Events

Talking about the crazy

As many of you know, we gathered folks together (in two concurrent sessions, due to level of interest!) to talk about how their organizations are addressing the massive disruptions resulting from the coronavirus. We believe our community has incredible insights within it, and wanted to provide an opportunity for as many as possible to connect and share.

The conversations were thoughtful, enlightening, and informative. Yet, the thing we took away the most was the level of hopefulness, which was expressed in many small ways. The best example was when one person mentioned:

“This is like our Independence Day (you know, the original movie, not the remake). Something is threatening our entire society, and we need to pull together and stop it. And we are!”

So how are we doing this, while at the same time trying to keep people sane, healthy, and productive (if possible)?

We framed the discussion in the context of our employee experience research, focusing on the 4 levers that drive a high-quality experience:

• A clear philosophy
• A supportive culture
• An articulated accountability
• An aligned measurement

We went through each of these levers and discussed what people are doing in different areas.

The mindmap: Results of our discussions

After the conversations, we summarized the suggestions mentioned in both sessions and have displayed them in this visual map below (use your mouse to move around within the map; you can also download it).

Some key takeaways

One of the suggestions that resonated the most with us was the idea of a coronavirus taskforce, which was shared by someone at a global consulting firm. This group aligns and coordinates efforts, leveraging medical doctors and other relevant experts to help structure and clarify the firm’s response to the crisis. However – and this is key – responsibility and accountability for taking actions is distributed throughout the organization. So, this is not a command and control structure, but rather an alignment and enablement approach.

Building on that, the concept of shared accountability was reinforced throughout the conversation. Organizations are providing people with significant autonomy and ability to get things done as and when it makes sense. If there ever was a time to trust employees and managers to do the right thing, it is now. Yet, as was mentioned several times, it's critical to support them during these times. Provide managers with suggestions on how to best support employees. Provide data when you can that will help everyone perform better.

As mentioned above, there's a lot of finding the good in this challenging moment. For example, one person mentioned because everyone is now remote, communication must be much more explicit. As a result, unexpectedly, this is making productivity skyrocket, because everyone is much clearer on what must get done. Another person mentioned that within organizations there can be subcultures that may have values not aligned to the organization’s larger cultural values. However, remote work was breaking up those subcultures and providing an opportunity to realign folks to the bigger culture. And yet another person mentioned how everyone is so much more open to experimentation, which is providing them with a lot of new ideas they did not have before.

Throughout the session, several resources were shared. We have added those – plus what we had before – to the end of this article (see Appendix 1).

For your viewing pleasure: The 2 sessions

If our summary in the mindmap and above wasn’t enough, you're welcome to listen to the recordings of the calls or review the slides (with hastily written notes) below:

• Session 1 (Moderated by Stacia Garr / Priyanka Mehrotra)
• Session 2 (Moderated by Dani Johnson / Karina Freitag)

Preserving Your Employee Experience During The Crazy from Stacia Sherman Garr

These sessions wouldn't have been possible without the active, thoughtful participation of the folks who joined. To each of you, THANK YOU. You both helped the folks on the call this morning, but also anyone who accesses these resources. Thank you for helping make our community smarter and stronger.

We would welcome the opportunity to continue to be of service to our community. What else can we do that would provide value to you and your organization? Let us know in the comments or via direct email at [email protected].

Appendix 1: Resources

Coronavirus support

• Harvard Business Publishing: Resources to Effectively Lead Amid COVID-19
• Qualtrics: Here to Help
• Limeade: Care in Crisis
• Pluralsight: The Remote Work Guide
• Lars Schmidt: Coronavirus HR Comms & Resources Guide
• Gartner: Respond, Manage and Prepare for the Impact of Coronavirus
• i4CP: The Coronavirus Employer Resource Center
• meQuilibrium: Coronavirus Uncertainty- Respond with Resilience
• Cornerstone: Cornerstone Cares
• Skillsoft / Sumtotal: Business Continuity Learning Center

Articles on coronavirus

• Impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to reduce COVID19 mortality and healthcare demand (Imperial College, London)
• Why Outbreaks like the coronavirus spread exponentially, and how to flatten the curve (Washington Post)
• Coronavirus: Why You Must Act Now (Medium)
• How Bad Is the Coronavirus? Let’s Run the Numbers (Bloomberg)

Articles on working remotely

• The Challenges of Managing a Remote Team (LinkedIn)
• Five Mistakes to Avoid When Managing Remote Teams (Forbes)
• How to Collaborate Effectively If Your Team is Remote (Harvard Business Review)
• Remote Team Building in the Age of Virtual Collaboration (Forbes)

We've been asked for a glossary, of sorts, of the types of tech functionalities that are available in the market. This infographic outlines the 8 tech functionality categories – both those used to engage employees with their own development, and those that L&D functions use to keep the proverbial trains on the tracks. Let us know what you think!

 

The steady drumbeat of COVID-19 news is reaching ever-greater levels – so loud that it seems to be deafening out almost anything else.

It would be hard for it not to. Here in the Bay Area we have the highest concentration of identified cases in California (and the 3rd highest in the country). Gatherings of more than 250 people have been banned. In-person classes at many local universities have been cancelled. Most of us parents are just waiting for school closures. My family has made the decision to avoid most public places (and you should hear how good my kids have gotten at the ABCs as they wash their hands). In many ways, these are scary times.

Focusing on the positive

But they are also times of opportunity, and I am trying to appreciate some of the unexpected good things that have resulted from these times. I thought I’d share them, as they might help you, too.

