Your Weekly Dose of HR Tech: Oracle Cloud HCM delivering new products and features!

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This week on the Weekly Dose I take a look at some of the new additions from Oracle Cloud HCM. Oracle is one of the big three HCM plays (Oracle, SAP, Workday – control the vast majority of the F500 HR tech spend). I think it’s important for us to understand what the big boys are doing in HCM because often we see their products and features become the gold standard across HR.

Oracle Cloud HCM has been working to meet the growing employee expectations within our organizations that desire more personalization, personal and professional development, and control of their career journey. Increased ability to own their own development and freedom of mobility within the organization are top of mind in the HCM space.

Here is what Oracle recently released:

Personalized Employee Journeys: New tools help organizations deliver an improved and personalized employee experience:

  • Journeys: Provides a seamless, step-by-step experience for employees as they move through personal and professional situations that require complex tasks and interactions. Journeys gathers various components necessary for these multipart processes to take the confusion out of activities like re-boarding employees as they return to the office, or helping employees manage their physical and mental wellness by providing access to health resources provided by the organization.
  • Profile Video Introduction with Connections: Helps teams feel more connected when working remotely by allowing employees to add a customized 10-second video introduction to their profile page in Oracle Connections.

Increased Career Mobility: New career development products help organizations quickly meet changing needs, increase career mobility, and encourage employee growth:

  • Opportunity Marketplace: Helps employees discover opportunities to grow within their organization, learn new skills, and expand beyond their traditional role to find long-term success and satisfaction. By making it quick and easy for employees to discover short-term projects and internal job postings, Opportunity Marketplace helps organizations tap into existing talent and fill short-term needs in new ways.
  • Open Jobs for My Career: Flags new and relevant roles to make it easy for employees to apply for new roles internally. The new Open Jobs for My Career tool gives employees the support and resources needed to continue growing their careers within the organization, instead of looking elsewhere for new opportunities.

HR Best Practices on Tap: New features streamline complex HR processes and improve data accuracy:

  • Oracle Payroll Connect: Streamlines processes with key payroll partners by making data accessible in real time directly through Oracle Cloud HCM. With access to all necessary payroll information on one platform, HR leaders do not need to go back-and-forth between software to pull necessary employee payroll information, improving both efficiency and data accuracy.
  • Oracle Anytime Pay: Provides employees with the opportunity to get paid for time worked in advance of their pay cycle. This employee loyalty offering enables HR to meet new workforce demands, especially with the rise in contract workers and gig projects that have more on-demand payment requirements.
  • Updates to Experience Design Studio: Improves data accuracy for HR teams with expanded autocomplete and localization features. For example, by automatically identifying employee-specific location, the autocomplete feature in the Experience Design Studio can improve process efficiency and decrease data errors for HR when updating benefits or payroll information.

Connected People Analytics: Enhanced analytics deliver enterprise-wide visibility to enable better decision making and prioritize diversity and inclusion:

  • Diversity Dashboard with Oracle Fusion HCM Analytics: Expands the possibilities of data by providing personalized business analytics for HR decision makers. The rich set of more than 50 HR KPIs, dashboards, and reports in Oracle Analytics for Cloud HCM include a Diversity dashboard. The pre-built dashboard highlights key statistics and trends to help HR teams better analyze employee data and improve initiatives around diversity and inclusion in their workforce.

I love the focus on internal mobility and Oracle creating a marketplace for their users to deliver to their employees. We’ve seen a similar marketplace concept from Workday last year, and it’s been wildly popular with employees. I’m sure Oracle users will have a similar reaction.

D&I analytics are a must in today’s world and Oracle delivers using Fusion Analytics as the engine. This dashboard will be a daily reminder for leaders helping them drive change within their organization.

I personally have a little heartburn when we start talking about daily pay, because it breaks my heart that we live in a world where this is a needed feature within payroll, but it is, and for those who need it, Oracle delivered. The reality is, this is a feature that Oracle users asked for and our workforce desired, so daily pay is now a thing within Oracle!

