Spilling the Tea on HR Tech - The national spotlight on AI safety, transparency and organizational trust turns to Washington + new developments in acquisitions in payroll and talent management solutions.

[00:00:00] Welcome to the HR Huddle Podcast presented by Sapien Insights Group, the ultimate resource

[00:00:09] for all things HR.

[00:00:12] It's time to get in the huddle.

[00:00:19] Welcome to Spilling the T on HR Tech where we focus on the hottest HR Tech news everyone

[00:00:24] needs to know to be in the know.

[00:00:26] We break down the news of the week and help you make sense of what it means for our industry

[00:00:30] and how it can impact your organization.

[00:00:33] We're recording today on February 21st, 2024, but the time you hear this, we may or may

[00:00:40] not be in LinkedIn.

[00:00:41] We'll see, depending on when everything gets launched.

[00:00:43] I'm your host, Stacy Harris, Chief Research Officer and Managing Partner for Sapien Sites Group and a Research and

[00:00:48] Advisory Firm. And joining me today is my wonderful co-host, Cliff Stevenson, Director of Research

[00:00:53] and Principal Analyst for Sapien Sites Group as well. Welcome to the show. I know we've been talking

[00:00:58] about all the tea you've got to share. There's a lot of stuff going on, but it's kind of some deep

[00:01:03] stuff this week, right? Like, it's a really, I don't know,

[00:01:05] is that what you call tea that's like really like strong?

[00:01:08] It's very well steeped, right?

[00:01:10] Yeah, so it's steeping for a while.

[00:01:12] We spent some time in the, I would normally say green room,

[00:01:14] but I guess the tea room, right?

[00:01:16] On the veranda, right?

[00:01:18] Yeah.

[00:01:18] And enjoying it, mulling over the various spices

[00:01:22] and deep notes, but I think the analogy is stretch far enough.

[00:01:25] Yes. But yet definitely some interesting stuff. We're going to talk about AI. I know all of you

[00:01:32] were clamoring not enough AI. We didn't talk about AI enough last week. Well, don't worry,

[00:01:37] we're talking about AI a lot. Both in a sort of general sense, we're gonna talk about some discussion from the open AI sort of

[00:01:46] kerfuffle from last month. The dovetail has created some HR or some HR AI, right capabilities as

[00:01:57] as day force, which we will remind you that was previously called Suridian, but they're no

[00:02:06] day force. That's for all the people that listen in every week.

[00:02:08] They already know that.

[00:02:09] Some AI enabled, possibly at least reporting

[00:02:13] an AI safety consortium from the Biden Harris administration.

[00:02:17] And then finally, some just general platform enhancements

[00:02:22] and new rollouts in payroll,

[00:02:24] both from Ramco and from Hi-Bob.

[00:02:28] So that'll be really wonderful.

[00:02:29] And if we have time, I'd really like to talk about

[00:02:32] the conversation or continue the conversation

[00:02:35] you and I were having, bring the audience in

[00:02:38] just in this whole idea about AI,

[00:02:42] about really it's about journalism,

[00:02:45] the discussion article that will point you to,

[00:02:48] but I think it has a lot of implications for HR

[00:02:51] and you Stacey had brought up some really wonderful points

[00:02:55] that I hope they'll have time to chat about.

[00:02:57] So.

[00:02:58] And I know we have to be fairly honest with the audience

[00:03:01] that you basically cut me off,

[00:03:02] but said no more topics because there were so many good things to talk about this week.

[00:03:06] So we'll do our best to keep it at the 30-minute mark.

[00:03:09] Cliffs keeps telling me we keep running over.

[00:03:10] Our T keeps flowing over, but we're going to get better at it.

[00:03:13] Also, I did want to let everybody know just so that if you're kind of looking at places

[00:03:17] where you can connect up with us or maybe want to touch base with us on other ways,

[00:03:20] one is I'm going to be at the Plan Source Customer Advisory Event,

[00:03:24] March 21st, and it's going to be in Austin, Texas. I'll also be at the Work Day Innovation

[00:03:28] session in April and the Oracle Application Summit in April. So if those are both going to be out

[00:03:34] in the West Coast and California and the Bay Area. So if you're at either of those locations

[00:03:40] and want to have a touch base, I'll be out there. I think Cliff, you're getting ready to do a webinar

[00:03:45] with Iram on the keynotes,

[00:03:48] on the same topics we covered in the keynote, right?

[00:03:51] That's right, we'll have that webinar on March 20th.

[00:03:56] And so if you still want to see some of the overviews

[00:04:00] or need a refresher overview of our HR systems report

[00:04:05] that will be on that day.

[00:04:07] And then as always, you can reach out to any of us

[00:04:11] if you just have some questions and follow up from that.

[00:04:14] Yeah, and I believe those IRM events,

[00:04:16] if you go to the website, think it's www.ihr.com.org.

[00:04:23] I'm not sure, no, we'll have to put in the links for everyone,

[00:04:25] but I think those are open to everybody, right?

[00:04:27] They are.

[00:04:28] Yeah, just need to sign up, put your information in,

[00:04:31] and it'll be, like I said, overview of the key findings

[00:04:35] that you might have seen from HR Tech,

[00:04:36] but maybe you didn't get the chance to.

[00:04:38] Well, not everybody did, right?

[00:04:40] Like they're, it was not like we were on Friday,

[00:04:42] but it was also not everybody gets to go to the live events. And I know we've done a couple of sessions where we've covered the data from the

[00:04:48] SMB conversations we had, which is below organizations below 5,000. I think you're going to be covering

[00:04:54] the total keynote, which includes the data on the companies above 5,000 as well, which will be the

[00:04:59] first time we'll be doing that, I think in a live broadcast. So, so it'll be fun. Yeah, we get a lot

[00:05:03] of that aggregate information.