Here are some of the things I've gotten more of since the outbreak of COVID-19:

1. Time with my family. You should have seen the pure joy and hugs my children gave my husband when he told them he’d be working from home for at least the next two weeks. And when I told them I wouldn’t be traveling for the foreseeable future? It was the most excited screaming I’ve heard in months. Social distancing is bringing us closer together.
2. Thinking space. The spring is conference season, which means I tend to be on the road a lot. That isn’t going to be the case this year. It’s giving me some time to do deep thought work on some new and important research we’re doing on gender and performance management, how to create a responsive organization, using people analytics to create organizations of the future, and the talent experience at purpose-driven organizations.
3. Genuine connection. This might seem counterintuitive. But since everyone is going through this pandemic together, more of my calls start out with conversations about how people are doing, how their families are holding up, and how they are managing through the difficulties. I think we collectively need more of this, and less “business as usual.” At RedThread, we already have a culture of video calls, but this need for connection has only reinforced that tendency.
4. Time to breathe. Since I am not on the road, I’m actively taking that time that was booked on my calendar for “travel to airport” or “flight time” and going for walks or working out. So some of that breathing is heavy breathing, but all of it is making me more healthy.
5. Reflection. Most specifically, I’ve been asking myself, do I need to be on as many planes as I have been for the last few years? What are the tradeoffs I’ve been making in terms of my health, the environmental impact, and my family? And are they worth it? My eyes were really opened by Hacking HR’s Global Online HR Innovation and Future of Work conference last week, and specifically the power of technology like hopin. There is so much more we can do virtually if we are open to it.

COVID resources

For many of us, COVID-19 also provides an opportunity to show steady leadership in a time of instability. It is through strong leadership that we can help our teams, organizations, communities, and families manage effectively. We continue to see (and will continue to add here) resources that we think might be particularly useful to leaders during this time:

• Harvard Business Publishing: Resources to Effectively Lead Amid COVID-19
• Qualtrics: Here to Help
• Limeade:  Care in Crisis 
• Pluralsight: The Remote Work Guide
• Lars Schmidt: Coronavirus HR Comms & Resources Guide
• Gartner: Respond, Manage and Prepare for the Impact of Coronavirus
• i4CP: The Coronavirus Employer Resource Center
• MeQuilibrium: Coronavirus Uncertainty – Respond with Resilience
• Cornerstone: Cornerstone Cares
• Skillsoft / Sumtotal: Business Continuity Learning Center

A few articles to peruse

Finally, there are obviously a lot of articles out there on COVID-19 and your most reliable data source is the CDC and your state or county department of health. However, we've also done a lot of reading on this topic and were especially struck by the high-quality data analysis and insights in these 3 articles:

• Why Outbreaks like the coronavirus spread exponentially, and how to flatten the curve (Washington Post)
• Coronavirus: Why You Must Act Now (Medium)
• How Bad Is the Coronavirus? Let’s Run the Numbers (Bloomberg)

Final thoughts

We hope our reflections are of some use to you as you try your best to navigate these challenging times.

One final thing – while you are looking after your physical health, don’t forget your mental health. It’s quite possible we are in for a marathon, not a sprint, with this one. Good luck and now go wash your hands.

 

Phenom People, a global HR technology company, recently hosted its 3rd annual talent experience conference in Philadelphia, PA. Outside the venue, there were signs of change and growth that constantly reminded me that springtime was just around the corner; trees were budding, flowers were blooming, and birds were chirping.

Inside the venue, there was a similar sense of excitement and forward movement. With its purpose “to help a billion people find the right job,” Phenom has been on an upward spiral since it was founded 9 years ago.

Our Take: Phenom Conference 2020

This year, Phenom hosted over 1,000 CHROs, talent leaders, and HR practitioners, which was double the number of attendees from last year. And its growth extends beyond the conference, with a $30 million boost from its latest venture capital round earlier this year, it recently hired around 250 employees increasing its workforce to just over 500 across the U.S., the U.K., Israel, India, and the Netherlands.

For Phenom, it all comes down to talent experience management (TXM) with a focus to simplify, personalize, and scale four types of experiences (see Figure 1):

• CX: Candidate experience – includes touchpoints during the recruitment process
• EX: Employee experience – facilitates access to career paths and development opportunities
• RX: Recruiter experience – offers tools to recognize and engage potential candidates
• MX: Manager experience – provides visibility into relevant talent information and analytics

Figure 1: Phenom’s Opening Keynote by CEO and Co-Founder, Mahe Bayireddi | Source: RedThread Research, 2020.

Now let’s dive more deeply into the 4 product announcements that Phenom shared at the conference:

• Phenom Gigs
• 1-to-1 Personalization
• Frontline Hiring Manager
• Phenom Scheduling

Phenom Gigs

Phenom Gigs is an internal talent marketplace (see Figure 2).

Figure 2: Phenom Gigs | Source: Phenom People, 2020.

It uses artificial intelligence (AI) to match short-term projects to internal employees. This is Phenom’s answer to the subject of skilling (also known as re-skilling or up-skilling), and of course to other large players with similar offerings. It looks like Phenom Gigs benefits both managers by suggesting a potential resource to fill a project need, and their direct reports by linking them to projects to further expand their knowledge and skills.

Phenom Gigs reminds me of some of the common themes we heard in our learning tech ecosystems study on the importance of providing employees with choices to learn and develop that focus on building relevant skills. But like in other talent marketplaces, the sophistication of its AI capabilities – and the opportunity to develop lagging skills – remains to be seen.

I am particularly excited to see that Phenom is helping organizations think differently about their talent. Phenom Gigs offers them another way to fill project needs without having to look outside the organization. It also sends a compelling message to internal employees that the organization cares about their growth and development by providing them with learning opportunities.

1-to-1 Personalization

1-to-1 Personalization provides personalized recommendations to candidates on relevant jobs, benefits, and perks based on their unique profile and interests (see Figure 3).

Figure 3: Phenom’s 1-to-1 Personalization | Source: Phenom People, 2020.

Phenom calls this a “true” AI-based personalization because it delivers an individualized career site experience, which may be the first time a candidate encounters an organization’s brand. In our recent report on employee experience, we mentioned that employee experience is based on “employees’ collective perceptions of their ongoing interactions with the organization.”

Phenom recognizes that employees’ journey begins when they are candidates, which impacts their experience with the organization from the get-go. By personalizing recommendations to candidates, it gives potential future employees opportunities they may not have found or considered on their own. Like Steve Jobs used to say, “…people don’t know what they want until you show it to them,” and Phenom seems to be taking this to heart.

In my opinion, this feature is not only beneficial to organizations, but to candidates as well. Most of us have searched for a job at some point in our lives, and know how cumbersome the process can be at times. So any feature that promises to ease the pain associated with searching and applying to a job, may go a long way in providing a good first impression for candidates. As customers leverage this new feature, I’m curious to find out how many candidate leads get converted to actual hires because they found the job recommendations truly personalized to their background, interests, and needs.

