Inclusive AF at HR Tech: Best of 2024–2025

[00:00:00] It's really hard to find great talent and I would implore them to rethink the systems that they've put into place because the current system rewards time, not talent. Like throughout the years and I've seen it across my career is that these barriers to entry are put up because we think it will lead to better talent. But the problem is better talent doesn't have time to jump through those barriers.

[00:00:25] You're listening to Inclusive AF with Jackye Clayton and Katee Van Horn. Hello, hello. How you doing everybody? Look, look, in real life together. It's like amazing. And also look, look, look, look. Ooh, you know what this means. This is going to be a happy hour edition of the Inclusive AF Podcast. Live from Vegas, baby.

[00:00:55] Okay, so Jackie, we're in Vegas for HR Tech. Yes. Do you know what I want to talk about? What? I would like to talk about bias at conferences. You know what? That's a good one. Yeah. So, I think the first piece that I would start off with is looking around. We are in HR. We know HR is heavily dominated by women. That's right. That's right.

[00:01:24] And yet most of the folks here are men. It's... It is so weird. Like, I mean, like, I think the stats are like 82% of people in HR are women. Literally, I think the men outnumber the women here like... Oh, 100%. Yeah, 100%. Yes. Maybe in four to one. Maybe even five to one. Maybe, maybe 19 to one.

[00:01:49] Is it because they send all the men thinking that the HR ladies will be like excited and go to their booth? Mm-hmm. Um, I hope that's not why. All I know, if you remember last year, we went to a party and I found myself standing and I felt very short and they were all... Oh, that's right. That's tall men. I don't remember the software and I was like, this is weird. Yeah. But I also... Yeah, it was... It was weird.

[00:02:19] But it also makes you think about the products that you're purchasing. Like we talk about being inclusive, adding other opinions. And if you're an HR tech company, building HR tech products, and yet you don't have majority of women, there might be something to that. Like, I hope that they ask questions around how are you mitigating bias around AI? Right. What is doing your... What is your recommendation for people who are starting up, founding a company to make

[00:02:49] sure that the AI that they're using does have a little bit of shields in place? Yes. Some kind of protection in place. And I think that that is a conversation that I feel like most folks are having or are thinking about, but there are still, I think, some things that just are not right. They're not... Absolutely not. They're... And I... And it scares me because, I mean, I am also... I guess I'm probably different than most folks because I'm like, I don't care what AI asks me.

[00:03:18] I'll give them any information because I feel like... Let's be clear. My information's out. I think all of our... We have to just understand that all of our information is out there somewhere. That's right. And so I think that that is something that I don't worry so much about. I worry more about just the bias that comes out of like, what it actually delivers, whatever that product is, what it delivers to you as the output. And it was promoting them to guests.

[00:03:47] Promoting to guests as instead of an employee, please do it before Halloween. Oh my God. Thank you. We say it every year. Every year. The reason being, and I know if you're not in HR, maybe this doesn't make sense. The reason being after Halloween, we're getting ready for Thanksgiving. It does something to us psychologically. People are getting ready for the holidays and it's supposed to be a certain time or it's really stressful for a lot of people.

[00:04:12] And as a whole organization can empathize again, to the point of like distraction, that's hard to get back. You will feel horrible. Your organization will feel horrible of anybody that you have to let go after. A hundred percent. Halloween. And you will not recapture that until well, and it'll feel, they'll feel it at Christmas. And then you have new years and then you've done your own resolutions. It takes until March for your whole organization to heal from a layoff. Yes.

[00:04:43] After Halloween. If you do it before Halloween, people feel bad. You have Halloween. And then it's like, we're starting fresh in the beginning of the next quarter and people can feel like there's enough time for healing. And then we see the jobs that get posted at the beginning of the year and people are getting into transition. Why are, why is everyone returning to office? What is the deal with that? They're not really, it's because they don't want to have a public layoff and they want people to quit who are not happy about having to go back to work instead of laying off the people.

[00:05:12] They're telling them in advance so that they can quit and look for another job before January 25th, but they're asking them to come back to the office. I'm telling you, people are using it so that they don't have to declare any of the other things where that people can start looking for other jobs and they will. Yeah. Hello. Hello. This is Katee Van Horn and I am joined by the infamous Miss Robin Schooling. Robin. Hello. Hello, Katie.