[00:05:05] And then the last thing is, if you're interested at all,

[00:05:08] we are getting ready at the end of March,

[00:05:11] beginning of April to kick off our six month building

[00:05:14] in an adaptable HR system strategy that works

[00:05:17] from concept to business case to outcomes program.

[00:05:20] It is a massive immersive cohort based program.

[00:05:24] We have all the people we need from a cohort perspective right now,

[00:05:27] but we do have two or three slots open if you still want to make that.

[00:05:30] Let me know that anybody in the company know you might see it in our newsletter.

[00:05:33] It's going to be a great program.

[00:05:35] We have a really great mix of participants already signed up to attend that event.

[00:05:40] And basically it's going to walk you through building your HR system strategy

[00:05:43] from beginning to end all the tools,

[00:05:46] all the technologies that are helpful to do that.

[00:05:49] It's vendor agnostic, it's gonna be focused on

[00:05:51] both the processes and the approach that you take,

[00:05:54] but it'll also cover leadership development.

[00:05:57] And we're gonna get into a little bit

[00:05:58] of that conversation this week, Cliff,

[00:05:59] the why sort of culture leadership development

[00:06:03] make a big difference in not just being able

[00:06:05] to get things accomplished in the organization,

[00:06:07] but also making sure they get adopted

[00:06:08] in ways that got cheap in some outcomes, right?

[00:06:11] That's absolutely it.

[00:06:12] And actually a wonderful segue,

[00:06:15] if you're ready to jump in to something that happened

[00:06:18] at leadership involving trust and transparency.

[00:06:21] And this is a topic we had covered,

[00:06:23] and of course had been a major news topic

[00:06:26] which was when Sam Altman, if you recall, the head of the OpenAI, the Chad GPT organization

[00:06:35] was removed and then was brought back. And Michael Bush, the CEO, great place to work,

[00:06:42] which is one of UKG's companies now. I had a wonderful article this week really talking about some of the leadership behaviors

[00:06:51] that played a part in this whole kerfuffle, right?

[00:06:56] And a few of the things he pointed out were trust and transparency, right?

[00:07:01] And a lot of people felt blindsided. And that's why they demanded a

[00:07:06] turn. They felt like they weren't being told the true story. And regardless of sort of

[00:07:11] right or wrong, it just shows the need for openness, right? Especially at a company called

[00:07:16] literally Open AI. And having that ability to let people know what's going on for good

[00:07:22] or for worse, it really sort of highlights the importance of that.

[00:07:27] Yeah, this one really caught my eye

[00:07:29] because I actually had a great opportunity

[00:07:30] to have a conversation with Michael Bush

[00:07:33] in December of last year,

[00:07:34] right before we all went on holiday break.

[00:07:36] We're hoping to maybe do some,

[00:07:38] a case study on some of the work that they're doing there

[00:07:41] because it really is connected, I think,

[00:07:43] to what we're seeing in

[00:07:45] the research and in the data around what the buyers are struggling with in some cases,

[00:07:51] that the technology and all the tools and all the processes around HR can be absolutely

[00:07:59] top-notch.

[00:08:00] They can have all the things, the bells, the whistles, the investments you put into the process is.

[00:08:05] But at a certain level, some of the issues come down to the culture of the organization,

[00:08:12] the willingness of the executives to make change, the trust that the employees have

[00:08:18] that putting their data in and sharing their personal needs and sharing their current work environments

[00:08:26] is going to be used in a way that's beneficial to them

[00:08:29] as well as to the company.

[00:08:30] And so what Great Places to Work is doing right now

[00:08:32] is they are focusing on creating a piece of conversation

[00:08:36] about high trust workplaces.

[00:08:38] And I think this is an interesting shift

[00:08:40] because I think for a long time

[00:08:40] I've been talking about engaging workplaces,

[00:08:42] Great Places to Work are engaging. And I think for a long time, I've been talking about engaging workplaces, great places to work or engaging.

[00:08:45] And I think the engagement conversation has bowled over oftentimes into a focus on not just the technology and listening,

[00:08:55] but the process of sort of building environments that people feel are sort of engaging. But I think people forget how some of this the really simple basic issues mean so much more sometimes

[00:09:08] than the best benefits programs or the greatest

[00:09:12] approach to the environment from the technology

[00:09:15] or the fact that you're being surveyed every couple weeks,

[00:09:17] just things like credibility, respect, and fairness.

[00:09:20] And Open A is a really good example of this, right?

[00:09:23] Now it's interesting because I think what they struggled with

[00:09:26] was their board had a vision of what the ethics were

[00:09:30] that they as an organization were trying to drive towards, right?

[00:09:33] And Altman sort of had a different vision

[00:09:37] of what that looked like.

[00:09:38] And what it ended up being is they were gonna lose

[00:09:41] their employees because their employees trusted Sam, right?

[00:09:47] The conversation had to be wrapped around the trust

[00:09:49] the employees had in that environment.

[00:09:52] I had a similar conversation with one of my colleagues

[00:09:54] just recently around we were talking about the idea

[00:09:57] of fairness and it was in the context of sort of

[00:10:00] whether or not there was a need to provide maybe some support or some help in getting

[00:10:06] someone through a program versus someone else.

[00:10:09] And there was a strong reaction to the fact that you've got to create an environment

[00:10:13] where people feel like they know what this scoreboard is and how they, what the performance

[00:10:19] ratings are and what that they're all sort of being evaluated at the same level, right?

[00:10:24] And that's a tough conversation these days, right?

[00:10:26] Because that trust, that credibility, that respect, and fairness oftentimes doesn't take

[00:10:31] into consideration the underlying challenges that people individually have.

[00:10:37] It has a real hard time with personalization, hyper personalization,

[00:10:41] which we've been talking a lot about.

[00:10:42] Sometimes goes a little bit even in conflict with it, right?

[00:10:45] Because hyper personalization is about me individually

[00:10:48] versus sort of that broader company

[00:10:50] and individual sort of trust conversation.