Frontline Hiring Manager

Frontline Hiring Manager provides recruiters and frontline hiring managers at retail or franchise locations with access to Phenom TXM (see Figure 4).

Figure 4: Phenom’s Frontline Hiring Manager | Source: Phenom People, 2020.

Recruiters and frontline hiring managers can manage their own jobs, pipelines, and candidates. It also provides large organizations with a consistent brand messaging across locations. It basically streamlines the recruiting and hiring process at the local level.

This approach to empower managers aligns nicely with the tendency of forward-thinking organizations to foster a positive employee experience. I believe that granting TXM access to frontline hiring managers will enable them to make quick and efficient decisions. I can see how this particular feature can be attractive to those on the frontlines, especially in industries with a higher than average turnover rate and numerous positions to fill. It basically takes the middle-person out of the equation.

Though I wonder if frontline hiring managers may find it tedious as it is one more thing to add to their “to-do list.” So I look forward to seeing how many organizations use this feature, the overall adoption rate by frontline managers, and if there is a significant reduction in the time-to-hire of frontline workers.

Phenom Scheduling

Phenom Scheduling is a recruiter-initiated scheduling feature that is integrated with calendars and preferences (see Figure 5).

Figure 5: Phenom Scheduling | Source: Phenom People, 2020.

We all know how frustrating back and forth emails can be when trying to schedule a meeting. Phenom Scheduling allows candidates to self-select available time slots to schedule interviews. It integrates with most calendar systems: Google, Outlook, Microsoft Exchange, Office 365, and iCloud.

This seems like a commonsense offering to add to recruiting software. But you may be surprised to learn how many organizations and recruiters still use a standard way of scheduling interviews, and how much time and energy they waste in the process. So what seems like a simple recruiting feature can go a long way in providing a more positive candidate experience and recruiter experience in the often long recruitment journey.

Final Thoughts

In my opinion and to wrap this up, 3 overall themes stand out from this year’s conference:

• A focus on simple, yet meaningful features
• An interest in scaling such features to key stakeholders during the talent acquisition process
• A targeted effort to enable access to relevant information and empower decision-making

So with Phenom’s recent announcements, it looks like our clocks aren't the only ones springing forward.

Note: This article is based on my attendance at IAMPHENOM 2020 on March 3-5. Phenom People paid for my airplane ticket and hotel room at the event. This article represents my opinions, and no one at Phenom reviewed or approved this content.

So what's been happening in the D&I tech space since our last check-in? Lots!

This is one of the fastest-growing tech areas today – with some existing vendors adding capabilities and tools focused on D&I to existing platforms, while solutions from new vendors pop up just as quickly. At the same time, issues surrounding bias continue to heat up as do the mounting concerns globally about data privacy and breaches. In the midst of all this, the human element remains at the center – and this article takes a look at the latest, and what organizations need to know to navigate these technologies and deal appropriately with their people.

The end of 2019: What's happened in the last 6 months?

It’s that time of the year again when we check into all that's been happening in the world of diversity and inclusion (D&I) technology, and update you on the new technologies that we've seen or read about in the past months. This is our 2nd update on the good, the bad, and the new since we published our D&I tech report in February 2019. You can read our previous update, published in the summer / fall of 2019, here.

The good

Sexual harassment and discriminatory practices at the workplace continued to make headlines following the #MeToo movement. In a study conducted by the National Women’s Law Center on the recent policy changes related to workplace harassment, the center found that 15 U.S. states have passed new laws protecting employees from harassment and discrimination. The policy changes have made it riskier for employers to ignore or not seriously respond to complaints about harassment.¹

Efforts to promote pay parity received a greater push as companies across the U.S. with more than 100 employees were required in September 2019 to disclose their compensation policies for workers of all races, genders, and ethnicities to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).² While the reporting rules were first issued by EEOC in 2016, it wasn’t until 2019 that they finally came to effect.

Bias in technology, resulting from unconscious bias of product designers, remained a hot topic. To help them solve for this bias, Google put together a product team of 2,000 people to ensure all the products launched by the company address people of all shapes, sizes, and color.³

In an effort to increase transparency for job applicants into the hiring process and hold technology companies accountable for their products used in the hiring process, the U.S. State of Illinois put into effect a law that requires companies to give employment candidates more insight into the algorithms that analyze their interviews. The Artificial Intelligence (AI) Video Interview Act requires that companies must notify and receive consent from the applicants for using AI to evaluate the applicant for a position. Companies must also explain how their AI works and to protect applicants’ privacy by limiting who can view their recorded video interview and delete any video that an applicant submits within a month of their request. The law barely requires any change for companies that are already GDPR compliant.⁴

The bad

Biased algorithms continued to make news. After a study revealed potential widespread racial bias in medical software designed to prioritize which patients receive healthcare, two U.S. senators asked the Federal Trade Commission and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid services to investigate whether biased algorithms are in use in government healthcare. The study, which was conducted in October 2019, found that an algorithm some healthcare providers use to prioritize access to extra help with conditions such as diabetes systematically favors white patients’ needs over those of black patients.⁵

The new: Technology in the market

The D&I tech market grew significantly in the 2nd half of 2019. A major trend of 2019 was the number of technologies that offer analytics capabilities, leveraged by companies for the purposes of D&I. We also saw a number of solution providers enter this space with tools focused on improving overall employee experience. Further, sexual harassment was a dominant topic, with several new solutions coming to market that specifically help companies provide safe and anonymous venues for employees to report incidents of sexual harassment.

Since our last update (in which we identified 18 new vendors), we came across 15 new (to us) vendors that we want to share with you in the sections below. These vendors are “D&I focused” or “D&I friendly” and have identified them as “new additions” below. Additionally, four of the vendors we have previously covered have launched new products, and we have identified them in the list below as receiving an “update.”

Talent acquisition

• New addition: EZ-ADA helps employees return to work and employers stay compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act. The company uses machine learning to accelerate unbiased decision-making for accommodations and to issue custom fitness for duty forms for each employee.
• Update: Oleeo, a talent acquisition platform that helps companies minimize unconscious bias during selection process, added insights, and text analysis to their product. The insights allow users to see the diversity of their hiring pool by breaking down applications, interviews, and hires by gender and ethnicity. The text analysis allows them to identify words or phrases used in job descriptions that can appeal to or alienate specific groups.

