised by this one, I think, because

[00:12:23] SAP to me, when they've gone into this in the past, it seems that they've gone after, I would call them sort of broader reach companies, but it really does show that their interest in what WalkMe was doing. They saw something, this needs to be part of our portfolio.

[00:12:41] Yeah. And this was a fairly expensive acquisition for them as the numbers go, from my understanding. WalkMe is an organization that has grown pretty rapidly over the last several years and not so much in the HR learning space as in the operations space

[00:12:54] and in sort of project management and rollouts for systems, right? So if for those who don't know it, it is an adoption platform or an on-demand learning platform, depending on what you want to call it.

[00:13:04] But basically it is one of those solutions that you kind of put on top of your applications and it will sort of sidebar out step by step how to use that, some notes about processes, anything you might want to put into it.

[00:13:17] The most interesting thing about WalkMe is that over the years they've moved from just being sort of a sidebar kind of support tool to actually something that can actually do the process for you.

[00:13:26] So it goes a little bit into what used to be Firefly back in the day, if anybody sort of remembered that word, actually moved your mouse and have the commentary about that. And so it really has taken some of the best of that world of online adoption

[00:13:38] based sort of learning on-demand learning and combine that. But what was more interesting, I think about WalkMe that most people don't realize, and I followed them for quite some time because they were slightly in the

[00:13:49] learning space when I first met over Block who was at that point in time, want to say he was analyst relations, but it could have been something like head of communications. I don't know early on in the space.

[00:13:59] And we have this conversation about what it could do for learning and what it could do for the market. And I said, the really exciting thing about these products that most of you don't realize is how much they can help adoption.

[00:14:08] Now whether I helped them come up with that or they decide to move in that direction before that, I do not know. But I will say that that adoption conversation that we had probably 2014, 2015 somewhere in there, it was early on when they first came out.

[00:14:20] And what I always knew is these solutions were sort of the precursor to what I expect artificial intelligence to be in the future. We're starting to show you starting to connect the dots for people, starting to give context in a way that we hadn't seen previously.

[00:14:35] And so much data can be pulled, not just from how which clicks people make about which sites, but what they don't make clicks on or where they don't interact when they should be interacting in those systems. It's all systems based.

[00:14:49] It's all about what's happening inside of a system with so much work is happening. What I think is really exciting now about what we're seeing with Walkme is that this was an acquisition for SAP that had nothing really to do with the HR side.

[00:15:00] It's much more to their customer experience, their CRX and CXMs, the focus on that customer component of the overall solution. So I'm interested in seeing if they're going to realize the value of that data behind the Walkme tool,

[00:15:13] all the things that happen that an employee is doing that it's tracking in a positive way to give us some sense of what systems are not only easy to use, but do we have our processes right? Do we have the context right?

[00:15:25] Do we have the information they need to make the decision there? I think this is a wealth of data for any artificial intelligence that you're going to be putting into a system.

[00:15:34] So this was not a surprise for me in the sense of this kind of a system is a good acquisition. It's not a game changer. I think it's a really nice, what we call tuck-in, right?

[00:15:44] And we'll make a big difference. So I was excited to see this happen. I think this is a good move for SAP. Wonderful. Well, then let's hear your thoughts on another big acquisition that happened in this period, which was Clear Company, which acquired Brainiar.

[00:15:58] Clear Company has a kind of wealth of products across town management, but Brainiar has always been specialized in the learning management space. But this really does that part of connecting, you know, any part of talent development to learning, right?

[00:16:11] It almost brings it back to that skills conversation you talked about earlier, which is companies starting to think more about their inventory of skills and can they meet the needs of a changing world with the skills that they have within their organization?

[00:16:25] Yeah, this one I was trying to look up, but I'm not going to be able to find it quick enough. But I believe Clear Company is owned by, I'm going to say private equity, but I'm not sure if that's the case

[00:16:34] right now. But their company has been on this move to sort of gather and acquire sort of different HR technology. And I was actually quite, Brainiar is one of those that shows up in our learning technology space quite often. It gets fairly good ratings, right?