[00:10:53] But this is the balance all companies have to strike.

[00:10:55] They have to figure out a way to do it in this world.

[00:10:58] And to me, it was a really good conversation

[00:11:00] that Michael was sort of calling out on this one.

[00:11:03] Yeah, I really liked that you knew brought up the whole concept of listening and surveying people,

[00:11:09] right?

[00:11:10] And he made a great point in there too that it's not enough just to listen.

[00:11:13] That's very important, right?

[00:11:14] Sometimes you can't skip that step.

[00:11:17] But if you don't do anything about it, it is exactly as if you don't do anything, people

[00:11:21] aren't going to take the next survey, right?

[00:11:23] So you won't, you'll lose that opportunity to even listen.

[00:11:25] Something that we always think about

[00:11:27] when we're doing our survey, right?

[00:11:29] Is that what are we doing with this information?

[00:11:31] As we've been developing our survey,

[00:11:34] which will be going out May 1st,

[00:11:36] all of you listening, please take part.

[00:11:39] But we think about if we're not going to present

[00:11:42] this information,

[00:11:43] if this is not going to be useful to anyone, this is not a question we need to ask.

[00:11:47] And we go line by line on a very large survey and make sure that's the case is this something

[00:11:52] people can take action on.

[00:11:54] And it's a good practice for you to think about when you're developing anything, any

[00:11:59] of your policies and procedures in HR person.

[00:12:02] You realize of course there's always going gonna be compliance issues, but anything that is sort of voluntary,

[00:12:07] anything you are doing that involves,

[00:12:10] as Stacy said, engagement.

[00:12:11] Okay, that's good.

[00:12:12] You've got people there, they're listening,

[00:12:14] they're, you built that trust, but now take action.

[00:12:17] Right? That's always the next step.

[00:12:18] Otherwise you'll lose that.

[00:12:20] And make sure you're understanding their perception

[00:12:23] of fairness or their perception of respect.

[00:12:26] I think that's the harder part sometimes

[00:12:28] because what's fair to one person might not be fair to another.

[00:12:30] You've really got to think about that.

[00:12:32] It requires more than cookie cutter

[00:12:34] is probably my most important thing

[00:12:36] that I got out of that from the conversation

[00:12:37] I had with Michael Wishes

[00:12:39] is that we can't cookie cutter the conversation with people.

[00:12:41] We have to understand, be in the conversation with them

[00:12:45] and be aware of what is driving their perceptions in some cases, right? And then we can have a

[00:12:50] real outcome that we're trying to achieve. Yeah, that's wonderful. And speaking of taking action,

[00:12:55] I'm really stretching the Segway here. Belftail announced that they have a new AI driven HR assistant, HR co-pilot. They released a video on their LinkedIn,

[00:13:09] also on their just main website, showing how it would work. One of the things that stood out to me,

[00:13:15] a lot of this was, I won't say cookie cutter, you just said that's an answer. But, you know,

[00:13:22] it's a yeah, what you would expect. I like to know my benefits.

[00:13:25] Now, it's one thing if you go in and type,

[00:13:27] what are the benefits and you get,

[00:13:28] it redirects you to the page that shows you

[00:13:30] what benefits are available.

[00:13:32] But what I liked was a term you used earlier,

[00:13:35] Stacey, hyper personalization,

[00:13:36] that's what we're seeing here.

[00:13:38] You lease in this example that they put out,

[00:13:40] where it says what benefits value to me,

[00:13:42] and it pops up with your benefits

[00:13:44] and the things that

[00:13:45] would be available to you. If you're, you may have different things that are available or would be

[00:13:51] of interest to you depending on your gender or where you stand in the company, that type of thing.

[00:13:58] And so that's what you will see along with what you have now. So it's not just, okay,

[00:14:03] here's, we'll help you find that link,

[00:14:05] but it's not a let me Google that for you.

[00:14:07] It really is working as an assistant, as intended,

[00:14:11] from AI.

[00:14:11] So I really liked seeing that aspect of it.

[00:14:14] Yeah, and I think it's interesting.

[00:14:15] I mean, it's not like this is,

[00:14:17] we've definitely saw a lot of these

[00:14:18] as we were doing the road shows last year, right?

[00:14:19] Various people putting in place,

[00:14:21] some of them have them working,

[00:14:22] some of them didn't have them working yet, right?

[00:14:24] These sort of assistants that we're gonna dive in

[00:14:26] and get the answer for you, right?

[00:14:28] I think that's not the most unique thing

[00:14:31] about sort of what we're seeing from Dovetail.

[00:14:34] I think the thing that I liked about this,

[00:14:36] and we should probably note that Dovetail for the last time,

[00:14:40] and I wanna say six years,

[00:14:43] but I'll have to go back and double check,

[00:14:44] but I know for at say six years, but I'll have to go back and double check, but I know for at least six years.

[00:14:46] Doug, as long as we've been doing user experience and vendor satisfaction ratings on the help

[00:14:52] desk space, I should put it that.

[00:14:54] That's probably a better way to put it, which is now for us the HR Service Delivery space

[00:14:59] because it's expanded out to this broader view that includes a lot of the engagement

[00:15:03] platforms and the

[00:15:05] portal technologies and things that go along with it.

[00:15:08] Dubb Tale has always ranked in the upper right corner for both the user experience and vendor

[00:15:13] satisfaction.

[00:15:14] And for the last several years, when we broke it out by size and range, they still got top

[00:15:18] user experience and vendor satisfaction ranges, even in different sort of size ranges of organizations.

[00:15:24] And they're not a huge company. They're smaller in the earnings date in the market.

