3Sixty Insights HRTechChat

#HRTechChat: David Edwards on the “Last Mile” from Data to Decisions

Thu, 05 Mar 2026 15:00:00 -0000

In this episode of #HRTechChat, Nicole Roberts (Senior Analyst & Advisor, 3Sixty Insights) is joined by David Edwards—strategic workforce planning practitioner, advisor, and author of The Strategic Workforce Planning Handbook—for a candid conversation about the gap between SWP theory and the messy reality of execution.

David explains why strategic workforce planning still suffers from an identity crisis (too many definitions, too many expectations), and why organizations keep getting trapped in short-term thinking that freezes out long-term capability building. Together, they unpack why chasing “perfect data” can be just as risky as oversimplifying, and why the real skill leaders need—especially as AI accelerates planning inputs—is judgment: knowing what’s decision-grade, what matters most, and what to do next.

The conversation also tackles the evolving role of managers, the incentives that discourage reskilling and redeployment, and why SWP should focus less on planning the entire workforce and more on the truly strategic segments that determine future business performance. David offers a clear challenge to HR tech providers too: analytics aren’t enough—leaders need help walking the “last mile” from dashboards to decisions, in the language of risk, outcomes, and action.

Resources mentioned (including books, discount code, and links):

The Book of Heroic Failures (Stephen Pile):

https://www.amazon.com/Book-Heroic-Failures-Official-Handbook/dp/0708819087

The Strategic Workforce Planning Handbook (David Edwards):

Kogan Page: https://www.koganpage.com/hr-learning-development/the-strategic-workforce-planning-handbook-9781398623590

Discount code: KoganPage25

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Strategic-Workforce-Planning-Handbook-Implement/dp/1398623598/

HR Conference Cruise:

https://hrcruise.com/

#HRTechChat: Aman Kaur-Shaik on Why AI Adoption in HR Starts with Knowledge, Data, and Culture

Wed, 04 Mar 2026 15:00:00 -0000

In this episode of #HRTechChat, Dylan Teggart speaks with Aman Kaur-Shaikh—HR Director at Nutrien, member of the 3SixtyInsights Global Executive Advisory Council, and a 2024 Global Top 100 HR Executive—about what it really takes for organizations to adopt AI successfully.

Aman explains why the biggest barrier to AI adoption isn’t the technology itself, but the environment organizations have built around it. From fragmented knowledge bases and outdated policies to inconsistent data and unclear guardrails, many HR teams are trying to layer advanced AI tools on top of systems that were never designed for them.

Together, they explore why the hype around AI is beginning to settle, how HR leaders can move from experimentation to practical adoption, and why starting with strong knowledge management and data foundations matters more than chasing the latest tools. Aman also shares a simple four-part model for introducing AI into day-to-day work—focusing on small, repeatable improvements, building AI habits that enhance productivity, and creating the behavioral and governance frameworks needed to support long-term success.

If organizations want AI to truly augment how work gets done, the path forward isn’t bigger technology investments—it’s better data, clearer knowledge, and a culture ready to adapt.

#HRTechChat: Do More With Less Is Breaking Managers (and What to Do About It) — with JD Dillon

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 15:00:00 -0000

In this episode of #HRTechChat, Dylan Teggart is joined by JD Dillon—advisor, speaker, and author of The Modern Learning Ecosystem—to unpack the “do more with less” reality shaping work in 2026 and why managers are taking the brunt of it. JD explains how constant change, unclear AI mandates, and shrinking labor budgets are pressing frontline and middle managers from both sides—corporate demands on one side, team needs on the other.

Together, they explore why traditional leadership development isn’t meeting the moment, why “engagement” is losing meaning as a guiding metric, and what actually helps organizations adapt when disruption hits. JD makes the case that if you’re going to prioritize one investment in the employee experience, make it managers—by giving them time, clarity, and permission to lead. The conversation also digs into how vendors can translate people initiatives into operational outcomes, why “systems of work” matter more than one-off training pushes, and how long-term capability-building shows up when it counts most.

#HRTechChat: The Economics of HR - Speaking the Language of Business with Maria Scarangella

Wed, 07 Jan 2026 15:00:00 -0000

In this episode of #HRTechChat, Nicole Roberts is joined by Maria Scarangella to tackle one of the most persistent challenges facing HR today: proving business value in a climate defined by cost pressure, efficiency mandates, and heightened executive scrutiny. Drawing on her 37-year career at GEICO—including leadership of a $2.5B P&L—and her current work building Marstella, Maria explains why HR risks losing its strategic seat when it speaks only in HR metrics instead of business outcomes.

Together, they explore how quantifying the true cost of hiring, onboarding, training, and turnover can fundamentally change executive decision-making—from smarter workforce planning to more targeted investments in technology and development. Maria outlines why “a lot” is not a number, how lifecycle cost visibility creates accountability across leaders, and why HR leaders must understand how the business actually makes money if they want credibility with boards, CFOs, and investors. The conversation also looks ahead at the future of HR tech, the limits of AI without economic context, and how people metrics are increasingly sitting alongside financial KPIs in boardrooms—especially in PE-backed environments. The result is a practical, data-driven roadmap for HR leaders ready to shift from cost center to value driver.

#HRTechChat: Jeff Smith of 15Five on Building Better Managers in the Age of AI

Fri, 12 Dec 2025 15:00:00 -0000

In this episode of #HRTechChat, Nicole Roberts sits down with Jeff Smith, COO of 15Five, to unpack what it really takes to build better managers in an era of AI, constant change, and overflowing HR to-do lists. A psychologist by training with deep R&D and product experience, Jeff brings a rare lens on how organizations can redesign systems, expectations, and technology to truly support people leaders—not just measure them.

They dig into the mounting pressure on HR and managers, the shift from “HR owns all people issues” to shared accountability, and why management has to be treated as a daily practice, not a one-time promotion. Jeff explains how tools like 15Five and Kona AI can turn everyday one-on-ones into continuous performance data, simplify review cycles, and give leaders real-time coaching—while still honoring privacy, governance, and the realities of legal and IT risk. Along the way, they explore common failure modes: promoting star ICs into roles they aren’t equipped for, burying managers in 20-question reviews, and ignoring the signals that your best people no longer want to step into leadership.

If you still think “being a good manager” is something people just figure out on their own, this conversation will change your mind.

#HRTechChat: Heike Wiesner and Alastair Pride on Payroll Trends and Innovation at Unit4

Wed, 13 Aug 2025 14:00:00 -0000

In this episode of #HRTechChat, Dylan Teggart sits down with Heike Wiesner, Global Sales Growth Director HCM, and Alastair Pride, Managing Principal Consultant, of Unit4 to explore the evolving role of payroll as a strategic business driver.

They discuss how cloud migration, integrated ERP systems, and innovations like Unit4’s Payroll Navigator are transforming payroll from a back-office function into a core asset for workforce planning, compliance, and employee trust. From real-time visibility to faster, smarter deployments, Heike and Alastair share how Unit4 is helping organizations simplify complexity, boost efficiency, and adapt to shifting workforce demands.

If you think payroll is just about getting people paid, it’s time to think bigger.

#HRTechChat: Darwinbox’s Samrat Krishna on Killing the Toggle Tax and Unleashing AI Agents at Work

Fri, 08 Aug 2025 14:00:00 -0000

AI is changing the game—but not in the way you think. In this episode of #HRTechChat, we’re sharing a special swapcast from the PeopleTech podcast hosted by Mark Feffer, featuring Samrat Krishna of Darwinbox.

Samrat unpacks how AI agents are killing the “toggle tax” and rethinking enterprise software altogether. Instead of juggling dozens of systems and interfaces, agents now act on your behalf—fetching info, taking action, and streamlining workflows across platforms.

They dig into the mechanics of MCP (Modular Component Protocol), how Darwinbox is building for agent-first environments, and what HR leaders should automate today to unlock strategic headspace tomorrow.

If you think AI is about replacing people, you’re asking the wrong question.

Tune in to learn how to shift from assistance to agency—and why that shift changes everything.

#HRTechChat: Meredith Reilly on Building Your Advisory Village and Scaling HR Strategically

Fri, 25 Jul 2025 13:45:00 -0000

Small businesses face growing complexity in HR, payroll, and benefits—but too often, leaders carry the burden alone. In this episode of #HRTechChat, Dylan Teggart talks with Meredith Reilly, Chief Sales Officer at isolved, about why it’s time to stop going solo.

Meredith shares how modern HR demands strategic partnerships—not just tools—and how activating an “advisory village” can help leaders scale smarter. From tech fluency to cultural alignment, they break down what today’s HR advisors must bring to the table.

If you’re still treating vendors as service providers, you’re missing the point.

Tune in to learn how synergy, not solo effort, drives results.

GTM Innovators: Vetting the Future with John Baldino - Trust, AI, and the Human Touch

Mon, 12 May 2025 14:00:00 -0000

In this episode of GTM Innovators, host Kyle James sits down with John Baldino, President of Humareso and co-host of the But First Coffee Podcast, for a candid conversation on the future of AI in the workplace. This discussion explores how organizations must balance innovation with responsibility when adopting AI technologies. John shares his insights on building trust, maintaining ethical standards, and preserving the human element as AI continues to reshape the way we work. From recruitment to performance management, this episode offers practical advice for leaders navigating the rapidly evolving landscape of technology and talent.

#HRTechChat: Ahmad Noordin on HR-IT Collaboration and Simplifying Employee Tech

Fri, 02 May 2025 12:00:00 -0000

As organizations face growing complexity and rapid change, the need for simple, integrated HR solutions is more urgent than ever—especially in industries where high attrition and operational efficiency collide.

In this episode of #HRTechChat, 3Sixty Insights’ Dylan Teggart sits down with Ahmad Noordin, VP of HR Technology at a leading U.S. property management company, to explore how HR and IT can partner to drive better employee experiences without overcomplicating processes.

Ahmad shares how his background in both technology and HR uniquely positions him to bridge the gap between functional needs and technical capabilities. Together, they discuss the growing shift toward simplification in HR tech, the role of no-code and low-code platforms, and why ease of use has become a competitive advantage in workforce technology.

From selecting practical solutions and balancing vendor partnerships to embracing AI as a wrapper for fragmented systems, Ahmad unpacks how organizations can reduce friction, improve usability, and deliver faster outcomes for managers and employees alike.

How can HR and IT avoid working in silos? Why is simplification the new sophistication? And where does AI fit into the evolving digital employee experience?

Tune in as Ahmad offers clear, actionable insights on uniting people and technology in pursuit of seamless, human-centered HR.

#HRTechChat: Heidi Barnett on ApplicantPro’s Evolution and Integration with isolved

Wed, 30 Apr 2025 12:00:00 -0000

As workforce expectations evolve and hiring challenges mount, the need for seamless, scalable recruitment strategies has never been more critical—especially in industries where speed and simplicity make or break business outcomes.

In this episode of HRTechChat, 3Sixty Insights’ Dylan Teggart sits down with Heidi Barnett, former CEO of ApplicantPro and now a strategic leader at isolved, to discuss the recent merger between the two companies—and what it means for the future of talent acquisition.

Heidi brings her marketing-first mindset to HR, unpacking how ApplicantPro’s streamlined, high-conversion applicant tracking capabilities are now being scaled through isolved’s expansive HCM platform. Together, they explore the rising pressures on HR teams in SMB and mid-market companies, the realities of modern recruitment in high-turnover sectors like restaurants and healthcare, and the critical role AI and automation play in supporting overworked managers.

From applicant matching and video screening to managed recruitment services and mobile-first candidate engagement, Heidi explains how isolved and ApplicantPro are combining forces to help businesses move faster, hire smarter, and reduce operational friction—without sacrificing human connection.

What makes recruiting harder than ever in today’s labor market? How can AI actually restore humanity in the hiring process? And how can HR tech providers meet the needs of growing businesses across a fragmented talent landscape?

Tune in as Heidi shares practical insights on speed-to-hire, employee retention, and why the future of recruiting is both tech-driven and deeply human.

HRTechChat: How Yutaka Takagi and isolved Are Solving Hiring & Retention Challenges in QSRs

Fri, 18 Apr 2025 13:00:00 -0000

As quick-service restaurants (QSRs) continue to adapt in a post-pandemic world, the challenges of managing a dynamic, high-turnover workforce have never been more complex.

In this episode of HRTechChat, 3Sixty Insights' Geoff Webb sits down with Yutaka Takagi, Principal Product Evangelist at isolved, to explore the fast-paced world of QSRs and how human capital management technology is playing a pivotal role in workforce transformation.

With deep insight into the daily realities of QSR operators and managers, Yutaka shares how evolving employee expectations—especially among Gen Z—are reshaping hiring, scheduling, and engagement strategies. He explains how the speed and fluidity of the QSR environment demand not only flexible tools but also a shift in how organizations think about HR: from back-office admin to real-time frontline support.

From earned wage access and self-service scheduling to AI-driven hiring and always-on HR chatbots, isolved is helping QSR leaders streamline operations and improve the employee experience—without compromising on cost or efficiency.

What does it take to attract and retain Gen Z talent in a high-churn environment? How can technology reduce friction for managers and enhance engagement for hourly workers? And how are QSRs rethinking their tech stacks to support sustainable growth?

Tune in as Yutaka dives into the unique pressures of the QSR space, the power of automation in small physical workspaces, and how isolved is empowering employers to act fast—and smart—at every stage of the employee journey.

#HRTechChat: The Evolving Role of Brokers in HCM with Andrea Dumont of isolved

Fri, 28 Feb 2025 14:00:00 -0000

As the role of brokers continues to evolve, they are no longer just insurance providers but strategic advisors helping businesses navigate workforce complexities.

3Sixty Insights' Geoff Webb sits down with Andrea Dumont, Vice President of Channel Marketing at isolved, to discuss how brokers are adapting to meet the changing needs of HR and HCM. With over 20 years of experience in the industry, Andrea shares insights into how brokers are expanding their service offerings, leveraging technology, and strengthening client relationships to provide greater value.

She explores the increasing reliance on brokers for strategic business advice, the impact of compliance challenges, and how HR technology plays a central role in delivering long-term success.

How are brokers differentiating themselves in a crowded market? What role does trust and technology play in building lasting client partnerships?

Tune in as Andrea breaks down the latest trends shaping the broker landscape and how HCM platforms like isolved are helping them stay ahead.

#HRTechChat: Workplace Transformation & HR Leadership with Kathy Claytor

Fri, 14 Feb 2025 14:00:00 -0000

As companies navigate hybrid work models and return-to-office (RTO) strategies, HR leaders are pivotal in shaping workplace culture and ensuring a seamless transition.

3Sixty Insight's Dylan Teggart sits down with Kathy Claytor, Chief Human Resources Officer at Delta Dental and board director at HRCI, to explore why HR should take the lead in facilities management. With over 25 years of experience in HR leadership across financial services, government, and technology, Kathy shares how workplace design, employee well-being, and strategic planning impact productivity and engagement.

She discusses Delta Dental’s approach to hybrid work, the importance of space planning, wellness initiatives, and how organizations can balance business needs with employee expectations.

Are companies rushing RTO too quickly? How can leaders create an office environment to which employees want to return?

Tune in as Kathy shares her expert insights on the future of work, hybrid work trends, and how HR can drive workplace success.

#HRTechChat: Navigating the 2025 Job Market with Lynn Hurley

Wed, 12 Feb 2025 14:00:00 -0000

In this episode of #HRTechChat, Lynn Hurley, an experienced

HR leader, joins Dylan Teggart to break down the 2025 job market, AI’s impact

on hiring, and why recruiters must think like marketers.

They explore how economic uncertainty and AI adoption are

slowing hiring, why networking has overtaken job applications, and how employer

branding can make or break talent acquisition. Lynn also tackles ghosting in

recruitment and what companies must do to fix it.

#HRTechChat: Steven O’Brien on Building High-Performing Teams Through Strategic Role Design

Mon, 16 Dec 2024 15:00:00 -0000

Steven O’Brien, Senior Vice President of People Solutions at Syneos Health, joins Dylan Teggart for this episode of #HRTechChat. With over 20 years of experience in HR and talent acquisition, Steven shares his transformative approach to building high-performing teams by emphasizing the critical role of organizational design, culture, and team dynamics.

From his unique experiences at IBM to his insights on avoiding the pitfalls of “top talent” myths, Steven discusses how autonomy, task variety, and feedback are essential ingredients for unlocking potential. He also explores the impact of generative AI and modern assessment tools on enhancing productivity and fostering workplace innovation.

#HRTechChat: John Sumser on Compensation, Pay Transparency, and the Future of Work

Mon, 25 Nov 2024 15:18:00 -0000

John Sumser, VP of Marketing at Salary.com and a seasoned industry analyst with over 30 years of experience, joins Dylan Teggart for this episode of #HRTechChat. Together, they explore the shifting landscape of compensation and the profound ways pay transparency and AI are shaping the future of work. From his beginnings analyzing the job board industry at the dawn of the internet, John offers a wealth of knowledge on HR technology and the critical role compensation plays in business strategy.

In this episode, John shares his unique perspective on key trends transforming the workforce, from navigating an aging labor market to the challenges of integrating vast amounts of data into actionable insights. With a thoughtful approach to ethics, technology, and innovation, John provides listeners with a deeper understanding of how organizations can adapt to thrive in an evolving workplace.

#HRTechChat: Unlocking Behavioral Insights Through AI with Ben Mones of FAMA

Fri, 22 Nov 2024 13:35:52 -0000

Ben Mones, CEO and Founder of FAMA, joins Dylan Teggart for this episode of #HRTechChat to discuss the evolving landscape of AI in HR technology and talent assessment. With over a decade of experience leading FAMA, a company dedicated to providing behavioral insights through digital footprints, Ben shares his journey from launching FAMA via an accelerator program to becoming a leader in the field. He recounts the company's origin story, inspired by an incident of workplace misconduct, and discusses FAMA's role in helping employers identify potential risks through online behavior analysis.

Ben and Dylan explore the broader trends shaping HR tech, including the increasing sophistication of AI procurement processes, the impact of societal movements on hiring practices, and the challenges of integrating AI into decision-making frameworks. Ben also highlights Fama’s approach to empowering HR professionals with actionable insights while maintaining ethical and legal standards.

This conversation sheds light on the interplay between AI, workplace culture, and the future of hiring, making it a must-listen for HR leaders and technology enthusiasts alike.

People Tech with Mark Feffer and Opal Wagnac on Navigating AI’s Impact on HR

Thu, 21 Nov 2024 13:55:00 -0000

This guest podcast, originally aired on People Tech, features Mark Feffer in conversation with Opal Wagnac, Senior Vice President of Market and Product Strategy at isolved. Together, they unpack the state of AI in HR, exploring how leaders can distinguish between AI solutions that deliver real value and those that are mere hype.

In this episode, Opal discusses the challenges of AI adoption in the workplace, the evolution of tools like retention predictors and recruiting automation, and the growing alignment between human intuition and machine learning. She highlights practical AI applications in recruiting, payroll, and employee learning, while shedding light on how AI is transforming HR tasks to focus on connection, empathy, and strategic innovation.

Opal also delves into the art of the possible, offering a vision of how AI can empower HR professionals to reimagine their roles and elevate the employee experience.

People Tech with Mark Feffer and Pragya Gupta on AI’s Role in HR

Tue, 12 Nov 2024 19:23:00 -0000

This guest podcast, originally aired on People Tech, features Mark Feffer and Pragya Gupta, Chief Product and Technology Officer at isolved, as they explore AI's growing impact on HR. In this episode, they discuss shadow AI, automation, and the ethical considerations shaping today’s AI applications in HR. Pragya shares insights on how AI is transforming daily HR tasks, enhancing personalization, and streamlining strategic decisions across organizations.

#HRTechChat: Four Harsh Truths and Finding Your Brilliance

Thu, 05 Sep 2024 00:00:00 -0000

Welcome to Podcast 6 of The Five Talents that Really Matter. Over the last 5 podcasts, I have wondered -- "What happens if you do not possess the talents that really matter?" It goes without saying that there are people in leadership positions today that do not possess those talents. So, we arrive at the Four harsh Truths: 1. Not everyone is or can be a leader. If you go into any organization, you can quickly see those that are leaders versus those in leadership positions that do not have the natural talents to effectively lead. In earlier podcasts, we talked about the fact that talents are innate. They are consistent over time and resistant to change. They are pervasive—present in our daily work and personal lives. In a world of nature versus nurture—innate talents are nature. Barry makes the point in this episode that organizations must stop lying to their employees and telling them that everyone can be a leader. Everyone has their level – and people can still make significant contributions to their organization without occupying a leadership role that doesn’t suit their natural dispositions. 2. We might never solve the lack of workplace diversity. Organizations have disproportionately hired in favor of a privileged group. We know that the biases that cause discriminatory hiring do not change through training programs. Your organization does not need a Chief Diversity Officer to take the right actions, but you should be well-versed in psychometric assessment as an important step toward mitigating unchecked biases that disadvantage talented candidates. 3. Leadership characteristics are hard to develop. Leadership cannot be taught to those who do not possess the natural talents to succeed. Barry and Sarah remind us that if everyone could learn leadership, we would not see such a dearth of Talent at the top of companies. 4. Personalities and Talents aren’t the same thing. Here is the takeaway that is significant—If you want to use assessments that matter, predictability is the key—results should be stable over time, and they should be valid predictors of performance. Talent assessments are not the same thing as a personality inventory. Talent assessments that are built to measure potential and predict success are more reliable, valid, and fair. Join Barry Conchie and Sarah Dalton for the discussion on the Four Harsh Truths—and learn about how you can be brilliant and contribute even if you do not possess the Five Talents that Matter.

#HRTechChat: Unpacking Skills Transformation with James Griffin

Tue, 03 Sep 2024 00:00:00 -0000

James Griffin is a Principal Consultant at the UK-based Skills Collective. His work focuses on skills, enterprise SaaS (Software as a Service), talent transformation, and consulting, all of which revolve around the customer. His deep expertise lies in reimagining talent transformation strategies and understanding how to begin implementing skills-based approaches within organizations. He has positively impacted several SaaS organizations, including Degreed and Elevate Direct. With Principal Analyst Dylan Teggart, they discuss the shift from traditional job-based hiring to skills-based hiring, driven by the need for more tailored employee selection. James highlights the growing confusion in the software market, urging organizations to focus on tools that demonstrate clear value and align with corporate strategies.

#HRTechChat: Looking at Talents of Harnessing Energy, Exerting Pressure, and Increasing Connectivity

Thu, 29 Aug 2024 00:00:00 -0000

In this podcast, our authors, Barry Conchie and Sarah Dalton, take us through the last three Talents in this series. Our conversation is organic moving between Harnessing Energy, Exerting Pressure, and Increasing Connectivity. Here are high level ideas around these talents: Harnessing energy: Every organization needs energy to function. Leaders need energy to power themselves, as well as power others. The authors offer a great metaphor, that of being the manager of a power plant. Without energy, things do not get done. Energy drives performance and commitment. People are drawn to high energy organizations and high energy leaders. Exerting Pressure: What I love about this discussion in the book is that we learn the nuance of how inspiring others to action and effective influencing helps leaders meet the expectations they have set. Increasing connectivity: It would be impossible to move an organization forward without focusing on relationships. Here are three critical issues for leaders that help build relationships that matter. High performing leaders display elevated self-awareness and the ability to read others. The best leaders build close relationships and invest in their high performers. High Performing leaders are accountable for the overall integrity of the organizational network. They hold themselves and others to the highest ethical standards. Join in listening to this podcast to gain the insights that shape how these Talents drive personal and organizational success. Learn what Barry and Sarah discovered in their research, and why these Talents drive leadership success.