[00:16:49] I think people really enjoy it as a learning solution. It's got an easy to use interface. I think it's got some competition in the market with some of the other stuff going on with Microsoft and others right now, right?

[00:16:59] So I think this was a good probably acquisition in the sense of bringing two companies together who probably needed that to sort of bolster where they were at in the market. I'm excited to see what happens.

[00:17:08] I think we're going to see a lot more pickups of these sort of learning. We saw Mineral get picked up not too long ago, right? These solutions that add value for organizations who already have sort of solutions that are must haves in the organization.

[00:17:23] But these little solutions, and I say them in the nicest way, meaning that these solutions that make those technologies more valuable have more engagement to the audience. Just makes them that much more likely to be sticky and to stay with that solution. Right. Absolutely. And you're right.

[00:17:39] It's venture capital. I think it's Gem Spring Capital that owns Clear Company. For those of you that are listening, it'll seem like I came off top my head. Those of you that are viewing will see that I type that so some of the magic got removed.

[00:17:53] But yeah, I I again like to see anything that is really getting at the heart of solving problems. Right. You know, of OK, we need to really figure out a way to get past.

[00:18:07] All right. We we know where our town is and we kind of see where things are at. But then what do we do about it? It kind of is in the Congress last time. And I think that that follows that along.

[00:18:17] And I think Vizier, who we talked about on our last episode, I think a lot of these stories that we're going to talk about right here are directly into that. One was a research report that, yes, Vizier did.

[00:18:30] But if you know them, they're an analytics company so that they know the stuff behind this. And they found that there was a lot of requests from people managers using AI. And there's a quote in here that, you know,

[00:18:45] AI has a lot of capabilities of democratizing access to data. I mean, before Danil is had to be sort of really know their stuff and then they would kind of say, OK, here's what's coming out. Here's the data that you have access to.

[00:18:59] But now it's like, OK, I just put in a just normal natural language query and can get the information I need to make decisions in the moment. And I, you know, there was some of the stats in there was that

[00:19:11] 36 percent believe they could use that sort of time savings to team planning or coaching. So, you know, they're really thinking about like, OK, if I don't have to deal with these sort of things, what can I do? You know, really getting back to that people access.

[00:19:25] And then another one was a partnership, some work that they're doing, in fact, is specifically an embedded analytics partnership with Access Group, who is mostly Europe, in fact, mostly UK, in my experience. And they do more, I would call it just workforce software,

[00:19:43] although it does run the gamut. And having watched them really try to meld the idea of productivity, you know, in the space work that you're doing with HR type software. This seems a natural extension of that philosophy.

[00:19:57] So those two sort of stories, I think, kind of go together that have been recent news from Vizier. And I think it ties back to exactly what you're saying is, you know, getting people the information they need to make better decisions in the flow of work.

[00:20:12] Yeah, we're seeing more and more of Vizier being embedded in many of these either point solutions or these mid market or SMB solutions. We've seen some really good example from this in the SMB space. And it makes an impact on the access to this kind of stuff

[00:20:27] for organizations who normally may not have access to it, because generally Vizier was something that only the biggest companies in a market have when you look at 10,000 plus employees. So I'm a big proponent of embedded when it comes to this kind of work.

[00:20:42] And I do think part of the reason we're seeing sort of Vizier spend some time on this research. I'm not sure if Andrea did this, but she's one that she believes up their their research function over there. But I know she's meticulous in how she thinks about research

[00:20:55] and the work that she does. And what what I know is that it's interesting to see how much managers are banking on AI as as part of their sort of way of getting getting more time and space right in their work days.

[00:21:13] Because I know as myself as a manager and other people who are managers know that that you're always splitting your head between being working managers and doing management. And that's just I think across the board, we just don't see this idea

[00:21:23] that you have many people managers who don't also are working managers these days. And I'm not sure if that's going to be the case or not, or if I will be able to do that is definitely what they're banking on.

[00:21:33] I think, you know, that's one of the things that we have to address as people in HR is we have to address that knowledge, they need data, which means that we do have to have to give them access to analytics and dashboards.

