Spilling the Tea on HR Tech - The future of job search platforms amid AI, UKG massive layoffs, and Supreme Court regulatory shifts.

[00:00:00] The future of job search platforms amid AI, UKG massive layoffs, and Supreme Court regulatory shifts., The future of job search platforms amid AI, UKG massive layoffs, and Supreme Court regulatory shifts.,. have turned out, right? It's like a career change for me that I'm absolutely loved.

[00:00:35] Welcome to the HR Huddles podcast presented by Sapient Insights Group, the ultimate resource for all things HR. It's time to get in the huddle. Welcome everyone to Still in the Tea on HR Tech where we focus on the hottest HR Tech news

[00:01:00] everyone needs to know to be in the know. We break down the news of the week and help you make sense of what it means for our industry and how it can impact your organization. I'm your host,

[00:01:10] Stacey Harris, Chief Research Officer and Managing Partner for Sapient Insights Group, a research advisory firm. And joining me today is my co-host and our director of research, Cliff Stevenson. Cliff, welcome to the show today. We're kind of recording in kind of the break

[00:01:25] between the holiday knot here in the United States around July 4th. We've got some not so good news this week, but we've got some a lot of good news. So it's an interesting week for news in the HR

[00:01:36] technology space. What are all the things we're going to be talking about today, Cliff? Yeah, as you mentioned, as we were talking about before, we started recording that there's definitely some negative news and not just that it's July 4th for our English listeners who may

[00:01:50] not still approve of our leaving the colonies. But you know, there is some negative stuff. But as I started really compiling it and think about it, there's still a lot of positive movements. So we're going to talk about a few things. We're going to talk about some acquisitions

[00:02:04] and some mergers, including companies like Bullhorn, a Phenom, a Monster and Career Builder. That'll be an exciting one. We'll talk about some increased funding proving that it's not all it's not all dark clouds, right? We've got Fairnell and Tech Wolf and new CEO at Plansource.

[00:02:26] And then we will have to mention some things that actually one of the things that happened that we wanted to make sure we had for this recording, the layoffs that happened at UKG and some major decisions in the United States Supreme Court that could have long lasting effects

[00:02:43] in the compliance and regulatory landscape for works. Yeah, it's it's been a I think we tend to think of the summer as we've been heading into it as a quieter time in the nature tech space up in outside the US. It's definitely what we call holiday

[00:02:58] season or people get ready to go into holiday season. But I think what's happened here is we there were so much people kind of put things on pause. And there was a lot of waiting because of the AI conversation because of what's happening around the world globally,

[00:03:10] both in economic and socio economic and socio political issues. So we've we've really been in this sort of weird sort of in between space in the HR space, we talked a little bit about it at the

[00:03:22] last HR tech conference, I think we're going to see more of it here, right? So one of things that I think we're gonna we're gonna have a lot of conversation about today is is how to keep

[00:03:31] moving forward in the midst of this constant change. So we'll have a little bit of guidance on that. We've got some some tools we're putting out here at Save It Insights just to

[00:03:39] help some of our customers and clients. Also today, just a reminder I think by the time this comes out if you get a chance to listen to it when it first comes out, we'll also still have the

[00:03:47] opportunity to sign up for a few events that we'll be doing. One is the plan source webinar. That's going to be on July 16th and on engaging and empowering employees with data and insights

[00:03:59] primarily around what's happening in the benefit space. So if you want to sort of understand HR tech and benefits and how those two things are emerging and how they're helping give employees more insight and data to help them feel more in control, that's going to be the

[00:04:14] conversation. And we have some news from plan source this week. So we'll add that to that. So if you need to sign up for that look at our newsletter if you haven't seen it recently,

[00:04:21] there was a link to that there or go to the plan source website and I think they have a sign up registration as well. Also going on in the next couple of weeks, we'll be doing a

[00:04:29] roundtable the week of July 22nd. It's an invitation only chief HR officer and CEO roundtable focused on interestingly enough this topic we just talked about which is change and how organizations are handling change and how they're handling in a way that supports their

[00:04:45] diverse workforces. That's going to be at PENDOS Global Headquarters on Wednesday July 24th at 830 if you're interested in participating you're local to the Raleigh-Carry North Carolina space which is where I live. Let us know we're happy to bring you in and be part of

[00:05:00] that roundtable conversation. We're excited about where that's going. We are also just for everyone who maybe didn't get the chance to do it. We've closed the survey sorry Cliff I know the last minute going oh wait wait one more week at this point it is completely closed. Tammy

[00:05:16] is analyzing and cleaning and making sure that we have everything put to bed but if you didn't get a chance to participate that doesn't mean you won't have access to the research it does

[00:05:25] mean you might have to pay a little bit for the research so or you might want to attend some of the events that we'll be doing. One of the ways that you can catch it is by

[00:05:31] going to the signing up and just being the HR Technology Conference. If you're interested in special code we've got that to give you 150 off that HR Technology Conference at the Las Vegas in September I'll be giving our big voice to the customer the first look at the data

[00:05:47] research session there at one o'clock on the first day of the HR Technology Conference on Wednesday that'll be myself. We also have Terry Zipper who will be doing a panel

[00:05:58] with a good friend of ours from another organization at D&W Bichon at the Women in HR Tech which is on Tuesday the day before the opening session of HR Technology Conference and we will be doing

[00:06:08] several sessions at the IROM booth and a couple other events so you and I will be doing podcasts throughout the HR Technology Conference so there's going to be a lot of places to get a

[00:06:17] chance to connect up with us and meet with us and ask any questions you have about the research or also watch out throughout July we're going to be putting in some special early