#HRTechChat: Navigating Global Payroll Challenges with Remi Champeix

Tue, 27 Aug 2024 00:00:00 -0000

Rémi Champeix is a global payroll transformation lead with over 15 years of experience in payroll strategy, process design, and system implementations. In this HRTechChat with Dylan Teggart, Rémi discusses his passion for enabling people, simplification, and inclusive leadership. He also addresses EU tax compliance challenges, emerging payroll models, and the limitations of AI in the European market.

#HRTechChat: Mastering Leadership through Setting Direction and Controlling Traffic

Thu, 22 Aug 2024 00:00:00 -0000

Welcome to the fourth podcast in The Five Talents that Really Matter series. In this podcast we begin to introduce the five talents, beginning with Setting Direction and Controlling Traffic. There is a familiar phrase: “If you don’t know where you are going, you’ll probably end up somewhere else." While setting direction is where all great strategies begin, in our conversation with Barry Conchie and Sarah Dalton, the authors of The Five Talents, we learn that it might be one of the rarest talents. Successfully setting direction requires: 1. The destination has to be a place worth going to—a destination where people want to come along. 2. Getting people to come along is not just a matter of telling people your direction, you have to engage them—it requires listening, connection, and the ability to articulate a compelling picture around why you are going there. 3. It is important to connect each person to the destination and the work they are doing; people have to know how they create value and how their contribution to work matters. Many times, however, leaders can propose a direction, and it is met with skepticism because the direction was formulated in a vacuum, or it was the result of consultants formulating a direction that is not authentic to where the organization needs to go to be a success in the marketplace. What we know is that it is difficult to inspire people and build a shared commitment to the future state. What we learn from Barry and Sarah is that you need to pay attention to the terrain. Having a map is the beginning, but understanding the terrain is essential, and that is where controlling traffic is important. It requires agility, adjusting to market conditions, recognizing opportunities that lie ahead, making sure that the organization is positioned for success. What I love about this conversation is that Barry and Sarah give us notable examples of how the best leaders can control traffic. Execution capability is essential—the ability to effectively execute and orchestrate action. Join the conversation on Setting Direction and Controlling Traffic to learn more. The Five Talent that Really Matter is available on August 27th.

#HRTechChat: 58,000 Assessments and 18 Key Learnings

Tue, 13 Aug 2024 00:00:00 -0000

As part of researching The Five Talents that Really Matter, Barry Conchie and Sarah Dalton, the co-authors, conducted and reviewed 58,000 talent assessments. Their research was global in nature, and they studied leaders at every organization level. Their findings challenge the status quo and call out for leaders, at times, things they may not have wanted to know. The key learnings offer us insight into how we have been making decisions, unaware of their impact. Understanding these insights can help us make better choices and deliver better business performance. Let ‘s look at just a few of the learnings here...and then listen to the podcast to get the whole story. For example, when we are selecting candidates, we think of ourselves as objective—looking for whom we think would be the best candidate for a given role. If you ask leaders if they intentionally select people like themselves, they generally disagree. They think of themselves as seeking talent diversity. In fact, just the opposite was true, leaders had succeeded in “self-replication.” Even though it has been known for decades that “talent diversity predicts stronger collective performance advantages.” Have you ever heard leaders profess that they welcome all points of view and love to be challenged? Well, the reality is that dissention is often not welcomed. How do you know if this is going on in your team? If your team is discussing a complicated issue and no one is speaking up—then disagreement is not welcomed—yet leaders perceive themselves as welcoming dissent. If team members are having a meeting after the meeting to talk about the real issues—the leader does not welcome dissent and may not even see it. Do organizations have a bias for action-oriented leadership versus those with a keen eye for strategy? Would you ever hire someone you personally dislike even if they were highly talented? How often do you hire for likeability and are not even aware of it? Why does it take some leaders a longer time to terminate poor performers? In this podcast we will discuss the 18 insights and how you can use these findings to make better talent decisions—both in how you select and develop leaders.

#HRTechChat: What Companies Get Wrong About Selection with Barry Conchie and Sarah Dalton

Thu, 08 Aug 2024 00:00:00 -0000

With consistent churn in leadership roles at all organization levels, we have to step back and ask the question: - What are we missing in our selection process? - How do we continually make poor selection decisions? - And why aren’t we doing better? Let us start with how we can get caught in the “likeability trap.” Barry Conchie and Sarah Dalton, in The Five Talents that Really Matter, found that likeability factors have a significant impact on how a candidate is perceived. The problem is that likeability will not correlate with whether the candidate can perform in a specific role. Throughout my career I have seen organizations select highly likeable candidates that go on to fail in the job, often within the first 6-12 months. In the selection discussions, likeability is often defended as the criteria and can often win out over the discussion on potential performance. In this podcast, join the conversation to learn more about: 1. How we can mislead candidates. Do you think it is possible to mislead candidates in face-to-face interviews? I have seen this multiple times—candidates feel they had great interviews, and then are shocked when they do not get the role. Misleading candidates can not only create negative experiences for them, it can also damage a company’s brand. 2. How 360 Assessments are subjective at best and biased at worst. 3. How misaligned incentives with search firms can advocate for candidates that may not be the best choice. In this session, Barry and Sarah offer a path forward for how to audit and evaluate your selection process. “Their strategy is to introduce tools and processes that guide the hiring, selection, succession, and promotion decisions toward a defined structure that has measurable outcomes.” With each leadership selection decision, company performance is on the line—we can improve selection and have an enormous positive impact.

#HRTechChat: Ray Walker on Navigating Contingent Workforce Compliance and the Future of Work

Fri, 26 Jul 2024 00:00:00 -0000

In today's workforce landscape, Ray Walker stands out as a leading expert in contingent workforce compliance. A seasoned professional who ensures compliance with both general and immigration laws, Walker's primary focus is maintaining business integrity while adhering to complex regulations. Contingent workers, defined as non-standard, off-payroll employees engaged on a project basis, have become a significant part of the labor market, constituting one-fifth of the UK labor market. Walker categorizes contemporary workers into three main types: traditional full-time employees, gig workers, and professional service providers. Each group faces unique legislative challenges, especially in a globalized economy where misclassification and multi-jurisdictional issues are common. Walker's expertise is precious in navigating these complexities, ensuring businesses remain compliant without hindering operational efficiency. His insights into the future of work emphasize the need for companies and workers to adapt to decentralized, technology-driven models, ensuring success in this dynamic environment.

#HRTechChat: The Five Talents That Really Matter with Barry Conchie and Sarah Dalton

Tue, 23 Jul 2024 00:00:00 -0000

Every now and then a book comes along that challenges the status quo. A book that has the capacity to help us look at what we are doing today and see that we can do better. The Five Talents that Really Matter is such a book. Barry Conchie and Sarah Dalton, through scientific research, have identified the talents that really matter. They cut through all the noise surrounding what leaders do and how the absolute best achieve success. Talents are different from what we see in the market today—they are not a product of competency models or building lists of experiences or capabilities—they are not the output of 360 assessments from leaders or peers that can often suggest room for improvement. “Talents cannot be learned or taught. They are the natural characteristics we are all born with.” Talents are a part of who we are and how we think (innate), consistent over time and resistant to change (enduring), and present in our daily work and in our lives (pervasive). So, what are the Talents that really matter? Setting Direction Harnessing Energy Exerting Pressure Increasing Connectivity Controlling Traffic In this first podcast in the 5 Talents that Really Matter Series, we meet Barry and Sarah, learn about how they arrived at the five talents, and receive an overview of how the current way we evaluate and hire talent is flawed, and what can be done moving forward to select and develop talent with a high probability of success. At a time when several studies have shown between 50-70% of new CEOs fail within the first 18 months (CEB), and 50% of externally hired executives and 35% of internally promoted leaders fall short of performance expectations (DDI), isn’t it time for a new approach?

#HRTechChat: Connecting Technology and Employee Experience with Kamal Pradhan

Tue, 18 Jun 2024 00:00:00 -0000

#HRTechChat: Connecting Technology and Employee Experience with Kamal Pradhan by 3Sixty Insights

#HRTechChat: Streamlining Payroll with Tiffani Gray's Expert Insights

Thu, 30 May 2024 00:00:00 -0000

Tiffani L. Gray brings over 20 years of experience to this #HRTechChat, where she speaks to Dylan Teggart about lessons learned, collaborative teams, and conversational AI. Currently, she holds the position of Payroll Manager at Riverside Health Systems, overseeing payroll for 11,000 employees. Tiffani's impressive career includes working in payroll for the state of Virginia and serving as the Director of Membership of the Hampton Roads Chapter of PAYO (2020-2021 Past President) and Secretary of the Virginia Statewide Payroll Conference Board. Her outstanding contributions were recognized in 2022 when she was awarded the prestigious Payroll Professional of the Year by the VA Statewide Conference. In May of the same year, she was inducted into PAYO’s National Speaker Bureau and accepted as a Contributing Writer for PAYTECH magazine.

#HRTechChat: Unlocking HR Excellence with Lucia Valerio's Transformative Strategies

Wed, 22 May 2024 00:00:00 -0000

Lucia Valerio, the head of HR at Lexar since 2023, boasts a remarkable 20-year journey in the HR world. Her expertise lies in HR strategy, where she has been instrumental in driving organizational growth and revolutionizing employee engagement through transformative HR strategies. In a conversation with Dylan Teggart, Lucia delves into her principles on revisiting the fundamentals, its implications for HR leaders and businesses, and the transformative impact of new trends and technology on the future of work.

#HRTechChat: Ayden Hodgins of New Entity HCM

Thu, 16 May 2024 00:00:00 -0000

AI is set to empower HR leaders and optimize time with functionalities like timekeeping and attendance. In our latest #HRTechChat, Dylan Teggart is joined by Ayden Hodgins of New Entity HCM to speak about the future of AI in HCM and how large language models will improve the future of work.

#HRTechChat: Lilith Christiansen on Unlocking Employee Potential Through Strategic Onboarding

Tue, 14 May 2024 00:00:00 -0000

Lilith Christiansen is the founder and lead consultant with HumanGenuity and co-author of the best-selling book Success Onboarding. She focuses on programs and processes that help people thrive in organizations. In this HRTechChat, Lilith discusses her approach to successful onboarding, first impressions, employee experience, and manager enablement, while touching on how new technology can play a role in these.

#HRTechChat: Transforming Health Equity With Siemens Healthineer's Geoffrey Roche

Fri, 10 May 2024 00:00:00 -0000

3Sixty Insight's Principal Analyst, Dylan Teggart, speaks with Geoffrey Roche of Siemens Healthineers. Geoffrey currently serves as the Director of Workforce Development at Siemens Healthineers, and is a leading thinker in the healthcare space with a focus on diversity, education, and health equity.

#HRTechChat: Meeting Workers Where They Are With Christine Nichlos & Jessica Oberto

Mon, 06 May 2024 00:00:00 -0000

#HRTechChat: Meeting Workers Where They Are With Christine Nichlos & Jessica Oberto by 3Sixty Insights

#HRTechChat: Keirsten Gregg’s Crucial Insights on Talent Acquisition in Turbulent Times

Thu, 02 May 2024 00:00:00 -0000

In this HR Tech Chat, Dylan Teggart sits down with Keirsten Greggs of TRAP Recruiter. Keirsten has over two decades of experience in talent acquisition, onboarding, and training. Pulling from her experience in multiple sectors, including government, defense, and fintech, Keirsten walks us through the trends she's seeing in recruitment and hiring, the need for talented HR professionals, and how companies are finding the best people.

#HRTechChat: Connection Is the Key to Delivering Exceptional Business Performance

Mon, 25 Mar 2024 00:00:00 -0000

Organizations are struggling with how to better engage their people. If you want better results, people have to be connected to work. Research shows us that 77% of people in organizations today are just doing the bare minimum. Getting beyond the bare minimum to better productivity, connection with team members, a better business performance is about making a personal connection to the work and creating Indvidual pathways to development and career growth. Retention, team performance, innovation, belonging, and passion for the work, all improve when people can see the connection between what they do and what the business delivers in the marketplace.

#HRTechChat: A Chat with Workforce Software on the Deskless Worker Experience

Sat, 02 Dec 2023 00:00:00 -0000

This #HRTechChat between Workforce Software's CMO Sandra Moran, and 3Sixty Insights' Distinguished Advisor, Steve Goldberg, delves into many aspects of the employee experience for desk-less workers. Findings are shared from the WFM Tech vendor's annual Global EX Study, and the two experts talk about implications as well as intersecting topics that would be of interest to most HR professionals and leaders. The commitment to a better worker experience is evident from the leading software vendor's executive, and the genuine passion for improving outcomes for both employees and employers comes through quite clearly from the participants.

#HRTechChat: Unleashing the Potential of HR Tech: How AI is Revolutionizing Learning and Development

Fri, 29 Sep 2023 00:00:00 -0000

In the rapidly evolving landscape of HR technology, the future of learning is being reshaped by the transformative power of AI. In our latest HR Tech Chat episode, we sit down with Larry McAlister and Josh Irmler, CEO and founder of Landdai, to explore how AI is revolutionizing the way we approach learning and development. Together, we delve into the exciting possibilities of generative AI, the fears surrounding AI's impact on jobs, and the game-changing concept of personalization. Join us on this journey as we uncover the key insights and strategies to thrive in the golden age of HR technology.

#HRTechChat: Navigating the Talent Shortage: A Creative Approach to Skills-Based Hiring

Thu, 14 Sep 2023 00:00:00 -0000

#HRTechChat: Navigating the Talent Shortage: A Creative Approach to Skills-Based Hiring by 3Sixty Insights

#HRTechChat: A Deep-Dive Into PandoLogic Owner Veritone's Acquisition of Broadbean

Fri, 18 Aug 2023 00:00:00 -0000

At the very tail end of May 2023, the enterprise artificial intelligence software and services vendor Veritone announced the acquisition of Broadbean, a global recruitment technology company. Given that PandoLogic joined the family of Veritone companies in mid-summer 2021, we invited an expert each from PandoLogic and Broadbean to appear on the #HRTechChat video podcast and discuss synergies between the two now-Veritone companies. Joining us for this episode were Faisel Samseer, director of partnerships, development and growth for Broadbean, and Nikos Livadas, vice president of partner development for PandoLogic. Viewers (and listeners at the many audio podcast platforms where #HRTechChat syndicates) know we typically have in-depth discussions and communication with our guests in the "virtual greenroom" in the run-up to each episode. This episode is no different. Over a couple meetings and several detailed email exchanges, Nikos, Faisel and I discussed how the two vendors' shared circumstances under the aegis of Veritone ownership afford them the same kind of benefits normally found in any business partnership of this magnitude and scale. The joining of these two companies is natural in many ways. PandoLogic started out as an AI-based programmatic advertising solution for recruiting and quickly and significantly grew its capabilities from there, delighting customers along the way. As for Broadbean, "Today, we're the world's leader in job distribution technology," said Faisel. "We enable our clients to blast out their jobs to multiple platforms at the same time." He elaborated on Broadbean's large global footprint: "We say we're global. We have offices throughout the world," and Broadbean supports around 7,000 job board integrations. So, just how, exactly, do Broadbean and PandoLogic complement each other? "I think we all can agree that the bedrock of a successful AI platform is the amount of data that it has on the back end to fuel its algorithms and engines," said Nikos, pointing to the the "immense reach that Faisal was talking about earlier in data and combining it with the power of what PandoLogic has done in the AI space." This is true. No matter the type of AI, it always evolves better the more data it has access to. We see this in AI-based scheduling software and AI-predicated self-evolving skills ontologies. Outside human capital management -- and inherent in their very name -- "large" language models thrive most when as much data as possible (i.e., from human input) feeds them. It only stands to reason that this same fundamental rule of AI applies when it comes to AI and talent acquisition. As Nikos shared in a note to me ahead of the recording, "As our resellers and referral partners embrace the new Veritone HR Solutions set, they will be able to leverage our new expanded global footprint to expose our combined offering in more geo-locations than ever before possible. This will allow our partners to focus on their core competencies while relying on Broadbean/PandoLogic to handle the logistics and distribution aspects." Veritone's history in the AI space is long, "and they're a formidable player in AI when it comes to media advertising and voice technologies," said Nikos. Leveraging all that newfound data in a creative way will help the companies' customers find and engage with the best candidates for their open roles. "This is phenomenal for our partners as well," Nikos continued, "and we're looking forward to working with our partners under this new umbrella.

#HRTechChat: The "Ambition Recession" and Activating Employees with Pamela Stroko

Mon, 31 Jul 2023 00:00:00 -0000

Welcome back to another episode of HRTechChat, where we dive into the latest trends and strategies in human resources and workplace technology. In this podcast episode, our host, Jennifer, is joined by HR expert Pamela Stroko to discuss a pressing topic - the staggering 59% of the workforce who are quietly quitting their jobs. Pamela sheds light on the concept of the ""Dead Zone,"" the time of day when remote or hybrid workers are not available to their managers. This lack of trust and connection to work has contributed to the decline in productivity and engagement among employees. Pamela introduces a concept called the ""Ambition Recession,"" a term coined by Gad Levanon, which points to the decline in employee ambition and engagement since the pandemic. She highlights that we need to shift our focus from where people work (in-office, remote, hybrid) to the quality of the work and the experiences employees have within the organization. The key is to activate employees and connect them deeply to their work to foster greater engagement and productivity. One solution Pamela suggests is using technology like the People Activation Platform offered by Pro Habits. This platform helps employees connect with their work by guiding them through daily tasks, setting goals, and providing feedback. It brings visibility to the work employees are doing and helps build trust between managers and their teams. Another tool discussed in the podcast is BlueBoard, which provides recognition experiences as rewards. Instead of traditional gifts or events, employees can choose an experience that is meaningful to them, such as a vacation with family, attending a sports event, or going on a hike. These experiences create positive intent, energize employees, and increase their commitment to the organization. The podcast emphasizes that organizations should focus on connecting employees to their work and creating meaningful experiences rather than just solving for the physical location of work. By activating employees and igniting their passion for their jobs, companies can boost productivity, engagement, and overall organizational success. In conclusion, Pamela and Jennifer leave us with the reminder that within each individual lies the potential to be fully engaged and energized by their work. As leaders, it is our responsibility to find that spark and encourage it to shine, fostering a culture of productivity and enthusiasm.

#HRTechChat: Marta Weinstock, Senior Director of Operations at Rutherford Investment Company

Wed, 19 Jul 2023 00:00:00 -0000

Marta Weinstock, my guest for this episode of the #HRTechChat video podcast, is senior director of operations at California-based Rutherford Investment Company. Part of her charter at Rutherford Investments is to get human capital management as efficient as possible. Under the aegis of her leadership and the help of isolved, the employer's journey along the road to HCM maturity has been sweeping and inspiring. With isolved, Marta has brought order to a previously dysfunctional, disorganized HR ecosystem. Leading the charge for digital transformation from the inside, Marta has witnessed first-hand not only the excellent capabilities found in isolved's software-as-a-service People Cloud™, but also the highly attentive approach of isolved's HR services team.

#HRTechChat: Michelle Randall, Chief Marketing Officer at Playvox

Wed, 19 Jul 2023 00:00:00 -0000

This episode of the #HRTechChat video podcast welcomes Playvox Chief Marketing Officer Michelle Randall. The sole focus of Playvox's cloud software for human capital management for is the call center industry. When it comes to workforce management, especially scheduling, call centers are complex, challenging. Plus, everything we hear about the importance of the employee experiences is magnified at call centers. And everything we know about the impact of a positive employee experience on the customer experience is amplified at call centers. Deploy technology capable of improving agents' quality of work-life balance, their employee wellbeing, and customers will have those positive experiences when they need it the most: when they get in touch with the call center. Michelle dives into the particulars, and I highly recommend tuning in.

#HRTechChat: James Galvin, CEO and Co-Founder of Starcircle

Wed, 12 Jul 2023 00:00:00 -0000

The talent acquisition of today is nonlinear. By this, we mean it’s all one thing, not a siloed process with many activities taking place in an orderly fashion or readily apparent, repeatable sequence. James Galvin should know. Our guest for this episode of the #HRTechChat video podcast, James is CEO and co-founder of Starcircle, a Cork, Ireland–headquartered vendor of cloud software and services designed to result in truly effective talent acquisition campaigns by looking at these as holistic efforts and considering sourcing first, and not last — an idea embodied in a term Starcircle uses: long-tail talent. Take artificial intelligence, for example. It’s difficult to discuss modern talent acquisition without mentioning AI. This is because AI has entered the fray of talent acquisition for good. This is not hype. At the same time, however, “there’s a lack of understanding around how AI is going to fit into talent acquisition,” said James during the podcast. “And one thing’s for sure is: it’s not going to do your work for you. ” The issue goes back to the tried-and-true old adage about relying on computers: garbage in, garbage out. Known perhaps even better for its acronym, GIGO is the idea that it doesn’t matter how powerful a computer is: if the data going in is bad (i.e., garbage), the computer will spit out something of very little value (i.e., again, garbage). AI is the result of highly advanced, sophisticated computing, which of course means that GIGO applies to AI, too. Say you’re an employer. Say there’s an open role. Not that it necessarily matters for the example, but say it’s an executive role that you’re trying to fill. You’re certain of the qualities and characteristics you want or believe you need in new candidates for an open role. But who’s to say your certainty is warranted? Very few ask the question, and once you inform the AI in your talent acquisition technology with whatever ideas you have, you’ll get the candidates you requested. The problem is, your idea of what you want or need is probably a little or way off the mark when it comes to what you actually need or should want. Apply the AI without any thought to this deep consideration, and never mind the disservice to diversity: you risk perpetuating deep-seated organizational dysfunction. Talent acquisition is no longer a clean chain of neatly defined in-tandem events or occurrences culminating in a hire. Just as there is an emerging new talent acquisition suite for the future of work, in other words, so there is an emerging new process to go about finding and acquiring new talent. As the one who is planning talent acquisition for your organization, you could take this holistic view of talent acquisition and think of yourself as being at the center of a circle. A circle is a nice visual for the idea of something being nonlinear, after all. On this episode of the podcast, James and I went on what you might characterize as a walkabout. AI was just one topic. Our discussion touched on talent acquisition in a deep way: how approaching recruiting as if it were a sales funnel is a mistake, James believes — precisely because talent acquisition has become so nonlinear why sourcing is anything but transactional and should be the first (instead of last) thing employers rethink in their approach to recruiting what friction in hiring is and how lessening this friction helps employers engage with their talent pipelines and avert candidate abandonment down the line

#HRTechChat with Pamela Stroko: Challenges and the Role of HR Leaders in Curating Culture

Sun, 09 Jul 2023 00:00:00 -0000

Welcome back to another episode of #HRTechChat, the Podcast where we explore the latest trends, innovations, and strategies in the ever-evolving world of HR technology. I'm your host, Jennifer Dole. And on today's show, we have a very special guest joining us again, someone who has made a significant impact in the HR tech landscape with her expertise and thought leadership. She's a trailblazer, she's an innovator, and she's a true advocate for leveraging technology to drive positive change in the workplace. Welcome back, Pamela. In this episode, we delve into the challenges that HR leaders face. The job market and talent shortage are hot topics in the news, with economic factors and uncertainties impacting companies' hiring strategies. As Pamela points out, the predicted recession seems to be pushed further into the future, and HR leaders must navigate these changing landscapes. One significant shift in the market is the emphasis on skill building. Upskilling, reskilling, and alternative routes to acquiring skills are gaining prominence in talent acquisition. State governments, organizations like STAR, and initiatives like "Grads of Life" are recognizing the value of skills over traditional degrees. This shift opens up opportunities for underserved and diverse populations who may possess the necessary skills but lack formal education credentials. Pamela highlights the importance of tapping into underrepresented groups and using technology to increase visibility and encourage their participation in the job market. However, she also emphasizes that skills cannot be solely assessed based on a list on paper. Real conversations and understanding how individuals acquired and applied their skills are crucial. As technology evolves, HR leaders can leverage advancements to gain more insights into candidates' capabilities and potential fit within the organization. The conversation then transitions to the role of HR leaders as curators of company culture. Pamela explains her choice of the word "curate" and its definition: selecting, organizing, and presenting using professional or expert knowledge. HR leaders are tasked with carefully choosing the elements that shape the company's culture. With a myriad of responsibilities, they must prioritize and focus on areas that need attention, such as candidate experience, talent acquisition, skills development, and internal mobility. To curate the culture effectively, HR leaders must be aware of external factors, such as market trends and talent gaps. By using their professional expertise and knowledge, they can make informed decisions and drive positive change within the organization. The key lies in carefully selecting the right initiatives and strategies that align with the company's goals and values. In conclusion, this episode sheds light on the challenges faced by HR leaders in the talent marketplace and their role as curators of company culture. By embracing skill-based hiring, leveraging technology for inclusivity, and curating the right elements, HR leaders can create a positive and thriving workplace environment. Stay tuned for more insights and discussions on HR tech trends in future episodes of #HRTechChat.

