Category Archives: T3

T3 – GoCo (@GoCoio) – Zenefits-like with a Better HRIS platform

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This week on T3 I take a look at the Zenefits-like HR software solution GoCo. GoCo is an all-in-one HR, Benefits and Payroll software platform that you can use completely free. Why can you use it for free? Because like Zenefits, there’s a ton of money to be made by managing your employee’s benefit program!

So, Zenefits started this industry. Basically, we’ll give you free software if you allow us to manage your benefits. GoCo one-upped the game by doing virtually the same thing, but building a better HRIS platform for you to use! What this means is if you really aren’t married to your benefits broker for some reason, you can get some great value out of an organization like GoCo.

I think this type of system is perfect for SMB organizations, and those HR shops of One, or two, who are asked to wear a thousand hats and given virtually zero budget to do it with. That’s a lot of HR pros out there right now! But, the GoCo HRIS platform is also much better than most mid-sized organizations are using as well!

What I liked about GoCo?

– Very robust HRIS suite that is fully mobile optimized, full employee self-serve dashboard, digital onboarding, allows multiple locations and states with unique onboarding for each and 24/7 access to benefits advisors.

– Performance Management – unlike most in this space PM is a luxury and GoCo does a great job with providing a real-time feedback mechanism where employees can respond to their supervisors feedback, managers can keep private notes, schedule their one-on-one meetings, and it also can integrate with Slack.

– Time off and tracking with customized built-in rules and policies, automated approval with supervisors via email that links back to payroll, and employees request through their own dashboard.

– Payroll fully integrated with the likes of Paylocity, Gusto, ADP, etc. Make all of your changes, additions, and corrections within GoCo and everything gets pushed to your provider automatically.

– Document management – send any new or updated docs to employees and GoCo notifies and tracks all required actions and the admin dashboard will easily show who is not compliant.

– Total workforce tracking – use temporary or contract employees? GoCo tracks all of these resources as well, which is unique for almost any system. This makes it super simple for HR to track your full workforce in one system.

I’m a little surprised that more organizations have jumped on board to free HRIS software like GoCo, but much of it has to do with the belief you don’t get anything for free. In reality, most of us have no idea how much money is actually being made by our insurance brokers! Zenefits opened our eyes to this, and GoCo seems to have taken it to the next level.

Using this type of organization doesn’t increase your insurance costs. But your brokers will make you believe you’ll get worse service and increased costs. For the most part, I haven’t heard this feedback coming from the user community. Most actually love it, because they finally have real HR software to help them manage their workforce. Well worth a demo, if you’re in this demographic.

T3 – Talent Tech Tuesday – is a weekly series here at The Project to educate and inform everyone who stops by on a daily/weekly basis on some great recruiting and sourcing technologies that are on the market.  None of the companies who I highlight are paying me for this promotion.  There are so many really cool things going on in the tech space and I wanted to educate myself and share what I find.  If you want to be on T3 – just send me a note – timsackett@comcast.net

T3 – @Appcast_io – Talent Attraction is the New Talent Acquisition

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Yo, gang – I’m doing this webinar this week. Check me out!

Discover why talent acquisition is being laid to rest, giving rise to a new game in town: talent attraction.

Thursday, January 19th | 2:00 PM ET

This free webinar present simple strategies to start ‘attracting’ talent to your organization.

You’ll learn:

  • What current processes are broken in most traditional talent acquisition practices?
  • How to get your organization on board with one consistent version of your employment brand.
  • Core concepts of industry leading employee referral programs and innovative ideas surrounding implementing such programs.
  • How organizations are using employee ‘story-telling’ to market and share their employment brand within their industry.

Register now!

This is a concept I brought to Appcast because I think moving forward organizations should be more concerned with attracting talent than acquiring talent. Those are two very different concepts, yet most organizations still work in practices to acquire versus attract.

Should be a great conversation with some new ideas for you to begin using right away in your recruiting departments.

T3 – Smarp @BeSmarp – Connecting Employees with your EB Content

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This week on T3 I take a look at the employee communications application, Smarp. Smarp is a comprehensive communications app that connects employees with the employer’s online content, generating positive brand awareness and exposure by empowering employees to participate in the internal and external communications of the company.

