Member-only webinar: You, like us, may have been hearing a lot about connection at work recently. Connection is good for both employees and organizations, and it's almost as if the floodgates have opened on a question that's been on leaders' minds for some time: How can I foster better connection in my organization?

Heading into an uncertain 2023, you may be wondering how to foster more connections for employees without breaking the bank. That's not an easy task, especially in the current—hybrid—environment. Simply bringing people together in person won't build the kinds of connection that organizations need. Connection requires intentionality, planning, and thought. You need to know exactly what connection types need to be enabled, where, and why.

 

In an era marked by workplace disruption, what employees need (and want) is constantly changing. Join our team, along with Workhuman, as we explore the key trends driving the future of work and discuss new strategies for building human-centered, high-performing work cultures.

Member-only event! It's that time of the year again when we put on our prediction hats and look into the future.

Join us for our end-of-the-year webinar where were will discuss the year that was and what we think are the upcoming business trends for 2023 and how we see HR orgs responding to those changes. Attend to better prepare yourself and your organization to meet the upcoming challenges and priorities in 2023.

I attended Ceridian’s Insights conference in Las Vegas from November 9-110 Overall, it was a very well-attended conference, both by its existing as well as a significant number of prospective customers. The conference featured over 40 customer speakers as well as keynotes from Venus Williams, Cynt Marshall, CEO of the Dallas Mavericks, and David Horsager, author and CEO of the Trust Edge Leadership Institute.

Below are my takeaways from the major announcements and themes from the conference. I also published a quick wrap-up video that you can check out here.

• Consistent growth and innovation
• Continued focus on providing a seamless experience
• Focus on trust building

Consistent growth and innovation

Ceridian’s Co-CEO David Ossip kicked off the conference by sharing an overview of the company’s performance over the last 2 years. The company reported total revenue of $1.24 billion for 2022, an increase from $824 million in 2019. Recently released Q3 results showed 33% YOY growth. Ceridian reportedly has 6,000 customers live on Dayforce, its flagship HCM solution,  in 2022, compared to 4,000 in 2019, and a 96.5% gross retention rate. Thirty-eight percent of those Dayforce customers are using the full HCM suite. The company now has over 170 partners.

On the innovation side, Ceridian shared products launched in 2021 and reported that it delivered over 840 new features in 2022. Five of the main features unveiled at the conference included:

1. Employee Experience Hub: The product, is in early access and will be available globally in 2023. While not an entirely new product, the employee experience hub is the evolved version of the employee portal launched in 2019 and is a central hub for employees to find all company-related information and communications in one place. The improved portal is personalized for the user and provides relevant and contextual nudges and recommended actions (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Ceridian’s Dayforce Employee Experience hub | Source: Ceridian 2022

2. Guides: This new product will help guide employees through milestones such as parenthood, promotions, exit, etc. It will provide employees with resources and guides from Dayforce and other systems and recommend connections to which employees can reach out for additional information and support. The product will be available in beta in 2023 (Figure 2).

Figure 2: Ceridian’s Dayforce Guides | Source: Ceridian, 2022

3. Mobile Benefits Enrollment: Payroll is one of Ceridian’s strengths and it continues to invest in its capabilities. This new product will allow employees to enroll in benefits via the mobile application, making the process easier and simpler. It will suggest personalized recommendations for benefits and enable users to compare plans within the mobile app and configure it to their needs. It will also allow users to switch from mobile to the web without losing their progress. The product was the most highly voted by customers in the customer portal and will be available in December 2022 (figure 2).

Figure 3: Ceridian’s mobile benefits enrollment | Source: Ceridian, 2022

4. Career Explorer: Powered by Dayforce Skills Engine that helps users with skills management, this new product will enable employees greater control over their careers. It will allow them to explore open positions within their companies, find out how they can upskill themselves, and apply for new roles. The product will be launched in beta mode in early 2023.