#HRTechChat Showcase: Original Zen and the Art of Integration Strategy

Sun, 09 Jul 2023 00:00:00 -0000

Some may appreciate the play on the title of a mid-1970s philosophical novel, “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,” others the Eastern twist on Western theology. Regardless, original Zen and the art of integration strategy is the absolutely essential and crucial understanding that cloud-to-cloud integration is a process and a way of life, never something that eventually ends because it will ever finally be perfect. Vendors in HCM that acknowledge and embrace this universal truth will save money, increase sales, and improve their customer retention — all major competitive advantages. This episode of the video podcast is something we call the #HRTechChat Showcase, a version of #HRTechChat wherein our guests not only chat with us, but also share slide decks or other visual cues to help convey their ideas. So, if you’re listening to us on one of the audio platforms where we syndicate, this time you may want to look for us on YouTube so you can view the video. My guests were all-around experts in the granularities of cloud integration: Chief Technology Officer Jeff Tremblay and President Pierre Rousseau of The Cloud Connectors, an integration platform-as-a-service (iPaaS) where they and their fellow co-founders invented and use Clouddata™, a native-to-cloud-integrations computer language. Listening to vendors of software-as-a-service (SaaS) for human capital management (or any other domain of the enterprise, for that matter), a buyer might be forgiven to believe solution providers have solved cloud-to-cloud integration once and for all with application programming interfaces (APIs). But they haven’t — far from it. An HCM technology stack chockful of countless APIs hanging together via no more than a slew of corresponding point-to-point integrations is, as the cliché goes, a recipe for disaster. Vendors experience what TCC calls the Wall Effect, a hockey-stick graph where the cost of integration (TCoI) for maintaining everything suddenly increases exponentially to sap resources and siphon talent away from innovating. The challenges comprise far more than what appears above the waterline of the Integration Iceberg, an apt metaphor TCC invokes. To use another cliché, Clouddata is a game-changer. To pull from the related research note that we recently published, “Clouddata does for integrations what SQL has done for relational databases. Much like SQL delivered relational database coding from the very complex language CODASYL, Clouddata fulfills the same role for integrations. Clouddata makes it easy to build complex integrations that enable businesses to scale.” There’s more, of course. Critical as Clouddata is, it takes more than a breakthrough in computer language to make cloud-to-cloud integration better, more manageable and affordable over the long term. And there’s even more, and at this point, I really should just let Pierre and Jeff do the explaining. I happen to like the concept of #HRTechChat Showcase, by the way. Perhaps you’ve wondered at times what a briefing with an industry analyst is like, for example. Or, you just like seeing slide decks or other props when learning something new. Some don’t like PowerPoint, but we’ve all seen their impact and effectiveness elevate immeasurably when the caliber of presenter is really good. And, in Jeff and Pierre, we have really good, high-caliber presenters for this episode, indeed.

#HRTechChat: Make Work Better with Betterworks' Doug Dennerline & Jamie Aitken

Thu, 29 Jun 2023 00:00:00 -0000

Both my guests for this episode have appeared on the #HRTechChat video podcast previously - and it only made sense to host the two of them this time, at the same time. Why? Betterworks CEO Doug Dennerline and Vice President of HR Transformation Jamie Aitken have co-authored and published a book titled "Make Work Better," and our discussion revolved around it. Let's get something out of the way first. Employers have six ways to Sunday to make work better: make scheduling better for work-life balance, make onboarding better for immediate employee engagement (and faster time-to-productivity), make payroll better so employees get paid incorrectly less often, make on-the-job learning better so staff can build their careers... Have I missed anything? Probably, and we've been talking about how to make work better for years. Over 10 years ago, when I worked with executives at one of the well-known vendors of technology for workforce management, we argued (correctly) in our thought leadership that you could make work better for retail associates by modernizing WFM systems. The list goes on. You could start anywhere to make work better. One of the best places to start to make work better, however, is by upending tired old approaches to measuring and assessing employees' performance. More specifically, the central tenet of Doug and Jamie's book is that you can make work much, much better by dispensing with performance management that revolves around the tedious annual performance review. We've all heard the tongue-in-cheek term, The beatings will continue until morale improves. Well, what are we doing? We can do better than rely on an approach developed by the U.S. military early in the last century and specifically for military scenarios. As for the private sector, "massive research shows that it doesn't change performance," Doug said. "It's a ridiculous thing. Yet people still do it. So, this book was aimed at helping people understand the value of making the change, and giving them a bit of a roadmap on what happens when you do that" and insight into "the profound impact it has on companies that are brave enough to make the change." What kind of organization doesn't want performance to improve? What's great about leaving the traditional annual review behind is that employees' performance finally does improve -- the goal all along. New approaches aided by the state of the art in cloud software for this (like Betterworks) promote regular dialogue between managers and their direct reports, result in greater workforce engagement overall, and elevate the caliber of leadership throughout the organization. Over time, in fact, turning away from the old ways of performance management can be an important precursor to organizational transformation -- and HR transformation, certainly. Traditionally (and tellingly), HR departments have always measured success vis-à-vis performance management in simple terms of completions -- "as opposed to impact, what is it that you're trying to achieve?" Jamie said. "Well, it's not just 'check the box.' We need to have a completely different way of showing up for our employees. We need to be thinking about different ways to get them engaged, and focused." HR departments end up escaping this cost-center-reinforcing mentality and, armed with rich data on workforce performance and engagement, elevate their own standing with organizational leadership. Getting out of the past and into the future of work with their performance management, in other words, is good all around for everyone involved. For an example of how this plays out, watch this episode of #HRTechChat from last summer, when we interviewed Betterworks user Jeff Andes, vice president of talent management at University of Phoenix. And I almost forgot: another member of leadership at Betterworks appeared on the podcast last year. In the meantime, and as always, Doug and Jamie were great guests.

#HRTechChat: Adam Famularo, CEO of WorkFusion

Wed, 28 Jun 2023 00:00:00 -0000

Joining 3Sixty Insights Co-Founder Brent Skinner for this episode of the #HRTechChat video podcast was guest Adam Famularo, CEO of WorkFusion. In monitoring for financial crime, WorkFusion's "AI Digital Workers" may well be more accurate and efficient than any human could ever be. But it's actually good news for real humans in the world of work. In their discussion, Adam and Brent dig into why this is so.

#HRTechChat: Maximizing HR Economics with Maria Scarangella: Unleashing the Power of HR Technology

Thu, 22 Jun 2023 00:00:00 -0000

Ready to unlock the secrets of HR success? Tune in to the HR Tech Chat podcast, where we dive deep into the world of human resources and explore the latest trends and innovations in HR technology. In our latest episode, we had the incredible Maria Scarangella sharing her expertise on HR economics and its impact on organizations. From optimizing staffing to leveraging HR technology, Maria's insights will transform the way you approach HR strategy. Don't miss out on this valuable conversation! #HRtechchat #Podcast #HRsuccess

#HRTechChat: Megan Coen, Vice President of HR Services at isolved

Tue, 13 Jun 2023 00:00:00 -0000

Megan Coen, vice president of HR services at isolved, was a guest on the #HRTechChat video podcast. isolved calls HR outsourcing by a different name, HR augmentation, and this episode provides a glimpse into why. Megan shared war stories from her previous lives in helping to drive change management in HR and did a great job in laying out how isolved combines "the right blend" of technology and services.

#HRTechChat with Pamela Stroko: Empowering Women in the Workplace

Mon, 05 Jun 2023 00:00:00 -0000

In a recent episode of HR Tech Chat, host Jennifer Dole and guest Pamela Stroko delved into the crucial topic of supporting women in the workplace and ensuring equitable promotions and opportunities. Pamela, an HCM practitioner and HR tech expert, provided valuable insights on the impact of HR technology in enabling women to access greater opportunities. Listen in as we will explore the key points discussed in the podcast episode and shed light on the importance of HR technology in empowering women in their careers.

#HRTechChat with Amaresh Tripathy: Upskilling 120,000 People for Data Awareness at Genpact

Thu, 25 May 2023 00:00:00 -0000

“How do I make a 120,000-person organization data-aware?” asks Amaresh Tripathy, my guest on this episode of the #HRTechChat video podcast. Amaresh is senior vice president and global business leader at Genpact. A General Electric spin-off, Genpact is several billion dollars in size. A publicly traded professional services firm, Genpact mainly focuses on two things. One is all about running various digital operations on behalf of Genpact's clients, which are Fortune 1000 companies around the globe. The other involves data, technology and artificial intelligence, wherein Genpact concerns itself with helping these clients transform some of these same digital operations for the better. Amaresh's role is with this second focus, working to make "our clients more data-intelligent and data-aware," he says. You probably already see the tie-in with Genpact's workforce. Amaresh believes that, at Genpact, he and his team have built the world’s largest data awareness program. Solutions such as EdCast, found in the Cornerstone suite, factor largely into the effort. We discussed this. An illustrative example of organizational and digital transformation, the initiative relies, critically, on well-sorted learning technology and modern tools for curating and delivering content just right for the task at hand. Phenomenally, Amaresh is more than halfway to achieving an ambitious goal: so far, somewhere between 65,000 of and 70,000 of the company's own employees have completed the associated certification program, which leaves them highly versed in understanding the tools to extract and blend enterprise data. Graduates then go on to use their newfound knowledge and skills in order to help a client—in the process earning from Genpact what is akin to a black belt in data awareness. During our chat, Amaresh shared the philosophy behind his vision and delved into the thinking that has helped make it a reality at Genpact. This vision is empowering staff with the high-impact upskilling that is an essential ingredient not only for their success individually, but also for Genpact’s overall. Indeed, like so many initiatives notable for their positive effects on business, Amaresh’s is redolent of the idea that an organization’s people are an asset to cultivate and engage. This is the model for success. All at once, Genpact’s data awareness program is good for the company, its clients, and its people. If you're looking for an example of how the future of work is happening right now, look no further than this episode of the podcast. It was an absolute pleasure speaking with Amaresh.

#HRTechChat with Kim Slowik on Building Meaningful Relationships: Why Recruiters Are Irreplaceable

Mon, 22 May 2023 00:00:00 -0000

In today's fast-paced world of technology and automation, it's easy to assume that human interaction is becoming less relevant. However, when it comes to building meaningful relationships and effective hiring, technology will never fully replace the role of a recruiter. Kim Slowik, a seasoned talent acquisition professional, emphasizes the importance of genuine connections in her conversation with Jennifer Dole on the HR Tech Chat podcast. While technology offers valuable tools for filtering and finding candidates, it's the human interaction that truly makes a difference. When recruiters take the time to engage with candidates on a personal level, asking meaningful questions and actively listening, they gain insights that go beyond a resume. By understanding a candidate's aspirations, values, and career goals, recruiters can identify the perfect fit for both the candidate and the company. Building relationships also extends to the hiring managers. Recruiters who invest in understanding the unique requirements and dynamics of a team can find candidates who not only possess the necessary skills but also align with the team's culture and goals. It's about creating a cohesive unit, just like building a sports team. While technology provides tools like applicant tracking systems and LinkedIn Recruiter, which aid in the recruitment process, it cannot replace the nuanced understanding that comes from personal conversations. Technology may filter candidates on paper, but it often fails to capture the intangible qualities that make a candidate an ideal fit. Technology has undoubtedly sped up the recruitment process, but it is the personal touch that fosters lasting relationships. Recruiters who go the extra mile, provide feedback, and genuinely care about candidates build a reputation that garners trust and loyalty. It's not just about filling a position; it's about nurturing long-term careers. Technology may enhance efficiency and widen reach, but it will never replace the essence of human connection. Recruiters like Kim Slowik understand that building meaningful relationships with candidates and hiring managers is the key to successful recruitment. By combining technological tools with genuine empathy and insightful conversations, recruiters can truly find the perfect fit for both candidates and companies.

#HRTechChat: Inclusive Leadership in a Tech Age with Jen Dole, Larry McAlister, and Al Dea

Wed, 17 May 2023 00:00:00 -0000

In today's rapidly evolving world, the intersection of technology and inclusive leadership is shaping the future of organizations. The qualities of inclusive leaders play a crucial role in fostering a culture of belonging, collaboration, and innovation. In this podcast, we will explore some key attributes of inclusive leaders and discuss how technology can be leveraged to enhance inclusive leadership. Courage: At the heart of inclusive leadership lies courage. Inclusive leaders must have the courage to challenge the status quo, address biases, and create an environment where every individual feels valued and respected. They understand that being a great leader means embracing diversity and making intentional efforts to be inclusive, even if it involves taking risks or stepping out of their comfort zones. Desire to Help People: Inclusive leaders have a genuine desire to help people thrive. They recognize that by fostering a sense of belonging and inclusivity, they can unlock the full potential of their teams. They actively seek opportunities to create conditions that allow everyone to contribute their unique perspectives, skills, and knowledge. By nurturing an environment that encourages collaboration and cooperation, inclusive leaders drive greater team performance and overall success. Embracing Human Qualities: Inclusive leadership involves recognizing and embracing the human qualities that set us apart from machines. While technology can enhance efficiency, it is the human touch that enables true empathy, compassion, and self-awareness. Inclusive leaders listen with empathy, act with compassion, and demonstrate genuine care for their team members. These human qualities foster trust, build stronger relationships, and promote a sense of psychological safety within the organization. Leveraging Technology for Inclusive Leadership: Technology can be a powerful tool for inclusive leadership. It provides leaders with actionable data and insights, enabling them to understand the voice of their employees better. Tools like coaching platforms offer valuable support for managers, helping them navigate conversations around well-being, mental fitness, and career growth. Additionally, technologies that promote diversity and inclusion in the hiring process, such as AI-powered interview analysis, can reduce bias and create fairer opportunities for all candidates. Business Outcomes of Inclusive Leadership: Contrary to the notion that inclusive leadership is just "soft stuff," it has tangible business outcomes. Studies have consistently shown that diverse and inclusive teams outperform homogeneous ones. Inclusive leadership leads to higher employee engagement, increased productivity, and improved retention rates. By quantifying and presenting these outcomes, inclusive leaders can demonstrate the value of their approach to stakeholders, including the CFO. The intersection of technology and inclusive leadership presents an exciting opportunity for organizations to create an inclusive and thriving workplace culture. Inclusive leaders, driven by courage and a desire to help people, are leveraging technology to enhance their leadership practices. By embracing human qualities, using technology as an enabler, and focusing on quantifiable business outcomes, inclusive leaders are shaping the future of work. In this age of technology, it is essential to recognize the power of inclusive leadership in unlocking the full potential of individuals and driving organizational success.

#HRTechChat w/ Andy Storch & Larry McAlister on Career Fulfillment via Built Resilience & Ownership

Thu, 11 May 2023 00:00:00 -0000

Are you someone who dreams of a fulfilling career, but feels bogged down by challenges and setbacks? Do you feel like you're constantly pushing yourself outside of your comfort zone, without seeing the results you want? If so, you're not alone. But the good news is that there are ways to build resilience and overcome the obstacles that stand in your way. As someone who is passionate about career development, I've seen firsthand how a resilient mindset can help people achieve their goals. It's not just about bouncing back from failures or setbacks, although that's certainly important. It's also about having the right mindset, one that is open to growth, learning, and taking ownership of your career. This is especially important in today's fast-paced and constantly evolving work environment. As technology and automation continue to disrupt industries and change the nature of work, it's more important than ever to be adaptable, flexible, and resilient. This means not only being able to handle challenges and setbacks, but also being proactive about your own career development. So what can you do to build resilience and take ownership of your career? It starts with developing a growth mindset, one that is open to learning, feedback, and continuous improvement. This means being willing to take risks, try new things, and embrace failure as a learning opportunity. It also means being mindful of your own needs and goals, and being willing to speak up and advocate for yourself. This could mean setting boundaries, asking for support or resources, or taking on stretch assignments that challenge you in new ways. But perhaps most importantly, building resilience and taking ownership of your career means cultivating empathy and understanding for yourself and others. This means recognizing that we all have limitations, and that it's okay to ask for help or support when we need it. It also means being mindful of the impact that our actions and decisions have on those around us, and striving to create a supportive and collaborative work environment. In the end, building resilience and taking ownership of your career is about recognizing that we all have the power to shape our own futures. By cultivating the right mindset, being proactive, and staying true to our values and goals, we can overcome challenges and achieve success in all areas of our lives. So why not start today?

#HRTechChat with Swati Jain on the Right Mindset for a Successful Career

Wed, 19 Apr 2023 00:00:00 -0000

Building a successful career requires the right mindset, skills, and strategies to navigate the changing job market. In this conversation with Swati Jain, a transformational advisor and leadership coach, she shared her experience of building her professional journey, highlighting the importance of building career resilience, self-discovery, and a deep understanding of one's strengths and weaknesses. She emphasized that hard and soft skills are crucial but not the only focus for career success. Rather, she recommended three key strategies to build career agility, take risks, and network effectively. And, that is what we dive into in the podcast. https://www.getreempowered.com/

#HRTechChat: Robyn Torgius, Global Head of Payroll at IFS

Tue, 18 Apr 2023 00:00:00 -0000

I wish we could just push a button and have payroll process without a hitch, like everyone thinks we do," joked Robyn Torgius, guest on this episode of #HRTechChat. Instead of just falling into the work, as most have in the past, people are increasingly choosing payroll as a career path. This is a good thing. As global head of payroll at IFS and member of 3Sixty Insights' Global Executive Advisory Council, Robyn shared her considerable insight into how payroll can be elevated into a profession -- and why it should be.

#HRTechChat: Purbita Banerjee, Senior Client Partner and Head of Product Management at Korn Ferry

Thu, 13 Apr 2023 00:00:00 -0000

For this episode of #HRTechChat, Purbita Banerjee, senior client partner and head of product management at Korn Ferry, joined 3Sixty Insights Co-Founder Brent Skinner for a barnburner of a discussion. Their topic? How future-of-work technology is upending long-held notions in #talentacquisition and #talentmanagement. "We're here to create pathways to success for humans at work," said Purbita.

The Boston #isolvedRoadShow Episode of #HRTechChat with Guest Geoff Webb

Thu, 13 Apr 2023 00:00:00 -0000

Last week, just before the morning's program commenced at the Boston stop along the 2023 #isolvedRoadShow, this episode's #HRTechChat video podcast guest Geoff Webb and I met for some impromptu "green room" time and joked that it was too bad the camera wasn't rolling. Never fear, however: I plan to build on that very interesting discussion soon with a dedicated blog entry.... Following the conclusion of last Thursday's itinerary at the Courtyard by Marriot, Geoff and I sat down for this episode of the podcast -- recorded "in concert, so to speak," from the Road Show floor. And this may be the right time to explain just what the 2023 isolved Road Show is, because it relates directly to the conversation captured here. A multiple-city trek that executives and others at isolved are making to reach as many of the vendor's customers as possible, the Road Show is isolved's vehicle to deliver an important, timely message to HR leaders and their teams: it's possible to stop spinning your wheels under a mountain of administrative work and become strategic, laser-focused on the all-important employee experience. And you can get there one step at a time. Geoff shared a metaphor for all this, the Red Queen Effect. In Lewis Carroll's 19th century classic Through the Looking Glass, the Red Queen teaches main character Alice the underlying subtext and metaphor of running faster and faster and, yet, staying in one place. "When you think about what that means to an HR organization," Geoff said, "I think it's very, very appropriate. We see HR teams being asked to do more and more and more, to react and respond to changes in employee expectations and to change to the needs of the business. And, of course, there's just a relentless drumbeat of new legislation, new laws, new compliance requirements, new mandates, and so on. So, of course, what they're doing is have to run faster and faster, just to stay in the same place." The gist of the Red Queen's lesson is to work smarter, not faster. Species evolve to evade falling prey to predators. These same predators then evolve to catch these same prey anew. Each draws on the same innate imperative, and HR can evolve, too. HR can stop running faster and faster just to stay in one place. With this deliberate, intentional shift in thinking, HR will see many desirable benefits over time. Their evolution will lead them to more gratifying work that organizational leadership will recognize as strategic. The best part is, just like biological evolution occurs in tiny steps, so does HR evolution. HR presses forward and upward in gradual increments -- easily mastered, effective steps. Geoff is a repeat guest on #HRTechChat, by the way, and you can view a previous episode featuring him. In the midst of doing well over 60 for 2023, isolved is serious about its Road Shows. Those into math will recognize right away that this means at least one city every week this year. Yes, the isolved team is busy, and we at 3Sixty Insights enjoyed the opportunity to join them and host this episode of the podcast.

#HRTechChat: Brandon Dorr, Director of People Technologies at WPS Health Solutions

Tue, 11 Apr 2023 00:00:00 -0000

Brandon Dorr, director of people technologies at WPS Health Solutions, guested on this episode of the #HRTechChat video podcast. He and host Brent Skinner discussed how Brandon's training in IT led him into HR. There seems to be a robust career path in HR (and other lines of business) for IT professionals needed for their expertise in sorting the data that SaaS for HCM produces (and in developing custom, tailored functionality). During their conversation, they also touched on the high caliber of attention that UKG pays to customer success.

#HRTechChat: Mike Ettling, Chief Executive Officer at Unit4

Sat, 08 Apr 2023 00:00:00 -0000

I'm going to date myself here. My first encounter with Mike Ettling, CEO of Unit4, was over 10 years ago. Technology editor for HRO Today at the time, I was relatively wet behind the ears, as the saying goes, when it comes to human capital management and the technology for it. I attended a briefing for analysts and the industry press with Mike, CEO at the time of what was then NorthgateArinso. The gathering was in real life, a.k.a. IRL (a term that had not even emerged yet). "Well, Brent, that goes back some time," Mike said when I brought it up to open the discussion on this episode of the #HRTechChat video podcast. Much has happened since 2011. NGA became NGA Human Resources and, eventually, a part of Alight, and Mike went on to even greater things. Possibly most notable among his past roles is that of CEO for SAP SuccessFactors, a post he held from 2014 to 2018. To say Mike loves thinking about HCM is evident. He sees how it all blends, and he takes it a step further. "Unit4 focuses on ERP for people-centric businesses," he says, and his philosophy there is, in fact, to treat HCM and Unit4's software for enterprise resource planning and financial planning and analysis (FP&A) as being inextricably linked and having one holistic application for business. Mike's perspective here is refreshing. The idea to integrate these activities closely has been forming bit by bit for years, and, from a messaging standpoint and more, the approach has been just screaming for a go-to-market vehicle. The benefits afforded to an organization that treats these activities as linked are many and go beyond potentially sizable newfound efficiencies. The company that can give its financial people visibility into the organization's people overall, its workforce, will cultivate a greater appreciation among the former for the upside of a positive employee experience. Perhaps it is no accident, then, that one of Mike's first executive decisions, when he took the role to lead Unit4, was to rename the human resources department as People Success, a term that captures the essence and spirit of recently gathering trends in HCM and business leadership overall: the tenet that organizations' profitability and overall perpetuity hinges on their embrace of a new guiding ethos, one that asserts the success of the company's people ultimately translates to success, period. Not for naught, the concept is baked into Unit4's tagline, too: "in business for people," which is what initially drew Mike to Unit4, he says. The saying implicitly intersects with diversity, equity and inclusion, another topic we explored during the podcast. Mike says that he is grateful for his upbringing in South Africa, as it instilled in him what he sees as a second nature for DE&I. "You cannot solve DE&I with a process," he says. "You can solve it with empathy and the right leaders in an organization." It was a wide-ranging conversation. Just before recording began, Mike and I joked that our discussion would probably dip into speculation over artificial intelligence at some point (as does most coffee talk in HCM these days, it seems). Amazingly, it did not, but he says he's interested in returning to #HRTechChat someday to discuss AI specifically. That would be yet another fantastic discussion.

