Category Archives: SHRM Labs

@SHRMLabs Announces 2023 HR Technology Winner! #SHRM23

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This was the third year of SHRM’s Better Workplaces Challenge Cup, which is a startup competition for HR Technology companies. SHRM CEO, Johnny Taylor, has been very open about his vision for SHRM when it comes to HR Technology. It is his belief that SHRM should be the leader in HR Technology.

Part of this leadership is the Better Workplace Challenge Cup. Still, it’s also the creation and support of SHRMLabs which acts as an innovation hub for SHRM’s HR Tech aspirations, that are now seeing SHRM make actual venture capital investments into HR Technology startup companies. This is a big move for SHRM and something new for members to pay attention to. SHRMLabs is being led by Guillermo Corea, who continues to push the boundaries of what SHRM can be known for in HR Tech.

HR Technology might be the most important competency for HR Leaders of the future, but it currently stands as the weakest competency by a mile. SHRM is definitely looking to change this and bring HR technology to the forefront of its membership and HR leaders.

I spoke to a number of SHRM Executive Network attendees, and they also echoed these conversations were happening in their meetings this week as well.

Okay, what about the winner of the Better Workplace Challenge Cup?!

First, I was a judge for the finals. Along with my good friend Wiliam Tincup, SHRM Knowledge Center Director Amber Clayton, Tech Entrepreneur Jeff Wald, and author and TV personality Suzy Welch. A lot of smart folks in that judge’s panel!

The competition started with over 400 entries from around the world, and those were paired down to the top 50. From those fifty finalists, we got to one North American finalist: Maxwell, and one international finalist: Inuka.

Maxwell is led by founder Adriana Cisneros Basulto (one of the two female finalists), and it’s a work/life benefits & rewards technology. Basically, through a debit card issued to each of your employees, Maxwell allows each employee to select some select benefits/rewards that fit them specifically.

Inuka is led by founder Robin van Dalen, and it’s a combination of coaching tech and employee experience. Inuka is a technology that works to increase the resiliency of your workforce through science and expert coaching at a very competitive price point that allows all employees to receive coaching, not just those at the executive level.

The winner of the 2023 Better Workplace Challenge Cup is Maxwell.

Why?

That’s always the question. I’ve been lucky enough to be a judge in quite a few of these startup competitions, and it’s never one thing or the same thing. Each founder has just a few minutes to talk you into why they should win. That tends to work very well for technologies that are easy to explain and the judges can wrap their minds around what it is and how will the eventual buyer use the technology.

In this case, Maxwell was super easy to understand how it will work and the judges seem to believe buyers would have an interest in using it for their employees. The reality is both techs were great or they wouldn’t have made it that far. Inuka will also do well and they already have a great list of enterprise brands using the technology. It was just a bit more complex to explain.

I want to thank the SHRMLabs team for inviting me to be a judge and to be apart of SHRM’s journey to get more professionals to pay attention to HR Technology and grow the industry and their competency level. HR Tech isn’t scary or too complex for anyone in HR to understand. If IT or vendors are making it seem that way, you have the wrong IT leaders and HR Tech vendors! HR Professionals and leaders deal with some of the most complex things on a daily basis, technology is definitely something we can master.

75 Years of SHRM! What does the next 75 years bring? #SHRM23 @SHRM

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It’s the annual conference for SHRM this week, and I’m in Vegas for the show. This is SHRM’s 75th year, so it’s a big celebration and the biggest conference they’ve ever put on, with over 24,000 HR Professionals in attendance.

This is my 12th or 13th SHRM conference, and every single one I’m still amazed at the passion and energy HR professionals bring here. I love to tell any audience I speak to that those who attend a SHRM conference – local, state, or national, are in the top 1% of HR Professionals worldwide. Why? The vast majority of HR Professionals will never do anything to make themselves a better HR professional. The professionals who make the effort to attend SHRM events are purposely working to increase their HR skills. I think that is amazing.