If you had to redo your corporate mission statement in 2020, would it change?

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I think we call agree that 2020 has been a sh*tshow, but there also have been some very important issues that have taken a spotlight that probably would have a major impact on our corporate mission and vision statements. Besides the social justice conversation, the political division continues to grow, and of course workplace health and wellness kind of continues to suck up the oxygen in the room!

Coinbase, a technology company that created a platform to buy and trade cryptocurrency, decided to redo their corporate mission statement, primarily because political division and social justice ideas, being discussed in the workplace, were kind of disrupting their culture and not in a positive way.

Here are some of the aspects of the new Coinbase mission statement:

Play like a championship team –

  • Be company first: We act as #OneCoinbase, putting the company’s goals ahead of any particular team or individual goals.
  • Act in service of the greater mission: We have united as a team to try and accomplish something that none of us could have done on our own.
  • Default to trust: We assume positive intent amongst our teammates, and assume ignorance over malice. We have each other’s backs.
  • Focus on what unites us, not what divides us: We help create a sense of cohesion and unity, by focusing on what we have in common, not where we disagree, especially when it’s unrelated to our work.
  • Sustained high performance: As compared to a family, where everyone is included regardless of performance, a championship team makes a concerted effort to raise the bar on talent, including changing out team members when needed.

Focus on building –

We focus on the things that help us achieve our mission:

  • Build great products: The vast majority of the impact we have will be from the products we create, which are used by millions of people.
  • Source amazing talent: We create job opportunities for top people, including those from underrepresented backgrounds who don’t have equal access to opportunities, with things like diverse slates (Rooney rule) on senior hires, and casting a wide net to find top talent.
  • Fair talent practices: We work to reduce unconscious bias in interviews, using things like structured interviews, and ensure fair practices in how we pay and promote. We have a pay for performance culture, which means that your rewards and promotions are linked to your overall contribution to the mission and company goals.
  • Enable belonging for everyone: We work to create an environment where everyone is welcome and can do their best work, regardless of background, sexual orientation, race, gender, age, etc.

We focus minimally on causes not directly related to the mission:

  • Policy decisions: If there is a bill introduced around crypto, we may engage here, but we normally wouldn’t engage in policy decisions around healthcare or education for example.
  • Non-profit work: We will do some work here with our Pledge 1% program and GiveCrypto.org, but this is about 1% of our efforts. We are a for-profit business. When we make profit, we can use that to hire more great people, and build even more. We shouldn’t ever shy away from making profit, because with more resources we can have a greater impact on the world.
  • Broader societal issues: We don’t engage here when issues are unrelated to our core mission, because we believe impact only comes with focus.
  • Political causes: We don’t advocate for any particular causes or candidates internally that are unrelated to our mission, because it is a distraction from our mission. Even if we all agree something is a problem, we may not all agree on the solution.

The reason is that while I think these efforts are well-intentioned, they have the potential to destroy a lot of value at most companies, both by being a distraction and by creating internal division. 

I appreciate that Coinbase CEO, Brian Armstrong, is working to try and protect the corporate culture that Coinbase had prior to all the issues that have taken center stage in 2020. I think most leadership teams probably feel the same way, “Can’t we just have it like it was before!?” Wasn’t that better?

Well, it probably was better for the leaders and a good number of employees, but it also wasn’t good for a bunch of others. Many of these conversations were needed, and our hope is this will lead to even a better, stronger culture moving forward. I’m not naive, though, some of this will destroy some companies. It’s never all good or all bad.

I actually like the focus on work, when you are at work. It’s a very GenX/Baby Boomer thinking. The younger you are, the more you want your work life to reflect your personal life and beliefs. Some of that is just simple nativity. Some of that is probably a better way to work.

What I know, as a leader, is that we can’t have non-stop division within our workplaces and thing that will lead to a successful company. It won’t. So, we have some choices to make. We can decide to only hire people who think just like we think. Which sounds like the opposite of inclusion. Or we can work really hard to help our employees understand that having people around us that might have different beliefs is a positive thing if we really work to get to know the other person.