[00:21:45] But we also have to make sure that the AI that they have access to is doing the things they need it to do, particularly when it comes to giving them more time back. And so I think those two things go hand in hand.

[00:21:54] It'll be interesting to see how organizations like Vizier and others take that technology and make it more valuable inside of organizations in a way that's safe and secure. And also where they educate the end users in a way to leverage that technology effectively.

[00:22:11] I just can't mention enough how much we think this is really incumbent on the vendors. They have got to be part of the education. They can't just roll it out. They have to educate how it can be utilized and the risks and the opportunities with it, too.

[00:22:24] So, yeah. And as buyers, I think that doesn't mean your responsibility is right off. You have to work with your vendors to make sure that education is happening, right? You know, to make sure that you know the things

[00:22:35] that your managers need to know, if that makes sense to you. One last kind of interesting news piece that came across, and this is a little broader, but it has to do with Ripley, who we've talked about on the show a few times.

[00:22:48] And we're going to be talking to having an in-depth briefing within the next couple weeks. By the next time you hear this, we'll have a little more information. But they had a story came out that made sort of some...

[00:23:01] Oh, I was about to say ripples and I realized I'm walking right into it. But I made some, you know, made some news, which is that they were banned, basically former employees who work at competitors. Specifically, they had a list of competitors

[00:23:16] that they wouldn't allow to take part in a somewhat private stock sale. And, you know, I'm somewhat out of my element with knowing about the different types of legalities of when stock can be tendered and who can receive it. But the overall gist here is that, you know,

[00:23:33] certain employees would be able to buy stock. But if you worked at Workday, Pellocity, Gusto, Deal, Remote, JustWorks, Hi Bob or Personio, then no, because they see that as their competitors, which is interesting because it's definitely sending a message. And in an environment, I found it interesting

[00:23:54] because if you've followed this space for long enough, you'll know that most of this is, you know, it's a fairly friendly environment. It's not as cutthroat as some other, especially software environments, you know, Apple and Microsoft and Google are not friends in any sense.

[00:24:12] But, you know, these other companies will engage in this co-op petition, right? Where they're working together. You even mentioned embedding Vizier, right? With groups that could sometimes be seen as, you know, competitive environments. You'll see people work like that all the time.

[00:24:27] So for Rippling to take a different track, I think is one of the reasons why this made news of saying, no, we're very against this. Yeah. And I think I think that the place for this is not good or bad.

[00:24:39] I think it's just a thing to be aware of. You know, one of the challenges when Conrad sort of ran Zenefits back in the day was that he similarly had this very sort of competitive component,

[00:24:51] which I think comes very much out of the sort of San Francisco Bay area and the high tech market, right? Which is, you know, we're not trying to be, you know, working together. We're competing. So they had a pretty big adversarial conversation at that point time with ADP

[00:25:07] back then, right? And about integration and data and stuff. And this is not anywhere near that doesn't have anything to do with how they're going to integrate with other software. This has much more to just do with their employees.

[00:25:17] It's kind of just more of a frustrating thing, probably for employees or past employees, because many employees will take a job with a really start up for fairly low pay with the idea of getting stock options and then they will sort of make their money

[00:25:28] back for stock options. The fact that these stock options are valuable this early on is actually a big deal. So that's a win for Rippling, right? But I do think that this just sets the tone a little bit for for where

[00:25:39] they're probably going to be at with their cooperation conversation, right? With with other vendors. And that's just something to be aware of. You know, I think it may or may not have an impact on you, especially for the SMBs.

[00:25:50] But if you have a lot of integrations or you have to connect data, it just makes it a little bit more awkward when you've got these kind of things going on in the market. That's one of the reasons why HR technology vendors

[00:26:00] have had to be a little more cooperative because those integrations, those working together things aren't just about whether or not I can open a document. It's it's about people data and it's about your employees. And nobody wants to make work harder for employees.

[00:26:13] So you try and figure out a way to work together. So that'll be an interesting thing to follow. But yeah, I mean, I think we're going to see more from Rippling. It's definitely getting a lot of attention in the market, but it's early days for them. Right.