Figure 4: Ceridian’s Dayforce Career Explorer | Source: Ceridian, 2022

5. Agile Organizational Management: The launch of this product was received with applause from the audience. It provides users with a visual organizational chart and the ability to model and reorganize structures and teams in response to business needs. It allows users to create internal positions within a team and move people to fill them all with a drag-and-drop capability while the system can launch the associated workflows on the backend automatically. The product is available in beta mode now (Figure 5).

Figure 5: Ceridian’s Dayforce Agile Organization Management | Source: Ceridian, 2022

My take

The company didn’t share information on the number of customers that are currently live on the products already available or in beta. As I mentioned, most were excited about the Agile Organization Management product as it would make the admin user experience very easy.

While no doubt Ceridian has made significant investments in innovating and launching new features to help its customers, I would’ve appreciated more context around the product vision and what leaders believe to be its true differentiators. It would’ve also been helpful to understand which other products within the HCM suite customers find most useful and where the company plans to invest in the future.

The company also mentioned that it will be launching an inclusion survey as part of its engagement product within Dayforce, but it’s not clear how customers will use the data from the survey or what kind of insights be available from it.

Continued focus on providing a seamless experience

Ceridian’s Chief Product and Technology Office, Joe Korngieble spent time talking about Ceridian’s differentiator, which is the single data system at the backend of Dayforce that provides its users with a seamless experience on the front end (Figure 6).

Figure 6: Ceridian’s single system HCM solution | Source: Ceridian 2022

Because of the single data system, Dayforce is able to provide users with a personalized experience, automate workflows, and allow teams to be more agile and flexible. As Megan Sullivan, the VP of Product Design, said,

"We have an obligation to make experience and design a priority. We owe it to people to design experiences that make their lives better."

My take

The single data system sets Ceridian apart from its competitors, and the company continues to reap the benefits of this advantage as it builds new features into the solution. I spoke with several customers about their experience using Ceridian, and many highlighted the ease of use and the seamless experience they get because of the single system.

Given this, I would’ve appreciated greater insight into the underlying structure and technology that enables the single system and, more importantly, their vision for scaling the product to meet customer needs. It would’ve also been helpful to understand how Dayforce integrates with other existing technologies.

Focus on trust building

A consistent theme throughout the conference was trust building. From the opening keynote to  David Horsager’s talk, there was a clear emphasis on the need for companies to build trust with their employees in order to retain high-value talent and become an employer of choice.

The sessions highlighted Ceridian’s role in helping its customers build trust. The company shared how its single data system provides customers with a reliable source of data and thus helps them share it with their employees confidently, thereby driving transparency and trust.

Another new product that Ceridian believes will help establish consistency and provide greater clarity to its customers is the Ideal Talent Marketpalce (Figure 7). The product will provide full visibility to its users across its full-time, part-time, and contingent workforce, allowing managers to post jobs in the marketplace or with a staffing partner. The product also matches open roles with the right skills and qualifications based on data and information leveraged from the skills engine. The product will be available in beta in the second half of 2023.

Figure 7: Ceridian’s Dayforce Ideal Talent Marketplace | Source: Ceridian 2022

My take

The investments made by Ceridian in their workforce management capabilities are smart. However, it would be interesting to learn more about whether the company plans to invest in workforce planning capabilities. Strategic workforce planning that requires a more long-term understanding of the supply and demand of the workforce will be increasingly important for companies as they enter a recessionary period along with a tight labor market. There was no information shared on how Ceridian is helping its customers do that.

The focus on trust-building is great. The company is also doing a good job of providing an active customer community where customers are able to share information, learn from each other, and share their experiences.

Final thoughts

Overall, it was a great conference for Ceridian customers, with lots of new product announcements and information sharing. We would have loved to hear the leaders talk more about helping customers with their diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) efforts and navigating hybrid work challenges, especially those around connection-building and providing an engaging employee experience. We look forward to learning about more updates in the future.

 

You, like us, may have been hearing a lot about connection at work recently. One leader said she feels bombarded by messages about the importance of connection at work. We feel the same.

It’s almost as if the floodgates have opened on a topic that’s been on everyone’s minds for a while.