[00:15:28] But I think what I've always found interesting about sort of,

[00:15:31] we will go look into sort of validating the data and looking at their comments is that their customers always feel like they go the extra mile and connecting the data

[00:15:40] and making sure that during that implementation, it's not just put it in and get half the information

[00:15:45] sort of lined up and go,

[00:15:48] that they really work hard to make sure

[00:15:50] that there's some business outcomes tied

[00:15:51] to that implementation and they focus on that

[00:15:54] and that the data that they get back from it

[00:15:56] helps them continue to do iterations of the environment.

[00:15:58] And so I think it's that process

[00:16:00] that kind of makes what you just talked about

[00:16:02] more valuable because hyper personalization

[00:16:05] requires that you connect a lot of different data points and oftentimes that's not in a single

[00:16:11] system and that's hard work and if you don't have someone your company knows how to do it and

[00:16:15] your vendor doesn't help you do it oftentimes those connections stay broken right and so

[00:16:20] even though the technology can do it it doesn't it isn't able to bring that information back.

[00:16:21] even though the technology can do it, it doesn't, it isn't able to bring that information back.

[00:16:24] Exactly.

[00:16:25] I think there's one other thing that I like seeing here

[00:16:28] of sort of an advancement over just the basics

[00:16:32] in that any actions that were taking place

[00:16:36] while using this assistant,

[00:16:38] even within the demonstration they were showing

[00:16:40] required human oversight,

[00:16:41] something that we talked about quite a bit too,

[00:16:44] which is I would like to, when this example they showed,

[00:16:48] donate 30 of my vacation hours to a colleague and said, okay, are you sure, you know, what's calling confirm?

[00:16:56] And then said, okay, someone from HR will be reaching out to confirm with you.

[00:16:59] So you kind of got the ball rolling, but at no point is it just completely taken over, which was interesting because one of the statistics that they quoted

[00:17:08] was that 92% of HR departments see value in using chatbots

[00:17:13] to guiding information, guiding place to information they need.

[00:17:17] I liked it despite that.

[00:17:19] They say, OK, but it can't just be that.

[00:17:21] Right.

[00:17:21] Yeah.

[00:17:21] So well, in our data show, but I think we're, it's still just 16% in our data this year,

[00:17:27] of organizations who have implemented chat

[00:17:29] but specifically in the HR space, right?

[00:17:32] Yeah, it'll be interesting to see how that grows.

[00:17:34] Yeah, and that's always interesting too,

[00:17:36] as it kind of brings us back to what we were talking about

[00:17:38] before, it's one thing to have the information

[00:17:40] started to act on it, right?

[00:17:41] So nine out of 10 people say,

[00:17:43] yeah, there's value.

[00:17:45] Well, do what you do it?

[00:17:45] Well, no.

[00:17:46] It's a lot of work.

[00:17:48] You know what I mean?

[00:17:49] Yeah, because there's nervousness, there's fears,

[00:17:52] or it could be a cost,

[00:17:54] it could be a lot of different issues

[00:17:56] that hold people back.

[00:17:57] And I think part of that demonstration was meant

[00:18:00] to alleviate some of those concerns saying,

[00:18:02] don't worry, it won't be everyone will be running a mock and messing with all of our records always require human oversight.

[00:18:09] Someone we always love to see.

[00:18:11] Which is important to HR.

[00:18:13] And that kind of leads into our next conversation because the next conversation is about an

[00:18:17] organization that is trying to get more data into people's hands, but they're doing it

[00:18:21] through a bit of AI work, right?

[00:18:23] Yeah.

[00:18:24] So, Clorro, we're assuming this is it, right?

[00:18:27] I'm not just showing off my 100-day Duolingo streak.

[00:18:30] Clorro is this company that is an analytics organization.

[00:18:34] And fascinating stuff, Stacey, you'd sent this to me, but they had reached out as well.

[00:18:39] And there are AI-powered labor market reports.

[00:18:41] And we here at Saping Insights Group, love to check our data against any publicly available sources of data.

[00:18:48] And we have a large population of our survey takers that are US or at least North American-based.

[00:18:54] And so we really like to be able to see sort of benchmark our own data or get new data.

[00:19:01] But it can be difficult if anyone's ever had to work in the Bureau of Labor Statistics

[00:19:06] in the US, my hat's off to you because it can be difficult

[00:19:11] sometimes, right?

[00:19:13] And so having that ability to, as you said,

[00:19:16] do what we were just talking about, if I could just type in,

[00:19:19] hey, could you let me know how the unemployment rate

[00:19:22] has changed in three year increments?

[00:19:25] You'd rather not be able to literally download PDFs

[00:19:28] and all that sort of stuff.

[00:19:30] If that could be done, wonderful.

[00:19:32] Now, that being said, I have not actually tried using this yet,

[00:19:37] but I think they call it a game changer

[00:19:39] and I believe it would be for those of us

[00:19:41] that need to work with those largely accessible data points.

[00:19:45] And so being able to get that sort of data

[00:19:50] from what need to be very large reports

[00:19:53] would be very helpful in data.

[00:19:55] Yeah, so first off, congratulations on your streak

[00:19:58] for Duolingo.

[00:19:59] Mine has never been very long.

[00:20:01] And I will say, know that I have a lot of friends

[00:20:04] who comment on how good they are Duolingo and still can't really say anything in the language.

[00:20:09] So, yeah, and I think that so, Clara, if you told me correctly, the word itself means clear, right? Is that correct? It's all things conversationally that way. I always love looking at the etymology of the naming

[00:20:26] that people put around companies, right?

[00:20:27] And where they come from the backgrounds and stuff.

[00:20:29] For us, the safety and to meaning wisdom

[00:20:30] was a big part of our conversation

[00:20:32] when we decided to be safe and insight script.