[00:26:24] Yeah. And so I wonder and I don't mean to spring this on you because we didn't talk about it in the green room beforehand. But I wonder if this is somewhat of a reaction to the NDA ban, the non-disclosure agreement or the not just the NDA.

[00:26:39] It's not really an NDA ban, but the non-compete ban, I should say, specifically that happened in the US where, you know, before used to be able to say, no, you can't work at these other companies. So a way of sort of encouraging employees or, you know, sort of,

[00:26:53] you know, giving them incentive to stay or to not work for a competitor, you know, a sort of signal to existing employees. And I wonder if we're going to see other organizations try and find creative ways, let's say around that non-compete ban by saying, OK, well,

[00:27:10] then, you know, I still need a way to incentivize you to stay at our organization. So I'm curious. Or did not go at least to my competitors. Right. At least not to the competitors. Right. Yeah. I think, you know, yes, because so much is based off of IP

[00:27:23] ingenuity and that kind of stuff, not just your sort of what you get done. Yes, I think we may see some more of these sort of, you want to call it innovative ways to to sort of construct that or address

[00:27:35] that challenge. I think we are going to probably see a lot more conversation about ownership of IP and we're going to see a lot more conversation about what you can and can't try to take when you leave an organization,

[00:27:45] those kind of things that also go along with that. So that's going to be handled in a lot of different ways. This is definitely probably one way that people may think about it. Yeah. Well, speaking of having that conversation,

[00:27:54] this was a fascinating story that you had sent along. The title itself is Workforce Development, A Decade of Transformation. And it's, you know, a pretty sort of historical look back at workforce development. But but don't think it's just a history lesson.

[00:28:11] It's really talking about sort of the modern space that we're in right now. And now you have a personal connection here. And, you know, this is the part two where I'll mention earlier, you said you don't know if they took that idea from you.

[00:28:24] Well, since you have the microphone, I'll say yes. So that that is the case. Whoever speaks loudest. Whoever speaks loudest. Yeah. No, this written and we're going to put the link in the article by Sarah Tracy. She's vice president of workforce and education at TPMA.

[00:28:39] And she doesn't know that I'll be talking about her and she'll probably blush completely like what I haven't talked to you in ages. So Sarah way back or so this is many, many years ago. So please be very many, many years ago was one of the first interns

[00:28:51] I ever hired at Joanne stores. And I can remember her resume was amazing. It had all these things she had done. And I was like, this girl knows how to work and she put herself through school and she is a hard worker.

[00:29:00] And when she came to work for me, I just know she was the person who brought at that point in time, this company called CyberU to my attention because they were connecting learning and performance management.

[00:29:09] I had not I had thought about how we were going to be doing. I had not seen a technology that did that. She was in the industry doing her research because she was a fabulous research and she had found that company, which then became Cornerstone

[00:29:21] back in the day. So that shows you how many years ago this was that that Sarah was my intern. But what I have been fascinated with is watching her career and she's sort of gone bad.

[00:29:30] She entails her career in this sort of article that we're going to link here and going from sort of being a in education and getting her PhD and being an English. And what do you do with an English degree and all those kind of things

[00:29:45] to working for, I think, some of the most interesting organizations in the space when it comes to manufacturing. She had in general throughout her career has kind of connected the federal grants, the manufacturing space and the workers in those spaces who work for that environment

[00:30:07] together in some way and all the ways that she's always sort of the jobs that I've seen her take and really focus on trade industries. And to me, this is a space that's really important right now. We've got to be talking a lot more about it.

[00:30:18] It is the jobs that we're not going to see from a trade perspective. AI really take over because it's work that requires that human context and human ingenuity. Right. The manufacturing environments have been automated as much as they can be automated for the most part.

[00:30:33] The jobs that are left are those highly skilled jobs. And what I really love about her focus is that she's always thinking about the people and she walks through the talent shortage that we're seeing in the manufacturing space in the United States,

[00:30:48] as well as globally in her sort of walk through her career and what she's seeing and some of the new bills that are being proposed to try to address that. And some of the new federal funding that's being put in place to try and address this.

