This morning, Visier announced it acquired the assets of Boostrs, a Paris-based skills mapping vendor.

At the 30,000 foot level, Visier is getting into the skills tech space because it wants to combine skills data with the other employee-specific data it collects and analyzes for customers. This will allow Visier to provide skills benchmarking and greater levels of insight into what is happening with individuals within the organization.

This event is notable because it marks the first acquisition of a skills mapping technology (a nascent space) by another people analytics tech vendor. It speaks both to the broad importance of skills in our space and to Visier's specific strategy. This blog will cover both.

Why skills?

In case you've been living under a rock (it's ok, I do, too – after all, I still haven't seen Ted Lasso), you may wonder why skills are such a hot topic these days.

The reason is that skills allow organizations to quantify work more granularly and thus be able to do things like:

• Better determine the skills needed for specific roles and better gauge the qualifications of an individual to fill those roles
• Identify transferable skills across roles and organizations – making mobility more than a pipe dream and a solution to the many talent shortages organizations face.
• Rethink roles by determining which skills could be combined to create new or eliminate old roles.
• Create more flexibility and mobility – in traditional roles (moving from one role to another) and things like talent or opportunity marketplaces and gig work.

This list isn't everything skills can do, but it shows how a skills mindset can change how organizations function and work gets done. The promise of skills is creating great enthusiasm in our space right now.

Yet, skills is hard…

However, it turns out that once you dig into the whole skills topic, you find it is actually quite hard to:

1. Identify all the skills of employees in your organization
2. Organize the skills in a way that is flexible and continues to take into account new skills continuously
3. Align skills to existing capabilities and jobs
4. Integrate skills into existing talent practices and tech systems
5. Do this for all of the organization
6. Get everyone to use them

Hence, we’ve seen the rise of skills mapping vendors, such as Boostrs, Janzz, and TechWolf, which are designed to help with items 1-4 in the list above. (If you want more info on the skills tech market, you can read all about it in our recent report, available to members or via a free 7-day trial).

Why did Visier buy a skills mapping vendor?

Visier is what we call a “multi-source analysis platform” (MSAP). This means it connects data from existing HR (e.g., HRIS, LMS / LXP, TM) and other operational (e.g., sales or customer data) systems. It then enables robust analysis and distribution of those data. (If you need more background on Visier, you can get it from our blog on their last acquisition.)

So why did Visier buy a skills mapping vendor? There are a few reasons:

1. Visier needed some sort of skills solution. Given the “hotness” of skills outlined above, pretty much everyone needs to be able to demonstrate how their solution supports skills. This is even the case in the people analytics tech space, where our bread and butter is analyzing people data that matters – and that is exactly what skills data are. Visier lacked a dedicated skills capability to date, and this acquisition gives them foundational skills infrastructure from which to build.
2. Visier needed people who KNOW how to do skills. As mentioned above, skills work is hard: the tech is cutting edge, the devil really is in the details, the underlying graph technology is complicated, and HR use cases / applications aren't quite as easy to implement as you might hope. It takes time to find people and build tech that can do this. However, the market is moving really fast on this topic. It is far more efficient for Visier to buy this capability than build or borrow it.
3. Visier wanted its own skills framework. There are so many skills ontologies and taxonomies out there right now that it will make your heads spin. At some point, though, we predict it will settle down, and folks will begin to adopt each others' frameworks, resulting in just 3-5 big ones. As a vendor, you want others to adopt your skills framework, as that means you can structure the data and approach in a way that is best suited to your technology. By buying a skills mapping vendor, Visier gets into this race – and as one of the largest MSAPs, they have a good chance of getting their approach to be one of the few that is widely adopted in 5-10 years’ time.

What is Boostrs?

Founded in 2017, Boostrs is an API-first technology that can extract any type of free or unstructured text from any type of document (e.g., Microsoft Word, PDF), such as training content / course descriptions, job offers / descriptions, titles, or resumes. The primary use cases for its technology to date have been skills mapping, matching, and job insights.