The Smarp app ensures employees are well-informed whether they are at the office or on the go and allows them to improve their own professional brand by helping them position themselves as thought leaders in their fields through the content they share. At its core Smarp is an application that allows an admin (HR, marketing, EB, etc.) to schedule content to be distributed to employees with simple one-click access for them to share the content with their social circles that they decide.

Smarp can easily be used for Employer Branding, but it’s not limited to only HR and Recruiting, all employee communication within the organization can leverage this tool. Smarp is a better way to share and exchange content amongst your employees.

The things I liked most about Smarp: 

– Smarp gives you an easy to use tool that gets your branded (or approved) content into the hands of your employees, then rewards them for consuming and sharing the content with a broader audience.

– Mobile App, with an Admin desktop interface, Smarp also allows your employees to recommend content to be shared across the organization, with specific locations, groups, or departments. This let’s the organization source content that your employees are already consuming and finding value in.

– Smarp has a major gamification element that rewards employees, through a point-based system. Not only are employees rewarded for sharing the content, but they are also rewarded for the quality of the share, thus, the amount of reshares, likes, comments, etc. also count for more points. It’s not only about the quantity they share but about the quality of the share. These points give each employee a “Smarp Score” that is tracked on an organiational leaderboard. Employees then use their “Smarp” points to purchase items you choose, give to charities, etc.

– The Admin dashboard has a great analytics engine integrated that truly gives you the metrics you need to know which content is performing the best, with which groups, etc. It will show you the reach of individual pieces of content, your estimated earned media value (EEMV), and allow you to disable certain share networks you might not want to frequent.

– Internally, Smarp also allows your employees to engage with content and drive collaboration within the organization, while also sharing the content externally, without any of the internal dialogue reaching the outside. I love this feature. It allows you to have dynamic conversations internally, without fear of the public seeing what’s going on behind the curtain.

– Smarp also allows you to share job postings if you have a unique URL for the job posting. Also, if you have an RSS feed to your jobs these will be brought in automatically if you would like that ability for your employees to share these jobs externally and give you the ability to measure this kind of activity.

This application is more likely one that would be used by larger organizations, or more tech-savvy organizations who have an employee base that would embrace this type of activity. Built as an annual license per employee user, organizations will get the most out of this with high user adoption, which can be tricky if you’re not prepared. I was impressed with what Smarp has to offer, not only for HR and Recruiting but how this tool could easily be used across the enterprise for employee communication.

T3 – Talent Tech Tuesday – is a weekly series here at The Project to educate and inform everyone who stops by on a daily/weekly basis on some great recruiting and sourcing technologies that are on the market.  None of the companies who I highlight are paying me for this promotion.  There are so many really cool things going on in the tech space and I wanted to educate myself and share what I find.  If you want to be on T3 – just send me a note – timsackett@comcast.net

T3 – @Lever #ATSDifferently

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Over the holidays I’m taking a break from normal writing and sharing some of my most read posts from 2016. Enjoy. 

This post ran as part of my Tuesday HR and TA technology series. Lever is a really great ATS, but I think they might be even better at SEO as this T3 post gets read heads and shoulders over anything else I’ve written for T3! 

This week on T3 I get to look at a rather new entrant to the applicant tracking system (ATS) field, Lever.  Lever was designed from the ground-up to be different than every other ATS on the market.  Most ATS software are built for the recruiter in mind. The thinking being this is a software used by recruiters, we need to design it so the recruiters will love it.

That all makes perfect sense, if the basis is true – used by recruiters for recruiters.  Lever decided that basis wasn’t totally true. ATS software should be used by everyone in the company. Yes, recruiters definitely need to use it. Also, hiring managers need to use it. Those in the interview process need to use it, etc. If attracting talent is a key component of your organizational success, then you need an ATS that is designed to be used by everyone, not just recruiters.