How many fans do you have?

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You’ve probably heard of the idea of 1,000 True Fans. Seth Godin gets a lot of credit for the idea, but he’s quick to point out he got it from Kevin Kelly over a decade ago.

True Fans are those people who really believe in you and your work. They make it a point to consume your content. If you’re close to them they’ll make a point of coming to see you. Most people don’t have any fans. Think about your normal employee working their average job. They do good, solid work, but no one is going out of their way to hear what they have to say.

Kelly’s idea about 1,000 True Fans is this:

“A true fan is defined as a fan that will buy anything you produce. These diehard fans will drive 200 miles to see you sing; they will buy the hardback and paperback and audible versions of your book; they will purchase your next figurine sight unseen; they will pay for the “best-of” DVD version of your free youtube channel; they will come to your chef’s table once a month. If you have roughly a thousand of true fans like this (also known as super fans), you can make a living — if you are content to make a living but not a fortune.

Here’s how the math works. You need to meet two criteria. First, you have to create enough each year that you can earn, on average, $100 profit from each true fan. That is easier to do in some arts and businesses than others, but it is a good creative challenge in every area because it is always easier and better to give your existing customers more, than it is to find new fans.

Second, you must have a direct relationship with your fans. That is, they must pay you directly. You get to keep all of their support, unlike the small percent of their fees you might get from a music label, publisher, studio, retailer, or other intermediate. If you keep the full $100 of each true fan, then you need only 1,000 of them to earn $100,000 per year. That’s a living for most folks.”

That’s a very good living for 99.9% of the world’s population. I could live comfortably in the U.S. on $100,000. Maybe not NYC, or San Francisco, but most places $100K gives me a wonderful life.

I wrote a book, The Talent Fix. I’ve written every day on this blog for over eight years. I’ve been blogging in the HR and Talent space for a decade. I know I have some True Fans. I don’t think I have 1,000, although I’ve sold way over 1,000 books. I think I would be comfortable saying I’ve got 100 True Fans.

Some might read that and think, well that’s not very much, but I would disagree! Think about your own life. Who are your “True Fans”. If you said tomorrow you’ll be on stage in your hometown talking about whatever and it costs $25 to see you, how many people are showing up? Now take that number and take away your parents, your spouse, your kids, etc. Now, how many are showing up?

100 is a good number. I’m working to get to 200, then 300, and maybe one day I’ll have 1,000 True Fans of my work. That would be very awesome!

My best True Fan story is that my wife jokingly calls me a “Micro-celebrity” saying there’s really only a couple dozen HR and Talent Pros in the world who know who you are. One day we were going on a trip and we were walking through Detroit Metro Airport. The new terminal is giant, a mile long.

So, we are standing in the middle of the terminal as people are rushing by to catch flights. We are discussing where we should grab a bite to eat before we get on a long flight and a guy walks by me. He stops and turns and says, “Hey, you’re Tim Sackett!” I said, I am, and started up the conversation around how he would know me, etc.

Turns out, he’s a ‘fan’ (his words, not mine), he reads my blog every day. Just happen to be making a connection in Detroit, he was a Talent Pro from the east coast. What a small world! As he walked away I could feel my wife staring at me, knowing she wouldn’t be able to fit my head into the plane! I mean, when your wife calls you a micro-celebrity and then you get noticed in an airport, well…

That how it all starts, one true fan who will notice you in an airport and show your wife you’re completely a micro-celebrity!

So, what does this have to do with anything? 

You don’t need to boil the ocean. You don’t need to recruit every candidate. You don’t need to have everyone see your employment brand. You need to start with one, then two, then three. That’s doable, you can do that, I can do that! Trying to do that with everyone, that seems impossible!

E33 – What are the HR Jobs of the Future? The HR Famous Crew break them down!

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In episode 33 of The HR Famous Podcast, longtime HR leaders (and friends)  Tim Sackett, Kris Dunn, and Jessica Lee discuss Harvard Business Review’s 21 HR jobs of the future and their personal strategies for working from home with children who are doing online school.