1. Mapping: They have a skills repository of over 5,000 jobs and 13,000 skills, normalized across specialties, and includes complete job details (such as alternative job titles, and job and skill descriptions). They also have historically enabled customers to convert text content into normalized skills and categories automatically.
2. Matching: They can match users with job opportunities based on skills, identify skills gaps, and identify appropriate learning paths.
3. Job insights: They can share information on the evolution of jobs within a given organization (e.g., which ones are getting more automated), determine jobs that are harder to hire for, and determine which jobs are emerging in an organization.

To date, the technology has been focused on using skills to help with:

• Learning: Creating accurate and customized learning paths
• Recruitment: Matching candidates and job opportunities, pre-screening candidates, and generating candidate-shortlists
• HRMS: Integrating standardized job families and relevant skills data to improve data quality and insight

Why did Visier buy Boostrs?

From the press-release, Visier states the following:

“The Boostrs technology enables Visier to provide broader and deeper insights and benchmarks for skills across the talent lifecycle, including key areas in:

• Recruiting & Retention: Recruit for skills that lead to quality hires, and retain those hires through custom career and learning paths through a focused internal talent mobility strategy.
• Learning and Development: L&D programs designed to upskill and reskill, with succession planning and promotion readiness.
• Compensation: Clear benchmarks for skills and job level compensation, extending beyond job titles and offering clearer insights into skills based compensation planning.”

Yes, yes, but why, specifically, Boostrs?

This is all well and good, but it is worth asking why specifically Boostrs, versus some other skills mapping vendor? Here’s why we think they did it:

1. Skills data are sensitive and buying a European provider is a good idea. Skills data encapsulate a person's current skills and future hopes (if you are capturing the skills they want to develop). And so, it is sensitive data, subject to scrutiny. Vendors need to be aware of all the data-protection limitations (yes, GDPR, but also the new California Privacy Rights Act, which goes into effect in January). As a European vendor, Boostrs is well-versed in this dance of data and privacy and will likely help Visier navigate this situation.
2. More European presence can help bolster Visier’s expansion efforts. Visier has grown quickly over the last few years. It currently has a London sales-focused office and a Berlin-based development office. The acquisition of the Boostrs team (10 engineering and data scientist employees) in Paris will give them another toe-hold in Europe. Given that Visier’s biggest European competitor, Crunchr, is now pushing into the US, it seems appropriate that Visier push more into Europe.
3. API-first, HR tech-integration-focused vendor. Boostrs is an API-first vendor, meaning it has no front-end for users. It also has seen other HR vendors as primary customers for a long time. Therefore, it is a perfect solution to buy and “tuck-in” to Visier’s existing data capture, mapping, and analysis capabilities. It’s important to note that the solution will no longer be sold independently, so it will only be available via Visier.

What concerns us?

As always, this all sounds super rosy on paper, but we always have to think about the concerns with an acquisition. Here’s what we’re thinking at the moment:

• The Boostrs skills repository isn’t that big. According to its website, the Boostrs’ skills repository has 5,000 job titles and 13,000 skills. When we compare that to other skills repositories at other vendors, it is obvious that this is far smaller than many others. Now, quantity does NOT mean quality – so it is important to avoid over-indexing on this point. However, it is still worth noting, as it implies that Visier will have a lot of work to build up significant skills benchmarking capability, which is one of its primary goals.
• The technology focuses on documents, not systems. We understand that Boostrs can imbibe information from any document (e.g., Word doc or PDF), but not go into existing systems (e.g, HRIS, CRM) and extrapolate or infer skills from those locations. This significantly limits the number of sources from which one can identify skills data. It also means that Boostrs isn’t doing anything to really identify proficiency levels, which will become increasingly important. It may be that Visier already has tech that can (or can be configured to) gather this information (maybe from its Yva.ai acquisition?), but this seems like a limitation Visier will have to overcome.
• Data privacy and ethics. It wouldn’t be a RedThread blog about a people analytics tech acquisition if we didn’t write about the importance of data privacy and ethics. As vendors bring together more and more data about people, it is critical that leaders make compassionate, thoughtful, ethical decisions about how those data are used. While people analytics leaders in companies may be the critical gatekeepers on these decisions, we very strongly believe vendors have an important role to play in setting norms and making design decisions about how these data will be used. Visier will continue to have an important role to play here.

Where might Visier go with this next?