Figure 1: Screenshot of Oleeo Technology | Source: www.oleeo.com, 2019.

Analytics

• New addition: Cassiopeia offers a solution to analyze a company’s data on communications, surveys, and structure to identify non-inclusive behaviors and take actions to address those behaviors.

Figure 2: Screenshot of Cassiopeia Technology | Source: www.cassiopeia.tech, 2019.

• New addition: Compaas is a fair compensation platform that offers analytics to allow customers to receive insights into their employee compensation. The platform connects with existing HR tools like HRIS, payroll, and benefits as well as stock administration to provide an overview of compensation policies.

Figure 3: Screenshot of Compaas Technology | Source: www.compa.as, 2019.

• New addition: Dandi provides analytics to help its customers with their diversity, equity, and inclusion goals by tracking and providing insights on a company’s hiring, compensation, promotion, and employee retention practices.
• New addition: KeenCorp offers a solution that conducts text and language analysis to identify levels of tension and involvement in internal organizational communications. The Keen Index allows the users to analyze the levels of engagement and connectedness within and across teams and groups.

Figure 4: Screenshot of KeenCorp Technology | Source: www.keencorp.com, 2019.

• New addition: OneModel is a people analytics tool that provides infrastructure to measure, report, analyze, and predict business outcomes. The customers are able to leverage the analytics infrastructure to find insights on their D&I goals and efforts, such as their diversity growth rate and diversity profiles in leadership roles and compare mobility and promotion rates among different diverse groups within the company.

Figure 5: Screenshot of OneModel Technology | Source: www.onemodel.co, 2019.

• Update: OurOffice, a D&I analysis and monitoring platform, launched a turnkey solution that offers assessments on maturity levels of existing D&I infrastructures and policies, and helps customers plan their future efforts to meet their goals.
• New addition: Trusaic enables pay equity analyses to help organizations understand their pay equity profile and address any unexplained pay disparity. The service also includes various diversity metric views and reporting.
• Update: TrustSphere, a solution that conducts organizational network analysis (ONA), launched its D&I MRI product which allows customers to measure inclusiveness using passive ONA signals. By analyzing both inter-team and intra-team networks, the MRI is able to asses the level of homophily, the preference of a group or individuals to connect with others that share common attributes.

Figure 6: Screenshot of TrustSphere Technology | Source: www.trustsphere.com, 2019.

Engagement & retention

• Update: Culture Amp, covered in our original report as an employee experience vendor, launched its Diversity & Inclusion Starter Kit. The kit includes a D&I survey, lessons, and reporting to help companies uncover D&I insights along with actionable tips.
• New addition: People First is a software solution that allows employees to report workplace harassment either experienced or witnessed by them. The solution offers a predetermined amount of time that reports should be resolved. In case it remains unresolved, the report is automatically escalated to a senior member.

Figure 7: Screenshot of People First Technology | Source: www.peoplefirsthr.com, 2019.

• New addition: Spot is another solution offering harassment training and anonymous reporting. It offers a small survey on the working culture of their organization that can be taken anonymously by employees. The company provides an AI bot that acts as a third party between the HR and employees reporting anonymously and passes follow up questions between the two.

Figure 8: Screenshot of Spot Technology | Source: www.talktospot.com, 2019.

• New addition: #Notme is a mobile solution that allows employees to report harassment anonymously. For employers, it allows them to track reports and see patterns of misconduct. The data is stored in the company’s encrypted infrastructure.
• New addition: HRAcuity is an employee relations case management solution. It helps identify, track, report, and analyze issues that are crucial for employee relations. It aims to foster a culture of accountability and provides confidentiality and security for employee relations data.
• New addition: Worklytics conducts organizational network analysis that customers leverage to meet their diversity and inclusion goals. The platform uses nudges to encourage inclusion behavior among employees and drive change.

Figure 9: Screenshot of Worklytics Technology | Source: Worklytics, 2019.

Development & advancement

• New addition: DebiasVR offers diversity and inclusion training through virtual reality by focusing on racial bias. The platform offers gaming and uses avatars based on minorities set in a virtual reality environment to build and develop inclusive behaviors.
• New addition: Ethena provides a solution that allows for customizable sexual harassment trainings. The programs can be customized by sector and by how much the employees taking them already know about sexual harassment.
• New addition: Fishbowl offers a platform and a social network for employees to connect, share knowledge, and seek advice about their industry and work. The platform works with companies to provide mentorship and a safe space for women in various industries to push for pay equity.

Figure 10: Screenshot of Fishbowl Technology | Source: Fishbowl, 2019.

• New addition: Women 2.0 offers a platform for HR teams, leaders, and individuals to access resources and research on inclusion and career development for women. Their platform includes a subscription-based product, The Dot offers resources and analysis provided by the company’s experts that help the customer’s D&I efforts.

Conclusion

Diversity and inclusion continue to be priorities for company leaders; Gartner’s recent research into HR frontline agenda revealed that 82% of CHROs have discussed workforce diversity in the last year with executive teams.⁶ The issue has drawn greater attention as evident by the recent announcement by Goldman Sachs to refuse to take companies with all-male boards public. Investing in employees through fair compensation policies and fostering diversity and inclusion was also one of the focus areas of the Business Roundtable group as CEOs made a commitment to lead their companies for the benefit of all stakeholders.⁷

A positive result of the issue coming to the forefront has been the growing focus on not just committing to inclusion, along with diversity, but actually measuring it to truly meet their D&I goals. A growing number of new technologies, as covered above, are offering companies the means to do that.

If you're interested in learning more about the vendors in the D&I space, you can do so by checking out our tool here. If you are a technology vendor in the D&I space and think you should be included in our tool, but are not, reach out to us here.

Appendix 1: Table of Referenced Vendors & Capabilities

Judging by the number of analysts who were on the announcement call with less than ½ hour warning, the news that Cornerstone OnDemand (CSOD) was purchasing Saba for $1.4B came as a surprise to pretty much everyone. In chatting amongst ourselves (and water-coolering it with Stacey Harris), maybe it shouldn’t have come as such a surprise. Why?

Big Picture

Human capital management (HCM) markets aren’t what they used to be. Many of the big players have failed to adjust to new market conditions and gone the way of the world. And, whereas it used to be possible to count the major players on one hand, smaller, more nimble point solutions now have more power as ecosystems become more common and integrations become easier.

