3Sixty Insights HRTechChat

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

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!

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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.

“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.”

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.

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.