[00:05:42] I'm very proud to be playing the part of Jack. Yeah. Today. Yes. Robin is playing Jackye Clayton in this episode of the Inclusive AF Podcast live from the HR executive studio at HR tech. And we are joined by two wonderful guests here. Mark and Caitlin from co advantage. So Caitlin would love for you to introduce yourself, share a little bit about who you are, all that good stuff. And then we'll turn it over to Mark as well to do the same. Great. Yeah. So excited to be here with both of you.

[00:06:10] Um, my name is Caitlin Carrague and I'm the head of strategy at co advantage. Um, and we are a professional employer organization and we've recently merged with prime pay, which is an HR services, um, HCM company. And this year we're actually sponsoring pitch fest at HR tech. So we've been really excited to see some of the innovative talent and up and coming companies in the space. Awesome. Yeah. Pitch fest is one of the, one of my favorite parts. I think Robin, I, you would probably say the same that pitch fest is one of your favorite parts of HR tech.

[00:06:39] We get to see some really cool new things come out. So awesome. Love that you guys are sponsoring that. And Mark. Yes. So I'm Mark Zimmerman. I am the CIO for co-ed and for prime pay to together. Um, responsible for all the technology that we deliver to our clients on both sides of the grounds right now. Um, and like Caitlin, happy to be here and, and joining you guys. So what inspired you to, to be the sponsor for pitch fest? Yeah.

[00:07:07] So, um, we consider our purpose really making small businesses successful. And so this opportunity to sponsor pitch fest was really appealing to us because a lot of the sponsorship dollars actually go directly to that prize, um, which is infusing capital into those startups. And we're also excited by innovation in our space in this industry. And so we wanted to get kind of a front row view of that and kind of be able to support the next up and coming company.

[00:07:32] Um, I think we've been very interested by sort of, I would say the congestion around AI and what we've seen so far, right? Everyone seems to be leveraging AI, but not quite sure how they're going to differentiate yet. So that's also been interesting to us to kind of see what people are bringing to the table from a unique point of view on that. Um, and I think to, to some of your question at the beginning, we've been interested to see how they're using it.

[00:07:57] I would say to improve the way that we hire, um, to make it a more inclusive workforce, right? To try to remove bias where we can, to try to really assess talent, um, on its face. So that's been, I think, inspiring and we're, we're excited to see it. So, uh, what's the, it, has there been anything that stood out for you in terms of any of the tech that you've seen so far? There were a couple that stood out to me. So not to be biased because it was my round, but I did like, I did like hollow, which was

[00:08:25] one of the winners of round one, um, because they're really focused on language skills assessment and supporting BPOs in terms of staffing, like call centers and things like that. Um, which I think is a unique value proposition. And there was another in round one that I did find interesting. I believe it was Bluegen, um, that really was building AI on top of more like semantic language, um, and sort of behavioral syntax. Um, I think we were joking, like, it's a fascinating crossback.

[00:08:54] I think it was harder to understand in a three minute pitch. So it was like, didn't it, what maybe wasn't as sizzly at a front face value, but I think that is where you see some of that differentiation is what are you really building? That is it publicly available? How are you using it to give that perspective that is unique, that is going to help solve some of those true business problems? Yeah. There was, there was one today. I don't remember the name and maybe you will want to describe it. For me, it was almost kind of, it was removing every identifying component about the person,

[00:09:24] their, their name, where they live. Um, even some of their background that would be in LinkedIn and kind of sanitizing those components to kind of, to me, it felt like, well, like the voice for, for hiring, right? So the voice, they turn around, they don't see the person, but they are listening to the voice and then they hit the button and turn around like, that's the, that's, that's the voice I want to pay attention to. So similarly, they were at, they had technology that kind of did that.

[00:09:51] It was job board where, where the employer, I'm sorry, the employee or the job seeker would put their information in and then it would clear it all out. And then the employer, when they were going to do their sourcing, would see it and pick just based on those attributes that were most important to them. And then after that, they went to the next round. So I thought that was very unique. I think there's a few things. So I think there's been a lot more research lately and a lot more conversation around. HR is actually a business impact driver, right?

[00:10:20] And I think like historically, a lot of people have thought of it as maybe a little bit or like fuzzier, right? In that way. And I think now with all of the data available, you actually are able to make direct correlations of what's the cost of the business. If you may have a wrong hire, what's the cost to your reputation? If you aren't known as being a good culture fit or actually good to your people. So I think the conversation has shifted a little bit into more of one that's positive from an ROI standpoint. But I also think we are at an interesting point.