[00:06:25] buying details about how to get access to the report if you didn't get a chance to participate as well so be sure to download our newsletter. So Cliff that was a lot of things that we're doing

[00:06:33] this week but I know you have some exciting news you were really happy about where we ended with the research this year. Yeah I was just about to say that's why I'm not going to be too upset

[00:06:42] like it's over because although we won't know the exact numbers because of the cleaning that our team is doing as you mentioned we can confidently say it's going to be our largest

[00:06:53] survey ever in terms of the number of respondents that we got from it so thank you all there's a very good chance if you're listening to this you took the survey thank you for that. We know

[00:07:05] that it's long and we make a lot of efforts into making sure that it's although comprehensive it still has ease of use you know we think about these things you know we don't just

[00:07:16] talk about them we put them in the place and I think that along with just all the great efforts we had from our distribution partners of course all of you that would have taken it this is going

[00:07:27] to be the biggest year ever which allows us to you know already we have insightful data but as an organization that prides ourselves and defines ourselves by our data the more that we have from more different places and more different industries just means we can be that much

[00:07:42] more confident and that give you even deeper insights into not just what's happening overall but what's happening within maybe just your hyper focused region and industry and nothing makes me happier than that. Yeah I will say I was a little because I thought the 25th anniversary

[00:07:59] would be our biggest year because you're always whenever you've been doing this you're like oh well well you know that this will be it then after this will be great just to hit

[00:08:05] $2,500 every year right I think you know last year we got a little bit more and I was like oh wow that's great you know in a fluke there's a lot going on people are trying to figure out

[00:08:14] I think this year definitely blew me away and we even had a some switch up in some of our big distributors right some of them had to drop out some had to move around it was a little bit

[00:08:22] interesting so that means that that we're gonna have I think just some really powerful data this fall one things I think we're gonna be talking a lot about will be where is the the HR

[00:08:33] technology buyers mind what are they worried about and it is AI but there's a lot more than that that going on in their mind so Cliff I mean one of the things we wanted to sort of get into

[00:08:43] today is talking about where some of the investment monies and the mergers acquisitions happening in this space and how that's going to be sort of playing out in the in the same sense as the

[00:08:53] person who's actually from a buyer perspective making decisions in the market like how are those two things going to be sort of colliding what's happening from the big investors and the people who are who are sort of making those decisions and stock market level and the buyers who

[00:09:06] have to make decisions every day about which solutions they're buying maybe where do you want to start today with all that well let's talk about some of that let's talk about the AI because I do think that that is part of the conversation and that's motivating sellers as

[00:09:20] well as buyers right the classic sort of marketplace right trying to anticipate what people are looking for right because of its not on the shelves and people can't get to it right and for that reason I think bullhorn acquired text kernel specifically because of their AI

[00:09:36] solutions right so this is bullhorn if you're not in recruiting you may not know as well but for those of us like me that came from the RPO world in the recruiting world town acquisition

[00:09:47] very well known it is software that's used primarily in specific industries and for specific purposes a lot of it in the sort of recruiting and staffing right so those are in those you know those high number high volume areas of things like healthcare light industry professional services

[00:10:06] and text kernel was the software layer that laid underneath a whole lot of big staffing agencies and a lot of the fortune 500 companies so bullhorn is being very future focused here and saying you

[00:10:21] know that you can take some time to develop AI or you can see what's working now and what is already in use in their specific group and world that they deal with and I think that motivated a

[00:10:33] lot of getting after this sort of AI because as we're going to talk about later you're going to need solutions to underpin and find the right people and talent that are out there and this is a part

[00:10:46] of that and text kernel was one of the larger you know parsing technologies right in the in the space and we say parsing it's parsing resumes if you're not in the town acquisition

[00:10:56] space on a regular basis that's not doesn't sound all that important but it's actually one of the most critical things if you're in the town acquisition space because resumes get uploaded and you're

[00:11:07] always trying to figure out how to kind of take that data and turn into something that's valuable and they had recently connected what they were doing with open ai's chat gbt I think part of this

[00:11:17] is that you know we're seeing AI say that hey we can do this thing I don't need to have any specialized tools I think what we're seeing here is that yes you there's still context that

[00:11:28] needs to be driven and there was a lot of context built into what text kernels done right over the many many years that it's been working plus there was a lot of bias management introduced

[00:11:37] into what they were doing and a lot of focus on I think really understanding the nuances of a resume you know one of things that a good friend of ours Brian Summers has been talking

[00:11:47] about is sort of the the challenges you're seeing with open with any of the artificial intelligence from the person who's actually putting forth their resume into the system right so like how our employees how our candidates basically figuring out how to game the AI

[00:12:02] environment one of them is things like you know white labeling a little bit of information inside of your resume so that the parser will see that like make sure that I show up in the environment right that's stuff we've talked about already but I think this

[00:12:16] isn't an opportunity where you could really kind of connect those dots and and maybe address some of those changes as well right yeah absolutely and especially when you're dealing at scale right we often talk about sort of the benefits of AI and of these tools isn't so much

[00:12:32] the generative side which makes most the headlines but the ability to automate at massive scales and staffing agencies deal with that and say we need to quickly find these people and a simple search engine isn't going to cut it when you're trying to find a certain

[00:12:47] combination of skills or use terms or if you want to be able to sort of compile that and get you know like you said remove any sort of biases and say you know who are the top 10

[00:12:58] you know windshield developers and you know terms like that that can have different meanings but will be known to a more advanced system I want to know what Javi or nor is windshield developers I'm telling you yeah software often you get these terms like Python and windshield