[00:20:34] But I do think that this,

[00:20:36] I've talked for a long time about

[00:20:39] if you're gonna do workforce planning,

[00:20:40] you, one of the most impactful things,

[00:20:43] beyond things like internal data around roles

[00:20:48] within the organization and position management, which we know already ties, and we've got correlations

[00:20:53] behind how important that is to sort of planning discussions. The other thing that often comes

[00:20:58] up when we look at our data as something that really adds bottom line value is external added data. Whether that is external data on weather patterns

[00:21:08] or store data or maybe sales expectations

[00:21:11] or something like this, which is labor data,

[00:21:14] it's really powerful to have something

[00:21:16] to compare your own data to in a way

[00:21:20] that's gonna be of value to what you're doing.

[00:21:22] But I think to close point again,

[00:21:24] we haven't got a break with this organization.

[00:21:26] It's on our list, but I wanted to bring it up today because I do think we're going to

[00:21:30] see more of this.

[00:21:31] I've seen a couple of organizations, one that I had referenced last year at the HR Tech

[00:21:36] Conference is one of the emerging technology companies to watch.

[00:21:38] I think it's a company that does a similar kind of thing like this, but they're still

[00:21:43] have a process that they go for.

[00:21:45] It's kind of manual to get that data in front of people,

[00:21:47] but the way they pull it is very AI driven, right?

[00:21:50] This, I think, from what I understood from the announcement

[00:21:53] is that they're sort of also pulling it through A,

[00:21:55] but they're presenting it in a way

[00:21:57] that's a little bit more easy to use.

[00:21:59] Because that is always the struggle, right?

[00:22:00] Like there's so much data how you present it

[00:22:03] and how people can sort of ingest it

[00:22:05] becomes the part or part of this sometimes. And so, but I do think that this is, if you're looking

[00:22:10] at where you want to sort of do some innovation, do some testing, I would definitely make sure you

[00:22:15] put aside budgets or at least some time if your organization, if you do any level of workforce

[00:22:20] planning, to start to look at tools that do this kind of thing, not anyone in particular,

[00:22:25] but external data is going to be a big part, I think, of what will make these artificial

[00:22:30] intelligence conversations make more sense inside of our organizations, right?

[00:22:34] Yeah, and that'll be another one that we have been asking in our survey and it will be

[00:22:39] monitoring again this year to see some changes.

[00:22:42] External data benchmarking, external data collection tools,

[00:22:45] because that's someone we've seen growth.

[00:22:47] Again, it's a small percentage,

[00:22:48] but we suspect that it will continue to grow

[00:22:52] as people find the importance of what they can do with it.

[00:22:55] That's kind of keep that common thread going, right?

[00:22:57] What actions can you take place?

[00:22:59] What actions can you take with that information?

[00:23:02] So keeping on this AI train won't stop.

[00:23:05] All day today, isn't it? Yeah.

[00:23:07] It's like the old days back. It does prove the fact that I think we started saying it

[00:23:12] as early as around this time last year that there are certain things you see as trends

[00:23:17] or fads or buzzwords even, just things that come up in HR and you're, I don't know if

[00:23:23] this is really something I need to spend a whole lot of time thinking about. And we, I think we said last year,

[00:23:28] this is here to stay. And I think this kind of proves it because here we are more than

[00:23:33] halfway through and we've just been talking about AI. But hey, the US government agrees

[00:23:37] because the Biden Harris administration announced their first ever consortium, specifically about AI safety. So that'll be under the AI safety institute.

[00:23:48] It's a whole new thing.

[00:23:50] The NIST will have it all the way over, but we've now got a whole new acronym because the US government never does enough acronyms.

[00:23:58] So the AI SIC, the AI safety institute consortium, will be a group that has everything from academics

[00:24:09] to public office, holders, industry researchers. They haven't reached out to us yet, but it's

[00:24:15] only a matter of time, I'm sure. And it will sort of be in charge of implementation, interpretation, and oversight of that executive order that we talked about

[00:24:29] a few months ago, the US executive order on risk evaluation and sort of guidelines for

[00:24:36] the use or non-use of AI applications.

[00:24:40] So that's been wonderful because we've been talking about sort of what are the benefits or potential dangers of AI all today.

[00:24:49] And now we're finally getting some guidance here.

[00:24:52] Yeah, this is, I mean, it's good to see. I think it's expected. I don't think this is anything that we weren't expecting.

[00:24:57] I mean, right now it sounds like it's about 200.

[00:24:59] The colleague AI stakeholders is what they're calling it, so there's been 200 different groups involved in this. I think the thing that's probably most important

[00:25:07] about this is that we are seeing organizations

[00:25:11] and businesses and governments and entities

[00:25:15] around the world take this a lot more seriously

[00:25:18] than they took when the web started growing.

[00:25:22] Now, I think there's two perspectives on that. Will this early leap into

[00:25:28] regulations cause a damper on the innovations that could go around this? And that might be. I mean,

[00:25:34] one of the things that grew the growth of the worldwide web was that we didn't see a lot of

[00:25:40] early regulations. It kind of broadly swept across the market and broadly swept across

[00:25:45] the world before governments really sort of got their arms wrapped around it, which really

[00:25:49] led to a very open network for a very long time until things started getting regulated

[00:25:54] heavily.

[00:25:55] Same thing with social media.

[00:25:56] There was a lot more just letting it go and then regulating afterwards.

[00:25:59] We're not seeing that happen with AI and we're hoping, and I think because we've been

[00:26:03] burned a few times and sometimes that path of just letting it go and see what happens. So I'm a little bit more on

[00:26:10] the side in this particular case that we probably do need regulations earlier on because I do think

[00:26:14] this is going to have an impact very quickly and very directly on people's lives as we already know

[00:26:19] in watching what's happening in businesses. We're seeing a lot of organizations already make decisions

[00:26:24] about layoffs based off of the direction of moving into AI.

[00:26:27] We're already seeing organizations make hiring decisions

[00:26:30] and we're already seeing organizations make

[00:26:32] promotion decisions tied to AI content.

[00:26:34] We really need to have, there was a great article

[00:26:37] that Anita Lenkin put out a few weeks back

[00:26:39] if you didn't see it on,

[00:26:41] does AI need a human oversight?