And for good reason: Connection is good for employees and organizations alike. This research found that organizations with more connection were:

• 5.4x more likely to be agile
• 3.2x more likely to have satisfied customers
• 2.3x more likely to have engaged employees

In this context, many leaders are thinking about how to enable more connection in their organizations. That's not an easy task, especially in a hybrid work environment. Simply bringing people together in person won't build the kinds of connection that organizations need. Connection requires intentionality, planning, and thought. You need to know exactly what types of connection need to be enabled, where, and why.

This infographic, we hope, will help you more effectively enable connection in your organization. It summarizes key findings from our research report, Rethinking Connection for a Hybrid Work World. Click on the image below to expand the view.

As always, we'd love your feedback in the comments!

Last week I attended the UKG Aspire conference in Las Vegas. It was the first unified conference for the customers of Kronos and Ultimate Software since the merger of the two companies in April 2020. It was attended by about 5,000 people in-person and 2,000 online. Overall, it was a great experience and an opportunity to listen to the executive team about the new updates and their vision for the following year.

Below are my takeaways from the major announcements and themes from the conference. I also published a quick wrap-up video that you can check out here.

• A unified vision of putting people first. Two years after the merger of Kronos and Ultimate software, UKG presented a strong and unified vision focused on being people-first, including its customers and employees.
• Increased simplification and better user experience. UKG has made significant investments in simplifying its products, improving the user experience, and driving employee experience.
• Increased focus on DEIB. The company launched new analytics tools to help customers drive their DEIB performance.
• Greater attention to community and connection building. Retention is a major challenge faced by UKG’s customers, and the company is investing in building products that can help build connection, collaboration, and belonging.

A unified vision

As a unified company, UKG now has over 15,000 employees (or U Krewers as they are called) across the Americas, APAC, and EMEA. Forty percent of U Krewers have joined the company since the announcement of the merger. New CEO, Chris Todd, shared UKG’s goal of growing its revenue to $5 billion and cash operating earnings to $1.5 billion by FY 2025.

Having implemented the merger the vision that UKG is focused on now is helping their customers become the employer of choice in current times by focusing on 5 priorities in 2023 (Figure 1).

Figure 1: UKG’s 2023 priorities | Source: UKG 2022

Talking about the product, the Chief Product and Technology Officer, Hugo Sarrazin, shared what they believe are the product differentiators, which includes helping customers work towards becoming Great Place to Work Certified given UKG’s acquisition of Great Place to Work (GPTW) in 2021 (Figure 2).

Figure 2: UKG’s differentiators | Source: UKG 2022

The company’s vision is to become a people-first HCM solution provider and solve customer challenges through its 2 HCM solutions, UKG Pro (previously Ultimate Software UltiPro) and UKG Ready (previously Kronos Workforce Ready). Twenty five percent of the features on the 2023 roadmap for the UKG Pro product and 21% of the features for UKG Ready have come from its Customer Ideas portal.

My take

The merger between Kronos and Ultimate Software appears to be a success. I spoke to a few employees about it and their experience, and they mentioned how UKG’s culture around and focus on putting people first has helped ensure a very smooth transition. The company seems clear on its purpose of being a people-first company. Still, with so many vendors putting out similar messages, it will be interesting to see how UKG truly sets itself apart.

The one true differentiator for UKG is the addition of the GPTW offering. We would have loved to hear from current customers of both UKG and GPTW on how UKG’s HCM platform has helped them improve their overall GPTW ranking and their DEIB performance over time.

Increased simplification and better user experience

Four announcements underscored the company’s commitment to simplification and an improved user experience:

• Retiring products. UKG will retire some of its older products and technologies over the next few years, especially those currently on-premise, to transition to a complete SaaS product to better support its customers (Figure 3).