We foresee a few places where Visier might go next after this acquisition (and the one of Yva.ai, earlier this year). These include:

• Labor Market Intelligence (LMI). LMI (existing players = Lightcast, Talent Neuron, etc.) is generally used to understand specific changes in the labor market, such as where within Texas there are concentrations of software developers and their annual compensation, that feeds talent acquisition and strategic workforce planning decisions. However, we are starting to see LMI be inserted into other talent management decisions, such as to inform decisions around investing in developing talent vs. trying to bring in new talent from the open market and compensation adjustments based on skills in the market. Given the breadth of information Visier will now have on employees, we could see it expanding more into LMI benchmarking in the future.
• Platform as a Service (PaaS).According to Microsoft, PaaS “is a complete development and deployment environment in the cloud, with resources that enable you to deliver everything from simple cloud-based apps to sophisticated, cloud-enabled enterprise applications. You purchase the resources you need from a cloud service provider on a pay-as-you-go basis and access them over a secure Internet connection.” With its increasingly large benchmarking data set – now to include skills – we could see Visier moving in more of a PaaS direction to make a lot of these data available to a broader set of customers. It’s worth noting that Visier has some of this capability today, but a PaaS play would be a more significant offering.

Wrapping up

Visier clearly needed a skills-focused solution, and this acquisition gives them that and opens up some additional doors to more sophisticated benchmarking in the future. It also removes some potential technical headaches of leveraging someone else's skills ontology or taxonomy as their foundational skills framework. We have a few concerns about the technology itself, but those may be mostly related to its maturity, which will now evolve substantially. We see this as a solid strategic move and look forward to continuing to learn more.

P.S. If you care about skills, we have a lot of resources on them (below). We will also publish a new report on designing a skills strategy in the next few weeks. You can check out our existing resources below:

• Can Skills Run the World of Work?
• Skills Tech: A Market on the Rise
• Skills vs. Competencies: What’s the difference?
• Creating a DEIB Culture: The Skills Every Employee Needs
• Workplace Stories Podcast: The Skills Obsession, The Skills Odyssey and The Skills Odyssey II

Today, news broke that Equifax mined records it collects from 2.5 million companies to fire dozens of employees for working 2 jobs. They dubbed the probe "Operation Home Alone." This is troubling to us on at least 2 fronts:

First, while it may not be illegal, it definitely feels….icky. It also sends a very strong, maybe unintended, message to employees and to customers. Employees will likely be less willing to share information voluntarily and will also likely be more paranoid about Big Brother watching them. And if I were a customer, I'd be even warier than I was after the data breach in 2017.

Second, this crackdown on employees who are working more than one job seems to be addressing the wrong problem. The problem is not that employees are working 2 jobs. The problem is that organizations are not engaging employees enough or paying them enough to garner their full attention.

Also, if performance objectives are clear, employees are meeting those objectives, and there is no conflict of interest (i.e., working for a competitor, etc.), does it really matter if employees work more than one job? Companies shouldn't own employees.

I would love your thoughts.

Employee experience is a top priority for leaders, especially in light of hybrid work. However, many leaders wonder how they can create, manage, and drive a positive and engaging experience for all employees across physical and digital modalities. This roundtable is designed to help us all understand the practices and technology that are critical for employee experience.

This will be a highly participatory discussion. As always, the discussions will include a blend of research, sharing, and collaboration. Space is extremely limited. If you would like to be considered for participation, please join the waitlist!

If you're interested in skills and skills tech, this infographic summary of our latest skills tech research (full report here) is for you.

Skills tech is hot right now for good reason: It has the potential to help transform many of our longest-standing people practices, helping organizations be more responsive, agile, and flexible in ever-changing environments.

Click on the image to view more closely. And please share your thoughts and insights!

 

Last week, we published our Skills Tech Report! It was the culmination of months of research that included a survey and live briefings / demos with over 45 vendors, and I couldn't be more excited to share our findings.

Skills tech is technology that collects and organizes data about employees' skills. We estimate that this market is roughly $1.2B and growing. Ninety percent of the vendors in the study offer skills tracking functionality (the biggest of all functionalities).

Not surprisingly, the skills tech market is as varied (and confusing) as the skills movement itself. We had a heck of a time categorizing tech in a way that could help leaders make better decisions. But we did it! We found that most vendors can be plotted on a 2X2 matrix – using these 2 factors:

1. How skills are organized (more flexibly or with more structure) and
2. How employees' skills are identified (primarily by people or by tech)

The report discusses each quadrant, including the pros and cons, strengths and challenges, and how each is best suited for certain use cases.