#HRTechChat: How Maji Tharpe is challenging the status quo

Tue, 07 Mar 2023 00:00:00 -0000

March 8th marks International Women’s Day and a special opportunity for organizations to celebrate the contributions of their female employees. This is an especially important day to me because it is about empowering women in the workplace. So this year on International Women’s Day, let’s take some time to recognize our hardworking women and find new ways to challenge the status quo. Celebrating with me today is Maji Tharpe from University of Illinois’ Discovery Partners Institute, and she is doing everything she can to diversify the tech ecosystem in the state of Illinois by disrupting the internship model. We met at the virtual HR Tech Conference, and instantly hit it off! We both operate in the cross section of HR Tech, succession planning, upskilling and pipeline diversity. We are both committed to challenging the status quo to create a better workplace for our daughters. “It is important that we address these issues systemically and conscientiously so that we can actually make a difference,” said Maji, “because if we just say we want to do good, that's not solving anything, we've got to create solutions. We have got to push ourselves to the point of being uncomfortable if we are going to make a difference that is actually going to affect and make our system more equitable across the board.” International Women's Day is just a great opportunity to put this message out there with a solution of what can be done. Reach out to Maji at immersion@uIllinois.edu to learn more.

#HRTechChat: Jamie Aitken, Vice President of HR Transformation at Betterworks

Tue, 28 Feb 2023 00:00:00 -0000

#HRTechChat: Jamie Aitken, Vice President of HR Transformation at Betterworks by 3Sixty Insights

#HRTechChat with James Brogan CEO and Co-Founder of PepTalk

Fri, 17 Feb 2023 00:00:00 -0000

#HRTechChat with James Brogan CEO and Co-Founder of PepTalk by 3Sixty Insights

#HRTechChat: Geoff Webb, Vice President of Solutions, Product, and Marketing Strategy at isolved

Thu, 16 Feb 2023 00:00:00 -0000

#HRTechChat: Geoff Webb, Vice President of Solutions, Product, and Marketing Strategy at isolved by 3Sixty Insights

#HRTechChat: Organizational Psychologist Caitlin Collins, Program Strategy Director at Betterworks

Tue, 07 Feb 2023 15:00:10 -0000

#HRTechChat: Organizational Psychologist Caitlin Collins, Program Strategy Director at Betterworks by 3Sixty Insights

#HRTechChat with Alex Furman, Founder and Chief Executive Officer at Performica

Wed, 18 Jan 2023 15:00:23 -0000

This edition of #HRTechChat features Alex Furman, founder and CEO of Performica and 3Sixty Insight's Jennifer Dole. In this episode we share why founder’s story matter. Prospective customers want to understand the story behind a company’s founding- why it exists, what inspired its leaders, and how it will make their lives better. Founders’ stories can offer inspiration, give them insight into the values at play in the organization they're thinking of using, and even persuade them that they have made the right decision when considering an investment with a particular company. In this blog post we explore why Alex's stories should matter when you're investing in technology. There was so much to unpack in a short time during the recording, take a listen!

#HRTechChat: Steve Goldberg, HR Industry Analyst, Advisor & Thought Leader

Mon, 12 Dec 2022 00:00:00 -0000

My guest for this episode of #HRTechChat was Steve Goldberg, well-known HR industry analyst, advisor and thought leader. Steve and I were having so many interesting conversations of late, that we decided we'd better lay one of these tracks down on vinyl, so to speak. Steve shared a few ideas around the theme of "opportunities where HR technology can make a difference today and over the next several years," and here we are.... True to form, Steve got me to thinking about something in a way I'd never considered. It's loosely related to a concept I encountered many years ago. The idea "is really the byproduct of mashing together the vendor perspective and the customer perspective," Steve said. From vendors, there's a standardization of functionality for this or that need and area of practice in human capital management. And, at the employers that use this software, there's a fit for this standardization, but also a uniqueness that standardized solutions won't address. And, Steve asks, "I'm now thinking, can machine learning help? How do you bridge that gap with machine learning?" That is a fascinating possibility. Another area of interest in HCM today "is what I call line manager enablement," Steve said. "It's a phrase that I started using when I was at PeopleSoft. Even fast forward to today. It's not getting anything close to the attention that I think it needs." His point is sage. Essential stakeholders when it comes to HCM technology, line managers need attention. And what's intriguing is that the dam seems to be breaking, and vendors of technology for HCM are beginning to gear their solutions for the line manager — a welcome development. "The HR department typically only comprises about one percent of the organization," Steve said. "How can HR possibly scale and have a finger on the pulse of the needs, interests, goals, potential issues, and challenges of every employee in an organization, every worker? So line managers have to be viewed as critical in listening to employees' needs, interests, and goals and in balancing these with the needs, interests, and goals of the enterprise." Our chat covered a country mile's worth of ground. We discussed Steve's three P's for artificial intelligence. We threw a bone to Generation X and Baby Boomers by talking about the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island as a parable for the pitfalls in crisis communication at the intersection of internal and external brand (link included for the edification of Millennials and Generation Y). Even the topic of mergers and acquisitions came up, including the cruciality of managing cultural friction successfully during these events. This conversation was truly wide-ranging. A friend of mine and member of our Global Executive Advisory Council, Steve is always a deep fount of knowledge and wisdom on all things HCM. Much of it comes from his decades in the business as a practitioner in HR, an HCM technology vendor executive, and an industry analyst and consultant. (He recently became a board advisor for Azilen Technologies, for example.) Anyone who likes to think deeply on technology, leadership and more in HCM will want to give this episode a view.

#HRTechChat: Anita Lettink, Founder of HR Tech Radar, Payroll Expert, Author

Sun, 11 Dec 2022 00:00:00 -0000

Anita Lettink was the guest for this episode of #HRTechChat. Many viewers of this video podcast may know Anita from her nearly 20 years in positions of increasing seniority at NGA Human Resources (acquired in 2019 by Alight). Following nearly three years as a senior vice president there, she finally left NGAHR in mid-2020 to found HR Tech Radar and write and publish her book, "How to Select Your Next Payroll: The Ultimate Guide." Anita is a payroll expert by any calculus, and it was a real pleasure to reconnect and discuss the subject matter of her book in detail. Having fallen out of touch in recent years, Anita and I actually go way back, originally meeting when she was about midway through her tour of duty at NGAHR. This was back when NGAHR was known as NorthgateArinso, and the chief executive was Mike Ettling (who's now CEO of Unit4). As for little ol' me, I was technology editor for HRO Today. My, how time flies.... Much as nobody has ever complimented or thanked the power company for the electricity working, no employee (or company executive, for that matter) has ever spoken up to give the payroll department a thumbs up for getting payroll right again. When the power goes out or payroll goes wrong, however, watch the emails, text messages and phone calls roll in. "It is the expectation of employees that payroll will be correct," Anita said during the episode. "You cannot overperform payroll. But the moment it is wrong, even for a small group of people, I'd say all hell breaks loose. And all the trust you've built, the reputation that you had, is gone overnight." Payroll is one of those things employees are entitled to, no questions asked. They know this to the point that they don't even think about it, when payroll is right. There's an unspoken understanding. Get payroll wrong, however, and the employer brand suffers. This is why payroll absolutely must be correct. When it is, employee sentiment remains unaffected; when it isn't, employee sentiment tanks. Having been a close observer and actor in the payroll selection process for so long, Anita has — interestingly — identified what she believes to be a specific stage in the process that, left unaddressed, can botch or derail the implementation and subsequent deployment of a payroll solution. What is this stage in the process? Consider viewing this episode of the podcast, where we discuss the answer. Payroll is among my very favorite topics, and Anita brought deep insight to the conversation.

#HRTechChat with Steve Hunt, chief expert, work and technology at SAP

Wed, 07 Dec 2022 00:00:00 -0000

Some restructuring efforts have become notorious for favoring cost cutting over the employees who drove their success in the first place. We must develop better frameworks that value employees and facilitate learning from our past experiences to ensure restructuring is handled more equitably going forward. Joining me on this video podcast of #HRTechChat is Steve Hunt, chief expert, technology and work at SAP and author of best selling book “Talent Tectonics.” In this episode we share an outline of an upcoming research paper we are collaborating on about the “New Era of Restructuring: How Companies are Leveraging Innovations in Work Technology to Manage Restructuring Differently.” There was so much to unpack in a short time during the recording. We offer one definition of restructuring, three different reasons for restructuring, and seven different technology categories for managing restructuring differently. One of my favorite parts of the video podcast, besides singing ‘The Twelve Days of Restructuring’, is when Steve calls it “almost crazy” to do restructuring without an organizational network analysis tool. “One of the most underutilized tools in the field of HR and restructuring … is organizational network analysis tools,” says Steve. “When you eliminate people based on organizational charts or spreadsheets, you have no idea what relationships are being destroyed or severely damaged. Some of the most critical people in the company are not necessarily the ones who have highly visible roles. Just because you know where someone sits does not mean you know the impact they have on people in other parts of the organization. It’s almost crazy to do restructuring without [the organizational network analysis tools].” Our concluding comments are around embracing restructuring with the employee experience in mind. Steve shares “it is not putting employee needs above company needs, but at the same level.”

#HRTechChat Explores isolved's Acquisition of AAP

Tue, 29 Nov 2022 00:00:00 -0000

This past summer, isolved acquired AAP, an administrative services organization (ASO) and significant member of isolved's large network of similar companies using isolved's software-as-a-service solution for human capital management to carry out part or all of HR for their clients. Demonstrating why AAP is an especially good match for the vendor, this in-network acquisition underscores several of isolved's strengths. Joining me on the video podcast to explain were Andy Osborne, who was CEO of AAP for 20 years, and Lina Tonk, who has been with isolved for many years herself, becoming the organization's chief marketing officer shortly after her previous appearance on #HRTechChat. This acquisition of AAP reflects an important element of isolved's growth strategy. Bringing members of this network fully under the isolved brand is typically smooth and straightforward for these ASOs, professional employer organizations (PEOs), payroll service bureaus, and similar providers. Already using isolved's solution, they see business tending to continue as usual, and easily, for their clients. In the process, isolved grows in a highly sustainable way. In recent years isolved has built a wraparound ecosystem designed to cultivate this network. Firsthand, I've witnessed extra-exemplary ASOs and PEOs et al. from this network receive public recognition at isolved's annual user conference. As for AAP, infusing its culture into isolved's proved intuitive, a natural step benefiting from the strength of relationships between leaders at both organization. "Andy and I go way back," Lina said. "From the moment they deployed the isolved platform, I remember thinking, 'They will be such a good fit for us. And, when he made the decision to move into an acquisition with us, we knew that he had checked every single box to ask, 'Are my customers going to be okay? Is my team going to be okay?' They built such a strong culture for their customers that, as we transfer them through, you can see it; you can live and breathe it." Lina's words make lots of sense as you hear Andy speak of looking past just the paycheck. "We see through the paycheck. We look past the electronic file. We try to take into consideration every day, what we did that impacted the person behind what was printed on the check or what was in an electronic file. We want to understand the impact if we didn't get our job right. If we missed the child support or the direct deposit, you know that those things are key. That is the culture that we built." The story of AAP's relationship with isolved is a powerful anecdote speaking not only to the cultural fit between the two, but also the usability and capability of the vendor's cloud software for HCM. "We started reviewing the software options that were out there in 2014," Andy said. "The platform that we were on at the time was not meeting client demand. It was not evolving and developing at the speed that the market required." In 2016, AAP made the selection to move to the isolved platform, "which checked all the boxes for all of the things that we needed." So superior was isolved for AAP's needs that, just to be sure, Andy asked his team to re-analyze all the isolved competitors that AAP had considered. "After two reviews of everybody else, isolved still came out as the clear front runner." Incidentally, one of those needs stemmed from Andy's decision early in his tenure as CEO at AAP to target quick-service restaurants (QSRs), a vertical market that eventually accounted for approximately 65 percent of AAP's client base. This aligns with goals at isolved, which targets QSRs, too, with a solution especially well-tailored for their challenges in HCM. As usual, the blog entry captures only a sliver of the depth of thought and conversation on display on the #HRTechChat video podcast. Do yourselves a favor and watch this episode, a very deep dive into what it takes to make an acquisition of this kind successful.

#HRTechChat Enavrio: "Is Technology Vendor Selection Really Just about Technology Vendor Selection?"

Tue, 22 Nov 2022 00:00:00 -0000

When exactly should vendor selection really start? Is it ever just about vendor selection? Many times, employers should step back, rethink assumptions, and consider whether vendor selection even is the right path. Whatever ails their HCM or impedes them from achieving their vision may be traceable to something other than technology or whatever vendor may already be deployed. This episode of the video podcast is a brainchild of sorts. It stems from a conversation at the HR Technology Conference & Expo with Brenda Laughlin and Brian Turk, managing partners at Enavrio. "Is technology vendor selection really just about technology vendor selection?" I asked. And here we are now, the three of us, on #HRTechChat to explore the answer to this seemingly circular question. Enavrio is "a global consulting collective of the best and brightest HR and HR technology consultants," Brian stated near the outset of the recorded chat. Working with independent contractors, freelancers and, also, boutique consulting firms, Enavrio has a front row seat when it comes to seeing how technology vendor selection plays out. When and why employers determine that they need a change in their HCM technology provider is a complex discussion with many layers and variables. The direction of their decision-making is fraught with pitfalls. "Ideally, we have the HR strategy somewhat formulated, we know what the business is trying to accomplish, and we know how the HR strategy is linked to the business objectives," Brenda said. "Today, technology is just an integral part of almost every strategy, every piece of HR. And to ignore the technology piece and have it as an afterthought is a mistake," just as to reflexively "lead with the technology is a mistake, because oftentimes technology doesn't even solve the problem." As can be imagined, our discussion meandered smack-dab into 3Sixty Insights' own core focus: understanding the evolving decision-making process in enterprise software. For one, it's important for buying organizations to advocate for themselves. When it comes to their needs, "it's a little bit risky to completely rely on the vendor from sales to implementation," Brian said. "Ideally, you have some way of owning that as the client and seeing it through as the client." Longtime viewers may recall that Brenda was a guest on the podcast in late summer 2021. Here's a link. It was a pleasure to have Brenda back, this time with Brian to discuss an at once timely and perennial topic. Any organization rethinking its approach to HCM would do well to view this episode.

#HRTechChat: Jamie Aitken, Vice President of HR Transformation at Betterworks

Mon, 21 Nov 2022 00:00:00 -0000

“Nobody wakes up in the middle of the night going, ‘Oh, great, tomorrow is my performance review,” said Jamie Aitken in a moment of light-hearted sarcasm during this episode of #HRTechChat. My latest guest on our video podcast, Jamie is vice president of HR Transformation at Betterworks. In 2017, Adobe published a report titled "Performance Reviews Get a Failing Grade." The results to the associated survey painted a bleak picture. Startlingly, 22 percent of respondents admitted to having cried after their performance review. From the same survey, 58 percent of respondents said performance reviews are stressful, and 37 percent began searching for employment elsewhere following a performance review. One-fifth of respondents were so impacted by their performance review that they acted on a decision to quit immediately afterward. “Why are we doing this?" Jamie asked. "It's stressful not just for employees, but for people managers. Traditional performance management doesn’t even move the needle when it comes to performance or productivity.” It really doesn't. And it really doesn't matter that the results to Adobe's survey are from nearly six years ago. In the time that's passed traditional performance management has surely become even more anachronistic. The old way of doing performance management is, in fact, antithetical to the implicit goal of any company attempting to track and measure their employees' performance: to improve it. Providing evidence of a viable alternative is Betterworks' own report: "2022 Global HR Research Report: The State of Performance Enablement." Surveying 2,500 employees and managers at a wide range of employers, the vendor found that respondents who were indeed users of Betterworks saw a 25 percent improvement in employee engagement and 44 percent increase in employees' willingness to exert discretionary effort on the job. Betterworks’ term for this alternative is modern performance enablement. Jamie and I spoke at length on the idea: to dispense with standalone annual employee performance reviews in favor of promoting continuous year-round conversations between managers and their team members. This building of rapport may culminate in a much more meaningful and empathetic annual retrospective on employees' performance informed by the substance of these conversations. As you can imagine, modern performance enablement is also a huge factor in HR transformation. First, the efficiencies found in modern performance enablement free HR from the often overwhelming administrative tedium of babysitting annual reviews. This helps significantly in delivering HR from its cost-center shackles. Second, modern performance enablement is highly engaging and, therefore, highly inviting. It's a boon to companywide participation rates, which, in turn, produce rich longitudinal data on the performance of the organization's people. With the newfound time and mental space to devote to understanding and interpreting this data, an HR department can become a strategic partner to leadership by being the source of deep insight into the company's people. Jamie put it best, and I encourage you to watch this episode: “As HR professionals, we now have ways to articulate why what we do matters for the business, and I would say HR should be really excited. Don't wait for the seat at the table to be given to you. Just take it.”

#HRTechChat: Nicole Davies, Vice President of Talent Optimization at Valet Living

Fri, 11 Nov 2022 00:00:00 -0000

For this episode of the #HRTechChat video podcast, my guest was Nicole Davies, vice president of talent optimization at Valet Living. Our discussion covered her department's highly successful deployment of Quantum Workplace, which 3Sixty Insights details in a recently published case study. If you've ever lived in a multifamily home, condominium complex or apartment building, it's possible that you've benefitted from Valet Living. United States-based and close to 28 years old, Valet Living operates in more than 40 states and employs approximately 10,000; about 8,500 are part-time staff. Together, these employees carry out amenity services such as package delivery, waste removal, and dog walking to the 1.8 million homes in residential communities with which the company partners. Driving Nicole's decision to propose deploying Quantum Workplace at Valet Living was her employer's lack of modern technology — or any technology at all, really — for tracking employees' performance. The process was annual and highly manual. As we have discussed at length lately, here at 3Sixty Insights, this is no way at all in this day and age to track employee performance, let alone promote better performance, boost employee engagement or inspire staff to stay. Annual and manual performance management has pretty much always been antithetical to all these goals, in fact. Luckily, modern technology for talent management makes it possible to leave these old ways behind and helps organizations align the employee experience to a high-tech customer experience. Valet Living already had advanced software, long in place, designed to track associates' progress day-to-day in completing client-facing work, and Nicole wanted to bring the company's employer brand into alignment with this aspect of the consumer brand. "We pride ourselves on being a tech-enabled service," she shared during the podcast. Valet Living's associates are "out there on site. They're using very fancy technology we've developed to let us know where they are on the property. But then, on the people side of things, we were very low tech. We really had no great way for them to be able to have engaging conversations with their leaders, or for them to even really know what was happening within the company." When Nicole joined Valet Living, she and the rest of leadership there made the decision to partner with Quantum Workplace. Doing so left them "one-stop shopping so to speak, where folks could go if they wanted to learn about how they're doing — going from a performance perspective all the way through to opportunities to continue to grow and develop from a succession planning perspective." Positive employee engagement increased considerably right away and continues to climb. Given that daily work life for associates does not naturally lead to much interaction between them and their managers, this boon to employee engagement at Valet Living is especially notable given the fundamentals of the employer's business model. Employee retention is much higher, too, and with the deployment of Quantum Workplace has come a significant boost in internal hiring for managerial roles and attendant drop in labor expenditure related to external recruiting. Our case study dives into these details. If you're looking for an example of how to boost employee engagement under challenging conditions, and if you need inspiration for HR transformation, then you owe it to yourself to watch this episode. The use of Quantum Workplace has helped Nicole elevate HR's strategic standing at Valet Living. Highly knowledgeable when it comes to talent management, she's a natural guest for a podcast and has an exceptionally compelling story to share.

3Sixty Insights #HRTechChat with Larry McAlister, founder of The Corporate Humanist Consultancy

Thu, 03 Nov 2022 15:01:54 -0000

This is my first time hosting an HR Tech Chat and my first guest is Larry McAlister! My colleague Brent Skinner included me on HR Tech Chats before - Talent Management - It Will Blend and 3Sixty Insights Shares its Takeaways from the HR Technology Conference & Expo. We are going to make a regular practice out of sharing our big ideas, and he has encouraged me to host my own HR Tech Chat too. I am so grateful for this opportunity! When I first met Larry, our professional paths intersected at NetApp and Fuel50, I was struck by his passion for helping organizations transform their talent and culture through the effective use of technology. It is not surprising that he recently published a book about this very topic - titled "The Power to Transform.” He is always eager to share his insights and experiences with other leaders in the field. We both agree the definition of success is changing. With so many individuals working remotely and needing to adapt to changing conditions, skills development and well-being have become key components of success. And in this new landscape, HR technology is playing an essential role by providing tools for managers to have more meaningful conversations with their employees. By leveraging innovative HR tech solutions like talent marketplace and virtual coaching tools, managers are able to provide employees with the support they need in a way that is fast and efficient. Additionally, these technologies help to promote empathy and understanding among team members, allowing them to communicate effectively even during times of stress and uncertainty. It is clear that modern HR tech is enabling a new definition of success in the age of the post pandemic, empowering both individuals and organizations as they navigate this challenging time. As more and more companies embrace the concept of an ecosystem and explore different ways to bring together diverse solutions, it is clear that the ability to think creatively and effectively manage different perspectives is critical. And in order for companies to fully realize the potential of this ecosystem mindset, they must also pay close attention to their HR tech stack and talent strategy. Furthermore, it is crucial that businesses recognize that automating tasks alone is no longer sufficient; rather, it is how we leverage the resulting data that truly matters. With greater data democratization across all levels of an organization, people have an opportunity to see exactly what they're capable of achieving. Whether individuals are looking to climb up the corporate ladder or simply want to improve as individuals, having access to meaningful data will help them realize their full potential. We covered a lot of ground in this discussion and there’s definitely something for everyone. So whether you’re an HR pro looking for ways to stay ahead of the curve or just starting out on your tech journey, we hope you find this information helpful.