SHRM has had a mission to help HR professionals be the best HR professionals for 75 years. Building community, building educational resources, building certification. The SHRM I originally signed up to be a member of in 2001 is not the same SHRM that it is today. Today’s SHRM has a large international presence that grows every year. Today’s SHRM is pushing the boundaries within the HR Technology community with their Better Workplace Challenge Cup and SHRMLabs, investing in many HR Technology startups. SHRM continues to publish amazing authors with a specific emphasis on our profession. They’ve added specialty micro-credentials to help HR professionals as we get more and more specialized in our field.

I’m not a SHRM historian. There are way better people who can give you that knowledge. For me, the history of SHRM isn’t as important as the future of SHRM.

SHRM is one of the largest associations in any capacity in the world. Over 300,000 members strong and growing. HR, over the past few decades, has continued to increase its relevance and importance to world-class organizations, and I don’t see it stopping.

What would I like to see SHRM do over the next decade?

  • Bring Talent Acquisition into the fold in a much bigger way. Some sort of full-blown certification, training, and education. TA, in many ways, rivals HR as a function. Most CEOs would say there is nothing more important for the organization than their ability to acquire and keep talent.
  • Build HR Technology as a core competency that is a strength in HR Leaders. Currently, HR Technology is the weakest competency overall for HR leaders. In the future, that can not be the case.
  • I love what LinkedIn Learning has done, and I think SHRM can do the exact same thing for HR. Short, impactful video-driven HR education for top voices and minds in our field. GenZ grew up on video, shorter range, on-demand, and classic education and development will not call to them.
  • Get more involved in university HR and TA program development. We continue to see more and more high school graduates specifically choosing HR and TA as careers. While we see a lot of HR college programs, honestly, they aren’t the best. I believe SHRM could lead the charge to help make these programs better. And almost no universities have TA-specific programs, and it’s one of the most important functions in organizations!

I could go on because SHRM is my association and I like to push them forward, but if any of these things can happen above it’s a giant win for our profession. I want to wish all the employees and members of SHRM a Happy 75th Anniversary. It’s a huge accomplishment and our size and voice in industry are being heard.

What’s Your Favorite Layoff Tech?

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Yeah, this isn’t something we like to talk about! We love talking about technology that helps our employees be better employees or technology that helps us find better and more talent. But the technology that helps us get rid of people, well, that seems a bit depressing, right?

In 2022 there have been public debates about what a recession is. We haven’t had one since the Great Recession of 2008-2009, so there is a very large part of our workforce that has never seen a downturn in the economy. We are on the precipice of an economic downturn, and companies will be laying off workers. Are you ready? How will you handle this? Spreadsheets?

Offboarding will be a major buzzword in 2023!

God bless the marketing pros who try and make termination software sound sexy! We don’t call it firing software or a termination process, we now call it “offboarding”.

At the HR Technology Conference this past year, I was a judge of the startup competition Pitchfest and one technology that was pitched was Onward HR. They actually did a great job and I really liked their pitch, but they were going up against a bunch of software that “helped” employees, not help you offboard them. Not fair to them, they had real HR software, helping solve a real HR and employee problem. A lot of the software pitched sounded positive and sexy, but it was mostly vapor. Onward had real HR stuff!

Big HCM software and payroll software will tell you they also do offboarding, but honestly, what they really do is basically just help you with the process. True offboarding should be about how do we humanely help our employees transition out of the company and quickly become re-employed. But also, a giant part of offboarding is ensuring those same employees actually might want to come back and work for us again at some point.

You see, layoffs, are an inexact science. Most organizations are bad at it because we don’t practice layoffs. We practice hiring. We practice developing employees. We practice performance management. We do not practice layoffs, so we mostly suck at layoffs. Quite frankly, I’ve never met a leader who wants to be good at layoffs!