Not only that, CSOD made an interesting decision a few years ago to focus heavily on content, and while this has been a decent move in the short term, it's a risky long-term move – as content becomes more ubiquitous, and AI and algorithms get better at helping people curate it. And, just feeding content to employees more efficiently falls short of where the market is headed: understanding the skills a workforce has, helping them develop those skills that will help them personally and move the organization forward, and tying skills and development  to career opportunities.

In short, the acquisition makes a lot of sense to keep CSOD a viable player into the future, helping it compete – both with the ERPs that have been encroaching on the HCM space, and with the young whippersnappers that threaten the larger platform play. The Saba acquisition gives CSOD both market heft and revs its innovation engines. Let’s break it down.

Market heft

The acquisition of Saba increases CSOD’s heft in the market. Most obviously, it acts as an accelerator. Alone, Cornerstone’s ARR (annual recurring revenue) was $575M. With Saba, that number jumps to $818M. Additionally, Adam Miller, CSOD’s Founder and CEO mentions that the deal frees up cash by finding synergies in their data centers, operations, and administration.

Even more impressive is the increase in number of customers. This acquisition makes CSOD arguably the largest cloud company in the world. According to our mad scramble for data from many yearly reports:

Figure 1: Total HCM Customers by Company | Source: RedThread Research, 2020. *Oracle number reflects cloud HCM in 2017. Does not include on-premises HCM implementations.

The HCM market has been experiencing a bit of fear as of late, as some of the larger ERPs have made strategic investments and acquisitions that allow them to play in the HCM space. Workday, for example, recently launched Skills Cloud, which competes directly with several talent management platforms. And it is having an effect. One leader we recently spoke to told us that he is being asked to  “make Workday work” for a learning and skills solution, instead of investing in other more specific solutions.

But, the acquisition of Saba by CSOD puts them in a position to become sort of a “super” talent management system – one that provides deep expertise in talent while still being open to partnering with the HRIS or ERP that companies are currently using. Because they are now one of, if not the biggest, cloud players, it may protect them from some of the encroachment.

Finally, acquiring Saba, who recently acquired Lumesse, a leader in talent management software in Europe, increases their global footprint, which was already sizable (with CSOD being in 25 countries currently).

Innovation

We don’t think there has been a time of greater innovation in the HCM space. Ever. CSOD’s acquisition of Saba allows them to jump-start their innovation efforts in a few ways:

Data, data, data

The majority of new features and functionality in modern HCMs require a solid set of data to be valuable: who sits where, who does what, who knows what, where they want to go, what they've learned, what skills they'll need, etc. This data has the ability to help organizations vastly improve their people strategies – from who to hire, to who to develop, to how to form teams, to retention, and on and on.

The holy grail of talent management right now is successfully tying development subjects to skills and ultimately to positions – and everyone’s in a race for a viable solution – including ERPs which have not traditionally played in this space.

However, people development is easier with people development-specific data – something that ERPs likely lack; while they may claim similar functionality, specific talent management data helps tremendously in developing people. ERPs are often built on platforms focused on resource allocation and process automation – both noble causes, but maybe not the focus when developing workforces to help organizations compete.

The combined CSOD / Saba datasets of 75MM users (assuming they can quickly  figure out how to merge and use them) provides a treasure trove of data that can likely help them provide a much richer, personalized talent experience than their ERP counterparts.

Talent

Workday is an innovation machine – they spend roughly 30% of revenue on R&D efforts (if we interpreted their annual report correctly). Which is why it has been able to effectively challenge HCM providers in their own backyards. Additionally, as we mentioned above, smaller point solutions often innovate as a matter of course – through implementations and partnerships, and their continuous improvement mindset and simpler structures often make them more agile and able to pivot more quickly.

Figure 2: Percent of Revenue Spent for R&D – Cornerstone vs Workday | Source: RedThread Research, 2020.

CSOD spent roughly 14% of revenue on R&D activities in 2018 (slightly below average). Good engineering talent is difficult to find, and with the Saba acquisition, CSOD now has access to a much bigger pool of talent who can do more R&D. This gives them the ability to maintain Saba products as it makes sense while also borrowing that talent to upgrade CSOD and integrate the best from Saba.

Hungry mindset

Finally, and this one is probably a bit more opinion than the other areas we have covered, but one we think is important: When Saba went private in early 2015, some of us were taking odds on whether or not it would survive. But it did. Saba has not only done a fair amount of innovating since then, they’ve gotten into the habit of innovating. Granted, some of the stuff we’ve seen in the last couple of years has been a bit unconventional, but it indicates that they’re taking a fresh approach to the HCM space.

CSOD now has access to not just great engineering talent, but talent that has been approaching the market in a slightly different way. We’re excited to see what they do with it.

So to nutshell: We think this acquisition was a decent move by CSOD. We're interested to see what they do with the bigger footprint, the data, and the talent. As with any move, it all comes down to execution.

All of this leaves us with just two questions: How long will our Saba swag still be cool, and can we still hang out with Phil?

Why we care

Organizational support for gender diversity – or at least the talk around it at executive levels – is at an all-time high. Yet, women still remain woefully under-represented at nearly every level in organizations.

While organizations have taken steps – particularly in performance management (PM) – to address this disparity, the difference grows steadily at each level as more men are promoted than women. The result: men end up holding more than 60% of managerial positions, while women hold less than 40%.¹

Clearly, something happens – something fundamentally different – that changes the upward career trajectory of women, even when they enter their careers on equal footing to men. While there are many potential factors, including work / life integration, employee benefits, leadership development, etc., we know that one of the biggest factors is performance management, as it influences both compensation and promotion decisions. Given this, we wanted to investigate what might be happening differently for the different genders² within PM.

Hypothesis

Our hypothesis for this study:

Given the impact of performance management practices on promotion, it's likely that men and women are having different experiences within PM that are negatively influencing women’s advancement in organizations.

The myth of gender differences

Oftentimes, we assume that, because a practice is fair on the surface, it must result in similarly fair outcomes for men and women. Thus, when we see differences, it can be easy to assume that the individuals are different in some fundamental manner. This is the case with men and women in the workforce, where different outcomes have been explained away by apparent “fixed” gender differences, such as women desiring to leave work more frequently to care for family or women not having the same expertise or competence – especially in critical fields.