[00:26:44] Like there was a whole conversation about, do you have to do a check-in on a regular basis

[00:26:48] to test your AI?

[00:26:49] And I've been saying for years that you should have a calibration and an audit process for

[00:26:54] any algorithm that's running, even just when we should definitely have it for this, in my

[00:26:57] opinion, because the mistakes can be made at a much faster pace.

[00:27:01] And it's making decisions based off of the data that comes from humans, and humans aren't

[00:27:04] perfect.

[00:27:05] So I think this is a really important component.

[00:27:07] Whether or not the government will get it right is another conversation, but I think

[00:27:12] it needs to be here, right?

[00:27:13] I do too.

[00:27:14] You mentioned a couple examples wherein maybe not having Governor O'Sight worked out, right,

[00:27:20] because I'll add to more innovation.

[00:27:21] I think a counter example, or example showing where

[00:27:25] regulation might have been good is if we think about the self

[00:27:27] driving cars thing, right?

[00:27:29] Where we didn't put, we kind of waited and just the innovation

[00:27:33] happened and we got quite literally burned by that, right?

[00:27:37] There was a lot of danger by letting that happen without oversight.

[00:27:40] So just as you as a listener are listening to that,

[00:27:43] remember that it's always a give and take. This is the we're going to really get in the weeds here. But

[00:27:47] this is the old sort of debate around copyright, strangely enough, whereas if everyone has

[00:27:54] the access to information and can build on things, yeah, you'll get innovation. But then

[00:27:58] will you because people won't feel incentivized to create something if they can't be theirs or they can't in some way either get fame or money from

[00:28:09] their creations. So this is the push and pull also of regulation

[00:28:15] in all forms, right? You got to hit the brakes a little bit. Keep

[00:28:18] that self driving car issue there.

[00:28:21] Yeah, and that's, it's important, right? Like I think maybe we jumped to that last

[00:28:26] article because I do want to get to what's going on with Ramco and Hi, Bob. I think both of them

[00:28:29] are important announcements and maybe we'll wrap on that. But this idea of content and media and

[00:28:38] information sharing, it's going to be tightly connected to what's going on with AI. And there's, I think, a really great,

[00:28:47] there's a gentleman who's been in the journalism space

[00:28:50] for quite some time that I've followed for a long time

[00:28:53] who put out a really interesting connection

[00:28:56] between sort of the fact that journalism back

[00:28:59] when the websites and the World Wide Web was growing

[00:29:03] allowed the internet and the process

[00:29:07] of sort of making content more available

[00:29:09] and the internet sort of drive out the integrity

[00:29:12] in some cases and the hard work that we used to put

[00:29:14] into journalism because you could just copy paste

[00:29:17] and get it out to everywhere, right?

[00:29:18] And AI to some extent, we're seeing that happen

[00:29:21] a little bit too in the sense that,

[00:29:22] well, it's just easy, so we're gonna go with it

[00:29:24] and the entities that put out the journalism are going with

[00:29:27] it just as fast as anyone else.

[00:29:30] But true journalism, true content creation, true deep thinking about the topics, deep

[00:29:36] conversations about the content, that's not replaceable.

[00:29:39] And I think that was the conversation he was having, which is if we do our job well, it's

[00:29:44] not replaceable,

[00:29:45] right? Yeah, I would agree to a certain extent. I think he also, the gentleman's name, I think,

[00:29:49] is Adam Timworth, not to be confused with William Timcup, a different person altogether, but

[00:29:55] shout out to both of them. But yeah, sort of setting a warning to, as this AI revolution is

[00:30:03] happening, let's not repeat the mistakes of the past.

[00:30:06] It really felt that by allowing,

[00:30:09] especially social media, which you had mentioned earlier,

[00:30:11] Stacy, as a big movement,

[00:30:13] we allowed a few companies to sort of consolidate

[00:30:16] and create these what are called walled gardens, right?

[00:30:18] Everything's really nice, but you can't leave, right?

[00:30:21] And so the information, both in and out, right, your posts can only go there and they'll

[00:30:28] decide what gets disseminated and how. And we mentioned as an example of one that we as

[00:30:35] a people sort of got right, right, by just RSS feeds are just that that anyone can use

[00:30:40] whatever one they want, anyone can make a podcast or anyone can make a podcast,

[00:30:46] even us.

[00:30:47] No, but they really did.

[00:30:49] We did a good job of that, of creating that.

[00:30:51] And you mentioned some of the new things

[00:30:53] that are coming out.

[00:30:55] I'm asked on and blue sky, which I'm on now,

[00:30:58] which really helped create these sort of federated platforms.

[00:31:03] They're all sorts of small independent states

[00:31:07] that can link up, right?

[00:31:09] And can keep it for being in the hands

[00:31:11] of just a few small players that monopolize that information.

[00:31:15] And so his sort of cold arms, can we do this with journalism, right?

[00:31:21] Is this the space for this?

[00:31:23] But I think this is tied to a broader

[00:31:26] conversation you just mentioned, which is this is true of just information, which I guess in a

[00:31:32] sense is what journalism is. But if you are thinking about this in a sense of how does this

[00:31:38] apply to my business, right? So here we are, we're bringing in full circle. It's not just

[00:31:42] information. But what can we do with it? Right?

[00:31:45] And that idea of trust and transparency,

[00:31:48] how is information stored in your organization?

[00:31:51] Who has access to it?

[00:31:53] What are your policies on why are they that way?

[00:31:56] What would happen, right?

[00:31:57] If the person with the password is gone,

[00:31:59] who can access this sort of stuff?

[00:32:01] And I love this idea of just keeping it very open,

[00:32:05] adapt to just assuming that things are going to change.