[00:10:49] We've raised AI as a solution. I also think it runs the risk of being a risk and a liability if people start to think they can just use free tools and sort of replace a true people strategy or replace an investment. So I think it's also incumbent upon us to talk about HR as a protector of the business. And you want to invest in it because it really does drive that much more than just we're hiring people, we're retaining people, we're firing people.

[00:11:17] It's the backbone of the business as it stands, right? All right. Welcome, welcome, folks. This is Katee Van Horn and I am without my sidekick today. Jackie is not going to be joining us, but I did bring along a fun guest to have a conversation with so we can learn a little bit today, even in Jackie's absence. So first off, I wanted to just say welcome to the Inclusive AF podcast.

[00:11:44] Curtis would love for you to introduce yourself and share a little about who you are. Glad to be here. I appreciate you inviting me. My name is Curtis Forbes. I am your typical musician turned entrepreneur. How deep into my story would you like me to go? I'm happy to give you all the details. So tell us a little bit about Mustard Hub. What does it do? How does it work? Who is it for?

[00:12:15] Sure. So Mustard Hub is an employee engagement platform and AI predictive insights, right? That helps companies eliminate turnover and keep their great people by making them feel recognized, connected and supported. In short, that's essentially what it is. Excuse me. It's designed essentially to help companies keep people, right?

[00:12:39] It combines a lot of peer driven recognition, life aligned support and some predictive analytics. So employees can feel supported and recognized and really develop sort of that community within the organization. I think unlike a lot of traditional HR software, it's pretty lightweight. It's culture first. It's built to scale across all sorts of different types of organizations, franchises, small businesses and multi-location teams. Cool. Cool.

[00:13:06] And tell me, like, how does that tie into, you know, obviously this is a DEI podcast. How does that tie into and what have you done from an AI perspective to focus on diversity and focus on kind of that inclusion aspect in recognition? Well, you know, I think that what Mustard Hub does, it solves this, you know, we have what we call really a recognition blind spot.

[00:13:35] And that blind spot really is, you know, a function of leaders often recognizing or celebrating their people really in the image of the way that they themselves like to be recognized. Right. And that's, you know, it's a fairly common problem that we see. And so, you know, generally we shift the recognition from managers only to peer first.

[00:14:02] So we can, we layer analytics to surface engagement risks leaders would otherwise miss, you know, and the platform turns these everyday signals like, you know, recognition density, you know, feedback frequency, all these different types of communication and participation analytics into a lot of early warnings for burnout. Where have you implemented this that you really feel like it was a success and it's working well? Well, there've been quite a few.

[00:14:28] I mean, I would say one of the, one of the clearest ways to show our impact is, is through the retention, right? I mean, cause I mean, I think ultimately the, the, the goal here is to keep people right. Reduce turnover, attract great talent. You know, even just replacing one $15 an hour employee can cost a company between $3,500, $5,000. I mean, turnover is expensive.

[00:14:56] If mustard hub helps an employer even retain a single member, right? It offsets the entire cost of our premium tier and then some, right? So we've seen, we've seen early customers recognize this ROI, I think pretty quickly. Um, and we'll, we'll take, you know, we, we do have, uh, some early childhood education. For an example, it's a, it's a good one where we have actually, or we have had, I should say, a lot of users from the very beginning.

[00:15:21] We piloted mustard hub across multiple schools and one of our location turnover dropped for, you know, what I'd call preventable turnover, right? Outside opportunities. Uh, one location actually dropped to zero across an entire year. Another cut turnover in half. A third went from, I'd say almost 20% down to none. Um, it's, it's remarkable. I mean, across those sites that I'm, that I'm thinking about right now and talking about specifically that translates into savings of like, I don't know, probably a lot of people.

[00:15:51] Probably anywhere between 80 to 120, $130,000 a year and avoided replacement costs. I mean, that is an enormous, that is an enormous number. And HR tends to be a cost center or at least thought of as a cost center for most organizations. Um, you know, we saw a similar story with, uh, private equity holdings company, um, portfolio companies with historically high turnover, uh, after rolling mustard hub, after rolling it out, they reduce attrition by.

[00:16:21] And, um, it, depending on the organization within the PE anywhere between 30 and 80% in the first year alone. Um, so when we talk about ROI, right, it's not just theoretical. I think across business. Yeah. Howdy, howdy. This is Katie Van Horn. And Robin schooling.