[00:30:59] First of all, follow Sarah Tracy. I think you will you will find that the stuff she's talking about is fascinating if you're in this space. Second of all, take an opportunity to read this and understand what's happening in our labor space.

[00:31:10] If you are always in a high tech or sitting in an office somewhere or sitting in a job that's that that's sort of focused on what's happening in front of you in a computer, you really need to understand

[00:31:20] how much of a labor gap we have in the market and how big how much wider it's getting in these kind of spaces and understand how that's going to impact the rest of our our economy. Anita Blanken just put out a big report as well,

[00:31:33] our article about the labor gap she's seeing in Europe. We're starting to get this point out that this is not skills gaps aren't just because we don't have people who have the right skills. It's because we don't have enough people to do the work.

[00:31:45] And so just my shout out to that. So sorry, Cliff, a little bit of a soapbox there. No, no, that that's wonderful. And as mentioned, the paper will be in the comments underneath the LinkedIn post. If you for the least of the watches on YouTube,

[00:31:58] because we're seeing a lot more uptake on that, if you find it valuable for me to do the same thing on the YouTube post, I can do it. In fact, I'll just go and do it for those of you. Don't bother reaching out.

[00:32:07] I'm going to go and do it. You should see it. We'll also put in I'll put in her LinkedIn post so you can follow her specifically. Now, the next story is pretty interesting. And we'll put in the exact paper

[00:32:19] because what I found was that it was kind of a discussion going on around the paper. And it was almost I wouldn't say two different takes, but kind of showing different areas of interest and sort of specializations. The paper itself was put out by Harvard

[00:32:35] and it was talking about organizations that have primarily worked from home populations. If they did occasional return to office events and you'll see the RTO used a lot. So that's what they're referring to return office. And WFH work from home, it gets a very acronym heavy

[00:32:52] as academic papers tend to do. But they found some big benefits from that. Some specific ones was and these are, you know, their numbers, 113 percent increase in employee communications. And they found specifically some cool kind of connection benefits

[00:33:09] by having people kind of group together, even in their travels at the airport or through Uber. And then that people sort of were able to connect through different groups, you know, broken up by age, ethnicity and gender. So that was pretty interesting.

[00:33:24] And then Steve Hunt on LinkedIn talked about, you know, that is good, but it's important to realize that there are things such as, you know, mobility concerns and accessibility concerns that don't allow everyone to work in certain types of jobs

[00:33:40] don't necessarily require on those connections and those collaborations. Certain people just don't work well in that. So he warns against sort of organizations seeing this paper and going, everyone worked from home again. He's saying, remember that it is dependent on the type of work you do

[00:33:56] and the kind of people you have always a good thing to remember when dealing with any of that. I think not to toot our own horn, but I think we do a good job of that as saying, this is the data. It's just the data.

[00:34:07] You should not mean that this is going to work for everyone. You know, when we're talking about different organizations, this might work for you, but here's the things you need to consider. But I really enjoyed the conversation because it's more nuanced than just

[00:34:18] everyone needs to work from home or everyone needs to be in the office. So yeah, I think what I was interested in the and the research being done by the Harvard paper group was that they weren't they were looking more at those who were already working from home

[00:34:32] and the value of bringing them together once in a while. So they said that the hundred percent increase in employee communications was meeting in person every once a quarter. And I want to say as someone who's been in both completely virtual

[00:34:44] and non-virtual environments, I completely see how bringing people we do that here at safety and insights group. We're all virtual and we get together at least twice a year, if not three times a year, because we know how valuable it is just to sort of create those connections.

[00:35:00] I have also worked with people for five plus years, never, never seen them in person and had amazing work relationships with them. So I do think that, you know, to that point, the data, I think, is giving you some valuable insight

[00:35:12] into how to make working from home work in some of the ways that the return to office is saying, well, we don't have that connection. We don't have that collaboration. Well, maybe you can get that collaboration by just doing a few

[00:35:23] sort of get togethers and gatherings versus trying to force everybody into an environment that doesn't work for them. Right. I'm a you know, the idea of sort of blanket return to office, as Steve Hunt was mentioning, is really, really challenging for me.