[00:32:09] As you said, job roles can change,

[00:32:11] but if you go in with the right attitude,

[00:32:14] so sort of building on what you said, Stacey, about,

[00:32:17] if we do it well, then we're safe,

[00:32:19] but also if we go on with the right mindset, right,

[00:32:22] of I want people to know this information.

[00:32:25] This is important, this is important information.

[00:32:27] Oh, and if there is restrictions being very sure

[00:32:30] of why that information is restricted

[00:32:32] and HR lives in this world, right?

[00:32:34] So it's important always re-examine

[00:32:37] how things work nowadays.

[00:32:39] If we think about that example of someone using self-service

[00:32:44] and chatbots to get information,

[00:32:46] they're doing some of that work and they need access to infotome make the best possible

[00:32:51] decisions.

[00:32:52] So is there any reason they should happen?

[00:32:54] Of course, there's going to be HIPAA restrictions and things like that.

[00:32:57] But it is time to examine what they should have access to and why and all of those sort

[00:33:02] of questions.

[00:33:03] So I love this very broad

[00:33:05] conversation because I think it sets the foundation for what we do at a more tactical day to day

[00:33:12] level, but it's important to lay that foundation so that we don't make those mistakes again.

[00:33:16] Yeah, and it opens up the conversation about flexibility because I think all of this

[00:33:21] conversation about AI can be so scary that it's easy to just lock it all down,

[00:33:25] to just say we're going to have one place, one area, one voice, and that feels like the right

[00:33:31] way to do it because we're trying to keep everyone safe. But in all honesty, we might have better

[00:33:38] outcomes by being a little bit more open, but making sure there's guardrails in that open way

[00:33:43] we're doing it, right? And so I think that was part of what caught me off of this

[00:33:47] was yes, it's not gonna be, our content may not be replaceable,

[00:33:50] but it's also important to remember that where it's housed

[00:33:53] and how it's housed is a big conversation too, right?

[00:33:56] Yes, yeah.

[00:33:57] I always joke that I seem to turn every single conversation

[00:34:00] into data governance, but I really think that's all

[00:34:02] we're really talking about.

[00:34:03] I think it's really important to think about.

[00:34:06] But I know you had mentioned a couple of organizations

[00:34:09] that had some changes, some developments and advancements

[00:34:12] that we wanted to mention.

[00:34:13] So I don't know if you wanna talk at any length,

[00:34:16] but Ramco, like Ramco systems,

[00:34:19] they're more well known in India,

[00:34:22] but do have a very large presence here in the US and they've launched Ramco Pace.

[00:34:27] Now, this is spelled PAYCE.

[00:34:31] This is not the one I'm assuming it's gonna be PACE

[00:34:33] is in kind of moving forward like the walking pace,

[00:34:36] but for some reason they've just joined the long list

[00:34:39] of pay companies with the word pay in there,

[00:34:43] but it's PAYCE and it is a platform based payroll software.

[00:34:48] Anything, I know you had really looked into this,

[00:34:51] Stacella.

[00:34:52] Yeah, I mean, I've been at Ramco for a while

[00:34:54] and we've done some briefings.

[00:34:55] And I will say I haven't had a briefing on this particular

[00:34:57] wine.

[00:34:58] Sometimes we get this news and we just want to get it out

[00:35:00] to everyone.

[00:35:01] I think what's most important here is Ramco's got about 500

[00:35:04] customers,

[00:35:05] I believe, now in their HR space. They've got much more in their ERP and broader other

[00:35:09] applications that they run. But they've been very focused on sort of being very flexible.

[00:35:14] It's been a big thing that they've been focused on in their approach to sort of meaning customer

[00:35:18] needs. I think what they've done is they've re-platformed is my sense based off of what I

[00:35:23] understand from the data that they've shared and the people that I've talked to.

[00:35:26] And in that replatforming, they've made their technology more efficient.

[00:35:29] They've made it sort of run faster.

[00:35:31] They're probably putting in a lot of more modern pools like the GUI interfaces.

[00:35:34] A lot of things that you'll see in other technology, but given the fact that they are in a region

[00:35:40] where I think the market's hot right now and people are really looking to automate payroll

[00:35:44] in a way they haven't probably heard traditionally. We're probably going to see

[00:35:49] a lot more of this kind of announcement coming out from organizations that are focused on

[00:35:54] either the European market or the Asia Pacific market. Not that Ramco doesn't cover other

[00:35:58] areas, but that is definitely one of their big focus areas. They cover about 150 countries

[00:36:04] with their platform.

[00:36:05] Now that I do not believe is their payroll model,

[00:36:08] they're not doing 150 countries in payroll,

[00:36:10] but they probably have employees

[00:36:12] who are on the system in those countries.

[00:36:14] And it sounds like they've invested a lot

[00:36:15] in on-demand reporting and guided implementation.

[00:36:18] But payroll is definitely the topic this month, right?

[00:36:20] We had a couple of announcements last week on payroll.

[00:36:23] I think the other big one that I thought was really worth mentioning is the high Bob announcement.

[00:36:28] High Bob did an acquisition of Pento.

[00:36:31] And Cliff, I know you had just a little bit of a chance to look at this, but high Bob for a long time has been probably premier talent management solution. Okay, it really ends with that Middle East region as far as servicing a lot of country

[00:36:45] place service a lot of US based companies as well.

[00:36:48] Very internationally focused.

[00:36:50] They're a great talent management tool for people who have a lot of employees in a lot

[00:36:53] of different regions and countries.

[00:36:56] They have a really big focus on their core HR system.

[00:36:59] payroll has not been their central focus.

[00:37:01] And so this acquisition for them was pretty big, wasn't it?