#HRTechChat: Talent Management -- It Will Blend

Mon, 24 Oct 2022 00:00:00 -0000

It's been about a month since my colleague Jen Dole and I dropped our very first mutual episode of the #HRTechChat podcast. Today's is the second installment in this new internal series wherein we will discuss various issues facing professionals whose day-to-day lives intersect with human resources and human capital management and how and why technology fits into the equation. Jen is now well past her 90-day mark here at 3Sixty Insights. When she joined us, we seriously considered whether to label her practice area something other than talent management. It has become a traditional term, after all, and part of us wanted to be forward-thinking and novel. Ultimately, we landed on the side of tradition, but we continue to wonder when exactly it makes sense today to refer to talent management as, well, talent management.... Conceived by McKinsey & Company in 1997, according to Wikipedia, the concept of talent management itself was once a novel take on the so-called softer aspects of human capital management, things like performance management, succession planning, compensation management, and, depending on who's talking, learning management and career development, too. And, in that time, an age when systematization in HCM was in its infancy, HR departments far and wide, from the leanest at the smallest companies to the most developed at the largest, were busy enough to approach talent management as siloed activities to tamp down. This continued for years. Fast-forward to today, however, and the benefit of hindsight reveals that the practice of so-coined talent management never comprised discrete, neatly defined activities; it was just the relatively archaic state of the technology for it holding us back, forcing us to contemplate things rigidly. The state of the art of technology for HCM today has since evolved to accommodate the fluid nature of what we've long identified as talent management. And we are now at the point where the conventional domains of traditional talent management blend together every day in sophisticated organizations where HR has embraced this state of the art and the forward-thinking workflow that goes along with it. New terms such as the future of work and the employee experience reflect the reality and help these HR teams show and exercise their strategic worth to the C-suite. But don't say any of this to those aforementioned lean HR teams at small organizations. Regale them with tales of a progressive employee experience or a bright future of work, and it may not even make sense to them. For them, it's probably best to call the softer side of HR by its traditional name, talent management. This is because every organization starts with nothing when it comes to HR, and there will always be those among us systematizing their HCM, absolutely needing to approach talent management as an array of discrete, siloed operations in need of order. It may be hard to believe, but this is just the proverbial tip of the iceberg of what Jen and I managed to cover in what felt like the shortest 35 or so minutes ever. I encourage anyone reading this to listen in. The term talent management may yet go away, eventually. In the meantime, however, we'll call it just that for the foreseeable future. Even as the activities of talent management continue to blend beyond the vision of a now-quarter-century-old concept, the term remains a useful signpost for all.

#HRTechChat: 3Sixty Insights Shares its Takeaways from the HR Technology Conference & Expo

Sun, 25 Sep 2022 00:00:00 -0000

For those of you who don't know, Jen Dole has joined the team at 3Sixty Insights as director and principal analyst to dive deep into talent management. Jen and I go back a little bit. The week before last, at HR Technology Conference & Expo, was the first time we saw each other face to face since the first time she and I met. When was that? It was when we were both at Cornerstone. Working in different divisions, we ran into each other at LAX on our way to the company's 20th anniversary celebration in Palm Springs, Calif., and got to chatting. Later, Jen and I began to talk shop a bit more after she joined Fuel50, which is where she was most recently. Before pivoting to working for vendors of technology for human capital management, where she focused on client success, Jen was a practitioner in HR — at Fortune 500 firms, no less. And she was there in the bad old days, when technology for HCM was relatively new, especially for talent management. She tells the story of running succession planning on Microsoft Excel spreadsheets at Liberty Mutual Insurance. It was a slow, tedious exercise in administration, and her job changed profoundly once her team finally got ahold of technology purpose-built for this. "I went from being an administrator to being a strategic adviser, because I wasn't focused on collecting data anymore. The technology was doing that." It's an idea taking hold. More than once earlier this month, at the event, Jen and I heard various renditions of the the idea: access to readily available, current data on the workforce is key to HR's transforming itself into a strategic advisor to organizational leadership. As the focus, data can orientate even the most administratively hampered HR departments in the direction of the future of work. And what is the fast-developing, primary dynamic going to be in the future of work? The focus has shifted fundamentally, already, to the employee experience. All anyone had to do was look at the themes of the booths in the expo hall and speak with the vendors and HR professionals in attendance: this train has left the station. As Jen likes to say, and I'm paraphrasing, "People's definition of success has changed, and employers need to align their definition with this if they want to succeed, too." Agreed. And this isn't just an aspirational HR-centric phenomenon anymore. We see C-suite executives, boards, line managers and just about everyone else clamoring to move in this direction, too. It's almost as if the wake-up call of a worldwide pandemic jolted everyone into acknowledging that organizations are made up of people. Who knew? I'm thinking about calling it the rise of the sentient organization. The state of the art in technology for HCM is helping us to listen. We heard plenty of other terms and phrases uttered often at the event: artificial intelligence, intelligent enterprise, FOMO (fear of missing out), empathy, and more. And, in contrast with HR Tech events of years' past, there were some terms and phrases we didn't hear all that much. Automation is one. What are some others? Watch the podcast. It is a real pleasure to have Jen on our team. We cannot wait to speak with as many of you as humanly possible and learn as much as we can about your thoughts about and experiences in HCM.

#HRTechChat with Pete Tiliakos, Global Payroll Product Strategy Leader at Alight Solutions

Fri, 23 Sep 2022 00:00:00 -0000

It was my distinct pleasure to have Pete Tiliakos, global payroll product strategy leader for Alight Solutions, as my guest for this episode of the #HRTechChat video podcast. Pete's latest role is just the proverbial tip of the iceberg when it comes to his experience, expertise and, really, authority in the domain of payroll. Most recently, Pete was an analyst at two different firms. Before that, he was payroll solution architect at IBM and senior consultant, human capital management, at Deloitte Consulting, in that order. Back in the early aughts, notably, he was payroll leader for shared services at Disney Worldwide. Put differently, to say Pete is an expert in payroll is an understatement. Returning to the present, "It's an exciting time to be in the industry," said Pete, who's also a member of our Global Executive Advisory Council. "It feels like all that experience has really caught a wave." During our chat, we shared takeaways in the wake of this year's triumphant return of the HR Technology Conference & Expo. Triumphant does seem like an appropriate word. Regarding the conference, "To me that was the biggest, boldest, most vibrant, most alive event I've seen in a long time," Pete said. "There's a lot of talk about a recession and a slowdown and things, but what we're seeing is that talent is still very important. And then, of course, we saw payroll well represented." The possibilities around payroll are greater and more progressive today than we even would have fathomed 10 years ago. The train has left the station, so to speak, and our concept of what payroll can and does mean has expanded. "I just think it's great to see all the investment and focus on payroll," Pete said. "COVID really provided that spotlight, where payroll became infinitely more important compared to how it had been treated in the past." It's almost as if business leaders are finally seeing the processing of payroll for what it is: not a mere cost to contain, but an investment, just as their people's pay itself is an investment, too. Pete and I delved deeply into all of this, the transformation of payroll — as evidenced by our conversations out in the wild, at HR Technology Conference — and how payroll professionals can seize the moment to become strategic advisors to their organizations. It's one thing to be highly skilled in work that organizational leadership may view as background noise. It's quite another to become bearers of crucially informative data that can change the C-suite's basic understanding of the workforce. That's when payroll and strategy start to occupy the same sentences. I really enjoyed this discussion with Pete and highly encourage readers to tune into this episode.

#HRTechChat with Bob Cahill, CEO of Globalization Partners

Wed, 14 Sep 2022 13:30:00 -0000

Bob Cahill got his start at Ernst & Young. “And I was fascinated by the power of software and technology to expand your market or make you efficient in your operations,” he said as our guest on this episode of #HRTechChat video podcast. Over the approximately 25 years that have passed, Bob served as a C-suite executive for several technology companies, and a big part of his focus has always been on international challenges, “where I found a lot of passion to scale technology globally,” he said. “It was sort of the perfect juncture with meeting Nicole Sahin,” the founder of Globalization Partners, where Bob later became CEO. “She had this better mousetrap idea.” Traditionally, companies that wanted to expand internationally would have to follow a very conventional process. The first step would be to set up a new entity and get a payroll registration so they could hire people. Then, they'd have to ensure regulatory compliance would be outsourced to an array of advisors. “Nicole's vision was, ‘Why do I keep doing this over and over again?’,” Bob noted. Thus was born, about 10 years ago, Nicole’s vision for an employer-of-record (EOR). A company that needs to stand up its ability to employ people in a country new to its operations can turn to an EOR to do all the heavy lifting. The EOR’s very business is to set up these entities in any country needed to become the globally expanding employer’s single point for all things there related to employment. The EOR assumes this risk and takes on solving for all the complexity involved. As a pioneer in the space, Globalization-Partners has trailblazed best-practices to overcome resistance to the idea of an EOR. This resistance is waning considerably as EORs have flourished to gain acceptance in recent years. The welcoming has come not only from the typical growing global organization, but also from employers clamoring to establish borderless workforces and vie for talent in pursuit of the emerging work-from-anywhere approach to talent acquisition and retention. This is the future-of-work angle, and it’s worth noting that nearly one-quarter of CFOs are concerned over talent shortages, according to Globalization Partners' 2022 Globalization Trends Survey. Perhaps more compelling, 83 percent of CFOs believe “their long-term plans will stem around expansion into new countries,” the related press release notes. It’s a number slightly higher than last year’s, and the report is rich with insight into the sentiments and objectives of CFOs vis-à-vis EOR. As additional context for our conversation, Bob and I touched a bit on the findings overall. We also explored the company’s philosophy when it comes to workforce inclusivity and blending service and technology for EOR, as well as Nicole’s vision for the years ahead in EOR now that she is executive chair of Globalization Partners. I highly recommend viewing this episode.

#HRTechChat with Danny Schulz, Senior Manager of Payroll, Systems and Taxes at Kohler Co.

Wed, 07 Sep 2022 13:30:00 -0000

When it comes to the disruption of the past two years, "I'm probably one of the first people to say we're really thankful for that, because I think it led payroll be the star," says Danny Schulz, the newest member of our Global Executive Advisory Council and my guest for this episode of the #HRTechChat video podcast. He means payroll becoming the star at Kohler Co., where Danny is senior manager of payroll, systems, and taxes. So, naturally, we sat down to discuss best practices in bringing order to global payroll — something Danny and his team are well on their way to achieving. Says Danny: "To me, payroll in general comes down to data and data flow. And the success of your payroll operation is really going to be dependent upon the success of your data. I'm a data junkie at heart. If you're at a place where, from an organizational standpoint, you're doing multiple data entry by humans [...] you're not going to get it right." It's a scenario most global organizations encounter, before they ever set about to rectify the situation. This is because, once it gets to the point where leadership recognizes that global payroll needs attention, global payroll has almost always become exceedingly complicated. Beyond the fact that it's by-definition tough to solve for global payroll before you actually have global payroll, most organizations will wait till it becomes noticeably painful to process payroll globally. For some, it is then that they will look for a fix. For others, and perhaps more often, "There's some executive somewhere that wants the payroll data," says Danny. The payroll teams (yes, plural) do their best to get this data from, let's say, 16 different people, consolidate the data, and deliver it in a report. Suppose the process takes 26 hours to complete. The executive needs the information daily. A decision is made to make a change. Depending on the size of the organization, it takes a lot of sleuthing to get global payroll right — figuring out who handles what, where, when, and with what system or systems. Think of it not unlike conducting discovery for a legal case. It's to determine the organization's current state. There are, in fact, at least three best practices when bringing order to global payroll, according to Danny. One is to get your data right. Another is to corral executive alignment in your move to a strategy for global payroll. A third is to develop a roadmap and standardize processes. Don't worry. We haven't stolen his thunder. Danny went into all this and much more during our chat. I encourage you to view the episode.

3Sixty Insights #HRTechChat with Lina Tonk, Senior Vice President of Marketing at isolved

Tue, 30 Aug 2022 00:00:00 -0000

Who should own the employee experience (EX)? "There's room for everyone," said isolved Senior Vice President of Marketing Lina Tonk during her guest appearance on the #HRTechChat video podcast. And she's right. The EX occurs everywhere any employee is involved in work. "I do believe the final responsibility should reside with HR. And I think HR leaders will probably agree with that." They probably would, yes. HR's job is not to micromanage the EX, however; it is to shepherd, lead and help shape it. From this, responsibility naturally flows. Speaking of marketing, have you ever wondered whether, why or how marketing and HR could join forces to bolster and improve EX? I know that I have. And it turns out that it's an idea gaining steam.... In January of this year, isolved conducted a survey of 500 HR leaders based in the United States and from a broad cross-section of industries. The resulting whitepaper, "Transforming Employee Experience: 500 HR Leaders Talk Talent, Tech, Tactics & Threats," is an interesting read that spans several areas of interest as they relate to isolved's goal with the research: ascertaining HR's top challenges of today and top opportunities for tomorrow. And the exercise unearthed some intriguing findings vis-à-vis an emerging role for marketing in the EX and HR's sentiments regarding this. According to isolved's survey, 65 percent of HR leaders say they want their marketing team involved with EX. Specifically, 52 percent are seeking marketing’s involvement because the department plays an important role in how the company is perceived in the market, and another 40 percent want to leverage marketing’s creative ability. HR and marketing work together in these ways at isolved. During our chat, Lina described her on-the-job relationship with her colleague Amy Mosher, chief people officer at isolved. "I'm super transparent with Amy," with whom she speaks daily to align goals. During our conversation, Lina got granular in explaining what aligning marketing's goals with HR's looks like at isolved — where HR has its own goals for the employee experience, and marketing has some related to the employee experience, too, "and I believe that cross-functional teams can only work in that manner if goals are attached to them." Lina delved even deeper, providing a glimpse into what this kind of collaboration, between HR and marketing, looks like from an executional standpoint — something else I've always wondered about. For example, advocacy is incredibly important to isolved, especially for HR leaders because of its impact on retention, which is "key to everything that we're doing," said Lina. Related to this, isolved has an internal advocacy tool that it provides to all its employees. "We needed not only the creativity on the content for marketing, but also the insights and the drive from HR." Usually, several tangents will surface during the #HRTechChat video podcast, and this episode is no different. Lina and I got to talking about where EX possibly matters most. There's probably no definitive answer to this question, but we both agreed: it's hard to argue that onboarding isn't critical to EX in terms of setting the tone for the long term. Incidentally, speaking to this is a soon-to-be-published report by isolved compiling results from a survey of 1,000 employees. Among the findings is this: 49 percent of employees say they’ve been tempted to leave a new job after a poor onboarding experience that includes limited transitioning, an unprepared first day and excessive paperwork.

#HRTechChat with Jeff Andes, Vice President of Talent Management at University of Phoenix

Tue, 09 Aug 2022 00:00:00 -0000

"At the end of the day, we are all humans working with humans," says Jeff Andes, vice president of talent management at University of Phoenix and my guest for this episode of the #HRTechChat video podcast. Jeff's is a story not only of doing the hard work to do away with traditional performance management in favor of a more progressive, far more effective approach. It's also a tale of how a large educational institution was able to return its organizational culture to one better reflecting the company's origins in innovation and the entrepreneurial spirt. My conversation with Jeff gets into the gist of all of this, as well as University of Phoenix's decision to replace SAP SuccessFactors with Betterworks to support what Jeff's team now calls Everyday Performance Development. It's a fascinating deep-dive into what it takes to transform a culture for the better at a large organization. Jeff has a savvy philosophy when it comes to his thoughts on what performance management should and shouldn't be, and I encourage readers to watch this episode.

3Sixty Insights #HRTechChat with Rachel Jordan, Vice President of HCM Product Management at Unit4

Mon, 06 Jun 2022 18:55:28 -0000

Joining me for the #HRTechChat video podcast is Rachel Jordan. At Unit4, provider of business software for human capital management and enterprise resource planning, as well as financial planning and analysis, Rachel is vice president of HCM product management. Just like several of her fellow relatively new additions to leadership at Unit4, Rachel has a strong a pedigree in the industry. Unit4 is a vendor keen on finding the best ways to align and combine HCM, ERP and FP&A. The possibilities are intriguing, and you'll be hearing more about these from 3Sixty Insights as we stroll through the second half of 2022. Think of this episode of the podcast as an appetizer. HCM technology (including the ethos behind it) has evolved drastically over the past five years, from a focus on talent management to one of supporting the success of people. (Those are two different things, yes.) HR continues to mature in its role, from a largely reactionary position mired in transactional work to one aspiring to proactively support organizational growth and strategy -- and capable of doing so. It makes sense. Organizations have had to adapt their HCM systems broadly and deeply, especially since the pandemic took hold and ushered in work from home, hybrid work and other dynamics once considered novelties or exceptions to the rule. HR's charter now is to facilitate and advocate for the employee experience, and the HCM system is no longer just a database of people, but an ecosystem to support a total employee lifecycle that has, on average, become unconventional and nonlinear -- e.g., career progressions no longer track straight, effective internal mobility hinges on accurate insight into soft skills, etc. Better-delivered information from payroll and compensation strategy and regarding employees' skills influences the employee experience by optimizing internal mobility, facilitating tenure, and rendering current and future personnel costs more predictable. All this change changes the fundamental calculus that HR and other organizational stakeholders must follow to justify their proposals to invest in HCM systems. One way for them to make this argument is to show the value of HCM data as HCM systems become better connected to other domains of the enterprise and the related data becomes more easily combinable in real time. The idea is to shorten the time it takes to figure out how or whether this or that decision regarding people success would deliver value to the organization. As my conversation with Rachel ultimately implies, HR leaders and other HCM-immersed internal organizational stakeholders in positions of influence should emphasize that one major benefit of all this is not only greater organizational agility, but stability, too. Data that an HCM system produces can give employers invaluable insight into which actions are best to take. The ready availability of this data, especially when it's the result of data exchange between systems supporting areas of the business that need alignment anyway, means leaders can take these actions early.

#HRTechChat with retrain.ai and Seyfarth Shaw LLP

Mon, 02 May 2022 00:00:00 -0000

Isabelle Bichler is co-founder and chief operating officer of retrain.ai. An employment litigation attorney, Robert T. Szyba is a partner at Seyfarth Shaw LLP. Both are well-qualified to discuss the at once inescapable and intriguing trends at the intersection of AI and human capital management, and they joined us as my guests for this episode of the #HRTechChat video podcast. retrain.ai is the creator of AI-based self-evolving ontologies that unearth the relationships at the intersection of an organization's existing and future roles, its people, and their hard, soft and transferable skills. During the chat, Bichler provided an impassioned, detailed explanation on why this is so important -- and why the development of responsible AI in this area is essential to helping leaders act equitably as they plan more efficient, more targeted external and internal hiring with implications, as well, for learning and performance management. That we're even having this conversation is evidence that we are finally here: AI has finally evolved to the point that it is now a bona fide benefit to HCM. And, right on cue, AI for the workforce has become the focus of an inchoate, nevertheless quickly gathering regulatory framework. That the latter has promptly followed the former is unsurprising. Fraught with the potential for misuse both intentional and unintentional, AI is an emerging technology also holding much, much promise for the world of work. Regulators are still wrestling to approach AI effectively. There is always the chance that an early, reflexive, inaccurately or only partially informed flurry of laws governing its use in the workplace could stifle innovation in the field and have the opposite of the intended effect on AI's impact on people, Szyba cautioned during the podcast. Take this new AI Audit Law that will affect employers in New York City starting in January 2023, for example, regulating their use of AI in screening job candidates or employees up for promotion. Reading it, Those needing to comply might find themselves legitimately unclear on just how to do so. Bichler, Szyba and I will be co-presenting a webinar exploring the subject of this law on June 8 at 10am EST. You can register here. You could say AI and the future of work are inextricable. There's no stopping where we're going with AI in HCM, and we humans must, therefore, embrace and learn as much about AI as we humanly can. With this episode, we do our best, the three of us, to help us all scale the learning curve just a little bit more, and I highly recommend that readers listen in....

#HRTechChat with James Norwood, Chief Marketing and Strategy Officer of isolved

Tue, 29 Mar 2022 00:00:00 -0000

Consider: It's not necessarily that an employer has a performance management problem or, say, a learning management system problem. We must strive to marshal the discrete domains of human capital management, the silos, as one multidisciplinary instrument to solve employers' people-related needs and challenges. This is the high-level strategic value in industry-specific and industry-tailored suites for HCM, in my opinion. They help us think about HCM more holistically. They help vendors and users alike of technology for HCM break free from silo-think. There's plenty additional value, as well, for the industries these tailored HCM suites address. Software-as-a-service provider isolved recently launched People Cloud for Healthcare Services, a version of its HCM software suite exclusively for employers in health and medical services. To discuss the new product (and accompanying professional services) James Norwood, chief marketing and strategy officer at isolved, joined us for this episode of the #HRTechChat video podcast. "Once you're in a battle for talent, and it becomes a seller's market, then you do have to invest in these things," James says. He's speaking of the perennial need for registered nurses in healthcare and the need to combat and address this with people-focused solutions. RNs are always in short supply, it seems. It's a top-of-mind challenge in the health and medical services space. The pandemic has only exacerbated this shortage to become even more acute (if that was even possible). The vendor's own research shows 100 percent of HR leaders in assisted living facilities saying its hard to retain RNs. You read that right, by the way. In a large isolved-initiated survey of many subsets of the healthcare space, yes, all the HR leaders working in assisted living reported difficulty in retaining talent. It's indicative of the urgent and deep challenges related to employing people in the healthcare space. "What is isolved doing? We're helping on some of those things," James says. For healthcare-related employers, through the new healthcare-focused version of the suite, "we're helping with people getting onboarded. We're helping them get compliant. Our learning management system has very industry-specific certification training courses, which will automatically notify people in advance when a particular certification might be coming up to expire. So there's lots of things that can be done to work with employees, to make them feel like they have more control in their own destiny." The new version of the suite does a number of things to address the idiosyncrasies of healthcare employers' people-related needs, and we recently published our analysis of the People Cloud for Healthcare Services launch. I encourage you all to watch this episode. James and I delved deeply into the rationale behind isolved's decision to launch this new version of its product, how it helps, where the vendor looks to tackle industry specialization next, and much more.

#HRTechChat with hireEZ's CEO Steven Jiang and Head of Marketing Shannon Pritchett

Wed, 23 Feb 2022 00:00:00 -0000

Early this month, at an event for analysts, news media, customers and others, the artificial intelligence-powered global talent platform formerly known as Hiretual announced that it had renamed itself hireEZ. I enjoyed attending virtually and learning the rationale for the name change. We also heard details around the $26 million in venture capital that hireEZ noted it had just raised to help drive the objective of the rebrand: becoming the first vendor to define outbound recruiting as a market segment. Following the event, it seemed natural to invite hireEZ CEO Steven Jiang and Head of Marketing Shannon Pritchett to the #HRTechChat video podcast. “We chose to rebrand to align with our company’s mission to create a new category,” Jiang said, during the podcast. “Our mission is to make outbound recruiting easy. We want to make it easy for recruiters to bring jobs to people. Our vision, three words, is ‘jobs find people.'” Outbound recruiting itself is a collection of practices that have surfaced over the past several years. This market alert we published on the development delves into things. Suffice it to say, outbound recruiting is the yin to inbound recruiting’s yang…. Once a novel idea made possible by the then-novelty of the Internet, inbound recruiting is the idea that you can use the web as a fast way to attract large numbers of candidates to apply to your open jobs. This has its benefits. In contrast, think of outbound recruiting as a return to classic headhunting, but now aided by marked evolution in technologies such as AI and the cloud — and the Internet, of course. Within the external online environment, recruiters are better able to find and choose their targets. It is now possible for organizations to identify and approach right-fit candidates online for open requisitions and, thus, spare themselves the tedious task of sifting through a slew of information on candidates that found their way into the applicant tracking system. A thorough search may be impossible in the ATS. And it’s hit-or-miss on who, among these candidates in the database, may or may not be good matches anyway. Outbound recruiting is far more efficient, and recruiters with the means to do so have increasingly been deploying it, in bits and pieces, as essential arrows for their quiver. “We’ve evolved into a more candidate-centric, candidate experience model,” Shannon said. This is where the pinpointed, 1:1 nature of outbound recruiting comes into play, and that means to do so is where hireEZ enters the equation. The vendor’s technology already supports all five pillars of outbound recruiting: AI sourcing; robust, searchable data; email automation; diversity, equity and inclusion; and system integration. During the podcast, Steven, Shannon and I dove deeply into the details of these five pillars, which the aforementioned market alert also describes. Against the backdrop of The Great Resignation and a job market that looks like it’s going to be topsy-turvy for the long term, what hireEZ is doing in the recruiting space is remarkable, really. What struck me most, possibly, is around something Steven said. He noted that, for recruiters to embrace outbound recruiting, they must internalize a fundamental shift in mentality. Inbound recruiting remains a piece of the puzzle, yes. But the passivity associated with waiting for candidates to pour in is incompatible with outbound recruiting, whose ethos is proactive, can-do, recruiting with intentionality. The talent acquisition departments that deploy outbound recruiting the most successfully will commence all their recruiting activities with an outbound mindset first, with inbound activities playing a supporting role in their pursuit of the objective.