Lever is designed for organizations who are really focused on talent attraction, where hiring managers own the talent on their teams and are keenly involved in the talent acquisition process. Lever isn’t trying to be the ATS for everyone. They’re trying to be the ATS that companies in tough talent markets use, where talent is an organizational priority, not an HR or TA priority.

5 Things I really like about Lever: 

1. Lever structured their database differently so that you don’t end up with duplicate profiles within your ATS.  It’s structured around the candidate, not requisitions, so you end up with a much cleaner database overall.

2. Lever is designed around CRM functionality, it didn’t bolt on a CRM to it.  This makes a difference when it comes to the functionality of how it automatically follows up in the future for you.  The hope is you don’t end up with a gold mine of talent in your database that you can never mine. Lever is constantly working to mine the gold you already have.

3. Lever’s reporting is a step above most ATSs in that they, again, went at it from an organizational need, not HRs need. Within Lever you can instantly see your pipeline speed and conversation rates all at a granular level to see the detail you need to make quick decisions.

4. Candidate interview scheduling is built within Lever, and integrates all parties, the candidate, hiring managers, interview teams, HR and TA. No back and forth stuck in the middle go between any longer. You select who to involve and the system will instantly show you when and what conference rooms are available to get it done. All in one step.

5. Collecting candidate feedback is another strong functionality within Lever.  It’s a simple interface any hiring manager or anyone on the interview team, can use easily. Plus, there are auto reminders that will continue to bug all involved until it’s done!

Lever is fairly new but already has over 700 customers, with some major tech companies who have recently switched over from some very big ATS products, which really speaks to how they are doing things differently within the ATS space.  Definitely worth a demo if you are not happy with your current ATS, or in the market looking for something new.

Lever is led by a great team, and I suspect you’ll continue to see innovation come out of this camp.  I met with them personally at HR Tech, and their CEO, Sarah Nahm, was one of the few HR Tech executives who truly seem to care what I thought about the product and took written notes as we discussed it. Most just want the free publicity, she wanted to know how to make her product better. That’s rare, and exciting!

T3 – Talent Tech Tuesday – is a weekly series here at The Project to educate and inform everyone who stops by on a daily/weekly basis on some great recruiting and sourcing technologies that are on the market.  None of the companies who I highlight are paying me for this promotion.  There are so many really cool things going on in the tech space and I wanted to educate myself and share what I find.  If you want to be on T3 – send me a note.

T3 – VISANOW Rebrands as Envoy

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It’s no secret that recruiting technical talent in the IT and Engineering sectors is next to impossible. Because of that, more and more organizations are digging into the aspects of hiring foreign technical talent for positions they have open throughout the world.

VISANOW is a technology that provides an immigration management platform allowing you to seamlessly hire and manage a global workforce with an army of internal staff and attorneys on retainer. VISANOW announced today they are rebranding as Envoy. The comprehensive brand relaunch includes a new logo, positioning, website, content hub (www.worldreadyworkforce.com) and URL (www.envoyglobal.com).

From the press release:

“Nearly 20 years ago, VISANOW was founded to simplify and expedite the arduous immigration process by combining expert legal representation and proprietary technology. As the HR industry and global talent marketplace has evolved, we consistently hear from our customers that they’re seeking an end-to-end global workforce management solution so that they can take advantage of opportunities — wherever they beckon. This rebranding effort combined with the recent release of the latest generation of our immigration management platform underscores our ability and commitment to serve as our customers’ envoy as they build and manage a world-ready workforce,” said Dick Burke, president and chief executive officer of Envoy…

Envoy’s patented cloud-based platform aids companies leveraging both inbound and outbound international talent — offering transparent and simplified immigration services that help save time, money and stress as well as increase efficiency and security. Its features include organization, collaboration, planning and compliance modules that allow businesses to manage their international workforce around the world from one intuitive online platform. Dedicated teams of experienced and knowledgeable immigration attorneys and a global network of local practitioners provide Envoy customers consistent, proactive and personalized counsel. This combination of expert counsel, high customer touch, automation, and transparency offers an unparalleled user experience — driving a net promoter score of 77.