Figure 3: UKG’s timeline for retiring products | UKG 2022

• One mobile application. The company will converge the existing mobile applications for different products into one single application, providing users with a single point of access to all the different products and tools
• Customer community. UKG will launch a customer community of over 140,000 users by bringing them together on the platform and allowing them to share information and best practices and learn from each other. The community will be live over the next few months.
• New technology. The company will launch UKG FleX, a new technology platform that is comprised of 3 components (Figure 4):
  • FleX Fabric: Powered by artificial intelligence (AI), this feature will allow customers to receive insights, recommendations, nudges, and reminders both within UKG as well as their work tools. UKG shared an example of how this technology will be used in another one of their new products, Career Designer, to provide employees with prescriptive and individualized suggestions for relevant learning opportunities to drive growth and development.
  • FleX Flow: This API framework will allow users to connect UKG solutions with other existing solutions easily. The leaders shared examples of how the framework can integrate UKG Dimensions within Uber and Microsoft to enable users to manage and fill open shifts with minimal disruptions quickly.
  • FleX Dev: This component provides users with “low-code and no-code” capabilities which means that users and third parties can easily customize and build additional tools and applications. UKG leaders believe this will allow the developer community and power users to engage with the product more easily.

Figure 4: UKG FleX | Source: UKG 2022

My take

UKG has made wise investments in the underlying technology to help their customers with a better user experience through integrations and AI, making it easier for the community to automate work processes easily, and build applications to augment the UKG product. The partnerships UKG has built with Uber, Microsoft, Google, and ServiceNow are smart investments that will enable better user and employee experience for the customers already using these products.

The community portal is an important addition for the company, especially since their biggest competitors (Workday and Ceridian) already have established community portals as part of their platforms. We would be interested to see how active and useful the community turns out to be for the customers in the near future.

Increased focus on diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging

UKG acquired GPTW in September 2021. During the conference, the company unveiled its new “Great Place To Work Hub” product as part of the UKG Pro HCM suite. The product will allow users to bring their Trust Index survey data from GPTW, which includes employee sentiment data, into UKG Pro and combine it with their HCM data to better analyze and understand their performance on DEIB (Figure 5).

Figure 5: Overview of UKG’s Great Place to Work Hub | Source: UKG 2022

In addition to helping users surface crucial insights, it will also provide actions and recommendations within the dashboard and guide users on the next steps. The suggested actions are based on GPTW thought leadership, customer experiences, and best practices and the customers' overall goals.

The overall dashboard will also allow users to understand their performance in areas such as promotion and attrition rates through a DEI lens by slicing and dicing their HCM data. The recommended actions, however, are limited to GPTW data.

The Hub will also allow users to access all of their GPTW notifications from the UKG Pro inbox (Figure 6). The product will be generally available in the second half of 2023 as part of UKG Pro suite.

Figure 6: UKG’s Pro Inbox | Source: UKG 2022

My take

This was one of the most important announcements and investments that UKG has made over the past year. By bringing GPTW sentiment data into UKG Pro, the company will be able to set itself apart from other HCM solutions that lack the wealth of data for benchmarking and comparison that UKG can leverage from GPTW. While ADP and Workday have invested significantly in their DEIB analytics capabilities in the recent past, the addition of GPTW recommendations and actions to help companies become GPTW certified as part of the product will be a strong differentiator for UKG.

It will be interesting to see how the customers that leverage these capabilities fare in their GPTW rankings over time. Additionally, if the future iterations of the product allow customers to bring in data from other HCM solutions into the GPTW Hub (as indicated by UKG), it will make DEIB analytics much easier for the customers.

UKG mentioned that intersectionality data (to identify inequality within and between groups of people based on multiple facets of an individual's identity) and providing actions and recommendations on the HCM data, will be considered for future iterations. While the investment is applaudable, UKG will need to move fast and take on a greater role in educating their customers on moving beyond simple data consumption.

Greater attention to connection building

A major theme during the conference was the role that UKG can play in helping their customers build connection and relationships in a hybrid work world. The recent acquisitions and product launches by the company are a reflection of that.

UKG acquired SpotCues, a mobile communications platform, in early 2022. The technology is folded into its new product, Talk, which is a social media tool that can help customers facilitate engagement, connection, and belonging across the organization. The product also helps customers build a sense of community by enabling employees to come together in groups, ask questions, share knowledge, and collaborate based on their shared interests (Figure 7). The product is live and available as part of UKG Pro.