#HRTechChat with Maurik Dippel, Co-Founder and CEO of CircleLytics

Fri, 04 Feb 2022 00:00:00 -0000

Technology has advanced to the point where we don't really have to subject ourselves to the inflexibility of a number of traditional, conventional practices anymore, in human capital management. One of these is our approach to measuring employee engagement and collecting employee feedback. Technology has evolved. We can dive much deeper now and achieve several objectives at once. We have much more at our disposal now than just one-to-many surveys set to quarterly, twice-annual or yearly cadences. "We're finding that a lot of the old ways, the conventional or traditional ways of doing things, just don't cut it," says Maurik Dippel, our guest for this episode of the #HRTechChat video podcast. Annual employee engagement surveys and the like just aren't "up to the to the task. The employee survey is an inflexible instrument." Innovations in driving employee engagement and gathering employee feedback outside the confines and limitations of the conventional employee engagement survey -- these are areas of expertise squarely in the wheelhouse of Netherlands-based CircleLytics, where Maurik is CEO and co-founder. The CircleLytics solution comprises artificial intelligence; natural language processing; well-thought-out, tailored, guided open questioning; facilitated follow-up interaction between parties, who see and react to each other's responses; and additional activity to make the gathering of employee feedback highly interactive, dynamic, meaningful and... engaging. It's an approach that in fact promotes employee engagement as a part of the process. This is far more insightful and helpful than the administering of a survey to measure employee engagement, in my opinion. Maurik agrees, of course, and notes that the model has a way of optimizing management-employee relations and helping these and related stakeholders reach consensus and accord internally on challenging issues. With its AI and NLP, CircleLytics' solution analyzes their answers and interactions to capture as broad of a spectrum of organizational sentiment as possible, to help employers reach consensus more readily and in ever better ways, over time. As a microcosm, it's not unlike the idea in the macro that we must inform algorithms right now with as broad of a spectrum of human sentiment as possible, to help ensure that AI evolves as humanly as we want over time -- the focus of another episode of #HRTechChat, from November 2021 with leaders from Cornerstone and AbilityMap. But before you view that episode from last year, be sure to watch this one. Maurik does an excellent job of explaining how CircleLytics works. Plus, he and I covered lots of intriguing ground. Candidly, Maurik really made me think, and we think our chat will make you think deeply too on new possibilities in employee feedback and engagement.

#HRTechChat with Doug Dennerline, CEO of Betterworks

Thu, 20 Jan 2022 00:00:00 -0000

"The annual performance review process is pretty broken," says Doug Dennerline, CEO of Betterworks and our latest guest on the 3Sixty Insights #HRTechChat video podcast. "It was created seventy years ago for hierarchical organizations," which means it's mismatched to manager-employee dynamics at most organizations today, according to Doug. His credentials and past experience leading well-known vendors in our space are formidable and lent gravitas to our discussion. And I happen to agree with him wholeheartedly. Years ago, in a previous professional life, I wrote about "a coming mass extinction in human capital management." A result of advances in technology spurring an evolution in attitudes around how best to get the most out of employees, chief among the coming casualties would be the conventional, traditional annual performance review, in my opinion. It was nothing particularly revelatory on my part. For a long time, plenty others had been saying similar things. The idea to say it was a "coming mass extinction" gave the idea some bite and sounded cool, I rationalized. Fast forward to today. The bite of the past two years accelerated the aforementioned evolution in those attitudes to the point where, here we are, fixated on how to create the conditions for an optimal employee experience at all times. Clunky, yearly performance reviews don't fit into this equation. We may still need them for compliance, sure. Factor machine learning and social media-grade functionality into continuous performance enablement, however, and a clear, auditable trail of information further supporting any action with an employee is possible and defensible from a regulatory standpoint. Enablement is the new word, by the way. Doug doesn't like the word "management" in performance management, and neither do I -- not one bit. It's just as bad as the "management" in human capital management or talent management. The idea that we're enabling performance is a better, more accurate reflection of the purpose of evaluating employees, and we end up doing much more than merely evaluating them. This is a good thing. Think of all the advantages modern technology for the employee experience affords us when compared to the old approaches. All you have to do is read Betterworks' tagline: "Betterworks closes the loop between people, strategy and results, enabling organizations to align even the most sprawling teams." There's no practical way to form a virtuous loop of people, strategy and results with only a conventional performance management system. Add work from home to the mix, and a renaissance, an expansion in our thinking in our approach to figuring out how employees are performing, is in order. The frustrating and stilted thing about the way old-style performance management has developed, is that it occurs in a vacuum. It doesn't really drive strategy. It purports to help drive results, but barely does so. Mostly, staff loathe the tedious annual review process and anything to do with performance management. So do their managers. Underperforming or struggling employees fear the process. There's little room for positive engagement wherein they might feel good about the opportunity to get better at their jobs. It's all top-down evaluation, all the time, and, often, the process isn't even very efficient or effective in producing accurate, usable evaluations.

#HRTechChat: Multinational Luxury Fashion Brand Shares Details of its Success with Workday

Wed, 05 Jan 2022 00:00:00 -0000

Leaders from a major multinational luxury fashion brand joined us for this episode of the 3Sixty Insights #HRTechChat video podcast: Chief People Officer Abigail Wilmore and Vice President of Global People Operations Jay Barrett, both members of our Global Executive Advisory Council. This introduction is shorter than the usual. Our guests did a great job of describing their challenges and success in detail, and I encourage readers to view the episode. The fashion retailer has found immense value in Workday’s solutions as an indispensable tool to support and protect its employee experience over the course of the now nearly two-year-old pandemic. Abigail and Jay explained why this is so — and how it all came to be. Had they and their team kept the disparate, cobbled-together, unintegrated HR systems in place that predated Workday’s implementation, they honestly wonder whether they would have even been able to manage lockdowns’ impact on the employee experience. Such was the magnitude of the new software’s impact on their success.

3Sixty Insights #HRTechChat with Michael Spataro, Chief Delivery Officer for Legion

Tue, 04 Jan 2022 00:00:00 -0000

For this, the latest episode of the 3Sixty Insights #HRTechChat video podcast, our guest was Michael Spataro, chief delivery officer for Legion, a provider of advanced technologies for workforce management (WFM). Michael and I enjoyed a wide-ranging, at once practical and philosophical discussion of organizations' relationship with their hourly workforce in the retail and service industries. Legion's software excels in helping employers in these industries support a strong, positive employee experience for their hourly staff. In the summer of 2020, Legion published a report sharing the findings of a survey the vendor conducted. Respondents comprised about 500 wage and hourly employees and approximately the same number of managers, all in retail and the service industries. An top-line breakdown of the many findings is available in this press release. According to the survey’s results, notably, two out of three top reasons for leaving an organization are essentially the same for employees and their managers. For wage employees, these top three reasons are a lack of scheduling empowerment, poor communication, and an inability to get paid early. For managers, the top three are the lack of tools that would make it easier for them to communicate with their employees, an inability to get paid early, and a desire to reduce the time they spend on administrative tasks such as scheduling. Note that for the one that is not as similar, it pertains to the same issue nonetheless: scheduling. Notice also that all these concerns leading managers and their staff alike to leave their jobs in these industries all have to do, palpably, with the quality of their experience with the employer. If an employer were to address these, the payoff in their workforce’s relationship with the organization’s customers would probably improve significantly. How do we know this? Michael and I delved into it a bit. For one, it’s a fundamental respect for the Service-Profit Chain, a well-documented idea detailed in Harvard Business Review. The central tenet of the Service-Profit Chain says floor associates satisfied in their work and its effects on their work-life balance are more apt to treat customers well, which, in turn, leads to better retention of both. With this in mind, we discussed the past two years' impact on employee satisfaction in these types of roles. It hasn't always been the case everywhere, but the majority of hourly staff have long struggled to thrive in these industries. It can be thankless work. It isn't just the pay, which has tended to be low. The entire employee experience has historically left a lot to be desired in these types of roles. For hourly jobs in retail and the service industries, as Michael puts it, the pandemic has precipitated a major power shift in the employer-employee relationship. All I will add is that the past two years have brought a festering inverse of a healthy Service-Profit Chain to the surface. Look at it either way, and the ramifications are clear. "There’s no shortage of workers, but the availability of workers willing to do retail or hospitality jobs, where the employee experience is poor, has dwindled," Michael says. They're holding out for better pay and better conditions overall. It’s the reality of the Great Resignation in these sectors among these employee demographics. Call it the Great Resignation or something else, even. The terminology doesn't matter so much. What does matter, far more, is that the pandemic created a scenario wherein employees in these kinds of roles have been able to exert more influence over the conditions of their employment and its effects on their overall lives. “It’s more than better pay," Michael says. "Employees want to interact with their employer" in much the same way they do as customers "with every other company in their life.”

#HRTechChat with Adriana DiNenno of Infor

Sat, 20 Nov 2021 00:00:00 -0000

Adriana DiNenno was our guest for this, the latest episode of the 3Sixty Insights video podcast. Adriana has an intriguing dual role at Infor. As product manager of Infor People Solutions, she plays a leading role in informing the development of Infor's solutions for talent in the workforce. She also helped found and co-chairs Infor People Wellbeing, an internal group focused on -- as the name implies -- supporting positive employee sentiment there. Note that the word is people, not employees. Increasingly, vendors and customers of software for human capital management are officially referring to their employees as their people, a more human term. As co-chair, Adriana had a vision to help create a place where Infor's people can prioritize their mental health insomuch as it intersects with their work life. It's an area often overlooked in the world of work. She quickly came to the realization, however, that Infor People Wellbeing would and needed to encompass the full gamut of wellbeing -- not just the mental health aspect, but the physical, the financial, the environmental, and the social. "There are all these dimensions of employee well being," she says. "So there couldn't be a better name than Infor People Wellbeing," which happened to fit perfectly with the area of product she helps manage (again, Infor People Solutions). As we have learned on #HRTechChat over the past year, most roads in the employee experience lead to the intersection of concrete and abstract HCM -- the idea that easily and not-so-easily quantifiable activities in HCM are interconnected and holistically bear on organizational success. Over the course of our conversation, Adriana and I brainstormed several not-so-hypothetical examples, and it's worth noting: An organization's people's overall wellbeing may not be easy to quantify in a way that shows the potential impact on the business, and yet employee wellbeing undoubtedly affects productivity. I very much enjoyed chatting with Adriana, a dynamic member of the team at Infor, and encourage everyone here to view the full episode. i2w2izKNUjwFWrZAyee1

#HRTechChat with Mimi Brooks, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Logical Design Solutions

Tue, 16 Nov 2021 00:00:00 -0000

Your organization has completed a digital transformation. But the organizational transformation you hoped would naturally follow has not materialized. Why? What happened? Mimi Brooks, founder and CEO of Logical Design Solutions (LDS), joined us at 3Sixty Insights to answer this and discuss the tricky notion of the role digital transformation plays in organizational transformation -- and vice versa. This is a chicken-and-the-egg scenario wherein at times the chicken is first, and at other times the egg is. This and how organizational cultures and makeups of the future of work will affect digital strategies, as well as the near-future considerations at the intersection or organizational and digital transformation vis-à-vis the pandemic and a return to work, are among the many topics we covered with Mimi, our guest on #HRTechChat. LDS is a management consultancy that works "with large global organizations on their digital strategies when they're trying to use digital to create organizational change," Mimi says. She speaks of a future workforce and sees a move toward employee experience plus productivity, as well as experiences in the context of work. In this way, digital transformation helps drive the gig economy. "I like to say worker experience, because it could be whomever and wherever work gets done." And this has implications for the semantics of the term employee experience, of course. Getting back to the origins of digital transformation, Mimi says it "came first, because people bought the technology first. The human behavior was to buy the technology. And we thought that if we bought digital technologies that we would become digital, native companies as a way of working." And this didn't necessarily happen, even though they were good capital expenditures. The challenge since has been to transform cultures to be digitally native and receptive to using the tools and forming a virtuous circle. The thing about COVID-19 and the major disruptions that came along with it is that it accelerated utilization of this preexisting digital infrastructure and has had a net-positive effect on the interplay between organizational and digital transformation -- again, that virtuous circle. We touched on a lot more in the half-hour we spoke. I encourage anyone interested in this topic to view the full episode.

#HRTechChat: Informing Artificial Intelligence

Tue, 02 Nov 2021 00:00:00 -0000

For this episode of the #HRTechChat video podcast, AbilityMap CEO and Co-Founder Mike Erlin and Mike Bollinger, vice president of strategic initiatives at Cornerstone OnDemand, joined me to discuss a crucially important area of focus: at this still-early stage of its development, helping to ensure that we inform artificial intelligence with the best human-centric data possible. After all, most of us would like to think that the behavior of AI, as it grows eventually to an exceptionally high level of sophistication and begins to take over higher-level decision-making, will continue to reflect what we hold dear as "humanness." Both Bollinger and Merlin are vendor-side members of our Global Executive Advisory Council and repeat guests on the podcast. The episode you're reading about here has its origins in an an unrecorded conversation the three of us had several weeks ago. It all began when Bollinger alerted us to "Bias in AI: Are People the Problem or the Solution?" By John Sumser, principal analyst for HRExaminer, the article acknowledges two camps and their diverging viewpoints on the development of AI. "One group says people are the problem; the other sees them as the solution" in the development of AI, according to Sumser, who also says, "All tools contain embedded biases. Bias can be introduced long before the data is examined and at other parts of the process." We commenced this episode by agreeing with Sumser. The way forward, in our opinion, is to flood AI with as much human perspective as possible. The alternative, for developers to work overtime attempting to ensure that AI remains devoid of human bias, may be the wrong way to go and, not to mention, possibly impossible. This is my own inference from Sumser's article. The approach is counterproductive if we wish to avoid the generally dystopian future that AI has the potential to produce should we fail at this point in time, right now, to shepherd AI in a direction that humans would recognize as desirable. This does not mean a direction that humans necessarily would set on their lonesome, by the way. And, yes, there are implications for the future of work specifically. Erlin made great points here. In the world of work, when we test for cultural fit and soft skills, the best candidate for a role can often be nothing like we might have predicted. What manager anywhere would guess that a former daycare worker would be the best fit for a role in debt collection, for example? I might be getting it slightly wrong, but something like this is a finding that modern psychometrics have produced. Imagine a future of work where AI lacks this perspective, drawing instead solely on conventional decision-making metrics such as credentials and past work experience. That's where we're headed, a future where the AI for talent acquisition, for example, will have been developed with data that precludes the AI entirely from the very ability to unearth delightfully unintended, unexpected relevance. In an additional twist, it's a particularly human outcome that mere humans would never reach on their own. Erlin further expounds on the idea. Incorporating quantitative evidence of human bias -- think inherent human preferences -- into the referenceable data sets available to AI generates higher-quality, human-centric current and future choices for humanity, he suggests. I agree. And it's a continual, never-ending process to feed this type of information to AI, which should then provide us suggested courses of actions. Furthermore, we must think deeply about the questions we ask AI to answer. For example, rather than ask, "How can reduce crime?," we should consider asking, "How do we create an enriching community?" -- lest AI return answers that only exacerbate human suffering or frustrations.

#HRTechChat with Caitlin MacGregor, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Plum.io

Wed, 20 Oct 2021 19:23:00 -0000

For this episode of #HRTechChat, our guest was Caitlin MacGregor, chief executive officer and co-founder of Plum.io. As readers of the 3Sixty Insights blog know, we are convinced that there is a critical link in human capital management between artificial intelligence and psychometrics, and this critical link needs a cacophony of advocacy. The idea is that fast-developing AI for the world of work runs a risk -- a huge one, actually -- of failing to account for the most important, necessary aspects of humanness. That is, unless we intercede immediately and in a big way. If we don't, the prospects for humans in the future of work might not be too good. To be clear, I am hopeful. Caitlin and I went into some depth on the rationale behind this urgency and why this kind of key information may nonetheless be less than a priority among forces currently steering the evolution of workplace AI. Plum's expertise and value proposition are in the psychometrics side of this equation. Drawing on the latest science, the vendor deals in modern psychometrics. In other words, and to pilfer an old marketing slogan for Oldsmobile, a now-defunct automobile brand, this is not your father's MBTI. Advancements in the science behind industrial psychology have produced instruments capable of much depth and accuracy in testing for the potential of people. And the question has now become, what's stopping us from doing all we can to take all this new high-caliber insight into humans' potential and inform the development of AI for the world of work? We're talking about soft skills, by the way. These are the gold standard in predicting humans ability to survive and thrive in a given role. It isn't hard skills or past experience or past performance. Too many factors are at play. A bright future of work is possible. Its likelihood hinges on a number of things, and one of those is how good of a job we do right now in feeding still-young AI nutritious data on people potential. It's the dimension and perspective that conventional data on people's job eligibility (e.g., credentials) and past performance, while necessary, can't provide. Among the upsides, meanwhile, will be increases in retention from improvements to the employee experience and employer culture and brand. Readers can complete a Plum Profile, by the way, and get access to their own full Professional Talent Guide to learn "exactly what drives and drains them," as Caitlin puts it.

#HRTechChat with Melissa Swisher, Chief Revenue Officer at Socrates.ai

Mon, 27 Sep 2021 00:00:00 -0000

For this episode of the #HRTechChat, our guest was Melissa Swisher, chief revenue officer of Socrates.ai. To say Socrates.ai is an artificially intelligent chatbot to tie together various domains of the enterprise software ecosystem is probably the most straightforward description. The description implies only a small sliver of Socrates.ai's potential application. Some of these domains themselves may have chatbots specific to various proprietary software, and Socrates.ai an draw information from it all. As Melissa elaborated during our chat, Socrates.ai "is an employee experience platform. Think of it as an experience layer" that hews to employees' preferences. My take is this: Think of it as a prosthetic to facilitate a unified experience in employee self-service as this pertains not just to staff's employment, but to anything they wish or need to know over the course of a given workday. In my experience, ESS for human capital management specifically offers a rich potential vein of return on investment, and I can only imagine that this ROI grows exponentially when applied to more of the employee experience. Melissa and I delved into some interesting numbers around newfound efficiencies deployments of Socrates.ai have produced. Naturally, because of the solution's relations to AI, our conversation expanded beyond Socrates.ai itself. And, as mentioned during the chat, I really wish something like Socrates.ai had been available to me much earlier in my career, when I worked with a team at civil engineering firm to figure out what the company had done, in its past, that was relevant to the many responses to request for proposals we drafted. A prosthetic to identify and pull that information from within the depths of the company's enterprise would have been nice. Then again, it was 2003, not 2021 -- the age of AI. We've come a long way, and I encourage everyone to listen this episode.

#HRTechChat from Hollywood, Florida at #isolvedconnect 2021

Tue, 21 Sep 2021 00:00:00 -0000

3Sixty Insights is at the Hilton Diplomat in Hollywood, Fla., this week to attend isolved Connect, the vendor's annual customer conference. So, naturally, we recorded an episode of the #HRTechChat video podcast onsite with Amy Mosher, isolved's chief people officer, and Lina Tonk, vice president of marketing for isolved. For our chat, we dove deeply into isolved's recent rebrand, the positive impact this has had on its employees and customers alike, and, as well, isolved's successful internal use of its own platform to grow its own workforce by 40 percent this year. Earlier, this summer, 3Sixty Insights published a case study delving into the particulars. Download it for free, and, if you're feeling enterprising, go here to learn all about our case study on Key Training Center's successful use of the isolved platform. By the way, you read that right: #isolvedconnect is an in-person event this year. Related activities and festivities remain in full swing through the conclusion of Tuesday's Final Night Party, and it was my pleasure to deliver a presentation here on Monday: Melding the Two Hemispheres of HCM: Concrete and Abstract. After close to two years now meeting with colleagues only virtually, you tend to forget how great it is to see familiar faces and meet new people in real life. In my opinion, isolved has conducted itself in an exceptionally savvy way as of late -- Amy, Lina, and I even dipped briefly into analyzing the effect of isolved's new colors, pink and black.

#HRTechChat with Josep Elias, Chief Strategy Officer at CloudPay

Tue, 14 Sep 2021 00:00:00 -0000

This was an especially illuminating episode of #HRTechChat. Chief Strategy Officer Josep Elias joined our video podcast to discuss the company's new offering for earned wage access (EWA), CloudPay NOW. EWA is another term for on-demand pay, and CloudPay NOW is "the only earned wage access solution that can be deployed in 130+ countries," the company's website notes. Interestingly, CloudPay is bucking the trend in on-demand pay by targeting the entire world (or most of it, anyway). Much of the growth in EWA of late has been in the United States, but EY estimates that "a total of approximately $1 trillion is accrued in employer payroll accounts on any given day," as noted in a report published in September 2020. That report by EY is a good read all-around regarding the potential for on-demand pay and the impacts of its unavailability. Additional research elsewhere adds grist to the mill. Nearly half of employees will tolerate no more than one mistake or problem with their paycheck, according to The Workforce Institute at UKG. And, according to a 2020 survey by the American Payroll Association, more than two-thirds of employees would experience financial difficulty if their paychecks were delayed by just one week. Just as worrisome, data from CareerBuilder shows that nearly fourth-fifths of people (in the United States, at least) live paycheck-to-paycheck. Notably on this last point especially, as Josep pointed out, it's a dynamic just as apt to dog the six-figure set, not just entry-level or low-wage staff. It would be a major mistake to attribute a gathering momentum in the growth of solutions for on-demand pay, or EWA, solely to a growing appreciation for employee sentiment and wellbeing vis-à-vis their pay. This is one factor undeniably driving adoption, sure, and socially conscious vendors want to meet the need. Swoop up and out another 20,000 feet, however, and you'll notice something.... Cultural expectations among the newer generations have changed. Generation Z (a.k.a. Zoomers) genuinely wonders why it takes one or two weeks, sometimes a month, to get paid and in just a few ways (e.g., direct deposit to a bank account or, perhaps, via pay card). These limitations fail to align with their expectations of flexibility, instancy and immediacy. To the younger generations, their expectations are compelling. But expectations such as theirs alone still would not constitute enough of a groundswell to bring EWA to all. No, it's the technology that has caught up, as well, to eviscerate heretofore entrenched limitations -- because, let's be honest: No matter our age or station in life, we've all at some point wished we could get paid right away without incurring some penalty or taking a risky loan out against income that we'd already earned and needed or just plain wanted right then and now, but couldn't have till the next payday. Together, the technological and regulatory landscape have only recently made the wish possible. The old impediments that made our agreed-to conventions tolerable in the realm of getting pay are falling away rapidly, and so will the traditional pay period, eventually. Josep's insights into the relationship between people and their pay are deep and intriguing. I highly encourage you all to watch. To learn more about CloudPay NOW, you can visit CloudPay's website site.