[00:13:13] or even engineer there we go this can have very different meanings depending on your industry right so who knows another acquisition Phenom I always think of them as Phenom people because I'm way too old

[00:13:25] but it's just Phenom acquires a company that I'm going to do my best it's TYDY I went with Tidy Stacy with your best guess I did I did tie dye I'm not sure that's correct though

[00:13:36] well I'm not being this particular company feel free to reach out to us we'd love to know but they're you know doing the pre-boarding and onboarding work so really trying to keep that

[00:13:50] you know the term that's often used is seamless but really is it has to do with the experience but also the data transfer through that whole effort so although it wasn't planned this way

[00:14:01] it is pretty interesting to think that of the technologies that are used all the way through you know very early an employee life cycle long before you're an employee right just getting the information compiling and allowing some to hire you and then what happens next right

[00:14:16] so that's where this these now just one company but where these companies work which is making those connections so that once you're in the system everything comes through and that's the idea right to create that unified experience and make sure that the data transfers

[00:14:32] and I think this adds to Phenom's goal to become more of a platform and not just a tool it's very similar to what we saw with a greenhouse picking up an onboarding solution and building

[00:14:41] out onboarding in their environment we saw Isems do something similarly really building out there onboarding and pre-hiring I think for Phenom which has a little bit more of a talent intelligence play along with what they're doing on the other recruiting areas and talent

[00:14:54] pools this really helps I think with sort of that platform conversation so I'm interested to see where they take us we haven't got an update on this but I think it'll be it'll be one step

[00:15:04] closer to through their broader vision right absolutely and I think in general as you said trying to create that you know one source and it's also as we said you know that idea of keeping that data which will be important for regulatory environments as well and we'll

[00:15:20] talk about that in some pretty big news later on but and so we've talked about a couple acquisitions we also saw a merger a combination if you will because this is happening at the shareholder

[00:15:31] level it isn't a sort of classic where one company takes the other but it's more controlling interests and these are names that if you spent some time even not just in the recruiting

[00:15:41] world but ever trying to get a job and you're of I wouldn't even say a certain age pretty much everyone up until the most the youngest of our listeners will know monster and career builder

[00:15:51] so they have combined with and now help Stacy I know we worked with so let me know if I get this wrong monster which their controlling group was randstad or ronstadt if you want to get very

[00:16:03] dutch about it they had the controlling interest on monster and now oh I think I've already got wrong and then career builder yes we'll have the controlling interest over the shares that previously

[00:16:19] held by ronstadt yeah so this one again controlling interest what we are seeing is ronstadt is sort of exiting out they had sort of picked up the career builder environment and really tried to sort of

[00:16:32] grow that into something broader I don't know that they've sort of given up completely on that model but I do think what we are seeing in the market here is that the what was or used to be

[00:16:43] the big role of the job boards which these used to be major companies like the biggest in the world right monster had what you know the how many super bowls it goes I think with the common

[00:16:52] eyes on linkedin a couple times right since monster was the name to know we've seen them change change a couple of times monster restricted by a big firm separately a career

[00:17:02] builder now is sort of again moving over to be merged with them what they're finding I think in all cases is that these job boards need to be consolidated they need to be at much larger levels

[00:17:13] I think someone said that there's still about five percent of the overall market but our data shows obviously that indeed is probably the largest in our dataset and I think in the market it was indeed had was still in the top five user trends and vendor sat scores

[00:17:28] for SMB organization so from their perspective as a recruiting solution they feel it indeed doing that job with all zip recruiter also coming up in that space the other one yeah right so some

[00:17:38] of this is that there be sort of being new technology new options have sort of outpaced them some of this is just that you know we saw this market start to change as organization and candidates stops are going directly to the job boards and started using aggregators and

[00:17:55] tools that were sort of pulling and aggregating this information together and this is sort of one spectrum together we were talking about phenom just a moment ago and now we're talking about

[00:18:02] monster and career builder and really this is sort of the end of the road that many of us saw five six years ago we started to see the idea that people were sort of pulling data automatically

[00:18:12] from these job boards to show in different places and this is really going to lead into the generative AI conversation over time because to combine and to basically deal with the fact

[00:18:23] that someone is pulling your data maybe showing it someplace else you've got to have a big enough organization and a big enough legal group to be able to battle that IP issue right and you've

[00:18:34] got to be able to sort of have enough data to make it valuable for these large language models to actually broker deal with you versus just taking what you have that's open on the web this was

[00:18:44] the same conversation we had about Microsoft LinkedIn several years ago and so what's happening is these organizations are all going to have to sort of morph into something that's going to have a much stronger standing and have more valuable datasets because much of the talent

[00:18:58] intelligence platforms are using if not data from the job boards they're also using data from the employer sites for job profiles and eventually that stuff's going to start to get locked down

[00:19:10] and then you're going to have to really think about how am I going to train these large language models going forward I can't get that data openly from the internet and this is really

[00:19:18] the conversation the buyers have to think about every time they talk to a talent intelligence platform that's talking about how they're bringing you taxonomies bringing you data about job roles bringing you information externally you have to ask the question where's your data coming from

[00:19:32] what's your strategy for making sure that data is always accessible and how do I know that that where that data is being managed and cleaned and effectively at over same right yeah that amazing point and the only thing I'll I'll add two things to it first of all

[00:19:46] if I'm doing the research on this I found that 30 years old monster when it first started so 94 95 but it also reminded me of something you said very early on when you were talking about

[00:19:57] you know a wage seen in our data that you know these weren't the big names anymore and it wasn't really until I started having a chance to be able to you know be in this world you know this