That means the technology can help. For the most part, layoffs run like this:

  • We make the decision of how many heads we need to cut.
  • We then ask managers of people to make decisions of who specifically.
  • We then try to find a way to let people know where everyone will basically know at the same time (this almost always fails and is terrible).
  • We then try and move on and forget it all happened.

The problem with the last step is we basically move on from those departing employees, and those employees feel that, and it becomes very personal. We try not to keep a connection with previous employees. Then, two years from now, you try and launch an alumni recruiting campaign because you’re growing again and can’t figure out why so many previous employees hate you.

What is my advice for your upcoming layoffs?

Be better. Treat people like humans. I mean treat people like humans you will once again in the future want to have a positive lastly relationship with!

SHRMLab’s Better Workplace Challenge Cup HR Tech Winner! #SHRM22

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This is the second annual Better Workplace Challenge Cup competition that SHRM has put on. The BWCC is an HR Technology Startup Competition that goes through three rounds of vetting over one hundred new HR Technology startups. The final four make it on stage at the SHRM Annual Conference and they get to pitch who they are and what they do, then an expert panel of judges decides a winner.

The winner receives a bunch of stuff including a $50,000 first-place prize! But honestly, the recognition and promotion alone of being the winner at SHRM is probably worth more than the $50,000! That means really, all of the final four are winners because they all get great exposure.

The 2022 Final Four are also unique in that all four were led by female founders! This seems appropriate given that 80% of HR professionals are female, we need more females developing the technology we use every day to help make our workplaces and our workforces better!

Let’s take a look at the Final Four:

Vinco (Your 2022 Winner!) – Lissy Giacomán, Founder and CEO based in Monterrey, Mexico.  

Vinco is an ed-tech company whose primary mission is to serve as a bridge between employers who wish to upskill, individuals who want to earn credentials, and institutions who want to drive their enrollment online. Vinco works to assist HR teams in upskilling their employees through connections at over 2,000 top educational programs.

Automation Workz – Ida Byrd-Hill, founder and CEO based in Detroit, MI (so you know I was rooting for Ida!)

The Automation Workz Life Culture Audit is a mobile app assisting HR professionals and corporate leaders to motivate front-line workers to digital career and training success. The Life Culture Audit reduces turnover and absenteeism by coaching front-liners through coding games and creation of their life vision so they realize they have the skills and potential success for new digital careers. 

Included – Laura Close, co-founder and chief business development officer

Included helps companies hire and retain a diverse workforce and drive measurable progress on diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) goals. The platform provides step-by-step guidance based on your own people data trends. Included makes sure you never miss an opportunity to hire the most qualified diverse talent. 

Inclusivv – Jenn Graham, founder and CEO

Inclusivv is a technology platform that brings people together for courageous conversations. Our conversation design process combines thorough research, psychology and the power of storytelling and follows a simple but powerful framework for hosting small group conversations: three big questions, one voice at a time, and equal time to share. 

Shoutout to the SHRMLabs team, led by Guillermo Corea, they have done an amazing job with this competition, but beyond that, they are truly bringing an in-depth focus to HR Technology that has never been at SHRM and it’s impressive.

Last year at SHRM Annual 2021, SHRM CEO Johnny Taylor, said he wants the entire HR profession to think of SHRM when they think about HR Technology and the SHRMLabs team is truly taking purposeful steps to make this happen.

The Two Things HR Is Most Concerned With @SHRM22 #CauseTheEffect

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Okay, I’m officially one of the biggest HR nerds on the planet because I love talking shop to everyone! (Shout out to Lindsey from GoGo squeeZ who I trapped on my flight here and talked shop for two hours!) I’ve spent the last twelve hours talking shop to the point I’ve almost lost my voice before I need to speak tomorrow!

I spent time today at the SHRM Annual Conference in sessions, on the expo floor, at the SHRM store, in the hallways, etc. Basically, at SHRM Annual, you’re always about an arms reach away from someone in HR, if not closer, so, yeah, I’ve talked to some folks. What is on the minds of HR pros and leaders at SHRM 2022? Two things:

1. We need to hire more people.

2. We need to retain our people.

Number three is so far down the list, I’m not sure anyone even cares!