#HRTechChat with Debbie Tuel, Chief Joy Officer at Symphony Talent

Wed, 08 Sep 2021 00:00:00 -0000

This one has been in the queue for a while. Earlier this summer, I had the distinct pleasure of speaking with Debbie Tuel. It was the day ahead of Symphony Talent's annual user conference. Fittingly, Debbie found herself doing this episode of #HRTechChat from a very cool brewery adjacent to event preparations. In February 2021, Debbie became chief joy officer at Symphony Talent. When I first spoke with Debbie, not long after she'd landed the new position, I assumed hers was a job in the vein of chief people officer or chief culture officer. As it turns outs, this is not an HR role. Debbie's charter is to advocate for Symphony's core message, the idea that talent acquisition should be joyful. Talent acquisition should indeed be joyful. Plenty of clunky, legacy applicant tracking systems populate the landscape, sure, and this is one of the greatest impediments. But the caliber of technology exists today to take most of the frustration out of talent acquisition for practitioners and job candidates alike. For the latter, all that's left is the potential sting of not getting the job. And this should be more than enough frustration for anyone in the job search, really. Fortunately, the technology available has become more than good enough. Debbie explains how so and just what, exactly, it means for talent acquisition to be joyful. I thoroughly enjoyed our chat and encourage everyone reading this to give it a listen.

#HRTechChat with Ryan Anderson, Vice President of Global Research and Insights at Herman Miller

Thu, 19 Aug 2021 00:00:00 -0000

Our latest guest on #HRTechChat was Ryan Anderson. As vice president of global research and insights at Herman Miller, he helps lead a team keen on investigating aspects of the world of work long-linked to the employee experience. More recently, their efforts have focused on how those dynamics play out amid a worldwide pandemic. Some in our audience may be aware that, for a long time, Herman Miller has been about far more than office furniture. Alongside Boston Consulting Group, Fortune, and "quite a few HR leaders," Anderson says, the company is a founding partner of the Slack-launched Future Forum. This consortium strives to help "executives at leading companies deliver on the transformation needed to thrive in the post-pandemic world." Part of that centers, of course, around protecting the employee experience and maximizing positive aspects around it. With the sudden disruption of the pandemic last year, Ryan says, he's noticed the responsibility for optimizing office environments increasingly becoming the domain of HR, and less the responsibility of facilities management. In parallel, the greatest influx of inquiries to his division, at Herman Miller, have come from leaders in HR asking questions on how to optimize employees' work environment as work, for many, becomes less of a physical place. This was a great discussion for the video podcast. Ryan shares much around the nature of these inquiries, as well as Herman Miller's philosophy around the employee experience. I encourage you to listen in.

#HRTechChat with Brenda Laughlin, SPHR, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Enavrio

Wed, 11 Aug 2021 00:00:00 -0000

For this episode of 3Sixty Insights' #HRTechChat, we decided to approach our favorite subject matter, technology for human capital management, from a slightly different angle. Joining us was Brenda Laughlin, SPHR. Brenda is not only co-founder and managing partner of Enavrio, a consultancy that helps "create tomorrow’s world of work for today’s workforce," but also CEO and principal consultant of PeakSource Consulting. A central area of Brenda's expertise is in helping to ensure organizations' "data collection and retention process aligns with industry rules, regulations and best practice." This is where our discussion focused: around the extensive considerations that wise organizations take when handling their people's data. The very idea that data privacy is important is just beginning to hit its stride, in my opinion. Highly varied across regions, countries and continents, the related regulatory landscape is still developing, and the act of complying can be complex. In the European Union, there's GDPR. In the United States, there are state-specific and even city-specific rules to follow. And those are just two of myriad examples. Beyond all this compliance, however, is the principle of protecting the security and privacy of employees' data. What's compelling from a philosophical standpoint is the notion that a person's data is akin to private property. It's not technically or exactly so, but it may as well be. Just look at the opinion many have about their own identifying information. Mess with it, and you lose their trust and exact possibly irreparable damage to your employer brand. Not that we always see companies treat customers' data with the respect patrons assume it enjoys, but it's interesting to hear organizations begin equating the potential downsides of mishandling customer and employee data. I thoroughly enjoyed speaking with Brenda and encourage viewers to watch this episode in its entirety. She was a great guest and brought a wealth of knowledge to this very important industry dialogue.

#HRTechChat with Anne Fulton, CEO and Founder of Fuel50

Tue, 27 Jul 2021 00:00:00 -0000

Our guest for this episode of the 3Sixty Insights #HRTechChat video podcast is Anne Fulton, CEO and founder of Fuel50 and member of our Global Executive Advisory Council. On the chat, Anne shared her thoughts, informed by much experience in this market space, on workforce agility and talent mobility. And, for the latter, she shared sneak-preview findings from Fuel50's yet-to-be-released, related report. The result of a survey answered by more than 200 HR practitioners and their employees, Fuel50's report finds intriguing, highly statistically significant, correlations between positive organizational performance and progressive HR performance. Specifically, organizations that perform better in terms of NPS scores, revenue per employee, and innovation are home to HR departments that have evolved beyond a focus solely on concrete activities, such as eliminating inefficiencies, to act on the more abstract, strategic possibilities of human capital management (HCM). What's more, the number one strategic priority of these best-performing HR departments is to invest in the future of work. For those of us sounding the alarm that we prepare for the future of work right now, lest we miss the opportunity to realize the very best possible future of work, this particular finding is valuable grist for the mill. Getting back to workforce agility, there's a lot to be gained for employers that do it right. Anne and I discussed how those that apply a marketplace mentality to their internal hiring needs can increase the accuracy of their external recruiting and spend less on it. Meanwhile, these organizations also begin to maximize their utilization of the talent they already have in their workforce. Beyond this come boosts to the employee experience, innovation, and retention. Some might say those three are intertwined, and they certainly tend to follow as workforce agility is optimized. Anne and I talked a lot, and every minute of it was thoroughly enjoyable. She really knows her stuff, and I strongly encourage readers to view this episode.

#HRTechChat with Nate Smith, Founder and CEO of Lever

Mon, 26 Jul 2021 00:00:00 -0000

Nate Smith, founder and CEO of San Francisco–based Lever, joined us for this episode of the 3Sixty Insights #HRTechChat. Lever's technology for talent acquisition, as well as the vendor's philosophy behind finding new hires, helps employers facing complex challenges in reaching their strategic goals identify and woo future employees whose skills are essential to the related tasks at hand. As you can imagine, this made for an interesting podcast. Nate and I first spoke last summer and openly wondered whether it might have been one year exactly to the day that we recorded this episode -- which was Monday, July 19. Being a calendar pack rat, I did a search, and it turns out that we were off by just one week. Imagine that. Many organizations today wrestle with antiquated, clunky or inadequate functionality to assist and facilitate talent acquisition. At the very least, it's the last two of these that make it seem like all three anyway. The thing is, the very idea of an applicant tracking system (ATS) is ill-matched to helping employers keep tabs on potential new-hires in today's recruiting environment. Long in the tooth, the concept of an ATS was so-named at a time when the workflow and scope of recruiting would have been nearly unrecognizable to today's talent acquisition professionals. Specifically, the vast majority of ATS functionality struggle to account for today's environment. The word "applicant" itself assumes that the only job candidate worth tracking is one who's elected to apply for a job. This is simply short-sighted. Social media and the evolution of recruiting technology have finally brought us to a point where employers can target new-hire prospects with accuracy and treat them as leads to manage and nurture over the long term. In other words, the length of the journey of a potential new-hire today is akin to that of a potential customer -- perhaps longer, if we're talking about consumer products. Truth be told, customer relationship management systems have facilitated long nurturing cycles, for sales, for many years. Talent acquisition is catching up. For example, a recruiter may have a conversation with a high-value person who doesn't apply for a job as a direct result or any time soon. The last thing he wants to do is request this person enter her curriculum vitae into any conventional ATS whatsoever. Instead, he'd want to enter notes of the details of this contact and the attendant conversation into a candidate relationship management (CRM) system, marking the record for follow-up when and if an opening suitable for her opens. Only once she becomes an actual applicant does her CV enter the ATS. Most organizations solve for this issue by deploying their ATS and CRM (candidate relationship management) applications separately, contending with nearly impossible integration challenges. Lever combines the two as one application running a single data set governed by a single rules engine. We've heard of single applications for multiple functions before, and it's often a very good idea. It's almost silly to call such a sophisticated, purpose-built thing an ATS, frankly. Nate and I explored so much more. I urge you to view the entire podcast.

#HRTechChat with Thomas Cielak, Vice President of HR Operations at Allianz Global Investors

Mon, 19 Jul 2021 14:11:27 -0000

We welcome Tom Cielak to this episode of the 3Sixty Insights #HRTechChat video podcast. Tom and I met several years ago to discuss his team's use of Ceridian Dayforce when he was director of HR operations at ACCO Brands. He later joined global asset management firm Allianz Global Investors, in mid-2018, as its vice president of HR operations. This is his current role, and Tom's team at Allianz Global happens to use Ceridian Dayforce too. Tom is an advocate for the notion that, to be effective in their craft and as an asset to the organization, HR leaders today must become technologists. In today's environment, where decision-making to buy enterprise software involves a broad variety of stakeholders, the IT department still has a say. The HR Technologist is far better at articulating a technology-buying decision to the satisfaction of IT and able to get the most of out of a deployment. Technology for human capital management proved to be fertile ground for a spirited discussion. One highly relevant tangent we took revolved around the various generations in the workforce today, from Boomers to Zoomers and everyone in between. Differentiation in functionality between vendors may resonate only for some buyers in that mix. For the younger generations, HCM technology vendors may need to make their case in other ways, especially as Millennials move up the ladder and take on buying authority. This led us to analyze the rationale behind why so many of these vendors focus on the strength of their own employer culture as their marketing message. From there we took a slight detour to delve into an idea covered previously on this podcast: that employers ought to rethink their calculus fundamentally by treating the workforce as an asset, rather than as a cost. Make sure to watch this episode. Tom brings a savvy perspective to HCM and the role of the HR leader.

#HRTechChat with Richard Limpkin, Chief Product Officer at Immedis

Thu, 15 Jul 2021 00:00:00 -0000

Joining us for this episode of the 3Sixty Insights #HRTechChat is Richard Limpkin, chief product officer at Dublin, Ireland-based global payroll provider Immedis. Richard and I spoke at length a couple times prior this. The insights we unearthed in those conversations were intriguing and, fortunately, the podcast captured the gist of these idas as we reiterated previously covered ground. When you think about it, payroll is perhaps the most concrete and most abstract aspect of human capital management. On the one hand, it's an indisputable number of outgoing money every one or two weeks (for some organizations, once monthly). Mess with that number or its delivery, and an organization can very quickly have a mutiny on its hands as job satisfaction suffers an acute, palpable blow. Above all, what must payroll be, without fail? It absolutely has to be timely and accurate, Richard says. He's right, of course, and this applies to all payroll situations. Get payroll wrong or produce it late, and an organization immediately experiences the aforementioned potentially disastrous crisis of employee sentiment. Exacerbating matters is a strict regulatory environment reflecting the basic importance of payroll and governing how the organization must proceed to rectify the situation, whatever it is. Here is where concrete and abstract HCM really come into play, and this gets us to the other two things payroll must do, in Richard's sage estimation: Be fully compliant with all applicable laws and fully protect the security and privacy of employees' data (for which some of that regulatory framework also applies). Notably, as an organization's payroll becomes global, the complexities of all these factors behind payroll intensify. In a way, global payroll is the ultimate point solution, and there's essentially no way to implement that solution for global payroll until the moment you need one. We got into all that too, and I encourage readers to view this episode of the podcast. It was a pleasure to speak again with Richard, who brought deep expertise to this discussion.

#HRTechChat with Tom Tonkin, Ph.D., CEO at The Conservatory Group

Tue, 22 Jun 2021 00:00:00 -0000

Joining us for this episode of the 3Sixty Insights #HRTechChat is Tom Tonkin, Ph.D., member of our Global Executive Advisory Council. A former colleague of mine, Dr. Tonkin is now CEO of The Conservatory Group, where he and his team "help executives, middle-managers and sales leaders to self-actualize in their roles." Dr. Tonkin's background in technology for the enterprise stretches back many years and includes just shy of two decades at Oracle in a multitude of roles spanning sales, technology enablement, professional services, and more. My conversation with Dr. Tonkin centered on diversity, equity and inclusion. Through his observations, informed partially by his doctoral work, Dr. Tonkin believes several things must happen for DE&I initiatives and ideas to move beyond awareness -- frankly, only the first step of many that must take place. For example, he believes strongly that so-identified historically privileged stakeholders' active, observable empathizing with women's and minorities' struggles in these areas will help to advance DE&I efforts overall. It's a great point. He sees much utility in the role of various affinity-related and other employee resource groups in giving voice and establishing representation for women and minorities in the workplace. The usefulness of these groups, however, while necessary, falls short in advancing the actual equity and inclusion sought. Our discussion eventually landed on the scientifically underpinned idea of neurodiversity. Who are the neurodiverse? They are, mainly, those who place along the spectrum of autism. Our world, Dr. Tonkin explains, is structured around the neurotypical's way of thinking. The vast majority of people are neurotypical. Their minds are considered, for lack of a better term, normal. Real-world experience shows, however, that the neurodiverse have much to contribute to the success of teams. A program at SAP is one example. The problem is that they struggle, because of their deficiencies in social interaction, to get hired. Here is where our discussion segued into the potential for psychometrics and other tools to help organizations make sure the neurodiverse make their way through the recruiting process and get a "fair shot" at joining the organization in order to offer the employer their very particular, valuable skills. The idea is that this ultimately benefits organizational performance. Thinking even further into the future of work, we pondered the possibility that artificial intelligence may one day equip both the neurodiverse and neurotypical with "mental prosthetics" that might greatly help them understand each other and collaborate optimally. Visitors here really do owe it to themselves to watch this especially fascinating episode of the podcast. Along with his work leading The Conservatory Group, Dr. Tonkin is heavily involved in organizations whose missions intersect with these and related ideas. One, SAMI (short for Smart Answers for Modern Issues), bills itself as a "Real Time Crowd-Sourced Solution for Soft Skills. Another, aptly named Diversity Equity Inclusion, provides a "SaaS-driven solution that makes diversity, equity, and inclusion high-tech and easy to understand for any organization or business."

#HRTechChat with Marc Havercroft, Chief Customer Officer for SAP SuccessFactors

Tue, 22 Jun 2021 00:00:00 -0000

For this, the latest episode of #HRTechChat, our guest is Marc Havercroft, global chief customer officer for SAP SuccessFactors. Marc and I had a conversation a couple weeks ago and were both struck by how much we have in common in terms of our views on HCM. We at 3Sixty Insights speak of abstract and concrete HCM, and how you need both. Marc shares a very intriguing rendition on this, equating the two to operational-related HCM and experience-related HCM -- i.e., the employee experience. And we agree that whether it's abstract and concrete or operational and experience, all of it comes to bear squarely and undeniably on employee sentiment. Our podcast together reiterates these points and continues in this vein. Ultimately, our discussion explores wide-ranging topics related to the principle premise: Organizations that treat HCM as solely operational (i.e., concrete) struggle to see their people as anything but a cost to contain. In contrast, those employers that treat their people as an asset will invest in them and win. Going deeper, organizations should move their workforce out of the cost column and into the asset column -- literally. Old-school financial-minded executives might question the wisdom behind doing so. As Marc puts it, however, and I paraphrase, there comes a point when you can't worry about explaining that the world is round anymore. The world is round anyway. This or the other effort having to do with improving the employee experience may be an abstract idea and may not translate to a financially quantifiable line item any accountant or anyone in finance would recognize. It matters to success anyway. We must begin to take as postulate that the general ledger is not a full view of the health of the organization -- i.e., of its ability to succeed over the short or long term. Employee sentiment matters to an organization's success -- to the bottom and top line. Finance may not see it. They're entitled to their opinions, but not to the final say. I encourage you to click on the video above and view this entire episode. Marc brought much-needed energy, passion and ideas to this very important discussion.

#HRTechChat with Mitch Zenger, Founder of Synctrics

Thu, 17 Jun 2021 00:00:00 -0000

The latest guest on the 3Sixty Insights #HRTechChat is Mitch Zenger, founder of Synctrics and member of our Global Executive Advisory Council (GEAC). Mitch brought to this episode a wealth of wisdom culled from decades of successful, high-profile work in executive coaching and team building. The HCM industry and professions gathered around it speak in depth and widely about the pressing need to get better at producing and interpreting data that enables employers to make better decisions in forming teams that will operate in harmony. To achieve this, there is an urgent need to pull in big data sets produced with modern psychometric models. As if this weren't enough of a challenge to achieve this pressing goal, however, there is a similarly urgent need to completely rethink and drastically streamline organizational data models to give analytics-deriving and -delivering systems the breathing room to play their role. As with so many other things, all the encouraging potential future-of-work scenarios we hear about just won't happen without this. Mitch makes great, provocative points here. If you have an interest in learning more about just how we can transcend some of these limitations that the evolution of enterprise software has thus far left us, click on the video.

#HRTechChat with Dr. Chris Mullen, Executive Director of The Workforce Institute at UKG

Tue, 15 Jun 2021 00:00:00 -0000

Our most recent guest on the 3Sixty Insights #HRTechChat was Dr. Chris Mullen, executive director of The Workforce Institute at UKG. Chris brings an extensive background relevant to the #HRTechChat conversation. Prior to joining what is now UKG, he carried out a leadership role in HR at the University of Chicago and helped to lead employee and faculty recruiting at Colorado State University. For this episode, we delved into why employees' feelings matter. By feelings, we mean employee sentiment. What is the role of human capital management and the technology for it in bringing about and supporting positive employee sentiment. Chris notes that there's plenty of research showing that positive employee sentiment matters to organizational success. And he's right about this. The obstacle many HR professionals run into as they argue for investments in related solutions is that improvements in employee sentiment, the very results that bolster an organization's ability to succeed, do not translate to financially quantifiable line items in a spreadsheet. Leaders on the financial side of the equation struggle to see the value, efforts stagnate, and inertia sets in. My own key takeaway from this conversation with Chris, partially covered in the podcast itself, is the following. One way to get around these seemingly intractable differences in perspectives is to understand that the nuts and bolts of HCM deeply influence employee sentiment too -- and show how these effects are not discrete, but part of the whole of the rationale, both tactical and strategic (i.e., concrete and abstract), for investing in efficient clocking-in technology or efficient, accurate, modern payroll processing software. The result is a toehold that HR can build upon to expand organizational leadership's concept of what constitutes worthwhile investments in the workforce. This is only a small snapshot of the our chat. We covered much ground, and Chris is a wellspring of knowledge and wisdom on these topics.

3Sixty Insights #HRTechChat: iCIMS Insights "Class of 2021 Report"

Thu, 10 Jun 2021 00:00:00 -0000

Joining me for this, the latest episode of the 3Sixty Insights #HRTechChat video podcast, were two guests from iCIMS: Rhea Moss, director of data insights and customer intelligence, and Nicole Tucker, manager of talent acquisition. Together, we delved into the recently published "Class of 2021 Report." Drawing on data from a survey "conducted among 500 U.S. human resource or recruiting professionals, 500 U.S. college seniors, 250 U.K. college seniors, and 250 France college seniors between April 9 and April 23, 2021," iCIMS Insights explored the expectations and hopes that this year's college graduates have for their first professional jobs. In the year that was 2020, industries of most stripes welcomed much discussion -- and took much action -- around bolstering and improving the employee experience. Employers of front-line workers faced their own challenges with hybrid arrangements and the like. Meanwhile, for desk workers, a fog set in as work from home became the norm. We began to equate improvements in the employee experience as necessarily linked to organizations' flexibility in accommodating WFH arrangements. What's interesting is iCIMS' findings around this. Whereas, anecdotally, we may conclude that Millennials and others embraced WFH as helpful to them as they tended to children attending school online or home from closed daycare facilities, the data show that Generation Z (a.k.a. Zoomers) doesn't wish to put up with much of this WFH dynamic. We may infer, from the research, that they want to experience the traditional rites of passage into full-fledged adulthood, and one of those is the opportunity to go to a brick-and-mortar office, make work friends, and experience their careers IRL. It's just one of the many intriguing findings from iCIMS' annual survey research in this area. In the data from iCIMS' latest research are several deep implications for talent acquisition and the onboarding and subsequent employment of young new-hires. Give this episode a listen. Rhea and Nicole bring much insight to this important discussion.

3Sixty Insights #HRTechChat with Mike Erlin, CEO and Co-Founder of AbilityMap

Tue, 08 Jun 2021 00:00:00 -0000

Mike Erlin, co-founder and CEO of AbilityMap and member of the 3Sixty Insights Global Executive Advisory Board, has the esteemed distinction of being the first-ever repeat guest on #HRTechChat. In the previous episode with Mike, we dove into the deep end of psychometrics, which have advanced considerably since the old days of Myers-Briggs (considered for many years now a largely ineffective instrument). In this, the latest episode, we went down the rabbit hole to ponder the future impact of artificial intelligence in hiring and human capital management generally. It's of paramount importance and urgent, we agreed, that humans develop and apply the soundest psychometrics possible to the evaluation and hiring of people, lest AI eventually apply its own and, possibly, prioritize profits and cost containment in ways our imagination can barely fathom. AI-driven criteria for hiring certainly wouldn't necessarily be ethical or value the human purpose in work, but a human-driven psychometrics model just might. And, in veering into these topics, Mike and I talked about whether civilization just might be putting too much faith, proverbially and literally, in AI. Watch the video to catch our full conversation -- and thank you, Mike, for your wise contributions to these conversations.

#HRTechChat with Jennifer Ravalli, Head of Marketing at PandoLogic

Thu, 20 May 2021 00:00:00 -0000

Jennifer Ravalli was our guest for the latest episode of the 3Sixty Insights #HRTechChat podcast. Following long stints at ADP and, most recently, iCIMS, Jenn joined PandoLogic in September 2020 to head all marketing efforts. Jenn and I met and first spoke at the Spring 2021 HR Technology Conference & Exposition. It's when we delved specifically into PandoLogic's solution, a programmatic job advertising platform with underpinnings in artificial intelligence and available on the iCIMS marketplace. Naturally, this episode of #HRTechChat covers much ground in the areas of AI, the future of work, and more -- among our favorite topics at 3Sixty Insights. (Go here and here for our blogging on these ideas.) Jenn sees AI transforming the roles of recruiting (and sourcing, for that matter). Drawing on lessons learned from the analysis of massive data sets, AI will eventually become just plain better than even the most seasoned, savvy, innovative professionals at certain things in recruiting and sourcing. Some of that will the machine learning part of things -- the repetitive things recruiters would rather not do anyway. But AI will also be better at other things, such as being far more accurate than human intuition when it comes to knowing where the best candidates for an open requisition are likely to be and where they're likely to look. Who exactly these candidates are or should be is another thing AI will get better and better at determining, eventually better than any human ever could be. And AI will make organizations better at producing job descriptions that attract the most qualified, most diverse candidates for the job. In sum, soft skills, skills such as people skills, will grow ever more critical to recruiting professionals' success as their day-to-day work grows to encompass mostly this aspect of their roles. And that's just a small peek into my conversation with Jenn. I encourage you to give this episode a listen.

#HRTechChat with Ahmad Noordin, Senior Director of Human Resources at Core-Mark International

Tue, 18 May 2021 00:00:00 -0000

For this, the latest episode of the 3Sixty Insights #HRTechChat, Core-Mark International Senior Director of Human Resources Ahmad Noordin joined us. Responsible specifically for systems, payroll and people analytics at Core-Mark, Amhad is also a member of our Global Executive Advisory Council. During our chat, he and I discussed the many factors employers must consider when attempting to bring order to critical aspects of human capital management at a geographically dispersed, decentralized organization. A Fortune 250 company, Core-Mark is one such entity, a behind-the-scenes supplier to thousands of convenience stores across North America. When thinking about centralizing certain HCM functions at an organization that services a broad geographic footprint and possesses a commensurate physical presence to accommodate this, Noordin says it's important to understand that balance is critical. Satellite offices bring much to the table in terms of boots-on-the-ground intelligence on what works, and what doesn't. At the same time, the HR department absolutely needs deep visibility into activity such as, for example, compensation planning -- whose UKG module Noordin and his team are presently implementing. And, workforce-related compliance overall must hew centrally lest the organization lose control of it entirely -- and suffer the risk. Our conversation was wide-ranging, and we got quite introspective as to the role and mission of HCM. Be sure to watch the video.