Envoy empowers companies to acquire the best talent regardless of where they are in the world; helps mobilize employees around the world to take advantage of business opportunities; and enables the management of entire global workforces, providing a strategic, proactive view into workforce and financial forecasting and compliance.

Simply, Envoy helps take the fear, stress and complication out of your immigration hiring process. Hiring visa candidates was always a stressor for me in the past because I didn’t feel I fully understood it clearly and I didn’t want to pay high priced attorneys. Envoy can help walk you through the hiring process, step-by-step, for a fraction of the cost of shopping this work to the outside.

T3 – The 100 Hottest HR Technologies on the Planet

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My good friend William Tincup (@WilliamTincup) is probably the single smartest person I know in the HR and Talent Technology space, worldwide! That’s saying a lot because this space is filled with smart men and women.

At HR Tech Fest this year, William made a comment on stage that there is roughly 21,000 HR and Talent Technology companies in the world. Seems like a number I can’t even get my head around – I might know 250 or so!

To prove his point, William quickly put together 100 of the hottest companies on the market and shared them on LinkedIn. Since most of you don’t visit LI but once or twice a month, I wanted to share them here as well.

My suggestion is to demo one of these companies each month. One hour of development per month, 12 hours total for the year. Any of us can do this. Pick out the ones that make the most sense to you, in your role. This will change you professionally. You’ll be smarter. You’ll see what your competition is doing. You’ll begin to think more strategically. Yes, just be looking at, and better understanding the technology that is shaping your profession!

Yes, just be looking at, and better understanding the technology that is shaping your profession!

This list is alphabetical. None of these organizations are paying me (yet). If you’re not on it, but want to be, connect with William on the Twitters and just ask.

T3 – Employee Feedback tech – Growbot @TryGrowbot

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This week on T3 I take a look at the employee feedback and recognition technology Growbot. Growbot is a Slack add-on. So, now I need to back up and explain the heck Slack is!

Slack brings all your work communication together in one place. It’s real-time messaging, archiving and search for modern teams. It’s like emailing, text messaging and social media messaging all wrapped into one.

Slack is what many organizations are now using to communicate internally with each other, as an organization, as a work group, individually. It allows you and your teams to discuss and share information quickly.

So, what does Growbot do ‘on’ Slack?

Growbot is one of many new add-on technologies that organizations can use in collaboration with Slack. Growbot allows you to aggregate all the feedback and recognition your team is giving to each other. The ‘bot’ tech works when you use keywords like, “Kudos” or whatever word you want to track.

When Growbot recognizes one of the keywords being used within a conversation at Slack it will pop up a notice to the individual with a short positive message. This simple technology helps encourage you and your team to drive the culture you want.

Most organizations will tie their keywords back to their values, so when those keywords are used Growbot will go into action. On the organizational side, you can see what values are being recognized and shared the most, and by who and to who they are being shared.

Individuals can also pull their own stats by giving a simple command to Growbot, “Stats” and it will show them how many times they received and shared feedback, and the reactions they’ve gotten from those shares.

You can also tie Growbot back into your rewards system and give points for recognition, etc., allowing your employees to then use those points to purchase items, donate to a charity, etc. Growbot is currently being used by over 6,000 companies on Slack celebrating the achievements of their employees.

So many organizations are using Slack now as their primary means of communication. I love that within this communication tool, Growbot found a way to drive and deliver more positive feedback amongst employees!

T3  Talent Tech Tuesday  is a weekly series here at The Project to educate and inform everyone who stops by on a daily/weekly basis on some great HR, recruiting, and sourcing technologies that are on the market. None of the companies who I highlight are paying me for this promotion. There are so many really cool things going on in the tech space and I wanted to educate myself and share what I find. If you want to be on T3  send me a note.

 

T3 – Technical Interview Technology – @eTeki_Inc

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This week on T3 I take a look at the technical interview technology eTeki. One question I get asked often by TA pros and leaders is around finding a technology that will help them select technical hires better.  There are some ‘test’ type technologies on the market, but those are really difficult to actively select from and the tests are usually super generic.