The cool thing about this, is I love these two concepts. The second cool thing about this is this is core HR at its finest. The business needs us to find talent and keep our talent. HR engaged!

This is what we do! We got the people’s side of our business. You need some more folks, okay. You need to keep the folks we have longer, okay. This is what we got into HR for! To increase the talent in our organizations. By bringing on great talent. Through developing the talent we have. By engaging the talent we have to keep them longer.

Our organizations are in crisis mode and it’s not sales-related or operations related or finance-related. It is simply HR related, and I’m here for it!

Of course, we still need to do all we do around learning, benefits, DEI, payroll, etc. We do what we do, and that doesn’t stop. But right now, our organizations are telling us they specifically have a problem that they need us to solve. That’s very cool!

Johnny Taylor, the CEO of SHRM, spoke about HR causing the effect. This is our time. And he’s right. At no other time in the history of the HR function have our organizations needed us more than today.

I always get energized being around HR pros who are trying to get better. Who are learning. Those who want to bring stuff back to their organizations that they can start doing immediately to have an impact. This is what the SHRM Annual conference is about for me. Like-minded pros, learning from each other, to raise our organizations and our profession.

Now, the hard work begins – finding more talent and keeping more talent! Let’s do this!

Are there HR Tech buyers at #SHRM22 #CauseTheEffect

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Sunday afternoon in New Orleans, the location for the SHRM Annual Conference 2022 and the Expo is open. If you haven’t come to a SHRM Annual Conference the expo hall can be a bit overwhelming. There are 800 or so vendors with booths, most are in the HR Tech space, and some are services, but it’s a lot!

Today in 2022, 99% of those attending SHRM are coming from companies that are struggling to hire more workers. Hourly and salary alike, the funny thing is there are a relatively small number of recruiting technology companies in the expo!

Why?

Well, the recruiting technology vendor community will tell you there are no buyers at the SHRM Annual Conference, so I wanted to see if that was true. I set out to speak with ten expo attendees that were Director title and above and ask them why there were attending the expo, did they have the budget to buy, and if they did, how much was that budget.

Here are the findings:

I was able to easily find ten folks to talk to at those titles. The company size ran from 100 to 100,000. Most were under 1000. 90% were in the expo looking at “what was new in the tech space”, visiting current vendors, looking to replace a current vendor, and one was looking for swag!

The big question was did they have a budget they controlled to buy and if so, how much? Here are some of the people I found at the expo –

Mary, HR Director from Illinois, of a 250-person marketing firm. She had $15,000 to spend and was looking for some technology to help with engagement and connection for remote and hybrid workers. Also, anything that could help in recruiting.

Mark, VP of HR from Denver, 2500 person medical manufacturing company. $50,000 of budget he had discretion over to buy technology. Needed help with getting more hourly workers and retaining hourly workers.

Yolanda, Director level from California, 500-person warehouse and trucking. She had $5000 she could spend and was looking for something to help with retention.

Barb, CHRO out of Atlanta, Law firm, 300 total employees, $25,000, but maybe more depending on what she found. She needed some compensation help and sourcing help for her recruiter.

Robert, Director out of Dallas, 5,000 person electronics manufacturing company. $10-25,000 and he was looking for something like internal mobility but sounded more like just internal job board help.

The one enterprise buyer I spoke with wouldn’t give me a number and realistically, she told me, anything major would have to go to RFP, but she was here looking at everything, especially things that she could add onto their SAP stack.

Across the board, everyone I spoke to was in the market at different levels and many mentioned while they might be able to make this decision on their own, this was the “just shopping” phase to see what is out there. They would take back ideas and findings to their team and decide who to demo.