[00:16:41] With the inclusive AF podcasts, part three of the HR technology recordings extra extraordinaire from Las Vegas, Nevada, HR tech 2025. We're in the HR executive studio recording away. And we have a special guest with us whose name we aren't going to say, we're just going to keep him nameless for this entire episode, just for funsies, because he was mean to us before we started recording.

[00:17:11] So it's all over folks. It's like having a private profile on LinkedIn, just anonymous. So Michael, thank you for joining us. Um, would love for you to introduce yourself and share a little bit about the tech that you brought to share today. Yeah. So, uh, Michael wanting here, uh, been in recruiting for over a decade now. Um, you know, started out on the agency side. Uh, well, kind of backstory. I got burned really bad by a recruiter when I was younger.

[00:17:39] The job was so miserable. It made me go back to school, which honestly I didn't think was possible. And so, you know, when I came out, I love the idea of getting to help people for a living. I thought that was a great way to, to, to make a living, but I've experienced firsthand how miserable recruiters can make people if they don't actually care about what you want to do. And when you're at a big agency, obviously my morals were the lowest of their priorities. You know, you recruit, we tell you to recruit. So I said, okay, I'm going to go out and start my own company.

[00:18:06] Uh, got certified in HR management so that I could really do a good job at like auditing these employers. Cause everyone says they're a great place to work, but I want to know what's the onboarding. Like what's the first 30, 60, 90, how well do you really treat your employees? And, uh, was, was doing that. And I noticed the same problem over and over again, which is, you know, every company complains about how hard it is to find good people. But every candidate I recruited complained about how hard it was to find a good company. And I had this aha moment.

[00:18:36] I was recruiting a director of finance guy was speaking of both buzzwords that needs to be put to death. He's a rock star, uh, but was clearly unhappy with what he was doing. And I asked him, like I do all my candidates. Okay. Well, uh, what tools are you using? What opportunities are you seeing out there? And he said, dude, finding a job is a full-time job. I'm way too busy keeping my head above water here. I do not have time to go dig through job boards. So I just wait on recruiters like you to contact me.

[00:19:05] And that's when, you know, I kind of stepped back and, you know, there's been a lot of innovation in the space that is centered around helping, uh, helping companies find people. But I thought like, why has no one built an app that makes it easy for you to find the right company for you? Not just the job you can do, but a company where you thrive at and you find that real meaning and purpose in your work. Um, so how does the tech that you built address bias in hiring? How does it address kind of that bias and sourcing all of those?

[00:19:34] Yeah, I think, I think the biggest thing is that there's a lot of unintentional bias that I believe could be cleared up by kind of fixing the problem with keyword matching in resumes. Right. A lot of great candidates. I knew a CTO who had to go to his hiring team and turn off ATS filtering because he applied for the job that was underneath him and it didn't even get through. Right. Hit one of those sound effects. Yeah. Oh yeah. Perfect.

[00:20:05] That production value right there. Nice, nice. Yeah. So I, I think that's the hard part right now is that 75% of resumes aren't getting in front of people. And I think I educate companies a lot on, on, on culture, right. And trying to remove the biases that might exist because what a culture is not a group of people who look alike and think alike and sound alike. That's a cult, right? Yeah.

[00:20:33] A culture is a bunch of people from different backgrounds that are united by the mission, the problem that we are trying to solve. And the important thing for me is making it easy for candidates to get in front of those companies. Right. And I think the way we're indirectly challenging biases is by giving these HR executives more qualified candidates to look at that.

[00:20:55] Like the average recruiter spends seven seconds looking at a resume and that, that resume tells you just as much about that person as your job description says about your company. So if your platform could talk directly to HR leaders, basically the audience here, the audience that's listening at home, the audience that's out there, millions of fans listening in right now. What would you want to say to HR leaders?

[00:21:21] It's hard. It's, it's, it's really hard to find great talent. And I would implore them to rethink the systems that they've put into place because the current system rewards time, not talent. Like throughout the years, and I've seen it across my career is that these, these barriers to entry are put up because we think it will lead to better talent.

[00:21:46] But the problem is better talent doesn't have time to jump through those barriers. So I would, I would implore them to, yes, I understand it's hard. It's very, very hard. Um, but we've got to embrace change. And I think everyone here can agree that the current system is not doing a great job. Um, we're making the most of it. Uh, but yeah, I, I would say, look, it's tough, but it's always darkest before the dawn.

[00:22:15] You're listening to inclusive AF with Jackie Clayton and Katie Van Horn.