[00:20:07] data and Merce world kind of going back to comments early on of saying you know here are the big players and it may not be who you expect and I think it really does show the value of

[00:20:16] you know these large data sets that we have you know not to toot our own horn but you know you any data set you know any of the inferior ones too you're welcome to look at

[00:20:25] but you know you could see and say you know what if I wanted to see it but just for small businesses is this really who the top are anymore just the ones that I know you know I mean

[00:20:35] that's of course as you said Super Bowl ads right that's what gets a name out but who are the big players anymore so that that's kind of interesting too to think about how you're supposed to understand who's out there and what your resources are

[00:20:48] but everything you said is spot on and it is following the arc of how a lot of the data is kind of gone you know as we've talked about in AI before that it only makes sense for it to go

[00:21:00] in this sort of direction yeah for good or for worse yeah and I think it is he was all of us to sort of think about where is the candidates where are the buyers where are the people who are

[00:21:13] inputting this data where do they feel the most comfortable sharing their data that has to be a question you've got to ask right so yeah absolutely so as long as we're talking about

[00:21:24] we didn't go very long I want to say in this episode without mentioning AI I think we didn't write on the bat and we've got more fair now who I believe we mentioned almost a year

[00:21:33] ago or so just got 3.5 million in seed funding and what they are is AI governance software so Stacy exactly the kind of point you were making there is now a market for that we've gone

[00:21:48] AIs become such a ubiquitous part of work that now there's software to help govern you know the data within your AI software right so you know already we're seeing an economy built around this technology rather than just being oh this is something new it's really been

[00:22:06] an amazing amount of growth so you know helping organizations that's you know sort of fair now's mission here to you know help them get control of where data is stored how it's being accessed

[00:22:18] how it's being used you know so sort of that alignment and keeping that sort of central repository and clearly enough people see the value in this that they're you know improving their seed funding throughout so yeah this was exciting to see right like because we had just

[00:22:36] covered them not too long ago we've had a lot of conversations with like Richard Rose now on this one and other people analytics David Green I had talked a little bit about this when I was up in

[00:22:45] Europe last year and in Barcelona at the workday event these are whether it's going to be a tool like this or the next generation of this tool I think the more we think about our tools and

[00:22:58] our technology and our data the more we have to think about the tools they're going to manage them right yeah absolutely and hey proof of that the next kind of big news was tech wolf also

[00:23:11] receiving funding this was a much larger amount 42.75 million in series b and this is another AI company Belgium this has been a very low countries focused Netherlands and now Belgium episode but this is AI but specifically within the skills organization in fact part of this

[00:23:32] funding I don't know if it was the majority I think you have a little more insight here Stacy was from workday ventures and I believe you had a chance to talk to them some about that is that

[00:23:40] correct well I talked about a month ago with the tech wolf VP of marketing and VP of product Yasmeena Karameen and Vicky Holzer so Yasmeena Karameen is first of all she's amazing and how

[00:23:52] she's thinking about this product right and I think one of the things to know about tech wolf is that it has been sort of I want to say this carefully it's been a darling but it has been

[00:24:03] the darling of many of I would say some of the long-standing industry voices in this market it is similar in sort of what it offers from a skills management perspective to some of the other solutions that have been picked up recently like the skyhive acquisition that was made

[00:24:20] by cornerstone to search recently the hired scored application that was made by workday it has a talent intelligence component to it they have a couple of different offerings that they do including sort of they do some of this talent intelligence data gathering from external sources

[00:24:34] now one of the things nice about them is they're very clear this is one of the conversations that Yasmeena and I had was you know how were they gathering their data and it was very

[00:24:40] clear that they had a strategy around that that went beyond just some of the traditional scraping that happens in the market they also do a lot of internal assessment of your data

[00:24:48] and they have the perspective that they can build an AI driven taxonomy now if you'll see if you see in some of our research we're finding that AI driven taxonomies need to be adaptable and editable

[00:24:57] and that's some of the conversation that we had because your company has to influence some of that conversation but there is this question as to whether you have a taxonomy versus an ontology but AI is definitely part of what's running this artificial intelligence that's sorry AI

[00:25:13] definitely it's running the skills management area and it is I think the only thing that's going to make it more feasible so I think a lot of the reason why tech wolf is getting so much attention

[00:25:22] is one it's got a lot of really good people sort of leading and guiding and advising them two is that I do think that you know they've leaned heavily to the artificial intelligence conversation because they know how important that is to doing skills management at a scalable

[00:25:36] renewable level now what's I think sort of interesting here though is that the other thing to be aware of with tech wolf is that it is yes it had some workday as part of the

[00:25:45] innovation piece but we also saw I know that Arcadia Arcadian sorry let me get it right Arcadian Ventures which is backed by Jason Corsello and Thomas Otter who are well known in our industry

[00:25:56] as thought leaders and also people have sort of been plus there are a lot of other people who are part of that fund they have a lot of other solutions in that fund as well

[00:26:03] there are also partners in that there we also saw a lot of other organizations like ServiceNow Ventures in that Stride VC, Notion Capital and a huge group of sort of a wide range of organizations who have invested in that meaning that people believe that this company

[00:26:17] has maybe some longevity and they want to understand how it's working and maybe create stronger partnerships with them which is a really good sign for them the one caveat I would add

[00:26:25] to all of this is that there was a little bit of a tip up online when this first went out and so I don't want to take anything away from this great funding and the work this

[00:26:34] organization has done as a really strong portion of what's happening in the skills management space so if you're looking for skills management solution that should definitely be on your list but I thought this is just interesting to just make a comment for any organization