#HRTechChat with David Barak, Chief Marketing Officer of CloudPay

Tue, 11 May 2021 00:00:00 -0000

For the latest episode of the 3Sixty Insights #HRTechChat video podcast, my guest was David Barak, chief marketing officer of CloudPay. Through a unified cloud platform, CloudPay provides managed global payroll in more than 130 countries. The company also offers treasury services across this geographic footprint. Here's a sampling of the ideas we covered: Virtually no employer ever really, truly plans for global payroll in advance. At some point, most organizations that get large enough and global enough get to a place where their company-wide payroll is practically unmanageable. This becomes the official outset of a typically three-stage process that eventually gets them to a straightforward scenario wherein their global payroll is under control and working for, not against, them. The journey there is almost always backward. You'll have to watch the video to learn what these stages are. Sure, there are vendors of full-suite software for human capital management who offer a substantial ability to deliver in the grand theater of global payroll. What's intriguing, however, is that global payroll is really a point-solution deployment. The complexity of it just lends itself to this. There is a need for so-called best-of-breed providers because the expertise in it must be deep and ability to deliver, broad. Global payroll is never a technology-only exercise. If the software isn't up to task, yes, insurmountable problems will scuttle efforts. Deploy highly capable technology that is just right for global payroll, however, and the constantly evolving, highly complex regulatory environment remains. This is why employers ready to get their global payroll in order behoove themselves to partner with a provider that has a cadre of subject matter experts on hand to help the user navigate the span of local, regional, and national laws applicable to processing payroll internationally. If global payroll is at all interesting to you or important to your work, then you will definitely enjoy this episode of #HRTechChat. I know that I did. Enjoy the podcast

#HRTechChat with Theresa Harkins-Schulz, Senior Vice President of Customer Experience at Inspirus

Wed, 05 May 2021 00:00:00 -0000

For our latest episode of #HRTechChat, my guest is Theresa Harkins-Schulz, senior vice president of customer experience at Inspirus. And this is where our conversation began, with Theresa's sharing of her philosophy around the customer journey. Because of its customer-centered connotations, she prefers the term customer experience over customer success and other monikers denoting the realm of activities organizations carry out in tending to their customers. From there, our discussion expanded to ponder the similarities between the customer experience and the employee experience and to what extent organizations can approach both similarly, look at them through the same lens, or even coordinate their efforts. A member of the 3Sixty Insights Global Executive Advisory Council and long-time board member (and past president and past education chair) for Recognition Professionals International, Theresa has trained her focus on the art and practice of employee recognition for much of her career -- several years ago, designing an employee recognition program for Delta Airlines. Following is a short elaboration on just three of the many additional ideas we explored: Campfire Girls: HR can get so wrapped up in planning and throwing great events for employees -- kind of like being "campfire girls" -- that they confuse this for the practice of giving employees recognition, which is an attitude. This aligns nicely with an idea, discussed in a previous episode of #HRTechChat, that providing pizza and beer on Friday does not equate to cultivating employer culture. It's nice to do nice things like this for employees, but it is not a substitute for the hard work. The Components of Good Employer Culture: What are they? It's a challenging question. Unequivocally, Theresa believes trust is the essential, bedrock ingredient. Another fundamental component of employer culture is purpose and understanding of the job that needs to be done. You can't really argue with any of these, which provide as good of a calculus as any to understanding what underlies a good employer culture. "Some of this really goes back to [...] Maslow's hierarchy of needs, and establishing that psychological safety in the workplace," she says. Pandemic, Hierarchies, Speed, and HCM Technology: The pandemic has laid bare the need for agility in working together and in catering to employees' needs. Hierarchies that have settled into existence over long periods of time slow this down. So does old, bad or no technology. There is a demand for immediacy, and there's a symbiosis to the flexible of an organizational structure and the technology in place to facilitate cooperation and promote positive culture. This need, today. for flexibility to deliver on immediacy is exponentially more pressing than it was ahead of the pandemic, and it will only increase in importance moving forward. There is much more to our conversation.

#HRTechChat with James La Brash, Founding Managing Director at InFlight

Tue, 20 Apr 2021 00:00:00 -0000

3Sixty Insights welcomed James La Brash late last week to the latest episode of #HRTechChat. James is founding managing director of InFlight. Truth be told, James and I have had the pleasure of engaging in several conversations, and we finally concluded that we should try to capture in the podcast as many of the great ideas we've discussed as possible. As anyone can imagine, there just wasn't enough time to cover everything, but we did get to a lot of it. The launching pad for our discussion in the video here is the idea that there just might be some room for human capital management and marketing -- the CHRO and CMO -- to cooperate, benefiting from mutual data analytics wherever possible. Furthermore, we noted that marketing has a roughly 10-year head start on HCM in the former's appreciation for measuring its effectiveness, and that CHROs may therefore learn a few things from CMOs in the interest of accelerating HCM's own foray into measuring its effectiveness. The conversation took off from there. Here's a sampling of the subject matter James and I have covered since first speaking, much of it captured in the podcast: With good intentions, many in talent acquisition have recognized the similarities (beyond the acronyms) of systems for customer relationship management and candidate relationship management. It's a good impulse. It's also good not to follow it to the extreme, as the parallels between customers' and candidates' needs are there, but limited. Are the employer and consumer brand separate? Or, are they one and the same? If it's the latter, is it preferable for HCM and marketing alike to treat them as one or as two. Is the answer, "sometimes"? In some industries, it makes especially good sense for HCM and marketing to partner. Examples are when the typical employee is desk-less or semi-desk-less or otherwise interacts directly with customers day-to-day. These employees become the expression of the brand, so employer and company brand are one and the same We all know that great marketing and a great employee experience contribute mightily to organizational success, in and outside the general ledger, but it’s notoriously difficult or impossible to quantify financially these domains’ overall benefits to the organization. Could it be that it’s because in order to prove that financially quantifiable connection, you have to measure the totality of HCM or marketing, and this just isn’t possible because of the many moving parts within these domains? One way to chip away at this apparent impasse is to introduce leadership to the idea of brand damage -- i.e., that it's potentially expensive and avoidable. This may be a viable bridge to get us to the ideal future, when organizations understand the benefits of positive brand (employer or consumer) as a point of excellence to pursue. There's much more. You just have to watch. We again thank James for joining #HRTechChat.

#HRTechChat with Josh Rock, Talent Acquisition Manager at Nuss Truck Group

Thu, 15 Apr 2021 00:00:00 -0000

Our latest guest on #HRTechChat is Josh Rock, talent acquisition manager at Nuss Truck Group Inc. With locations in Minnesota and Wisconsin, the company sells and services various brands of medium-duty and heavy-duty trucks and heavy equipment for construction. Before entering the field of recruiting at organizations of various sizes and in a number of industries, Josh spent the better part of a decade in sales at JobDig Media. He brings an uncommon perspective to the podcast, and following is an elaboration on three of the many areas of interest we covered: In many key ways, recruiters are your organization's ambassadors. In many instances, they're the first representatives of your organizations that your prospective employees (and, at times, future customers) meet. As part of an effort to maximize their positive impact, it's important to equip your front-line emissaries in talent acquisition with technology that makes them as efficient as possible in their work. It may be obvious, but it bears underscoring: Small organizations are more apt to adopt new thinking faster, and this is because bureaucracy has yet to set in and become an impediment to innovation when it comes to products and services or procedure, approach and process. Josh witnessed this firsthand in proposing the production of high-quality videos to help recruiters and Nuss Truck Group itself present a unified, rich depiction of the employer brand not only to prospective employees (for whom there is significant competition regionally with others in the organization's same business), but also existing employees. Josh notes that he was pleasantly surprised by the speed with which leadership gave him the go-ahead for this program and leeway to make it happen as he sees fit. The mix of technology for talent acquisition is really, really important and hinges on factors such as the size, geographic footprint, and industry of the business. At Nuss Truck Group, Josh inherited an applicant tracking system (ATS) from Ceridian Dayforce and recently implemented Emissary.ai, a text recruiting software, to help anyone recruiting for the organization reach prospects via the media where those candidates are most apt to respond. (Service techs tend not to do email, for example.) In our conversation, Josh mentioned that a solution such as iCIMS or other "Cadillacs" of talent acquisition, as good as they are, wouldn't make sense for his employer. For a similar reason, solutions such as Zip Recruiter, which may create an extra step in the recruiting process, may be advantageous for some organizations, but not for his. As noted, Josh used to work in business development in the HCM space and knows how vendors sell their technology. He brought a fresh, interesting perspective to #HRTechChat, and it was a pleasure to have him as our guest.

#HRTechChat with Jeanniey Walden, Chief Innovation and Marketing Officer of DailyPay

Wed, 07 Apr 2021 00:00:00 -0000

3Sixty Insights welcomed Jeanniey Walden, chief innovation and marketing officer of DailyPay, Inc., to the latest episode of #HRTechChat, where we explored the idea that the act of paying employees is much more than the operational aspects of running payroll. Any employer that solves frustrations related to pay can be exceptionally effective in influencing employees' feelings and, related, their motivation to be productive. Following are a few of the interesting ideas we covered during our illuminating conversation: The exchange of physical or mental energy for pay is arguably the single most important aspect of employment. Even so, employees have for years experimented or interacted with pay very little on a daily basis. Limitations of technology have been the largest impediment. Mobile technology and social media have played a key role in catalyzing an expansion of our attitudes toward pay -- and can make getting paid a sharing experience not unlike getting coffee. (Jeanniey explains....) Put differently, pay can be much, much more than a number to set and forget, more than an event that takes place in the background every one or two weeks. Pay can and should also be an experience, and a good place to start making pay more than a number is to make the receiving of it as flexible as possible. There is very little excuse today, with the state of technology, for the operational aspects of pay to be rigid. COVID-19 has helped show just how much flexibility is necessary in pay. The focus of regulations today in the realm of pay is mostly on more concrete aspects of it, and that is because society prioritizes the idea of getting paid on time. It will be interesting when and whether regulatory bodies decide that humans are entitled to more abstract aspects of employment in pay and elsewhere. Everyone is always fighting extinction or moving forward; this relates profoundly and inescapably to pay.

#HRTechChat with Mike Erlin, CEO and Co-Founder of AbilityMap, Episode 8

Mon, 29 Mar 2021 00:00:00 -0000

With the picturesque Australian outdoors as his backdrop, Mike Erlin, CEO and co-founder of AbilityMap, joined 3Sixty Insights in the early morning his time for this episode of #HRTechChat. A fellow alum of Cornerstone OnDemand, Mike brings ideas that slot right into the future of work. Employers today have the tools to understand their organizational culture like never before. Mike delves into some specifics and explains why any company can ward off a plethora of related challenges before they even take root. Much of the way forward distills down to the deployment of the right psychometric instrument. But there's much more to it, and if you enjoy geeking out on human capital management, then you'll have fun following our conversation. Here's some of what we covered: How can organizations start getting deliberate and methodical about changing an employer culture? Why are pizza Fridays, though a nice gesture, not an effective way to build an employer culture? What are some of the attitudes that may have held the world of work back in resolving to evaluate and train for soft skills? Why is now the time to start doing so? How can learning benefit to become far more efficient? How does Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs fit into this? What do our basic vs. aspirational needs have to do with the history and timeline of the Fourth and Fifth Industrial Revolutions? What matters to a CFO when it comes to investing in the development of soft skills? How did COVID-19 surprise organizations in terms of inventorying and understanding the capabilities existing in their workforce? Is it really possible to have an entire team of individuals who truly dig what they're doing for work?

#HRTechChat with Nicole Roberts, Vice President of People and Culture for MVAH Partners | Episode 7

Wed, 17 Mar 2021 12:51:33 -0000

Nicole Roberts, vice president of people and culture at MVAH Partners, joined 3Sixty Insights for this episode of #HRTechChat. A member of the 3Sixty Insights Global Executive Advisory Council, Nicole started in her leadership role at MVAH a year ago, in March 2020 -- just as the flurry of pandemic-related restrictions unfolded in the United States. The disruption profoundly affected the nature of her first several months on the job. On day one, for example, she took over internal employee communications. MVAH, a developer of affordable housing, has 7,000 units under its management across 15 states. The logistics around managing an already dispersed workforce suddenly under unprecedented, unique circumstances were significant and necessitated the expansion of her focus. Amidst all this, Nicole and her team also put in the hard work to implement the following: Paycom for suite-wide human capital management Paycor as a point solution particularly well-suited for applicant tracking at a company the size of MVAH Paycor partner Spark Hire for video interviewing, which was essential to scale to hiring needs under impeded candidate mobility Nicole sat down with us for a wide-ranging discussion -- employer culture, the intrinsic drive most employees have to produce good work, her philosophy behind employee recognition, and more. Our conversation yielded several gems: The HR department should not be the high school principal's office. For them to realize their potential on the job, staff need approachable leaders -- mentors and coaches, not scolds and nags. Leaders in the organization set and influence employer culture. Technology isn't just about efficiency. It's also about communication. Regular communication between HR and all its organizational stakeholders is paramount to success. Effective technology can be the deciding factor in facilitating or impeding this communication. In other words, most organizations need strong leadership and strong technology for HCM (and communication) to be successful in perpetuating a strong, healthy employer culture Every customer interaction presents a microcosm of some expression of that employer culture. Organizations with positive, healthy employer cultures have positive, healthy interactions with customers. By the way... At the Spring HR Technology Conference, a virtual event, Nicole is on the hunt this week for information on the latest thinking in employee recognition and innovative vendors providing related technology. 3Sixty Insights is happy to announce that our #HRTechChat Series is now available as a podcast on the following platforms: Apple iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/3sixty-insights/id1555291436?itsct=podcast_box&itscg=30200 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0eZJI1FqM3joDA8uLc05zz Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/show/3sixty-insights SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/user-965220588 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6aDtrRPYoCIrnkeOYZRpAQ/featured iHeartRadio: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/269-3sixty-insights-78293678/ Google: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5zb3VuZGNsb3VkLmNvbS91c2Vycy9zb3VuZGNsb3VkOnVzZXJzOjkyNDY0ODI1OS9zb3VuZHMucnNz See a service missing that you use? Let our team know by emailing research@3SixtyInsights.com

#HRTechChat with Mike Bollinger, VP of Strategic Initiatives | Cornerstone OnDemand Episode 6 2021

Tue, 09 Mar 2021 00:00:00 -0000

Joining us for this extra special episode of #HRTechChat is Mike Bollinger, vice president of strategic initiatives at Cornerstone OnDemand and a member of the 3Sixty Insights Global Executive Advisory Council. Mike and I have a shared history. It was Mike who recruited me to Thought Leadership & Advisory Services at Cornerstone OnDemand, where I learned a lot ahead of joining Nick Biron to co-found 3Sixty Insights. As always, Mike and I engaged in a wide-ranging and far-reaching conversation exploring the outer reaches of what might be possible in HCM. Here are a few of the ideas we covered: How the concepts of concrete and abstract HCM extend to the C-suite and the science behind left-brain and right-brain thinking How these ideas challenge traditional, conventional notions of what business and work are for What psychedelic HCM might be -- i.e., the combination of concrete and abstract HCM that produces something greater than the sum of those parts and an expanded understanding of HCM Why it has been a challenge to persuade employers to acknowledge the tangible value in abstract HCM -- i.e., the value in how employees feel about their jobs A brief detour into the origins of HR and how the lingering effects of its beginnings have limited organizational leadership's scope of imagination as to what HCM is capable of achieving How the massive disruption of 2020 catapulted us into a new reality where the employee experience, the macro expression of abstract HCM, suddenly enjoys a respect that will not go away Why a deep appreciation for abstract HCM, more than a pretense, will be indispensable to preserving the meaning and purpose that humans find in work as artificial intelligence begins to dominate task-based labor even in the realm of exempt employment The relationship between data, judgement, intuition and decision-making in leadership Why Skynet won't take over as long as we recognize that all managers must become leaders How becoming organizations and institutions adept at continually re-skilling and up-skilling the workforce will be critical to ensuring that humans and robots coexist peaceably in the workplace, as a mutual benefit to each other in the future of work

#HRTechChat with Lilith Christiansen, Chief Strategy and Product Officer from SilkRoad

Thu, 04 Mar 2021 19:34:40 -0000

Welcome to 3Sixty Insights’ latest #HRTechChat. SilkRoad Technology Chief Strategy and Product Officer Lilith Christiansen joined us this week to discuss just how profoundly COVID-19 has affected the workforce and influenced philosophies moving forward around how we manage people and the direction of technology for human capital management. The idea that this pandemic has changed HCM is a well-worn trope, sure, but Lilith and I dug just a little bit deeper. Here's a sampling of the ideas we explored: Why it's OK to use cliches in describing the profound nature of the before and after of 2020 How plans for extreme emergencies such as hurricanes or forest fires could have been a benefit last year to organizations struggling to adjust rapidly to massive disruption attributable to COVID-19 How the concept of employee experience and the related best-practices themselves shatters partitions separating the conventional silos of talent management What it is that makes human resources and internal employee communications such a natural fit, why they originally evolved separately, and how they merged this year (because of the pandemic) How communication technology supporting HCM can at once be as readily accessible and unintrusive as possible How a learning management system might curate and deliver content in real time for flash needs How onboarding isn't just about external hiring in the emerging post-pandemic future of work Why onboarding has evolved and matured to apply to all the major milestones across the entire individual employee's experience Why the action of onboarding encompasses far more than compliance -- for example, incorporating in-the-moment learning Why onboarding might not even be the best term for onboarding anymore What an even better term might be for employee experience

3Sixty Insights #HRTechChat with Randy Cooper, Founder of PeopleStrategy

Sun, 21 Feb 2021 00:00:00 -0000

Welcome to 3Sixty Insights’ latest #HRTechChat. Randy Cooper, founder of PeopleStrategy, joined us late last week. Having stepped down as CEO to become chief of strategy, Randy now focuses on longer-term goals for the company and our industry. This newfound charter of his aligns nicely with 3Sixty’s ongoing exploration of concrete and abstract HCM. In our conversation, we dove deeply into the following and related questions: What is soft HCM, exactly—and why, exactly, is it abstract? What are the building blocks of abstract HCM that get us to the apparent destination: a desirable, positive employer culture that results in greater productivity and staff retention? When’s the right time to start thinking about strategic goals for HCM—goals whose value may be abstract and lack the immediacy that reduced costs have to offer? What is it about abstract HCM that contributes to the durability of organizations? What’s the trinity of HR, and what’s the state of it today vs. in the aughts or ‘90s? How does the state of the HR trinity affect our ability to focus on strategic HCM, the type of activities that lead to abstract, but lasting, benefits to employers? Why and how are enterprise-size organizations predisposed to practice, or at least explore, abstract HCM? What are the challenges that get in the way of small businesses embracing abstract HCM? Why, paradoxically, are the principals of abstract HCM very much worth practicing when a company is relatively young and small? How can vendors of technology and services for HCM condition small businesses to internalize the concept that abstract HCM is useful to them now, not just in the future? How can a vendor help small businesses practice abstract HCM despite the obstacles?

3Sixty Insights #HRTechChat with Alex Smith, CHRO, City of Memphis

Mon, 01 Feb 2021 00:00:00 -0000

Welcome to 3Sixty Insights’ latest #HRTechChat. Alex Smith, CHRO of the City of Memphis and member of the 3Sixty Insights Global Executive Advisory Council, joined us earlier in the week to discuss her department’s decision to implement and deploy Oracle HCM Cloud, along with Taleo-derived functionality for application tracking. Beyond technology, however, Alex’s experience is an uplifting tale of lasting business and cultural transformation in the public sector. Illustrative of the vision forward-thinking HR leaders embrace, the City’s journey is everything the profession aspires to inspire. Here’s a glimpse into what we discussed during the videochat, as well as the contents of an accompanying, in-depth case study: Leading a municipality as a business—a new mayor of Memphis wanted to bring a business mindset to the city via CHRO-style leadership and moving to a C-suite model and mentality Introducing much-needed efficiencies—this came from not-insignificant task of replacing an on-premises Oracle installation in favor of Oracle HCM Cloud (and, for recruiting, Taleo) Reaching accord—despite the undeniable benefits of moving to the cloud, careful consideration of several departments’ and other stakeholders’ needs ultimately drove the decision Improving morale municipality-wide—now absent the previously heavy administrative load, and with positive leadership in place, HR turned its attention to workforce morale, with greater employee engagement and a much-improved Glassdoor rating being the eventual results Acknowledging diversity & inclusion—Alex was ahead of the curve in tackling diversity D&I in Memphis, establishing a focus on it in 2016, when she joined the municipality, ultimately increasing the representation of women and minorities in the municipality’s workforce There’s much more—updating and improving retirement programs, acknowledging civil rights–era staff, drastically decreasing time-to-hire, significantly increasing retention and upping pay in the all-important police and fire departments. The list goes on, and the gist of the success at the City of Memphis HR department and municipality-wide is this: Technology is the necessary tool, but leadership is the essential ingredient.

3Sixty Insights #HRTechChat with Jeff Cates of Achievers

Mon, 01 Feb 2021 00:00:00 -0000

Welcome to 3Sixty Insights’ latest #HRTechChat. Jeff Cates, CEO and president of Achievers, joined us last week for an illuminating conversation around the rationale behind recognizing employees and how to extract the most value from the activity. Following are some ideas we discussed: For any organization that wants to improve its workplace culture, employee recognition is a really good, intuitive place to start Organizational leadership’s attitude toward the workplace culture is critical to success The data show that employee recognition goes far, far beyond the idea of paying staff competitively (or more); day-to-day recognition has a far greater impact on changing behavior It is exceptionally difficult for employers to institutionalize day-to-day employee recognition in the absence of a platform for doing so—let alone next to impossible to measure results This is why systematizing employee recognition is so important: it produces a wealth of data that organizations can use to measure impacts Analytics from these data, furthermore, help leaders maximize goodwill with their staff With the help of these prosthetics, even leaders with strong propensities to recognize staff can improve by tailoring their intent to the ways their people comprehend or prefer recognition A dedicated platform also introduces efficiency to workflows around employee recognition, giving the activity concrete benefits for organizations that elect to embrace the activity

3Sixty Insights #HRTechChat with Michael Haske of Paylocity

Sun, 17 Jan 2021 00:00:00 -0000

Welcome to 3Sixty Insights’ latest #HRTechChat. Last week, Michael Haske, president and chief operating officer of Paylocity, joined us for a wide-ranging conversation. Following is a taste of the ideas we discussed: How you could replace the “versus” in concrete versus abstract HCM with “and”—and how this parlays nicely with what Paylocity refers to as “tactical” and “strategic” HCM How tactical/concrete and strategic/abstract HCM are both incredibly important to organizational success How most aspects of HCM are, in fact, both tactical/concrete and strategic/abstract simultaneously—think of a Venn Diagram with most of the two circles overlapping How C-suites are really beginning to come around and take strategic (and abstract) HCM seriously How Michael sees the shift as not only situational (e.g., the pandemic), but also generational: younger people are basically wrestling our notions of the value and meaning of business to society into a more progressive place, but without necessarily dispensing with the traditional How more people are getting into HR for the value it can bring to the table, beyond being a cost center—and how this caliber of HR person brings a level of sophistication to the organization and can become a leader’s trusted advisor in ways we just didn’t think about years ago How all this, especially as we exit the other end of the “COVID wormhole,” is awakening the C-suite’s right brain—the creative, people-focused interests and aspirations of C-level executives