It’s not a hidden fact that most HR and TA pros/leaders have little functional knowledge when it comes to technical positions. Internal IT groups are stretched thin, so using your own staff as part of the selection process becomes a huge hindrance to most organizations. Still, hiring managers are expecting TA departments to do a better job at filtering out technical candidates who can’t walk the walk.

Along comes eTeki. eTeki is an interviewing platform that uses screened functional IT talent to do live interviews. It’s like ‘Uber’ for selection. Need to interview a developer? eTeki will partner your organization with a developer skilled in the same technology you have, plus skilled in interviewing technical candidates.

What I really like about eTeki:

– eTeki interviewers don’t tell you who to hire or not hire but give you detailed scoring and comments based on the technical skills you want assessed. Since these interviewers have no vested interest in who gets hired, you get more of an unbiased assessment than with your internal team.

– Every eTeki interview is recorded with video, so you and your hiring managers can go through and see the entire thing if you want. Also, the interview platform has a collaborative code editor in 50+ languages so you can see code snippets of the candidates you’re assessing. The platform also has a shared whiteboard function and screen sharing.

– Super simple to use for all three parties, the candidate, the company and the interviewer. A coded personal link is sent to the candidate with a password, face to face video, nothing to download, mobile enabled.

– Crowdsourced interviewer rating system ensures the interviewers who are using can actually do what they say they can do. You can see comments from other organizations who have previously used these interviewers to screen their talent. Currently, they have over 1200 interviewers in their marketplace, 80% are U.S. based. Basically, experienced technology pros looking to supplement their income by doing interviews (where the Uber comparison comes into play).

– The platform gives freedom to the interviewers to dive into skills they see a candidate has, as well, that you might not have asked, but will find valuable based on the role and job description you provided them, on top of assessing all the stuff you asked them to assess as well.

The cost per interview varies on the interviewer who sets the price, but the marketplace usually keeps them in the $40-60 per interview range. That’s a real bargain when you think about how much per hour you pay your own internal technical employees, plus the training and information you get on each candidate.

Another piece of this I like is that if you find an interviewer that you really like and they’ve shown to give you really good information to make your selection decision, you can personally request them for additional screens as well. The platform continues to evolve as more and more organizations use it and have different requests for additions, and eTeki has shown they’ll work to evolve the platform even more in the future.

Well worth a look if you are in need of a great technology screening tool and need to move candidates through the process quicker.

T3 – Talent Tech Tuesday – is a weekly series here at The Project to educate and inform everyone who stops by on a daily/weekly basis on some great HR, recruiting, and sourcing technologies that are on the market.  None of the companies who I highlight are paying me for this promotion.  There are so many really cool things going on in the tech space and I wanted to educate myself and share what I find.  If you want to be on T3 – send me a note.

T3 – @InvestiPro

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This week on T3 I take a look at the employee investigation technology InvestiPro. Okay, I have to tell you that I first ran into InvestiPro at The HR Technology Conference when their Founder, Dana Barbato, got on stage during a new technology competition and by herself just got up and killed it! No flash, just real HR talk about one of the biggest challenges real HR pros face on a daily basis. I loved it!

To me, the best HR Tech is one that solves an actual problem that I’ve really had to deal with working as an HR Pro. Dana, like I, was a real HR Pro in the trenches. Before starting InvestiPro, real HR was her entire career. So, she gets it. She gets that having to run an employee investigation can be hard for a number of reasons. Having to run multiple investigations at the same time can really be a chore!

InvestiPro is a fully-automated workplace investigation solution designed to simplify the way employers conduct investigations. From start to finish the technology simply walks you through the process and ensures you remain complaint, legally, and keeps you and your organization out of hot water.

What I really like about Investipro: 

– The system allows you to maintain all of your investigations in one place. Keeps you organized and easily lets you see where you’re at in the process of each one. For those of us, like me, that had all of this in multiple files and doing it all by hand, this would have been a godsend!

– For those who don’t have to do investigations often, InvestiPro ensures you follow a process from beginning to end and helps you out along  the way. Many times investigations fail, from the corporate perspective, because something was missed along the way.