[00:35:37] But I think it's even more challenging for employees who find themselves in situations where they're being forced into situations that don't work for them and their families. And so I think this is the skills gap conversation we just had is going to play into this as well,

[00:35:50] because those who have the skills and the capabilities and the data and information you need, they are going to be able to kind of state what their expectations are for their work environments. And as much as organizations can make that happen,

[00:36:04] I think we're going to find that they're going to have to. So over time. Yeah. Yeah. And I like the example you use of our own organization, because I think it shows another one of those points,

[00:36:12] which is the type of work you do and the type of projects that you're on are also going to show different results from these sort of events. When you have creatives or people coming in with different perspectives,

[00:36:25] sometimes people get it won't work in a sort of remote environment, even when you're doing calls, you know, everyone kind of getting together and, you know, hearing ideas and be able to sort of blurt things out and work together, work in those sort of environments

[00:36:38] that just wouldn't work in a coding environment. Let's say, you know, that's just not the way that work is done. So I'd love to see it. And a couple of people news to sort of wrap things up here.

[00:36:48] We had Luke Marson joining SAP as and this is going to be a mouthful, but his full title is director of SAP's go to market innovation at SD works. Yeah, so he's not joining SAP, he's joining SD works as the director of SAP go to market innovation.

[00:37:04] Yes, yes, exactly. Another is an organization that has a query to our payroll time management solution in Europe, but they utilize SAP success factors as part of that package, along with other organizations like Workforce Software and UKG.

[00:37:17] What I Luke Marson is someone who's been in the SAP ecosystem for a long time. And I got to know him several years back and he runs a great podcast with Chara and Sherry, Sherry Myers, who's a good friend of mine.

[00:37:31] And for a long time, I think it's called the HR circle, but I'm not sure. Have to go look that I've been on several times. But it is, I think, you know, what we're starting to see is SAP success factors starting to sort of re-energize

[00:37:48] through a lot of their partners, the conversations that they're having at the market. So I'm interested in seeing how someone like Luke, who can make connections of the dots, maybe work a little bit better for this market.

[00:37:58] So I was excited to see that he had this role with SD Works. And I like SD Works. It's definitely on the European market. We see it come in on the survey and the report and the data.

[00:38:06] And so I'm interested in seeing sort of how this will enhance the SD Works connection from a European perspective and maybe even elevate them a little bit. Kind of similar to what we're seeing with the Mark Havocroft joining Workforce Software, Senior VP of International,

[00:38:22] covering APJ, EMEA and Latam. We are seeing a lot of these organizations hire long-term professionals in the industry to really enhance not only the connections they have, but to expand these international relationships, to expand the capabilities. For Workforce Software, I think this sort of probably

[00:38:43] hones in a little bit on some of the stuff you heard, maybe Cliff, on their goals for international, I would assume, right? Yeah, that's exactly it. They're intentionally sort of moving in that direction and they're interested in finding the right people to make that happen because, you know,

[00:39:00] they put a lot of investment in their tech and their product. I think the next logical step is to make that same investment in their people to remain a player. And it'll be really interesting to see both in this year's

[00:39:12] and next year's data from the HR system survey that we put out how that's reflected in their user satisfaction or vendor satisfaction and user experience scores. Because, you know, those are it seems very intentional, like, OK, we need to attack those two very, you know,

[00:39:26] those two very specific numbers and, you know, help ourselves out. So you love to see it. And another acronym heavy title there, you know, Asia Pacific Japan and your Middle East and all that sort of fun stuff that they've totally created some fun numbers for.

[00:39:44] Well, my acronyms, they make it. Oh, no, it's not yours. It's theirs. But, yeah, I think it's great to see these movements and to see these people getting right. We talked a lot about the job market and what's going on with the economy.