Please check out the report and let us know what you think! We always appreciate feedback and insights from our RedThread community. And a huge thank you to all the vendors who participated in this study. Your continued support makes our work possible! 

The role of managers has changed drastically over the last few years. As a result, managers are burnt out and struggling to meet the new expectations. This roundtable is designed to help us all understand what organizations can do to support managers in this new phase.

Join us for a highly participatory discussion on the practices, resources, and technology that can help managers in the new post-pandemic world of work.

As always, the discussions will include a blend of research, sharing, and collaboration. Space is extremely limited. If you would like to be considered for participation, please join the waitlist!

In September 2022, we convened a roundtable for leaders to discuss how organizations should rethink their performance management practices within a hybrid work environment. This session was part of our ongoing study on modern performance management.

Thank you to all who participated, shared your experiences, and learned from one another!

The state of work

We started the discussion by setting a context around

• Changing employee expectations
• The struggles faced by managers
• Falling employee engagement levels
• The continuing challenges around retention and turnover

We shared our latest research on the topic, using our framework to help organizations think about performance management for a hybrid work environment—the “3C” framework.

Organizations should focus on culture, capability of managers, and connection.

Figure 1: The “3C” model for performance management in a hybrid work environment | RedThread Research, 2022

The overall discussion resulted in rich insights. To help understand how organizations should rethink performance management as they build long-term hybrid work policies, we focused on 3 areas:

• Culture: What is the role of culture in enabling employee performance in a hybrid work environment? How should organizations rethink their culture?
• Connection: What’s the role of connection between managers and employees in driving performance in a hybrid workplace? How can organizations enable such connections?
• Capability of managers: How has the role of managers changed, now that they are enabling performance in a hybrid workplace? How can organizations support managers in this role?

Key Takeaways

The roundtable generated a number of insights we thought worth highlighting. Here are our top 4 takeaways.

Understand the “Why” behind your performance management

A major theme was that leaders need to understand the purpose behind their performance management practices. Participants agreed that it was important for organizations to go back to their value proposition and be clear about what kind of organization they want to be. As one participant explained,

“Culture is where you start—not something where you add. You have to start with what culture you are enabling and what process or system you use to enable that culture. So often we do it backwards.”

Participants also discussed the powerful role culture plays in reinforcing desired behaviors and mitigating those that are not. By designing performance management practices around the culture and values important to the organization, leaders can drive employee engagement, enable constructive feedback, and provide deeper meaning and understanding of what they do.

Individuals have just as much responsibility for managing performance as managers

The role of individuals in their own performance management was a topic that came up frequently. Participants shared that managers and individuals need to be on the same page about taking equal responsibility for driving performance. As one of the participants put it,

“The age-old notion that the ownership of performance lies solely with managers needs to change.”

Individuals should also be accountable for building their connections. Participants agreed that while an organization can help identify which critical connections need to be built, individuals are responsible for building them.

Connections need to be intentional

Participants shared how connections have become integral to performance management in a remote work environment. Several of them spoke about practices that they have adopted to make connection building a part of their performance management and, as a result, part of their overall culture.

One of the participants explained,

“When we’re remote we tend to go straight to work. We need to be more intentional about how we’re spending our time and how we’re connecting.”

One of the leaders shared that their organization has created accountability maps that identify and tag the people that an individual needs to know to be successful in their role.

Technology can help build connections, but cannot be a substitute for meaningful conversations

Participants shared how they are using technology to drive opportunities for connection. For example, one of the leaders is leveraging tools to nudge people to have regular 1:1s and remind leaders if too much time has passed since they last connected with employees. Organizational network analysis was shared as an example of technology that can help organizations drive connections and uses metrics that show their impact on the business. One of the leaders explained,

“Organizations need to embrace the power of technology in helping drive connections and opportunities. With high burnout, relying on individuals to make connections can easily fall by the wayside.”

Another participant shared an example of a framework their company introduced to help managers establish trust and transparency and remove barriers that prevent employees from achieving their goals. They embedded the framework as part of existing processes through their technology, so that people don’t see it as an extra thing they need to do.