[00:26:47] that's going out and making announcements about themselves and where they're at what they're doing it's a little tip-off on LinkedIn when it when they posted the picture of them getting the funding the group was heavily sort of mailing oriented not a huge deal I think

[00:27:01] there's five women compared to like you know 20 or 25 on the screen or something like that and there was a comment made by one of our previous colleagues who I love dearly who basically said just the optics of this is could you have made this a little bit more

[00:27:12] of a balanced picture we know how many women are working and supporting and the big part of what's going on at Tech Wolf and there was a little pushback on that like is this you know

[00:27:21] is this really the conversation we'd be having here I would say on this I think one you do have to think about optics whenever I always tell vendors when they're when they're demoing to me when they're giving me you know presentations when they're showing anything about

[00:27:33] who they are as an organization just make sure you have really thought through you know the diversity of just even the people you're showing who are in your organization and the and the and the distribution of the roles within your organization you cannot be talking about

[00:27:47] an organization that's really supporting HR if you haven't really thought about your own diversity now that's not to say that Tech Wolf has I think Tech Wolf has done a good job based off of the data they've shared about the percentage of females and people of color who

[00:28:01] are working within their organization but I do think that you have to think about this and this gets back to this representation conversation is I know this because I have conversations with

[00:28:11] a lot of young women and I have conversations with a lot of people who are coming up through the market and they say look I when I see someone who looks like me in a space I feel

[00:28:23] more comfortable stepping into that space and that's I think the really the message all that that our colleague was trying to share there but I think it's important one for all of vendors to

[00:28:31] note right so just a little side note on that because it was a big conversation online no that's wonderful and I think that really gets the heart of the title right spelling the D on HR

[00:28:40] Tech or even getting into some of the I would know it's not gossip but it's extremely important and yeah and I think also just kind of talking about an interesting sort of

[00:28:53] connection between these stories has been a few years ago there was a lot of talk you know amongst you know people like you that kind of know the space and could kind of prognosticate what

[00:29:04] was going to happen of this move from a sort of jobs base to skills base for hiring and what do we see we see a consolidation from the job boards and you know kind of less traffic there and a lot

[00:29:17] more funding going into how do we use AI to find and make the most use of our skills you know either in the organization or to find them so really interesting to see how that is played

[00:29:31] out kind of correctly predicted while at the same time within the world of AI that who could have predicted that it would be so a big apart you know all new was coming but to have come this fast

[00:29:43] so yeah I think how fast it's come is what it's is what I think we were all seeing and I think part of the reason it didn't part of the conversation in the market that we've got to

[00:29:51] understand about why maybe it didn't come as quickly as it could have is there were a lot of people who are holding back the work because they knew that the technology wasn't quite ready

[00:30:01] for prime time that it was still doing things that could give us the wrong information and it and it acted like it was the right information and I think even in chat gpt and even in what we're

[00:30:13] seeing with gemini and some of the other tools there they know it's still learning I think there's there's two differing opinions right we get out there and and it will it will it will

[00:30:22] get better because it will be learning off of real life conversations happening and when it's wrong it would they will be told that it's wrong or do we wait until it's it's really ready for

[00:30:32] you know people to use it appropriately and and I don't know the answer to that I think that is a true ongoing conversation in our industry right about you know is the public a great place to

[00:30:43] train AI and you know I think we're finding out well well I think it is kind of the just because you have the power should you use it right is that conversation well let's keep going

[00:30:55] with that thought because that leads into it and I'll we'll circle back because I did have one little bit of news but I like this idea because Microsoft put out a study the title being AI

[00:31:06] work is here now comes the hard part and they had a lot of stats now keep in mind this is their own study and certainly they have a vested interest I don't think they would deny that and

[00:31:16] they were very transparent about their methodology and even about some of the issues but some of the stats are that that AI is kind of just being used you know and so that you know we need to

[00:31:27] just you know adapt around that fact where you know they said 75 percent of knowledge workers use AI work today and 46 percent of users started using it less than six months ago meaning there's been

[00:31:41] just a huge jump in the last six months and with the primary idea of using it to save time but all of these were you know 90 percent said save time and even enjoy their work more

[00:31:54] was still pretty high at 83 percent so you know they also talked about the use of their own tools right that you know how it's being used for meeting summarization and email summarization

[00:32:05] not a big surprise there but it kind of gets into that right that there's a narrative that certainly they would like to push and may you also still be true that it's already happened

[00:32:15] you know that you know that there was a bit of hold because maybe the software isn't where it's supposed to be but yet here we are using it anyway I and it's been interesting to note although this you know it's very positive and I don't

[00:32:29] think too unexpected outside we'll have to see our own numbers because they're going to be a little more broad in scope and whoever gather their information from but I'm guarantee you

[00:32:41] it'll be more than we saw last year I don't think it'll be as high as you know 75 percent of knowledge workers using AI unless we broadly define what AI is right so yeah I mean I mean you could I mean AI

[00:32:53] at this point is anytime you do a search or hit the summarize button that someone has put out there right so I think I'm not surprised by that number I was I think when I said it to I said

[00:33:03] sending plus suspects see who wrote it and who put it out right not to say I mean Microsoft has more data than anybody about what people are doing right like that is part of the the gist of

[00:33:13] what you know as we buy Microsoft these days part of what we're sort of signing up for is that they're kind of watching what's happening in the background and yes you and I we talk about this we use I

[00:33:23] use it almost every you know not daily maybe but definitely every every couple days right it's it's helping right abstracts it's helping us to do some data and cleaning carefully we've

[00:33:35] been very very careful we're going to have some updates for everyone on sort of what we're using it on and how we're managing it again very carefully with nobody's information anywhere near anything