[00:39:59] So there's plenty of good positive news happening at the same time. Yeah, do you think I don't know about anybody else, but I know there was a bit of a pause we're seeing in the market from spending some of it is due to every kind of trying

[00:40:11] to figure out what AI is going to do, especially for big investments like enterprise, HR systems, payroll systems, core HR, those kind of things. We're seeing a little bit of a hold. And we're also seeing a little bit of a hold, at least here

[00:40:23] in the United States, headquartered organizations because of the election that's happening in November. I think we're hearing some of that too. Just a reality of sort of the worlds we live in. There's also a lot of people who are sort of trying to address

[00:40:36] their region's challenges with many of the ongoing conflicts, which is scary. And many of their employees and their workforces are in the midst of a lot of chaos for themselves. So I think, you know, it's been a rough couple of months,

[00:40:53] both for the the HR professionals trying to manage all this, but also for the vendors trying to navigate. Do I push for the sale? Do I wait? Do I hold? Do I put more marketing out? Do I do right? We're starting to see things break a little bit.

[00:41:06] We're starting to see people get their arms wrapped around AI. And so we're seeing some movement there. We're starting to see some people get some sense of sort of, well, I need to make these moves no matter sort of what the environment's

[00:41:15] going to look like in the fall. So I do think that July and August, they're going to look a little bit better, at least from our perspective anecdotally, as far as people sort of making movements and making decisions. And I do think this fall be ready.

[00:41:28] The world, I think, at least in the HR tech space, there has been some pent up work that needs to get done. So it's probably going to get really busy. And as we wrap today, I guess just a reminder to everybody,

[00:41:37] I know we darn it, Cliff, I could not get us to 30 minutes. We're at probably 45 or something like that at this point. But we're trying, guys, I'm really working on it. But here's the big thing as we wrap, please let us know if there's any content or information

[00:41:51] or things you want us to cover. Be sure to send it our way. We're happy to make sure that we have some conversations about it. Share it with everybody who's listening to us on a regular basis.

[00:42:00] Be sure before you sort of wrap up the week that you make sure that you do fill out the annual HR system survey. If you haven't yet, you only got a couple of days left, but also be on the watch out in July.

[00:42:09] We'll start to do early sales on the paper with some bundling. So be on the watch for that. That might be kind of exciting for some of you who are looking to for a deal who are not going to complete the survey.

[00:42:20] And then also, if you're interested in learning more about what goes on on a regular basis, hearing more about our research and hearing more about what's going on in the industry, be sure to sign up for to our website for a newsletter

[00:42:31] to get ongoing updates on research launches, where we'll be speaking, visiting and how you can participate going forward. Be sure to listen to our sister, H.R. Heidel podcast, H.R. We have a problem hosted by CEO Terry Zipper.

[00:42:42] And if you like these episodes and the work we're doing with the H.R. Heidel podcast here at Spilling the Tea on HR Tech as well as H.R. We have a problem. Please be sure to like and comment and do a couple of little

[00:42:54] downloads in the podcast areas. It makes a big difference. I think we've now gone way past our 10,000 downloads, right? Cliff, I think we were at that and we're moving beyond that. We know that people are out there paying attention.

[00:43:05] So we're excited to add more to what we are providing each and every week for you. If you'd like to stay up to date with the immediate breaking H.R. Tech news and get that all the behind the scenes content,

[00:43:16] you can follow at safety insights on LinkedIn X. It's called now. I really hate saying that. And Instagram, you can also follow Cliff and me on LinkedIn. We always for every event we go to, we give live updates

[00:43:28] as to what we're doing and what we're seeing at those events. So if you do want to get those, just connect with us on LinkedIn and you'll get those on a regular basis. Cliff, I think that wraps for today.

[00:43:38] Just a big thank you to you for putting together all the stories as usual, trying to find some theme throughout them. Spring Method Media Group who helps us produce our podcast run by amazing founder Kelly Kelly, our marketing team, Lisa Renko

[00:43:49] and Summer Orlando who get this out and make sure it gets out to everybody. Thanks to your listeners and community. We couldn't do this without you. It really makes a big difference that you're out there listening,

[00:43:58] that you tell us that you hear us, that you know us when we come on to calls and everything. It makes both Cliff and I smile. And that's it for this episode of Spilling the Tea on HR Tech.

[00:44:07] We hope it's been just the brew that you needed to start the engine running this week. And we'll be back in just two weeks with the another pot of boiling hot HR tech updates and insights that you can use. Thanks, everyone. Bye.