Listen (click this link if you don’t see the player) and be sure to subscribe, rate, and review (Apple Podcasts) and follow (Spotify)!

Show Highlights:

1:15 – Starting off the episode with a big question: In 10 years, what is your dream HR job? JLee wants to be the #2 in line to a great #1 HR employee at a certain organization. Tim says he wants to be chief performance officer for the US government (sounds pretty tough…).

3:20 – Harvard Business Review published an article about the 21 HR jobs of the future and KD wrote a blog post on his blog about it. Some of these jobs include chatbot and human facilitator, algorithm bias auditor, and work from home facilitator. Do you think any of these jobs will really come to fruition? JLee thinks that these jobs really just live in skills and trends rather than full jobs.

5:30 – KD comments on how a lot of job titles have changed over the years to better reflect or change the perception of what kind of function a job has.

7:30 – KD is interested in the idea of a second act coach and a gig economy manager. What new jobs brought up by this article do you like?

9:00 – Time for the CHRO Move of the Week! This week’s CHRO move comes from Jennifer Cornelius at Pinterest! She comes from Starbucks, Apple, and Sweetgreen, and now is the top HR dog at Pinterest.

12:00 – Tim worries that she might regret leaving Apple since her role at Pinterest is only a contract position and Apple is a very powerful brand.

14:45 – KD thinks that Jennifer added the “future of work” tag to her LinkedIn and praises it as a good move.

15:45 – Shoutout to Lars Schmidt and his podcast 21st Century HR!

16:30 – Second topic of the day: working from home with children in online school! JLee has two young kids that are in virtual school and she walks us through some struggles she has experienced in her household including wifi bandwidth issues. The HR Famous team is struggling with so many video calls on top of general tasks that use up wifi connection. JLee calls for more grace when people are experiencing video issues.

20:45 – JLee is seeing a lot of panic and stress from parents that are trying to manage their children’s schooling while on work calls. She sees a lot of parents apologizing often about any issues and thinks people should stop apologizing for having to parent during work.

24:00 – Tim is starting to see some backlash against parents who are getting breaks for dealing with their children and their kid’s schooling. JLee says she can’t think of an answer for this issue.

25:15 – JLee says she locks the door when she’s busy with work to keep her kids out. She also recommends getting wireless earbuds or taking work calls from parts of the house where you can multitask.

26:30 – Tim recommends creating a specific work space for his kids, creating an in house video schedule for wifi connection, and putting signs on the door to keep people out if important calls are going on.

27:45 – JLee mentions a Google device that helps manage device connection on a certain wifi network.

29:00 – Tim thinks people are desperate to get back to the office and WFH may not stay as long as we think it is. JLee thinks that people are still worried about health and safety.

30:00 – Shoutout to all the parents doing their best working from home and managing their kids schooling! We see you!

Here’s how to fall in love with your job!

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Do you know what it felt like the last time you fell in love?

I mean real love?

The kind of love where you talk 42 times per day, in between text and Facebook messages, and feel physical pain from being apart? Ok, maybe for some it’s been a while and you didn’t have the texts or Facebook!  But, you remember those times when you really didn’t think about anything else or even imagine not seeing the other person the next day, hell, the next hour. Falling “in” love is one of the best parts of love, it doesn’t last that long and you never get it back.

I hear people all the time say “I love my job” and I never use to pay much attention, in fact, I’ve said it myself.  The reality is, I don’t love my job. I mean I like it a whole lot, but I love my wife, I love my kids, I love Diet Mt. Dew at 7 am on a Monday morning. The important things in life!  But my job?  I’m not sure about that one.  As an HR Pro, I’m supposed to work to get my employees to “love” their jobs.  Love.

Let me go all Dr. Phil on you for a second. Do you know why most relationships fail? No, it’s not cheating. No, it’s not the drugs and/or alcohol. No, it’s not money. No, it’s not that he stops caring. No, it’s not your parents. Ok, stop it. I’ll just tell you!