Yet, when we dig into these arguments, we find they don’t hold water.

For example, suggesting that women are not as competent as their male counterparts ignores the fact that women continue to earn more college³ and graduate degrees⁴ than men. In addition, while women earn roughly half of the science and engineering (S&E) undergraduate degrees, they're less likely than their male collegiate peers to actually end up participating in S&E occupations.⁵

Further, arguing that women want something fundamentally different from their careers and they're leaving the workforce in droves to have babies and take care of family is not a true representation of turnover rates. Especially when we see that women and men have similar turnover intentions and only 2% of women leaving the workforce do so to focus on family.⁶

The truth is, the different outcomes that we see aren't due to innate gender differences – but instead are a result of the different ways in which men and women experience work. From fundamentally different interactions with managers and peers to policies that inadvertently hinder women’s progress, women experience the workplace differently.

Good intentions: We've paved a PM system full of them

Fairness has been a foundational concept in PM since we started measuring performance. In fact, we began measuring production to help organizations make administrative decisions and determine how much to pay people (an idea still foundational in pay-for-performance approaches). However, as work has changed – so too has PM.

In the last 7-10 years, organizations have taken many steps – often times dramatic ones – to modernize their approach to performance management. While the primary aim of PM redesign was to provide a more growth-oriented approach to drive performance, many of the changes also touched upon ideas of fairness.

Modern PM extends the concept of fairness beyond a paycheck, including:

• Capturing a more accurate picture of performance by rethinking ratings and expanding performance evaluation criteria
• Gaining a more holistic perspective of the individual through more frequent conversations between the manager and employee
• Decreasing bias by increasing the frequency and the sources of feedback (e.g., crowdsourced feedback)
• Ensuring that individuals are evaluated against relevant objectives by setting and updating goals in a continuous and agile manner
• Leveraging PM to develop employees in more meaningful ways (e.g., starting out with career or development goals before determining performance goals, assessing managers on the extent to which they develop employees)

All of these changes – and many others – have been made with good intentions. Organizations want to create PM systems that provide a more accurate picture of performance and foster an environment that is inclusive, fair and equitable to support growth and development. Yet, good intentions and superficial fairness does not mean these practices are experienced by men and women similarly in their day-to-day interactions within organizations.

Creating a level playing field

Given these different organizational realities, organizations need to better understand how their practices play out in reality for women and men. This will likely require organizations to rethink (at a minimum):

• The relationship between managers and employees and how managers are held accountable to developing talent
• The access that all employees have to relevant, value-added information, feedback and critical people / influential networks needed for development and performance
• The underlying theory that employee development is the primary responsibility of employees, when men and women – as a result of their relationships – have access to different types of development and may have different levels of confidence in pursuing development of their own accord⁷
• The way organizations define, identify, and measure disparities between men and women
• The lack of confidence and faith that women – across levels – have in their organizations to actively address gender diversity in real, meaningful ways

These changes could have profound impact on how women experience PM and, ultimately, move the needle on the advancement of women in organizations.

This project

With this study, we want to gain an understanding of the ways in which men and women experience performance management differently. More importantly, we want to uncover ways organizations can move beyond superficial fairness, and ensure that men and women are experiencing the same organizational reality. In our initial discussions, several themes have emerged that serve as the basis for the research:

 

I’ve been following Degreed since it was only about 30 people big and the development team was basically squatting in borrowed space in downtown Salt Lake City. Their approach to the market was different enough to make me sit up and take notice. From the beginning, they have had a very distinct vision: to make sure that no individual – or company – becomes irrelevant due to lack of new skills.

Over the years, I’ve kept a close eye on Degreed. They've made it easy by being very frank with us analysts about their roadmap, and they’re consistently one of the most focused technology vendors I talk to. As the LXP market has grown up around them, they've managed make a name for themselves in the space while still retaining the focus and vision they started with – something I admire, particularly given the market and investor pressures they surely must face.

So I wasn’t surprised at all when they acquired Adepto. Adepto, like-minded and mission-driven, provides functionality that complements and even rounds out Degreed’s skill measurement offerings by helping organizations both see knowledge and skills of their employees and by providing additional skill information through jobs and projects details, not just courses. This acquisition gets Degreed closer to their vision.

I sat down with Chris McCarthy (CEO of Degreed) to talk about his plans for Degreed’s latest acquisition.  As always, it was a frank and enlightening discussion that clarified a lot. It also reinforced my initial reaction to this acquisition: I like it.

Degreed’s virtuous employee development cycle (our words, not theirs)

Degreed’s purchase of Adepto rounds out their ability to do 2 things: acquire more data about the employee and contractor skills, and tie that data to opportunities (jobs, gigs, projects). We think that this additional functionality has the ability to create a virtuous employee development cycle – something we haven't seen elsewhere.

Today, approximately 30-40% of employees access existing learning technologies at least once a month. This is hardly consumer grade, and it indicates passivity in learning – learning for learning’s sake, as McCarthy puts it. While learning for learning’s sake isn't a bad thing, in a world where needed skills change rapidly, employees accessing learning once every 2 months (if we’re being generous) likely doesn’t develop the skills organizations need to compete.

Dipping into learning every couple of months also doesn’t help organizations (and the tech that serves them) understand what employees are trying to learn, which makes it harder to direct them to resources and activities that will help them learn and grow.

Degreed is addressing this in a couple of ways:

User Interface: With Adepto’s functionality that ties skills to projects and jobs, the user interface is being redesigned in a way that will bring the reason for learning to the forefront. Instead of a “Netflix, eat what you want” mindset, the new interface focuses on the goals the employee may have. For example, addressing skills gaps for a job you may want; being considered for a project; or switching careers. The new design will put the employee's goal front and center, and the system will recognize it and provide help and guidance for achieving that goal.

will be one single experience for the employee; you can actually go in and define your learning goals. All of the learning content and things that can help you are in one place, personalized to you. You can measure your skills as you improve on them and represent them so that they are being surfaced for potential opportunities. They’re tied to jobs, projects and other opportunities on the basis of your skills.

Chris McCarthy

To put it succinctly, Degreed’s new interface aims to answer the question all employees have: “What’s in it for me?"