[00:33:44] that could be outside for training we're using it in a lot of places to just help us gather data and then we have to go through a validation process with all that data right like that's

[00:33:54] a thing that happens in the market a lot so I think some of it comes down to how you're using it but I also think that you know we so much of this world that we're in thinks really heavily

[00:34:09] about knowledge workers and I think the next conversation has to be about is AI going to be you know doing some of the heavy lifting when it comes to areas that's not just sitting in front

[00:34:21] of a computer that's the opportunity I think I think there was that meme that's been coming out right like it's great that AI is coming out I wanted it to help me you know do my dishes and

[00:34:30] cleaning so I could do more creative poetry whatever and writing and not do my poetry so I could do more dishes and cleaning right big proponent of that get that right and I think

[00:34:40] that is really where we're going to have to start to really look at like can we take this technology and use it in a way to balance the workloads to balance the environments a little

[00:34:49] bit better and so I think that's going to be some of the conversation but and I think part of it's going to be who's leading these organizations and what they're doing and how they're approaching

[00:34:57] it right absolutely in fact I think very specifically we met with harry the company last week and a lot of their industries they deal with are in hospitality and so you know when they were talking about AI

[00:35:12] all they were saying is that you know we can use this to help optimize scheduling right because if you've ever worked in that industry as a manager you know you're even as

[00:35:20] a worker trying to avoid you know closes followed by openings or you know even if it's just people you prefer to work with and you know having a and managers have to deal with these headaches but when

[00:35:33] you can go in put in preferences as you know one of those people taking the shift and the system can go through and optimize the schedule give you a chance to say take a look at this and do it

[00:35:43] in a natural language way you just go I don't want any shifts on Friday and you could even just say it by voice and then see that sort of thing those are where I think people would like to

[00:35:50] see more of AI right instead of the poetry and those sort of applications I think are sadly as you said left out of that conversation so and I think that gets right to our next I think

[00:36:01] the last article before we sort of dive into some of the the the issues to this week that are not as happy that's for that way right is we do have a really good announcement plan source

[00:36:12] appointed Mike Morini as chief executive officer and I think this is a really good example of a place plan source does a lot more than most people realize because they're they're they're private labeled

[00:36:23] under a lot of solutions the benefits management for a lot of organizations and they're really powerful solutions for managing that they're one of the many that show up in our research

[00:36:33] along with a lot of others who do it right but for a while I think they've been trying to find the right leader in the organization that their CEO had stepped down they had a lot of really

[00:36:42] great strong leaders who were in different roles within the organization but they hadn't found a new chief executive officer and they just put in place Mike Morini now Cliff you said you've known Mike

[00:36:52] you met him at work for software right yeah I know him from his work at work for software we don't write jet skis on the weekends or anything but uh yeah I've known him from his time there

[00:37:00] and in his time there he's been very successful he's very you know he's a it's good personable leader he he has to oversee basically people that help very complex organizations so he himself

[00:37:12] asked us sort of you know you know understand all that to be able to help develop his organizations that can handle those sort of things you know companies are going through massive you know

[00:37:23] mergers and acquisitions and have lots of employees in lots of different spaces so yeah he understands these idea of these regulations in these complex environments and can help you know help

[00:37:34] build the software that can manage that sort of thing so really a great pick I think well and on top of the fact that so I had a chance about two months ago now to actually meet with them and and sit

[00:37:44] through their customer advisory board session and deliver sessions there some of their customers they're at plan source yeah thank you and Sreeni Minkchana and I don't know if I'm going to say his last name correct so I apologize Sreeni but he's their chief product and technology officer

[00:37:59] really impressed me with his thoughtful approach to thinking about how do you make the benefits management world more engaging and and really importantly not just engaging in the sense of oh it's prettier it's half easier to pick things but but more useful for the customer which is the

[00:38:19] employee right like this is the space where the employees have there's so much impact anybody who's dealt with any health care issues here particularly in the United States but even internationally

[00:38:28] where you have a lot of sort of options when it comes to what you can or can't do even if you have government funded health care this is this is a place where I think AI could really offer

[00:38:38] a benefit to the whole market if it's used effectively and to your point I think Mike is a great choice to that I think Sreeni has already done a lot of work on the product itself I

[00:38:47] think it'll be great to see them sort of figure out what their channel model is what their sales model is how they're going to roll some of this work out his team has really I think been

[00:38:56] thoughtful about AI and so I'm interested in seeing where this goes so I think it'll be a great opportunity to see a solution that oftentimes you don't hear about because it's not no sometimes

[00:39:05] benefits is sort of that afterthought but anybody who works in HR knows it is really important to get the relationship you have with your benefit solution right so yeah and you said you're gonna have the webinar coming up and of course we'll be open enrollment it's gonna

[00:39:19] speed up it's gonna catch up to you someone who said to live in that world it seems like it's far off but it's really not just a few months so yeah the one one of the main reason why we

[00:39:30] you won't notice it listener or viewer but we want to delay because some big news came in UKG who I'm sure you know that was the company that was formed from the ultimate and cronos

[00:39:41] merger they just laid off over 2000 people worldwide it's around 14% of the workforce I don't think it's specialized in one particular area you know they've got major office in western from the ultimate

[00:39:56] and then low mass from cronos but it is kind of across the board on the types of jobs and as part of a larger restructuring that they're trying to do a you know a streamlining you know we were talking about streamlining companies and sometimes that's positive right

[00:40:13] you're adding things in and sometimes it's very negative and I know Stacey both you and I know people personally that have worked there I've been working with some of my friends