– InvestiPro helps HR pros answer all those questions that they just don’t know, or might not fully understand, in regards to liability, should you even be doing an investigation, should you hire outside council, what questions you should be asking, etc.

– Each investigation is reviewed by a qualified legal expert to ensure it meets normal legal standards in case your investigation might end up in a courtroom.

– It’s a fraction of the price of bringing in outside council. It’s the 90/10 rule. 90% of your internal investigations can probably be taken care of by you, the other 10% probably need outside counsel. Most organizations tend to use more outside counsel than is needed. InvestiPro helps save you money.

The HR Tech crowd was un-wowed by InvestiPro, that’s because most of that crowd aren’t actual HR Pros and Leaders who deal with this kind of thing on a daily basis. For me, InvestiPro was the most usable out of the box technology that was presented at the conference! It was brilliant in its simplicity and function. That’s hard to do! Take a look.


T3 – Talent Tech Tuesday – is a weekly series here at The Project to educate and inform everyone who stops by on a daily/weekly basis on some great HR, recruiting, and sourcing technologies that are on the market.  None of the companies who I highlight are paying me for this promotion.  There are so many really cool things going on in the tech space and I wanted to educate myself and share what I find.  If you want to be on T3 – send me a note.

T3 – Fitbit Group Health – @Fitbit

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This week on T3 I take a look at wearable technology Fitbit, but not from the actual wearable tech perspective, but from their health wellness tech solution. Fitbit Group Health was developed specifically to support organizations that have decided to use the power of wearable tech to help their employees reach their wellness goals.

I was drawn to this tech because seemingly everyone knows the brand Fitbit. As an experienced HR pro, I’ve learned that the path of least resistance is critical when getting employee adoption of any HR program! Meaning, if my employees are already Fitbit fans, why would I fight the momentum!?

Fitbit has been around for a while now and because of this they’ve been able to do some long term studies with large organizations using their wearable tech and run side by side control groups to find out what impact this wearable tech has on wellness from a cost perspective, and it’s quite stunning!

Fitbit Group Health recently released a study that shows year over year results can reduce your overall healthcare spend by almost 25%! The study compared one group of employees with the Dayton Transit Authority (bus drivers who sit almost all day) with a control group of the same employees not wearing the Fitbit tech. For one year they followed this group and the group wearing the Fitbit incurred 24.5% less per person average overall healthcare cost as compared to the control group.

Fitbit’s own data amongst all their corporate users is showing similar great reductions across 2.6 million users in 70 of the Fortune 500. Wearing the tech leads to more active lifestyles and better health outcomes. Makes sense, right? Get your employees moving more and crazy enough they get healthier.

What I really like about Fitbit Group Health:

  • Employees already like Fitbit and are wearing Fitbit. This makes is super easy to gain adoption.
  • Fitbit Group Health makes it easy for you as an employer to supplement the cost of buying individual Fitbits and setting up a site just for your organization for employees to purchase the technology.
  • The Fitbit Group Health technology gives you a dashboard to track employee usage, set up contests and message individuals and groups of employees. The metrics you receive in HR allows you to track your own results and tie it back to cost savings.
  • It’s proven outcomes and reduction of cost over many industries, blue collar and white collar, fully supplemented, partial supplemented and non-supplemented. It doesn’t matter, it works!
  • It’s scalable and can easily be tested in an organization at the department level, location, etc.

What you’ll find is you already have Fitbit fans in your organization and you’ll easily be able to make some new fans, but you’ll also be able to drive a culture of wellness with employees supporting each other.

We all know the struggle of getting high adoption of wellness in our organizations. I think Fitbit Group Health is providing a great model of getting your employees moving and supporting each other. The fact is, that small thing, can give every organization huge positive results!

T3 – Talent Tech Tuesday – is a weekly series here at The Project to educate and inform everyone who stops by on a daily/weekly basis on some great HR, recruiting, and sourcing technologies that are on the market.  None of the companies who I highlight are paying me for this promotion.  There are so many really cool things going on in the tech space and I wanted to educate myself and share what I find.  If you want to be on T3 – send me a note.