[00:37:04] It'll be big and it'll allow them to kind of continue expanding what they're doing. I did look into

[00:37:09] this. This will be available for their UK customers first. So the HiBob UK group, you're getting this

[00:37:16] in 2024 with plans to expand it out further. Obviously anything with payroll every time you

[00:37:22] add a region, it just gets exponentially more difficult and complicated. But that is their original. That is their plan so far,

[00:37:29] the roadmap going forward. And I know we're wrapping up here, I believe, I would, yeah,

[00:37:35] we did mention the day force will also be debuting their AABAC assistant or at least AI back sort of whatever you want to call it. That will be,

[00:37:47] I believe the day before you as listeners will get this. So that is some, that's the hottest tea

[00:37:55] I think we've ever spilled. Well, that's the stages right there with that as well, right?

[00:38:00] So, Stagie Tara, so we've got two that are sort of launching basically in the next two weeks with the co-pilot conversation, right?

[00:38:08] And I think that basically is just going to show that this is going to be an expected

[00:38:12] piece in a lot of platforms.

[00:38:14] The question is, is this a piece of technology looking for a problem or is there a problem

[00:38:17] that these pieces of technologies are fixing?

[00:38:19] I'm waiting to see how they're leveraging them inside these tools, right?

[00:38:22] Much to consider.

[00:38:24] That's a good point.

[00:38:28] I dropped that thought on his right here at the end.

[00:38:30] I always do. I'm so good at that.

[00:38:31] But yeah, I'm excited to see these companies making these changes, right?

[00:38:33] I think Sage did a briefing.

[00:38:34] We'll have more updates on it in our next call, but I tend to just briefly.

[00:38:38] And obviously there's a lot of focus for them on their finance side, but they're

[00:38:42] definitely sort of investing in this HR and AI

[00:38:46] conversation. And we know Dayforce has been for quite some time as well. And I'm sure we're going

[00:38:51] to get a lot more updates in the next couple of weeks from some of the other offenders in the space

[00:38:54] as well. Absolutely. But yeah, I know it's been a lot of AI, I will mention to even the payroll

[00:39:03] discussions, the payroll sort of platform enhancements or

[00:39:07] rollouts even within those announcements, although we didn't mention during the podcast,

[00:39:11] they mentioned some of their AI capabilities. So thank you all for listening to the very AI

[00:39:17] intensive episode, which I will mention. We did not have anything written or assisted by AI during the creation of this.

[00:39:27] Not today, we have in the past for some abstracts.

[00:39:29] So we're definitely using it

[00:39:31] and we're definitely using it for some of our data analysis

[00:39:33] and review in a closed environment very carefully.

[00:39:37] But AI is, we're reviewing it

[00:39:42] and figuring out how to use it just like everybody else should be.

[00:39:44] But I think the conversations are worth having that you're looking at all sides of it, We're reviewing it and figuring out how to use it just like everybody else should be.

[00:39:45] But I think the conversations are worth having

[00:39:47] that you're looking at all sides of it.

[00:39:49] My big take one thing away from all of the conversations

[00:39:51] today is that you should have a calibration

[00:39:54] and a check in process.

[00:39:55] That if I leave you with one thing today,

[00:39:56] what about you Cliff?

[00:39:58] Yeah, I think I'm getting used to the sort of

[00:40:00] transparency thing.

[00:40:02] That's why I mentioned that we didn't use any

[00:40:04] because some of the regulation they come when we have to say

[00:40:06] we did or when we did or if we did,

[00:40:08] we're seeing that already with image generation.

[00:40:11] So I'm preparing and I like this idea of how we started

[00:40:15] what Michael Bush was talking about

[00:40:17] with this sort of top of this podcast

[00:40:19] beginning of this recording that trusts in transparency,

[00:40:22] just be open, right?

[00:40:24] Well, on that open, right?

[00:40:28] Well, on that note, my apologies, everyone, for we did not stand in 30 minute mark.

[00:40:28] Let's go to once again, whatever.

[00:40:31] But as we wrap up today, I just want to say thank you to everyone for

[00:40:34] participating.

[00:40:35] As always, if any of the data points that we shared from the annual

[00:40:38] HR system survey are of value to you, you can download it off of our website.

[00:40:42] Please be sure to do that.

[00:40:43] It's in our research center marketplace. Also in that report, you'll see that we had covered over 200 HR vendors

[00:40:49] in this year's report and input over 5,000 HR practitioners. Just a side note, if you

[00:40:54] are interested in distributing the survey this year, those efforts have just started.

[00:40:58] We did our Save the Date email. You might have seen those if you're an association vendor,

[00:41:02] big consulting firm, even an influencer who wants to have access to that report

[00:41:07] next year.

[00:41:08] One way to do that is to become one of our distributors

[00:41:10] and our distributor community.

[00:41:11] So that's an opportunity for you.

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[00:41:37] We would love your comments and we also love to hear anything you else

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[00:41:41] We do appreciate it when we would get on the phone calls and people say,

[00:41:44] oh, I listened to you.

[00:41:45] So that makes both the phone and I smile a bit

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[00:41:57] X and Instagram these days.

[00:41:59] Thanks to Cliff for pulling all of this together as usual

[00:42:02] and helping me figure out those great transitions

[00:42:04] between everything.

[00:42:05] Thanks to our production team, including Brand Method Media Group, who helps us produce

[00:42:08] our podcast from by amazing founder Kelly.

[00:42:10] If you haven't seen, she started her own podcast about marketing efforts.

[00:42:15] And I will put a link to that in our notes this week because I do think it's a really

[00:42:20] amazing conversation about where the market is heading on a marketing level and what's

[00:42:24] always good to understand how we reach people in conversations.

[00:42:28] Also thank you to our marketing team, Lisa Renko and Summer Orlena.

[00:42:30] They make sure this gets out to you and everybody has access to it.

[00:42:33] Thanks to our listeners and our community.

[00:42:35] We couldn't do this without you as it is absolutely necessary that you guys are enjoying

[00:42:39] the work that we're putting out.

[00:42:41] And I just want to say thank you to everyone.

[00:42:43] We hope that this has been just the tea you needed and we are wrapping up for the day. Thanks everyone. Bye!