[00:40:22] that from my old rpo days to try and help them connect but you know it is I wish we could only ever talk about mergers acquisitions and increases but that will you know you know

[00:40:35] everything coming out it's not going to affect any users of their software you know nothing's being shut down they're not shuttering any modules or divisions or anything that would have an impact

[00:40:46] on what you're seeing out there but I still I think is reflective of what is still although you know is a growth market there is still some volatility as we've seen in the general

[00:40:57] economy yeah and this one I think it's it you know depending on sort of where you look at the different different voices you're getting on this there's a couple of things to note on this one

[00:41:06] is that UKG and what was ultimate and pronose completed their merger right before the 2020 sort of shut down in the market right so a lot of people might remember that and at that time

[00:41:17] usually do a merger and acquisition not too long after you go through a pretty big sort of analysis of your workforce redundant workers and all those things Aaron who at that point in time was

[00:41:27] their CEO had kind of said that we kind of put something on hold and we feel like there's enough sort of ability to be able to sort of move people around to not have to do some of that big

[00:41:37] sort of redundant work shifting I don't know if some of this came out of the fact that they kind of put some of that on hold and now Chris Todd who's the new CEO had to sort of address

[00:41:46] some of that I do think that some of this is they did do sort of in March about 260 job reduction I know they were doing some losses through just pure attrition but if you look at

[00:41:58] the overall numbers of what UKG has been bringing over the last several months in particular the last year this was not a this is not a reduction because UKG itself was doing poorly as an overall organization and I think that's something that it's really hard it's

[00:42:13] it's much harder to have that conversation and we've seen it happen multiple times in the last couple of months and this was the same conversation Accenture had when they laid off on 18,000 not too long ago as they were going through sort of that AI analysis

[00:42:27] of their work effort road it was the same conversation we saw in a couple of the other large tech firms who had overhired in some cases right during the 2022 fear of not having the right roles not having the right skill sets inside the organization I don't know all

[00:42:42] the reasons we'll get some more data and we'll definitely be sharing that when we're able to share that around what was driving UKG's decision to sort of do this big of a cut and

[00:42:51] at this point in time what I can say is that this market is we are it particularly hits hard because we know so much more I think as HR professionals about one how this impacts

[00:43:06] the people who are having going through the process we also know how it impacts the people who are left in an organization and their sort of personal sort of feeling about

[00:43:16] an organization and so it's hard for all of us to kind of wrap our arms around this the one thing I and we have a good friend here a white who put out if you look up her posting put a list and she's

[00:43:27] starting to sort of try and connect different people with different organizations that might have job openings my one advice though to anybody out there who's listening who is going through this because I've gone through multiple layoffs in my life once when I was in my

[00:43:39] 30s once was my 20s and then once just recently in my 40s each time I had to make a lot of decisions and each time it was because the organization was making big changes and we were part of sort

[00:43:48] of much larger groups right that were being let go but that does not discount even though it's not personal that you don't get angry you don't have fear you don't have anxiety sometimes relief sometimes just sheer overwhelm take the time to feel the emotions take the

[00:44:04] time to give yourself a breather that's what many of the packages are for really give yourself a moment don't let your emotions make your decisions for you my first laugh when I went through it

[00:44:16] if I would have taken the first job offer I got I would not be where I'm at today because I was you know very afraid because I was the primary breadwinner in my family

[00:44:25] and so just my you know thoughts go out to everybody who's dealing with this but I just want to give you that sort of someone's that we're all here will be here after you get a

[00:44:33] moment to breathe so when do you get a moment to breathe we're all here to help and then also too for those in the United States who are impacted this has a big impact on your health care

[00:44:42] no other advice I always tell people who are going through this schedule all of your health care stuff immediately get that off your plate that gives you a little bit more breathing room

[00:44:50] so my two big words of advice because I've been through this cliff I think you've been through it as well right oh yeah the anytime there seems like a general recession working and recruiting is not the place to have been and very similar to what you were saying

[00:45:02] I think that those thoughts of how you feel today is not how you're going to feel always and it you know because it's so it can seem like platitudes right because everyone's

[00:45:12] going to be out there and there's nothing wrong with that I never begrudge anyone trying to give me you know just making me feel positive but just keep me in mind that I'm not going

[00:45:21] to feel this way forever whatever my personal feeling is and yet focus on those little practical things yeah the navigating you as health care is difficult at the best of times it gets worse when you're having to deal with everything without that going on so yeah try and

[00:45:36] get as much as you can done that's very good advice and and if you need to take some time there's nothing wrong with that either I do know that anyone that's been through it it's almost always turned out to be positive however these things have turned out right

[00:45:49] it's like a career change for me that I'm absolutely loved and but you know that doesn't do you much good when you're in the thick of it but it's a good thing to remember that you know

[00:45:59] your today is not the rest of your life and I think you know that kind of leads to some of the other stuff that we're going to be talking a little bit more about a couple months right yeah

[00:46:13] yeah actually you're going to be talking about it because this is a family friendly podcast and I've got no family friendly words about this the Supreme Court overturned what's been they're calling the chevron decision most people refer to as the chevron deference

[00:46:25] basically this was a ruling you know over 40 years old basically saying that when it comes to regulatory you know judgments right there's a piece of law something is enacted that has to do with compliance and regulatory things regardless of that could be anything from the workplace to fisheries

[00:46:46] which is actually how this got overturned if there was some contention that was handled by the regulatory and they would help interpret what that meant you know when there's new things

[00:46:57] that come out on the internet for instance you know in the FCC would say okay well this is how we should interpret that this gets rid of that now all of those decisions go to the court