Figure 7: Overview of UKG’s Talk Product | Source UKG 2022

Another new product launched by the company to help managers understand their teams better and drive engagement is the “Team Pulse” product which will be available in 2023. The pulse survey will enable leaders to find insights into their team’s engagement levels and if they are feeling connected with each other (Figure 8).

Figure 8: Overview of UKG’s Team Pulse product | Source: UKG 2022

My take

The focus on connection building is a smart move for UKG. The communications tool and pulse survey capabilities are critical additions to its HCM suite. Not only will these tools help drive employee engagement and connection, but will also allow customers to understand the impact of their DEIB initiatives. It will be interesting to see the different ways customers leverage these tools to drive their DEIB goals.

How well UKG can help customers make the most of these tools remains to be seen. For example, with UKG Talk, a potential concern could be that a lack of moderation of activity feeds, comments and questions posted by employees could result in disengagement and disconnection among people. UKG will need to educate and set best practices for customers to use these tools effectively.

Final Thoughts

Overall, it was a very informative and well-designed conference. We greatly appreciated the opportunity to spend 2 days with the leadership and ask them questions about their challenges, vision, and product future. UKG has made significant investments in its HCM suite, user experience, and employee experience over the last few years. We are excited to see the company continue to innovate and look forward to hearing more about its work on DEIB analytics and connection building.

Great workplaces require great people leaders, but the state of work today makes this a particularly challenging period to be a manager.
Employees are more distributed and disengaged than ever. Managers need new skills to navigate the performance issues and other inequalities in hybrid and remote work. They also require new levels of support and training to lead healthy teams that balance productivity with empathy.
We’ll share new data from RedThread Research on the current plight of managers and discuss what organizations must do now to enable and support them for future success. Registrants will also receive an exclusive executive summary of RedThread’s new research on this topic, “Managing Better in 2023.”

During this webinar, you will learn:

1. The current state of managers and their responses to changing expectations
2. The practices of highly effective managers
3. The resources, behaviors, and technology solutions that can help managers become more effective in today’s workplace

In this latest season of Workplace Stories, Employee Experience (R)evolution, we sit down with leaders to discuss the change in how people are thinking and talking about employee experience.

Join us for this special end-of-season webinar with hosts Dani Johnson, Stacia Garr, and Chris Pirie, along with special guest Ali Fuller of Workday, where we’ll recap the season’s best moments and unpack our biggest learnings together.

Key takeaways:

1. How has the employee experience changed with hybrid work?

2. How can organizations think holistically about employee experience, so we aren’t talking just about a “learning experience” or an “onboarding
experience”?

3. What's the difference between what organizations say their employee
experience is and what it actually is?

4. Is employee experience only about “moments that matter,” or is it more
complex than that? What’s the role of data, technology, and systems in
employee experience?

Organizations that have been in “reactive” mode for nearly three years are pausing, taking stock, and thinking carefully about the future.

Some of the big questions they’re asking are: How should we work together? How can we connect employees – to each other, to their teams, and to the broader organization – when so many are working remotely or in a hybrid setting? What does connection at work even mean in a hybrid work world?

These questions matter – tremendously – because connection at work is linked to outcomes like business performance, organizational agility, innovation, customer satisfaction, employee engagement, and employee well-being.

Join us for this deep dive into Rethinking Human Connection for a Hybrid Work World where we chat with Enboarder about how to answer all of these questions.

I spent the middle of last week in Las Vegas–first for Cornerstone's analyst day, followed by their 2-day Convergence conference for customers and partners. It was an informative, fun, and engaging 3 days. I appreciated the opportunity to hear about the changes Cornerstone is making and the executive team's vision for the next 12-18 months.

This blog is a quick roundup of my top 5 takeaways from the event. You can check out the wrap-up video here.

Here are my top 5 insights from the event. I'll dive into each below.