Relationships fail because expectations aren’t met.  Which seems logical knowing what we know about how people fall in love, and lose their minds.  Once that calms down – the real work begins.  So, if you expect love to be the love of the first 4-6 months of a relationship you’re going to be disappointed a whole bunch over and over.

Jobs aren’t much different.

You get a new job and it’s usually really good!  People listen to your opinion. You seem smarter. Hell, you seem better looking (primarily because people are sick of looking at their older co-workers). Everything seems better in a new job.  Then you have your 1 year anniversary and you come to find out you’re just like the other idiots you’re working with.

This is when falling in love with your job really begins. When you know about all the stuff the company hid in the closet. The past employees they think are better and smarter than you, the good old days when they made more money, etc.  Now, is when you have to put some work into making it work.

I see people all the time moving around to different employers and never seeming to be satisfied.  They’re searching. Not for a better job, or a better company. They’re searching for that feeling that will last.  But it never will, not without them working for it.

The best love has to be worked for. Passion is easy and fleeting. Love is hard to sustain and has to be worked, but can last forever.

That 20 Minute Phone Screen is a Candidate’s Most Important Moment of the Week!

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A lot of folks are currently out of job and looking for work. Not many jobs open. Too many candidates lead to a lot of rejections, black holes, no feedback, and very few “interviews”.

You and I (TA Leaders and Pros) don’t consider a twenty-minute phone screen to be an interview. Candidates definitely believe it’s an interview. They prepare for your phone screen at the same level they prepare for an in-person interview with the hiring manager. First impressions and all.

Here’s the problem, that twenty-minute phone screen, one of many you will have during the week, isn’t even in your top 25 most important things you’ll be doing this week. So, how do we address this variance in importance with how the candidate will ultimately view your employment brand, you, your hiring manager, and the job?

That’s a tricky question.

I think the first thing we need to do in talent acquisition is simply to recognize this reality. We are going to be talking with scheduled candidates about who we are, who they are, and what we have, and this is extremely important to them, especially for those out of job. To have some empathy and understanding of the situation. To provide something of value, even as we look to gain some value of information ourselves.

It’s a powerful thing to know you’ll be talking with a number of people in a week, all of whom this could be their most important conversation of the week, month, year. That we (all recruiters) have a major impact on this event in their lives. We can create an amazing experience, or we can do something less than amazing.

I have this naive belief that all of us humans actually want to do things that make other people happy and satisfied. Isn’t that a great little fuzzy, cute world I live in!?! If we knew we had the power to make someone’s life just a little better, we would use that power for good. That if given the choice to make someone’s day brighter, we would always make the right choice.

Well, we do.

Do Good. Be Kind. As Chris Kurtz would say.

This week, as you go out into the world and phone screen your brands out. Try and make someone’s week. You are worth it. They are worth it.

Talent Acquisition is NOT Marketing. Here’s why!

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We love, I love, to say Recruiting is Marketing! I love Recruitment Marketing and the technology behind it, I think it’s brilliant! Recruiting is also not sales!

Why is Recruiting neither Marketing nor Sales?

What’s the core function of marketing and sales? To welcome as many people as possible into your funnel so that all of those people will buy your product or service, or give to your charity, etc.

In Recruitment we in the Rejection business!

Can you imagine you walk into a Cadillac dealership? You saw the commercial for the new SUV, you decide you want that SUV. You saw the billboard for that same car, heard the radio commercial, heck you even saw an Ad on Facebook, it’s almost like they’re listening to your brain! You’ve got a pocket full of hundred dollar bills and you walk into the dealership because today you’re driving away in that brand new, beautiful Cadillac SUV!

Dealer – No!

Me – Um, what?! 

Dealer – No, we aren’t selling you that new Cadillac SUV, you’re not a Cadillac “Man”! 

Me – A what!? 

Dealer – Yeah, sorry, you don’t get a Cadillac today, we’re saving those for only certain people! 

It’s funny because we know this would never happen! I could walk into the dealership holding a severed head and the first words out of the salesman’s mouth would be “the trunk on our new sedan could hold a hundred of those heads!”