[00:47:06] so immediately we saw a lot of companies sit file things in fact a few ones were overturning any sort of lgbtq protections and removing those because they are no longer going to be held on

[00:47:21] to by any regulatory group I saw they'll be charging more most likely for any sort of medicare or healthcare because of regulation saying how much you could charge on those sort of things

[00:47:32] they will no longer be decided by those agencies so we'd go to a you know a court I'm not going to say any more words about that Stacey the big thing here for our audience who are thinking

[00:47:45] about this from a nature tech perspective is I think anything's gonna happen today or tomorrow this will be down the road that this is going to have an impact on you but it will may have some

[00:47:55] impacts as some regulations get sort of challenged in the courts particularly EOC regulations some of the labor law regulations my recommendation to everybody one is stay very close to your vendors on any regulatory things if things are changing to get a good labor law professional who you

[00:48:18] know who you can connect with even if you're a small business and you don't sort of regularly sort of deal with some of the stuff have somebody that you know that you can sort of go to and depend

[00:48:27] on just for those questions one of the things that we have that in our data this year is it and it's shown for a couple years for small businesses is that trying to do HR by yourself

[00:48:37] is scary and hard and we find time and time again that those who have a an advisor consultant that we're not we don't do any employment law advice on our side but those

[00:48:48] people end up being seen as more strategic because they're not trying to sort of manage this alone I think we have a couple of good people who can if not be your help maybe guide you to some of the

[00:48:58] right people Heather do you think is a good friend of ours yeah is a great place to go for information there's a couple of other people that will put in the posting as well just

[00:49:07] find the right person to sort of be your sort of your guide on this one the other thing too is I think this is we've been going through a big amount of change over pay transparency and this

[00:49:19] may be one of the areas that gets a bit of the early pushback in some of these areas right which could actually cause us more of a challenge in HR than not because we've already put in

[00:49:31] place so much around this so one of the things I recommend speaking of Heather and I don't think we talked about this clip but Heather just put out a book in conjunction with

[00:49:39] selling.com I should say over there but it's called get pay right how to achieve pay equity that works so just a shout out to Heather and Cliff out we'll put the link for everybody down in the notes

[00:49:49] because I think she's talking a lot in there from what I can see about pay equity and the compliance around it not just you know there's a lot to sort of make decisions about what's right and and how to morally sort of handle this and how to think

[00:50:04] about this ethically for your organization but there are just some guidelines and regulations and I think sort of being in front of that will be important as we go through some of these

[00:50:11] conversations so yeah it's a rough couple of days you know we've been thinking a little bit about you know sort of the market we're in is volatile it's not in a bad or good change is something

[00:50:23] that we are facing on a more constant constant basis than we've ever had we've been saying that for years it's not like it's something new here's what I would say is in your organization

[00:50:34] when you're dealing with all of these things for your employees really try and decide how much change your employees can handle and how much change you as an organization can handle the most

[00:50:45] important thing is to not let change roll over you but to basically lead through the change and that's probably the best advice we can give on all of this even in your own personal life

[00:50:56] when you're dealing with some of the stuff that we talked about earlier with the UKG changes it is so easy to let to let other people sort of set the tone for where you're where you're heading

[00:51:09] and to let fear drive some of the decisions that you're making and I get it because I've been there many times in my life change leadership is about really figuring out how you can

[00:51:20] you know how you can comfortably and with I think authentically say here's how I'm going to manage the change and how it's how I'm going to address it and handle it so if that's

[00:51:30] anything we can sort of give everyone with a kind of a an ending wrap up and I know we've gone long today by far cliff so I think we're just going to say that this is the regular length now

[00:51:40] because I think it's really important to you know you know I think you did a wonderful job not just saying what was happening but you know giving not not even just her interpretation

[00:51:50] but maybe some advice on and then how everything ties together so I really thank you for that I'm inspired we don't always know everyone we don't have this scripted out and I think

[00:51:58] it's pretty obvious sometimes so thank you for that for those of you watching on YouTube I'll hold up my two dogs at the end so for some positivity just to give us some smiles well let's let's close

[00:52:09] on that note my kitty cat is downstairs trying to stay away from the heat my office right now I hear in our hundred degree weather but as we were at today just a couple of big reminders

[00:52:19] right just if you're if you have any questions anything that comes up in the conversation feel free to reach out to me and cliff we love to hear from you guys I won't go into all

[00:52:28] the other things to remind you and I think we did a lot of that at the beginning of the session today just if you if there's something that we would help talk about or if you have some feedback for

[00:52:37] something we've said please let us know we want to make sure that we address it and have those conversations here online as much as we can also just a big thank you out to the production

[00:52:46] team who helps us put all this together we know a lot of times we're getting this in at the last minute so a big thank you to brand method media groups and our producer of the podcast

[00:52:54] run by founder Kelly Kelly if you haven't seen her work she has amazing work on the marketing side but take a look at her organization and the work that she's doing also to our marketing team

[00:53:02] Lisa Reinko and summer Orlando we wouldn't be able to do our jobs without particularly so much effort goes in from summer to keep everything straight for us and Lisa and making sure that the news

[00:53:12] letters are up to date with all the information so thank you to both of them thank you to our listeners in our community we're all here together we couldn't do this without you we are here after everybody gets through everything that you've been going through this week with

[00:53:25] a holiday this week with sort of the news let us know if there's anything we can do to help and that's it for this episode of spilling the tea on HR tech we hope it's been just the brew you

[00:53:34] need to start the engines running this week we'll be back in two weeks with another pot of boiling hot HR tech updates and insights and and maybe some more pictures of some cute dogs working here we go say goodbye everyone all right bye everyone thanks