So, I followed up with many with the question, “What about all those that aren’t here?” The resounding answer was, “Everyone is here, or if they’re not, we probably wouldn’t be interested” assuming those were only small players. There was an assumption all the major players in the HR Tech space were there, which we know is far from true, but it was an interesting finding!

The HR and Recruiting Tech space assumes SHRM only has SMB buyers so why come, and if I’m honest, there are a lot of those types at SHRM, probably 65% or so are in the SMB space. But, it doesn’t mean SMBs don’t have money to spend.

So many of the best-of-breed recruiting technology companies are not in attendance and I know for a fact their average deal size is under $20,000. Seems like a massive missed opportunity as these buyers were looking at a lot of lower-end techs and believing it is the next greatest thing!

It seems like with most HR Technology buys, outside of enterprise system buys, the add-on market is about being seen, being found, and delivering to an audience that needs you, but they don’t know they need you until they see you. With thousands of HR pros and leaders all in one location, it leaves me scratching my head on why these vendors don’t make the investment to come.

Are there buyers of HR Technology at the SHRM Annual Conference? The simple answer is, Yes!

Digital Transformation of Work & Wellbeing – @SHRMLabs Report

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I got invited recently to be a part of a think tank of sorts on a project with SHRM Labs and Techstars Workforce Development Accelerator discussing what technologies are needed to help navigate the new digital world of work. What the heck does that mean? Good question!

If you haven’t checked out SHRM Labs they are doing some amazing work around innovation, technology, and work. Led by Guillermo Corea, SHRM is working to take a leading stance on the technology that is built for HR. This isn’t your grandmother’s SHRM! Shout out to Hadeel El-Tashi, she has been amazing as well on the SHRM Labs team.

Basically, we have three types of worker environments right now:

  • Full On-Premise work
  • Hybrid
  • Full Remote

Full on-premise work we’ve been trying to build tech and processes around wellbeing for a long time. To limited success, for sure, but still, it’s been a long focus for technologists and HR for decades. Hybrid and Full Remote, while not new, were limited in use, so the focus was not there, then the pandemic thing happened and this had to ramp up really fast.

What we found is there are limited options for organizations to truly and robustly support their team’s well-being when they work remotely and in hybrid scenarios. Here’s the basis of the report:

This report highlights participants’ voices on each of these points. It proposes ways to foster work/life integration in remote- and hybrid work environments, followed by an exploration of elements that constitute a great employee experience and effective employee culture, closing with a discussion of how companies can attract (and retain) the best talent in the face of a tight labor market and the Great Resignation.

You can download the report here

What were our main findings:

  1. All organizations need to find ways to embrace flexibility in the workplace. Not just white-collar workers, but all workers. Flexibility and “All” is a difficult undertaking.
  2. Give employees agency and develop accountability. I call this one, treating employees like adults, but smarter people in the think tank had better words than me!
  3. Drive efficiency and asynchronous communication tools. Stop the non-stop stream of zoom meetings thinking that’s how you’ll communicate effectively with hybrid and remote workers.
  4. Personalize benefits and improve the employee experience. We still deliver benefits mostly like it’s 1970. Everyone gets a 401K match, even if that’s not your priority and you have student loans or want to buy your first house. Or we offer student loan repayment, but you graduated thirty years ago and paid off your loans, twenty-five years ago. One size fits most, is a crappy experience.

We also had findings around building digital culture and attracting more workers – you can download the report to check those out.

Overall, we’ve got work to do in HR as a total function, including TA, Talent Management, Learning, Benefits and Compensation, etc. This is invigorating for the field and there are so many passionate technologists in our space trying to help us develop great solutions for our issues.

I’ve been studying the technology in our space for the past decade and I’m always amazed that the process of what we need and what’s available is ever-evolving. The pandemic while awful, has opened up the world of work in ways we’ve been pushing to make happen for decades with little movement, then this tipping point happened and it’s like HR is being reinvented all over again.

It’s an amazing time to be in our profession!