Recruiting isn’t Marketing or Sales, because true Marketing and Sales is in the business of ‘All’, not one. No one really gets rejected in marketing and sales if you have the means. In Recruiting, you could fit every single thing the organization is requesting and you will still get rejected. Recruiting is in the Rejection business, not the sales and marketing business!

If we/recruiting are in the Sales and Marketing business, we are in a really sick and twisted business! Hey, “Everyone” come and apply to our jobs, because I get really excited when I get to turn you down and say “no”! So, let’s not kid ourselves. Our business is about Rejection. Hey, come on over here and let me tell you what’s wrong with you, and then I’ll make the decision if we want you to be a part of our team or not.

Marketing campaigns sometimes try to fake like they’re being exclusive. “Only ‘you’ are being invited to buy this new SUV! You’ll be the first to own it! No one else!” Until next week when everyone will own it and actually have a better color than you. That’s not true rejection for those who don’t get it first, it’s just a game we play to increase demand.

So, why does this manner? 

If we know we are actually in the Rejection business, and we are, we/recruiters have to have an empathy level that is off the charts if we want to survive. Let me get this straight, you want me to talk as many people as possible into loving our company, then you want me to reject 99.9% of them? Yes!

To be able to do that and not drink yourself to sleep every night takes a really high ego or an endless supply of empathy towards all those great people who just wanted you to pick them, but your organization picked someone else, but they left it on your desk to share the bad news!

This is probably the main reason so many candidates never get dispositioned. We can all just crush only so many souls in a day! It’s easier to ghost candidates than to crush their dreams!

The rejection business is a hard, hard business to be in. Sales and Marketing are easy. Can you imagine how easy your life would be if you were able to give everyone the job!

Another day making decisions no one wants to make!

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On the phone this week with a few HR Pros from the hospitality industry (think hotels and restaurants) some of the folks hit the worst by the pandemic. We start the call like most calls – “how are you doing”.

At some point during the pandemic, when this question is asked, I kind of just started laughing. How am I doing? How are you doing? It’s a pandemic! We survived another day! Does that answer the question?

My HR pro friend says, “It’s another day of making decisions that no one wants to make.” That struck me. She was right of course, that’s the job. Do we let go of Sally today, or cut some other important resource we can’t live without. Which is the lesser of two evils? Can I go home and have a drink already?

“It’s another day of making decisions that no one wants to make.” 

In a nutshell, this is leadership.

For all positives, we get out of being leaders we know there comes a huge downside. There will be times when you must make a decision that no one wants to make, but you have to. The knowledge of this doesn’t make it easier, it’s just knowledge.

What’s the silver lining of all of this?

I do think making tough, unbearable decisions, that no one wants to make, helps you as a leader understand real pressure from fake pressure. The greatest leaders I’ve been around didn’t panic in times that it didn’t call for it, or in times when it seemingly would have warranted it. They understood a call had to be made, no one was going to be happy, this is the job.

Here’s the thing though, with all of this. You can be in a position to make decisions no one wants to make, or you can be in a position where you are able to make decisions and stuff is just going to happen to you. Awful decisions are awful, but I’ll take that situation then not being able to make the decision.

@LinkedIn is not Tinder! Or could it be… #HRFamous

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In episode 32 of The HR Famous Podcast, long-time HR leaders (and friends) Tim Sackett, Kris Dunn and Jessica Lee come together to discuss crazy overtime pay at the USPS and harassment issues via messaging on LinkedIn.

Listen (click this link if you don’t see the player) and be sure to subscribe, rate, and review (Apple Podcasts) and follow (Spotify)!

SHOW HIGHLIGHTS

1:45 – We got an HR Famous boys trip coming up! Tim is heading down to Alabama to visit KD for a good ole trip with the boys.

3:50 – First topic of the day: It has come out recently that 4,000 USPS employees made more money in overtime than their base pay. The crew plays a game to guess what the average North East mail handler makes. How much do you think they make?