We were grateful for the open and vulnerable discussion during this roundtable. We welcome your suggestions, thoughts, and feedback at [email protected].

 

Late last week, I had the opportunity to spend a day with the senior leaders at ADP in their Innovation Lab in NYC. It was a flawlessly run event and I appreciated the opportunity to both listen to execs and actively participate in conversations on how to improve their products. This blog is a quick round-up of my takeaways from the event. You can also check out the Twitter thread at #adpaday.

At a high level, here are my key takeaways from the day:

• Consistent revenue growth: ADP grew 10% in revenue in FY2022 to $16.5 billion and experienced a 15% increase in new business bookings, growing $1.7 billion last year. The company is just short of 1 million clients, reporting 990,000 clients as of the end of FY22.
• Continued focus on comprehensive and unique HCM data set: A highlight of the session was ADP’s announcement of its new National Employment Report, which seeks not to be a forecast of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) report, but instead an independent estimate of employment. This report is being augmented by a 2,500 US adult worker survey of sentiment on things like engagement, connection, resilience, etc.
• Growth – though not as much as expected – in HCM platforms: ADP’s Workforce Now HCM platform for mid-market customers continues to perform well whereas its Next Gen HCM, targeted at larger, global customers, got off to a slower start than ADP hoped for, but is fully underway now.
• Increased focus on EX: Like many others in the space, ADP is focusing heavily on employee experience and engagement. They are making additional investments into their employee experience offering and launched an employee voice survey offering in July 2022.

Note: This blog was publicly available for 48 hours, after which point it became available only to RedThread members. Sign up to become a member at https://members.redthreadresearch.com.

In September 2022, we convened a roundtable for leaders to discuss how organizations can more effectively enable connection in the workplace. This session was part of our research into connection at work.

Thank you to all who participated, shared their experiences, and learned from one another.

Why is connection important?

To frame the conversation, we discussed why connection is important—both personally for roundtable participants and for their organizations. Participants commented that connection is:

• Personally fulfilling
• A deciding factor when joining an organization
• Essential for productivity, team effectiveness, innovation, and wellbeing
• Important for strengthening culture in a hybrid environment; at the core of creating a powerful culture
• Key to learning and trust

Participants noted that loss of connection isn’t purely a pandemic problem—loneliness, disconnection, and isolation were on the rise before 2020. Rather, the pandemic exacerbated an existing trend. And as one participant put it, leaders in this roundtable were “in violent agreement” that strengthening connection in the workplace is now one of the most important challenges facing many organizations today.

This roundtable aimed to help leaders answer the question: How can organizations most effectively enable connection?

To answer this question, we discussed the roles that systems, leaders, individuals, tech, and data might play in enabling connection:

• Systems. How can existing systems and processes be used to foster connection in an organization?
• Leaders. What’s the role of senior leaders and managers in building connection? How can organizations support them in this effort?
• Individuals. What’s the role of individuals in fostering connection in the workplace? How can organizations support individuals in this effort?
• Tech & data. How can technology and data be used to foster connection in the workplace?

Key takeaways

The roundtable generated a number of insights we thought worth highlighting. Here are our top 4 takeaways.

Individuals have a responsibility to build connection

Some participants latched onto the idea that individuals have a responsibility to connect. They emphasized that this responsibility is noteworthy because, in their experience, individuals sometimes rely on others to do the connecting. One participant noted:

“One of the things that’s striking to me is that we’re saying, individuals have a responsibility.”

Another agreed:

“Reminding individuals that they actually DO have a responsibility for building connections as well, not relying on others to only connect with you.”

Participants discussed how organizations can support and enable employees in fulfilling this responsibility. The conversation turned to tools and processes that might be used to help employees connect. For example, one participant described the Accountability Partnership Maps they use in their organization to help employees understand whom to connect with:

“You put yourself in the center, and then put different roles around you. Then you ask yourself: Who do I need to connect with to be successful in my job? Which are the most important connections? Then you color code those relationships, red / yellow / green, in terms of how strong the relationship is.”

Participants noted that tools like the Accountability Partnership Map help employees understand where to focus their limited time to build connections that will help them be successful in their roles and careers.