1. The big announcement: Cornerstone Talent Experience Platform (TXP)
2. The central theme: A renewed focus on customer and user experience
3. The smart investment: Skills tech
4. The possible game-changer: A "non-jealous," open tech architecture
5. The unknowns: A new leadership team and a big vision

The big announcement: Cornerstone Talent Experience Platform (TXP)

In his opening keynote, CEO Himanshu Palsule walked the audience through the changes wrought on the world since the last (pre-COVID) Convergence conference. He concluded that:

Industries are at a point of inflection that has fundamentally changed how we work and learn. –Himanshu Palsule, CEO, Cornerstone

Emphasizing that Cornerstone is a leader in the learning market, Himanshu said it's time to reimagine how Cornerstone enables its customers to work and learn. He announced the New Cornerstone and its flagship product, the Cornerstone Talent Experience Platform (TXP) (Figure 1).

The Cornerstone TXP aims to support the employee journey from hire to retire

This platform includes:

• A learning experience platform (LXP)
• An opportunity marketplace (AKA talent marketplace)
• A content curation studio
• An Extensible Integration Hub (to make integrations with other vendors much easier)
• Core learning and talent management capabilities (including all 3 existing LMSs)
• All powered by skills tech

With this TXP, Cornerstone aims to provide a "true end-to-end talent experience" covering hiring, employee development, performance management, and more.

My take: A single platform is tempting in today's fragmented market

From about 2017-2020, our research saw the number of "point solution" vendors in learning tech explode. (Point solution vendors offer fewer than 5 functionalities and aim to solve 1 or a handful of problems well.) Back then, we wrote about connecting those vendors into a tech ecosystem that made sense for an organization's employees, data, tech infrastructure, and goals. There was a lot of complexity to deal with. And that complexity grew as more potential solutions entered the space.

Now, the pendulum is swinging back toward the center. Organizations are looking to simplify.

A platform that can do it all is enticing–and that's what this TXP promises. Cornerstone says the TXP will enable:

• Personalized employee development
• Ongoing performance conversations and annual performance reviews
• Skills intelligence
• Content curation

And it'll enable all that in one place, underpinned by skills data, with high quality, at scale. Sounds amazing.

My biggest questions are:

• How will they stitch all the pieces together? Cornerstone built this TXP using tech from several different systems–some of which Cornerstone built itself and others which they acquired. Stitching it all together in a way that's seamless from a data and user perspective is going to take some work.
• Will something give? I didn't expect the main conference to cover what's getting cut. But I was surprised not to hear more talk of prioritization, trade-offs, or streamlining during the analyst day.
• How will they differentiate the 3 LMSs? Executives emphasized that they will not merge the Saba, Sum Total, and Cornerstone brands. That seems duplicative and confusing to customers. I'm curious to see how they'll make it clear–to sales reps, support staff, customers, and so on–which platform best serves which client needs.

The central theme: A renewed focus on customer and user experience

In the past, Cornerstone had a solid and well-deserved reputation as a customer-focused company. More recently–since about 2018–that focus fizzled. Customer and user experience declined. In conversations with customers last week, I heard words like "clunky" and "old school." And in a client panel on the main stage, one customer said:

For a while, as a client, I didn't feel heard. I didn't feel the promises made in settings like this were kept. — Cornerstone client, multinational food and drink processing conglomerate

Now the customer focus is back. The ethos of the New Cornerstone, Himanshu said in his opening keynote address, is customer-centricity.

Evidence of this renewed focus on customers is the addition of a Chief Customer Officer, Toya Del Valle, to the executive leadership team. Toya has experience leading customer success teams and a big vision for customer success at Cornerstone.

Moreover, Chief Product Officer Karthik Suri said he's committed to improving the user experience on the Cornerstone platform. He promised that customers will see changes starting in November 2022. There was a lot of talk throughout the 2 days about human-centered design and doing things in 1 click. In particular, they said they will:

• Introduce a new user interface
• Create consistency across products / platforms in the Cornerstone suite
• Improve the admin experience across multi-step workflows
• Offer mobile options

My take: Focusing on customers is never a bad thing

I loved seeing this renewed focus on customer and user experience. Cornerstone hasn't had a great reputation in the last few years, and it's awesome that executives were open about those shortcomings. They made it clear they'd heard the complaints.