6:00 – KD breaks down the talking points for various stakeholders to explain runaway OT.

7:45 – Tim points out that it would be clear to most business people that the amount of overtime the USPS is paying is out of hand and requires hiring of more employees.

9:30 – Tim mentions the stats behind the overtime hours for the average North East mail handler and how there might be some fraud in hours reporting.

10:30 – JLee discusses a podcast she listened to about the UPS and how they analyzed a ton of different data points for their delivery drivers and how some of that data monitoring could help with efficiency at the USPS.  KD points out that criticism of the OT won’t be pitched during the election due to party affiliation of unions.

13:00 – Second topic of the day: creepy dudes on LinkedIn! Friend of the show, Laurie Ruetimann, often posts about her interactions with being hit on by men on LinkedIn. Tim did a Twitter poll asking his female followers if they’ve had similar interactions. Many respondents said that they’ve been hit on but not propositioned for sex. However, many thought that if they engaged, it would have moved to that step.

16:00 – Tim is surprised this is still an issue in 2020. He discusses a statement from LinkedIn in January to help fight against harassment on their platform. LinkedIn took down 16,000 instances of harassment in the first 6 months of 2019.  KD points out in a world where LinkedIn provides AI to tell us how we want to respond to a message, they can probably stop harassment-based messages and the accounts that send them.

19:45 – Listener of the show, Cindy Gallop, wrote into Tim and mentioned she has logged 14 male harassment issues from LinkedIn. She gave Tim some of her suggestions to help fight harassment on the platform.

23:00 – KD asks for an example of a type of message that is perceived as being “hit on”. JLee gives some examples such as commenting on physical looks and certain flirtatious emojis.

27:00  – Tim thinks LinkedIn can do more from a tech perspective but notes some of the issues from just taking down profiles as the top strategy to combat this harassment.

28:45 – The HR Famous crew tells men to stop being creepy on LinkedIn!

Influencers or Analysts? Who has the most impact on your brand?

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The worlds of Influencers and Analysts have never collied more than they are right now in the HR industry. Most of this has to do with the popularity of Influencer Marketing that has taken off in the past decade, and like most things in HR, we are now just catching up with the marketing trend.

Traditionally, in the HR space, companies selling products, technology, and services only really cared about two things: 1. What do our clients think of us, and 2? What do the “Analysts” think of us?

What’s an Analyst? 

Every industry has them. These are basically individuals who work for organizations like Deloitte, Gartner, Forrester Research, IDC, and hundreds of boutique firms specializing in specific parts of the HR ecosystem. The individuals spend a great deal of time understanding the landscape of a specific function in HR, the technology, the processes, what works, and what doesn’t, etc. Then your organization pays its organization a great deal of money for this expert knowledge.

The hope is, using this expert Analyst knowledge will ultimately help you save time, money, and missteps because you’ve hired a firm of experts to help you make the right decisions. Many of these experts have never actually worked a day in HR, but hold MBAs and such. Some of these people are some of the smartest people I’ve ever met, and if you listened to them, they could truly help you. Some are idiots working for a big firm.

Examples of Analyst I admire: William Tincup, Madeline Laurano, Trish McFarlane, George LaRocque, Ben Eubanks, Kyle Lagunas, John Sumser, Holger Mueller, Jason Cerrato, Josh Bersin, Sarah Brennan, etc. 

This will then beg the question of well, then, what’s an Influencer? 

Influencer marketing has been around for a hundred years, but Kim Kardashian is the queen of modern-day influencers. I’m famous! You see me talking about or using this product. You buy this product. That’s really the backbone of influencer marketing. I mean Kimmy D would never steer you wrong, would she?

An Influencer is anyone in an industry that a measurable amount of people are listening to, which will influence their buying behavior. I write a blog post on some products that I’m using in my own shop. It’s super awesome! You go out, look at it, and decide to buy it and use it with your team. You’ve been influenced.