Connection must be embedded in what’s already happening

Participants emphasized the fact that although most people agree connection is important, they’re also overwhelmed by all that’s already on their plates. Making connection one more thing they have to do is unhelpful and, frankly, unlikely to get the results that leaders or employees might hope for.

So, instead of making connection an extra program or task that managers and employees are asked to complete, some participants are embedding connection opportunities into existing processes like onboarding, career planning, and manager support resources.

Other participants have seen success making networking more intentional by associating trainings with buddy programs, peer mentoring, or actual mentoring and coaching.

Participants also noted that organizations should implement processes that encourage connection, but at least some of these must make space for organic, informal connections. Connections can’t all be formal, and they certainly shouldn’t feel forced. As one participant wrote:

“The moment is forced, it drives disconnection.”

Finally, participants pointed out that connection opportunities should happen inside whatever technologies employees are already working in—not in separate systems.

Leaders set the tone

If individuals have a responsibility to connect, leaders have an outsized influence on whether and how connection happens in an organization. The ways that leaders connect with each other and with their reports will trickle down to the rest of the organization—behaviors cascade down.

Leaders, therefore, have a responsibility to role model connection. They set the stage and expectations for how others connect. One participant wrote that leaders can:

“Create space for connection, model connection, invest in experiences and opportunities,  encourage connection in creative ways, understand the importance of and build in every day micro-moments to create opportunities, understand that connection looks different for different people.”

Some participants noted that in order to role model and set the tone in the right way, leaders need to feel connected themselves.

Others pointed out that although these behaviors may come naturally to some leaders, others need practice and support—and might be embarrassed or afraid to ask for help. Organizations can support leaders in role modeling expected behaviors by providing tools, best practices, and guidance. Guidance might look like:

• Talk tracks for 1 to 1 conversations with reports
• Regular nudges on why it’s important for managers to connect
• Recognition of leaders who role model connection
• Senior leaders telling stories about how they build connection, when they’ve made mistakes around connection and what they learned
• Helping leaders understand the biases they may have about whom to connect with and how to connect with different types of people
• Providing tools and tech that make it easy to connect, especially remotely

Participants noted that in order for leaders to forge relationships, they need time:

“You can't microwave a relationship – it takes time.”

Participants noted that leaders must be given permission, support, and time to build meaningful connections.

Connection shouldn’t be left to chance

Participants discussed the fact that pre-pandemic, many connections were developed organically. Relationship-building chats could happen in the break room, at the water cooler, in the hallway, or just before or after meetings.

Now, participants claimed, organic opportunities for connection are much rarer. So they must be intentionally built into the ways people work these days. One participant wrote in the chat:

“In remote work, individuals need to be far more intentional about pursuing connection.  It used to occur more passively / organically, but I'm seeing less of that now.”

Some participants suggested that tech and data can be used to enable connection more intentionally. Perhaps most obviously, tech enables asynchronous communication and collaboration, which helps with some kinds of connection. One participant shared the example that in their organization, some employees are using virtual coworking spaces, where people are working together but aren’t located in the same place. This can create a sense of connection and community while enabling people to work remotely.

As another example, tech can match employees for any number of things—coffee chats, mentoring, projects / gigs, etc.—at a scale that would be difficult to manage manually.

Others in the discussion noted that having data about who’s engaged, who’s connected with whom, how healthy teams are, and so on can help leaders be targeted in their efforts to enable people to connect.

We were grateful for the open and vulnerable discussion during this roundtable. We welcome your suggestions, thoughts, and feedback at [email protected].

 

Much has been said over the last year about the Great Resignation, the pivot to remote working, and the ever-shifting return to work policy misfires. However, too little has been done to address the fundamental need of workers who are coming back to the office: reconnection. Leaders have an opportunity to reconnect workers to their colleagues, their customers, and the very purpose of the organization itself, but many don’t know how to do this.

In our latest season of our podcast Workplace Stories, The Great Reconnection, we explored how leaders should approach this work. In this special end-of-season webinar, we will discuss what we learned as a result of these conversations and how leaders can apply those insights to their companies today. Join hosts Dani Johnson, Stacia Garr, and Chris Pirie, along with special guests Amy Lavoie, VP of People Success at Torch to recap the season’s best moments and unpack our biggest learnings together.