My questions are:

• How will Cornerstone marry CX/UX with the complexity of their offerings? Cornerstone has a lot of products offered in lots of different ways. They have the TXP but also offer all those pieces à la carte. They have 3 LMSs with similar capabilities and client bases, at least on the surface. As I spoke with customers at the conference, they wondered: How does all this apply to my organization? What products are suitable for us? How do these changes affect what we already have? How will people find what they need? It may be a challenge to help prospects and existing customers have an excellent experience navigating the current offerings' complexity.
• Will the focus on customers stick? The renewed focus on customer and user experience is an exciting move, but it hasn't happened yet. With all the big product developments happening, I wonder if Cornerstone will deliver on the promised customer-centricity. There's a bit of wait-and-see in the air. For example, the client I quoted above followed her initial comment with this:

I've seen a shift in the detailed attention to keeping promises, but I am waiting to see what drops in November. —Cornerstone client, multinational food and drink processing conglomerate

The smart investment: Skills tech

I just wrapped up some research on skills tech, which Cornerstone participated in (public infographic here, full report available with a 7-day trial membership here).

A core finding of that research was how powerful skills tech can be. Skills tech–or technology that collects and organizes information about employees' skills–has the potential to help organizations:

• Better determine the skills needed for specific roles and gauge the qualifications of an individual to fill those roles
• Engage and develop employees in personalized, tailored ways
• Create more flexibility and mobility—both in traditional roles and less permanent (project / gig) work
• Increase equity and inclusion in the development and advancement opportunities available to employees
• More accurately plan for the workforce, teams, and leaders they'll need in the future

Given Cornerstone's vision for its TXP, investing in skills tech–or an "AI-powered intelligent tech fabric," as they called it–makes a ton of sense. This tech fabric sits at the center of Cornerstone's product strategy and will knit together the disparate offerings in the TXP (Figure 2).

Figure 2: Cornerstone is using skills to connect the elements of the TXP

The skills graph, in the center of Figure 2, contains about 53,000 skills mapped to 250 million jobs. The skills exchange (the square on the right of the diagram) will consume 3rd party skills taxonomies and map them to Cornerstone's. That's an exciting feature, since many large organizations have multiple systems that use different skills taxonomies.

The graph will drive functionalities like skills assessment, learning and opportunity recommendations, and skills recommendations (prompting employees to add / approve skills on their profiles). Cornerstone also maps skills to content to enable smarter content curation and recommendations.

My take: Skills tech is the way to go

Skills tech is a smart, necessary investment. Organizations are moving toward skills-based ways of planning and organizing work. It's great that Cornerstone isn't just supporting those efforts as an add-on thing, but moving toward skills as the fundamental way they're knitting together their offerings.

A tidbit that I'm excited about: Using work systems to infer skills! Skills recommendations will be partly based on inferences about employees' skills made from data in work systems (e.g., Salesforce, Asana, Jira, etc.). Few other vendors use data from work systems to infer employees' skills. It's hard to do. But the payoff can be high. Data in work systems are a great source of information about what employees can do, right now, as part of their jobs. This is a possible competitive edge for Cornerstone.

My big question is:

• What will the execution look like? With skills tech, the devil is in the details. I'm curious how good the skills inference will be. How well will it ingest 3rd-party taxonomies? How deeply will skills be embedded into the other offerings? And so on.

Possible game-changer: A "non-jealous," open tech architecture

3 years ago, Cornerstone was one of the hardest vendors to integrate with. They fought hard to own all the things.

Now, they're saying: "We're not jealous!" (Figure 3).

Cornerstone is going to play nicely with other vendors

In his keynote address, CEO Himanshu Palsule put it this way:

As much as we want to be the walled garden, best-of-breed talent solution, customers have other solutions in their ecosystem. So we have to integrate better than anyone else. — Himanshu Palsule, CEO, Cornerstone

Cornerstone is committing to playing nicely with all vendors, particularly regarding integrations. Their Extensible Integration Hub will include out-of-the-box integrations with major vendors like Udemy, LinkedIn, Teams, Slack, Salesforce, Workday, and so on–and they'll add more vendors over time. They also said they'll make it easy for customers to build self-service integrations with vendors if there isn't an out-of-the-box connection.