Most of the influencers in the HR industry are current or former practitioners, they’ve lived your life. Some are super smart and have the resume to back it up. Some are complete idiots. Any idiot can have a blog (I’m a great example!). Most influencers, like an analyst, have a specialty, something they’re better at than other stuff. Some influence full time, but most hold down ‘real’ jobs to pay the bills. So, they probably don’t have the time to deep dive into the industry, as you’ll see with analysts.

Examples of Influencers I admire: Kris Dunn, Dawn Burke, Carmen Hudson, Robin Schooling, Jason Lauritsen, Laurie Ruettimann, Jennifer McClure, Sharlyn Lauby, Steve Browne, Sabrina Baker, Joey Price, Mary Faulkner, Jessica Miller Merrell, Janine Truitt-Dennis, etc. (there’s really too many to name!)

Many of these people are HR Famous! They have worked hard to create an audience who for the most part listens to what they have to say.

You also have people that fall into this strange middle ground of Influencer-Analysts types that have no name. Maybe they started out as an influencer, then became an Analyst, or maybe they were an Analyst who became popular and started influencing. Examples in this camp are folks like: Josh Bersin, Jason Averbook, Sarah Brennen, Trish McFarlane, Ben Eubanks, etc.

(BTW – All of these people you should connect to! )

So, who has the most impact on your Brand? Influencers or Analysts? 

This is not an easy question to answer because like almost anything it depends on a lot! We all know of a certain product we love and regardless of the influence or what some expert is telling us, we will just buy it because we love it!

We also have an untold number of products and services we buy because someone we trust told us about it, and because we trust them, we go buy it.

If you’re a large enterprise-level product or service, basically selling to companies that have more than 5,000 employees, you better make nice with the Analyst community! They tend to have the ear of more enterprise buyers then you’ll typically see from influencers. I doubt very highly the CHRO of Google is reading this blog! (but I know the CPO of GM is!)

What I see is companies selling to enterprises usually work with both Analysts and Influencers. They want to ensure their message is heard across the buying community, so they don’t miss out on a potential buyer, and they have the money to do both.

Companies selling to under 5,000 employees and it starts to get a little harder to determine the impact of Analysts. I mean how many HR and Talent shops in Small to Medium-sized businesses have the money to pay for Analysts Research? Not many! If you run an HR shop of a 1500 person company, you do not have $50,000 to hear what the best ATS is! The ATS you buy won’t even cost $50K!

Behind the scenes, most analysts understand their biggest impact on the enterprise buyer, and because that’s where the money is, that’s exactly where they want to be! If you have buyers across small, medium, large, and enterprise markets, it then becomes a more difficult decision on how you use Influencer marketing.

The real answer to the question above is you engage with the analyst and influencers that have the most positive impact on selling your product. Unfortunately, most organizations have little or no idea if either side is having an impact on selling their stuff.

Who has the juice? 

I call someone who has ‘real’ influence as having the “juice”. If you have the ‘juice’ you have the ability to influence real buying decisions on a regular basis. Laurie Ruettimann tells you to go out and buy this new great HR product, and that organization will see a measurable sales increase directly tied to the links in her posts. She’s got juice!

I wrote about an HR Tech company a few months ago after a demo and a month later they sent me a bottle of gin because they landed a six-figure deal directly from my mentioning them in a post. That’s gin and juice! 😉

Most people who call themselves influencers in the HR space have little or no juice. Usually, because they just don’t have a large enough, sustained audience who is listening. They might be 100% correct in their recommendations and insight, but not enough people are listening to move the buying needle.

I love what the folks are doing over at Advos because they are actually showing organizations who have the juice and who doesn’t. I can tell you I have the juice and say I’m the #1 Influencer in the HR marketplace, but the reality is, anyone can say that! HRMarketer is actually giving data behind those words to let people know where the real juice is.

The truth around all of the analyst vs. influencer chatter is that you’ll find people in both groups who can help you and people in both groups who are complete idiots and have no value. The best thing to do is build a relationship with both, find out who moves your needle and aligns with the messaging you’re trying to get out, and then measure. Eventually, you’ll find the right mix that will work for your organization.