Data: A strong interface and personalized experience encourages employees to use the system, which in turn creates more data points, which in turn are fed back into the system to make it better, more personalized and more useful.

It also puts Degreed in a good position to actually become a system of record for skills data. Its acquisition of Adepto, along with the work it has been doing on integrating with other sources for skills data (HRISes, social networks, LMSes, and external content and certification providers), will make it, if it’s successful, a perpetual and virtuous cycle for collecting and using data on an organization’s skills and knowledge.

Degreed is also investing in increasing the size of their data scientist team, and improving their reporting and analytics functionality, making the data even more useful.

Degreed as a next gen talent platform

Stacia and I have been talking about learning, career, performance, even engagement, converging in the hearts and minds of people leaders. Why? It turns out that it is difficult to develop someone until you understand their career goals, how well they’re performing, and if they even want to learn and grow. While many of the talent platforms we see contain these pieces, some of them fail to provide a logical, helpful, cohesive experience, and we think the market is ripe for next generation ideas – ones that are data-driven and employee (rather than HR) focused.

With the acquisition of Adepto, Degreed moves past serving the L&D market exclusively. It has assembled the functionality to be that next generation talent platform. They have a strong LXP; they have partnered with LearnUpon to provide LMS functionality to their clients; and they have upgraded their skills measurement capabilities. If the world of HR truly is converging on itself, these pieces will allow a different kind of talent management – one that likely serves the employee and the organization better.

With the Degreed LXP, the LMS partnership , and now the skills measurement products we now have this complete skills product which is inclusive. It really is a talent product. All three of those things work tightly together, but any one of them could be the entry point into a new client that we choose to work with, which earns us the right to be able to expand the relationship with them over time.

Chris McCarthy

Frankly, I am interested to see what’s next.

Degreed as a grown-up

Despite almost 7 years in business and just over $153 million in funding, Degreed is still considered a start up by many. While funding and longevity are by no means a guarantee of future growth, Adepto helps them grow up some more. How? Two ways:

First, Adepto, based in Australia and the UK, increases their global market presence. While Degreed has done a lot to increase its global foot print (according to McCarthy, Degreed grew business outside of the US from 3-4% to over 30% in just a few years), the Adepto acquisition adds visibility, client service and technical resources on the ground to service local and global clients, a little gravitas, and maybe some new channels to tap worldwide.

Second, the Adepto acquisition moves Degreed from a single product to two products. While Degreed has experienced ridiculous growth (100% a year) in recent years, McCarthy rightly points out that that kind of growth is unsustainable without a second offering. Adepto not only provides them with a second offering, but also new entry points into the human capital tech market – something that will facilitate growth and ready them for a talent platform play (assuming I’m right).

When you add to that the care with which Degreed appears to both choose and handle its acquisitions, the company probably has legs.

We got so lucky with Pathgather, to compete against somebody so ferociously head to head and actually really like each other is kind of cool. And I give them a ton of credit. Our client retention from the Pathgather acquisition was 140% and the employee retention is pretty high, I think it's like 70%.

The reason I flew to Australia last week and back in two days is because I wanted to have one on ones with every single person in office and get to know them and tell them they could hold me personally accountable if we screw them up or don't do what we say we can do.

Chris McCarthy

Nutshelling it, we don’t think Degreed is going anywhere.

Degreed’s challenges

Despite how much I like this acquisition, I still see potential challenges. The first is that Degreed once again finds itself in a situation where they need to educate the market. Leaders don’t necessarily think in terms of virtuous employee engagement circles or skill measurement software. The fact that they are new concepts means that Degreed will need help leaders understand what it can do for them, how their organizations will need to change to accommodate them, and what line item in the HR budget should be allocated for them. They can do it; they did it for the LXP market. But I think it will be equally as challenging.

Secondly, as Degreed goes about redefining what a talent platform is and what it should do, they’ll be fighting quite a bit of momentum. Business has largely been done the same way for the last 100 years, and most technology accommodates and perpetuates those systems and processes. While we’re already seeing work being done differently, people doing the work handling their careers differently, tenure in organizations shrinking, overall careers becoming much more flexible and elongated, all of which challenges current systems, the momentum is great. We imagine that Degreed will be fighting against a pretty strong current.

Finally, this is Degreed’s second acquisition in the last 18 months and they continue to grow quickly. That’s a lot of change for an organization of this size to handle. It brings to mind potential questions about focus, differing priorities.

Despite these challenges, we like this acquisition. We think it’s good for the human technology space in general, we think it’s good for Degreed’s clients, and we also think it’s good for the future of Degreed.

We’d love to hear what you think too!

As you may have seen, we launched our report on the broader people analytics technology market. While that report is full of great information, there are still more questions that need to be answered, especially regarding the vendors, like:

• How can we categorize vendors?
• What are truly differentiating capabilities – and which ones are commodities?
• Which vendors offer which capabilities?
• What should buyers and vendors be thinking about?
• What do we see for the future of people analytics technology?

Here’s a taste of just some of the key findings:

1. Many vendors claim commodity features to be differentiators. For example, most vendors indicated their solution is scalable and flexible, customizable, takes little time to implement, and is easy to use. These are necessary capabilities, but they are not necessarily differentiating.
2. Differentiating capabilities can be grouped into three categories: addressing foundational barriers to implementation and adoption; enabling new insights; and, making people analytics more human.
3. The people analytics technology market needs a framework to understand vendor offerings. We developed a 2×2 model that categorizes vendors based on frequency of use and the data sources from which they pull, overlaying 10 types of vendors on the model. All vendors in our study are categorized on this matrix.
4. Of the 10 types of vendors, the most represented category was employee engagement / experience, followed by multi-source analysis platforms, and organizational network analysis.

While our first part of the report focused on our finding about the people analytics technology market, our second part focuses on the vendors. These findings and the insights we share along with them will be of particular interest to two audiences: practitioners and buyers looking to understand the market, and vendors looking to differentiate themselves more effectively.

For practitioners and buyers, we have a section on vendor categories, which will allow them to familiarize themselves with the offerings in the market. For each vendor in our framework, we provide a brief description, names of a few existing customers, founding year, screenshot of their technology, and a case study (if provided by the vendors). In the appendix, we provide some more information on their primary talent areas of focus, data capabilities, and analytics capabilities.