The features highlighted during the analyst day were:

• Seamless SSO
• Self-service integrations
• APIs
• Webhooks
• Event streaming

In addition, Cornerstone is opening its skills graph to the public on what they're calling a "Skills Playground." Anyone will be able to play around with the data they have. And in the future, they're hoping the Skills Playground will become an open-source community that uses input from community members to update the skills graph.

My take: I love this change!

This move to a non-jealous, open approach is a big change for Cornerstone. I'm thrilled about it! The ethos of sharing information and being "better together" (another common phrase at the conference) is fantastic.

And this move is timely. It follows a broader trend that we're seeing. Vendors recognize that no one vendor can do everything modern organizations need their HR or learning tech to do. So they're thinking about how to contribute value as one part of a larger ecosystem. This could be a game-changer for Cornerstone. This open approach may help Cornerstone cement itself as a value-adding component of customers' tech ecosystems, rather than a gatekeeper that must be worked around.

My questions are:

• Will integrations be as easy as advertised? I applaud the commitment to easy integration. But it seems like integration is always harder than planned. I'm curious to see if Cornerstone can make their integration hub as easy to use as they're envisioning.
• Will the open skills graph pay off? Cornerstone isn't opening up its skills graph for purely altruistic reasons. They're hoping it'll be a way to expand and improve their dataset as well as a source of new business. That seems like a sound approach, but I'm waiting to see if it pays off.

The unknowns: New leadership and a big vision

Cornerstone's leadership team is impressive and energized. And they have a big vision for the New Cornerstone. They assured us that everything they announced at the conference was, at the least, in beta. They said these improvements will be rolled out for a general audience in the next 12-18 months.

The biggest promise was the Talent Experience Platform and all its pieces:

• Learning experience platform (LXP)
• Opportunity marketplace
• Skills studio and skills playground
• Content studio (skills-enabled content curation)
• Learning and performance management
• Extensible integration hub

In addition, they announced:

• More support for user-generated content, including advanced analytics & reporting
• Capability models that set global standards for job titles and levels
• Adding skills to check-ins and performance reviews
• Manager tools to analyze team skills
• Continuing improvements to support customers' compliance / regulatory requirements, business rules, and processes
• Aggregated insights (across Cornerstone products) for admins
• Position management functionality to support planning, succession, and compliance tracking
• Enhanced compliance controls
• Video transcription, search, and recording in-browser
• A dashboard designer feature
• Better documentation for developers

That is a long list, and I'm sure there's something I missed.

In addition, many senior leaders–notably CEO Himanshu Palsule and CPO Karthik Suri–are new. Figure 4 shows the entire leadership team.

Cornerstone's leadership team is relatively new

Himanshu is 10 months in office, Karthik less than 50 days as of this writing. Neither comes from the HR or learning space–which, as you know, has its own idiosyncrasies and bugaboos. Toya has been with the company for 9 years, but the Chief Customer Officer role is brand-new.

My take: I can't wait to see what's next

Cornerstone’s newly-formed leadership team has promised a lot. There's a lot to be proven.

Which isn't a bad thing at all. I love the big vision, the energy, and the direction.

It simply means some time needs to pass to give the team a chance to execute the vision.

My questions are:

• Will the outside perspectives help? The CEO and CPO’s relative inexperience with HR and learning tech could be great if they bring new perspectives that move the business forward. Or it could be a problem, if they fall into traps they may have avoided with more experience in the space. I hope it's the former.
• Is 12-18 months enough? The Cornerstone team has a lot on their plates. They said many pieces are in place to execute everything promised. Maybe the 12-18 month timeframe is doable. I can't wait to see how things shape up.

Final thoughts

It was a pleasure to meet so many interesting, dedicated people at Convergence 2022. The event lived up to its promise of "limitless inspiration." (On that note, the 2 keynote speakers–Amy Poehler and Mae Jemison–were fantastic.) I look forward to seeing what happens over the coming 12-18 months and hope to see everyone next year.