For vendors, we provide our insights on which capabilities are truly differentiating and which are not. We also touch upon the outcomes vendors report most impact on, and which ones they should focus on instead. For example, when asked to identify the primary business, talent, and HR outcomes they impact, vendors responses reflected huge similarities, with 78% of vendors identifying efficiency as a business outcome, 82% pointing to both employee engagement and retention as a talent outcome, and 94% of vendors stating “better insights into the workforce” as a HR outcome (see Figure 1). However, we found several critical outcomes vendors could impact, but that comparatively few of them do today. We talk about those outcomes in more detail in the report.

Figure 1: Most Commonly Impacted Outcomes, Reported by Vendors | Source: RedThread Research, 2019.

While we introduced our 2×2 matrix and the four quadrants in the first report, we summarize it in this report and follow it up with more detailed insight into where we think vendors fall on each of the four quadrants. The result, which we share in the form of a graphic, is a product of innumerable conversations, briefings, demos, discussions, and feedback conducted with and shared by vendors, practitioners, our sponsors, and members of the RedThread team involved in this project. We know that this is just the beginning, and our thinking and approach will evolve as the conversation on people analytics technology gets richer and deeper.

We invite you to comment below or reach out to us at [email protected].

Will Robots Take My Job?

There is this website called “Will Robots Take My Job”. You type in your job function and it uses some solid research to tell you how likely it is that your job will be automated. It’s sorta fun. My job has about a 23% chance of being automated. Largely because it currently relies on things that only humans can do. That’ll likely change.

I happened upon this website last year as a part of a quest to understand what makes humans unique. I had read one too many articles about robots taking over the world and I decided to find out, once and for all, how likely that was.

After scouring social science literature, anthropological journals, psychology texts, and even some religious writings, I came up with a list of four things that make humans unique – or four things that robots can’t do and that other species don’t do: (you can read the full report here)

1. Envision a different future: Humans can picture a future different than their present, determine steps to make it so, and then execute on those steps.
2. Tell stories. Humans use stories to communicate information in a way that motivates and inspires and entertains.
3. Collaborate. While other animals may collaborate to survive, humans collaborate longer than it is beneficial to them personally or critical for survival. Helping others is in our DNA.
4. Use tools. Humans have perfected the art of using tools. We don’t just use them to shape our physical space; we also use them to shape our mental spaces.

It occurred to me this week that two of these four things – storytelling and collaborating – are directly related to how we connect as human beings. We connect in ways that animals don’t, and robots never will. Connections make us human. And they explain at least some of why we have been so successful as a species.

Leveraging Connection (and Tech) for Learning

L&D functions have understood the importance of connection for decades. Much of the research and literature on adult learning styles focus on learning from each other and leveraging existing knowledge – the connections if you will.

Until recently, much of this work has been done largely in the classroom; connection – particularly storytelling and collaboration – has been associated with face-to-face activities, particularly when it comes to some of the softer, more human skills (e.g., management, communication).

That said, we’re seeing the definition of “face-to-face” expand beyond the classroom and include more than formal training. We’re also seeing organizations understand how to make connections with employees through communication and personalization.

Storytelling.

Stories provide context to the data of experience. Through stories, humans cast themselves as main characters, place themselves in predicaments, and learn from their own experiences as well as others’ successes and failures. Understanding the what, the why, and the how, gives employees context and motivates them in ways that increases the responsiveness of the organization.

In order for a story to be effective, a connection needs to be made. Whereas storytelling has existed as long as humans have walked the earth (and probably as long as our antecedents have as well), in recent years, those connections are increasingly being made with the use of technology. We’ve seen a couple of trends:

• Standalone tools or additions to existing tools focusing on storytelling – video, animations, drip campaigns, micro-curricula, and other content-creation tools – all help L&D professionals to craft stories that have more impact.
• Easier ways to connect more deeply. We mentioned this briefly in our last article: L&D technologies are moving past the one-way sharing of content and instead are building in true collaboration tools. Whereas employees used to have to be in the same room to take advantage of these deep connections, collaboration spaces, communication tools, structured, and unstructured paths all occur online and with teams spread across the world.
• AI and data. Our access to data is unprecedented – we know more about our employees than ever before. AI and data make it possible to build personal stories – not generic ones, and not ones built on “personas”. We can connect with our employees on their level and meet their needs in new and more effective ways.

Collaboration.

Thomas Suddendorf, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of Queensland in Australia, says that we have a fundamental urge to link our minds together. “This allows us to take advantage of others’ experiences, reflections, and imaginings to prudently guide our own behavior.”

We are wired to help. Ask any two-year-old that follows you around picking up things you dropped. It’s innate, and it’s incredibly human.

Helping others manifests itself in some of the ways we utilize technology. A good example of this is Wikipedia. It exists because thoughtful people with knowledge want to share it – and because thoughtful people who value that knowledge fund it. Another example is GitHub – where programmers can share code with each other. Collaboration in this case has saved countless hours and accelerated development by allowing one programmer to build on top of – instead of recreating – code.

The L&D function – and the solution providers that support it – have also made some progress when it comes to helping individuals collaborate – to help each other learn – using technology. A few interesting things we’ve seen:

• The rise of the expertise directory. Several vendors (and some enterprising homegrown solutions) are making knowledge and skills more transparent in the organization. Some systems allow users to self-select knowledge and skills; others rely on AI and latent data to “guess” which skills an individual may have; but they all help employees collaborate by guiding them to who is likely able to help.
• Leaders as teachers – virtually. When I was at Deloitte, I was always impressed with their ability to leverage leaders as teachers in the classroom. Tech, however, allows us to leverage leaders as teachers EVERYWHERE. Organizations can take advantage of expertise no matter where in the world it sits through new technologies built particularly for the purpose.
• Project marketplaces. We’re seeing more organizations create opportunities for learning through the work itself. Project marketplaces allow employees to sign up for short projects that will help them to develop critical skills. The marketplace is a great example of collaboration: individuals willing to help and to learn while doing it, and leaders offering opportunities for that growth, along with some coaching and mentoring.

Likely these are not entirely new ideas – we have been talking about them for about a year. But the fact that these technologies are built to connect us, and that those connections appeal to our very humanness, and that organizations are more effective when they focus on the things that makes us human gives me hope for us. And for the robots. And for us being able to live harmoniously with them.