In the HRTechnology industry, there is a spectrum of trade shows. Bracketed by the HRTech conference on one end and Unleash on the other. The HRTech conference is more like a car or boat show. Unleash is more like an educational function. The difference is as simple as one is American and one is European.
I enjoy both approaches.
At a car or boat show, you go to see concept cars and the smaller improvements that happen in new cars. Not everything you see is a pillar of innovation. There is a lot of fad following (does the car use CarPlay or an internal media tool). There are a few breakthrough ideas. But, innovation happens in fits and starts. That is what you see at HRTech.
At Unleash, the dividing line between advertisement and content is clearer. The presentations tend to be delivered by academics, practitioners, and future oriented sooth-sayers. The whole thing has a more rigorous feel.
One is extremely accessible for vendors and startups. The other is practitioner oriented. They both have their place. The US is more startup friendly. Europe in much less so.
My experience at these shows is different than a normal vendor, Investor, or practitioner. Let me tell you about my HRTech this year.
When I attend HRTech, I almost never see the Expo or attend sessions. Instead, I find a table in the analysts’ room and hunker down which means I never saw daylight.
Analysts’ (and media people) work in a cavernous ballroom with many, many tables available on a first-come-first-served basis. Most of the others spend some time in the room and sometime on the expo floor or in conference sessions.
I spend my time in back-back 30-minute meetings with vendors. They are mostly startups, early-stage companies, or clients. This year, I did about forty.
As I’ve read the various summaries of the event, I’ve noticed a disturbing thing. Those accounts have a disdain for many of the vendors (startups in particular). The short form of the critiques is ‘Those idiots have no idea what they are doing.’
My experience was profoundly different. I didn’t talk with a single idiot the entire time. Some were more familiar with the industry. Others weren’t. That’s normal.
The industry is built on a foundation of technology that comes from elsewhere because there is no stable R&D function in HR. R&D happens through a rapid turnover in startups. They are usually formed by technologists and not practitioners because practitioners are rarely technologists and the companies are technical.
(Note: the companies founded by practitioners have a short shelf life because the POV of a practitioner is inherently limited.)
So, the teams that make it to HRTech have an idea and have been able to find their way to the show with enough money to pay for a booth and travel to Las Vegas. That means that they have an idea they believe in, some capital, and the ability to find their way through the arcane channels. HRTech is where they start to test product market fit.
There is no better place to begin to understand how hard it is to differentiate in this industry. Sound alike companies selling sound alike products is the norm. As a result, the booths are full of gimmicks, goodies, and gobbles to pull people in. The swag budgets are significant (but have nothing on SHRM events).
The analysts’ room provides a solid buffer between the noisy marketplace discovering readiness and the pure ideas behind the noise. (It’s also one of the extraordinary benefits that paying vendors get).
Here’s what I encountered.
· Fraud
I spoke with vendors selling fraud protection and identity verification solutions. For my money, this is mostly a made-up problem brought to you by the remnants of the blockchain identity solutions of a few years back. We are in a recession (except for tech and healthcare). What happens in a downturn is that 50% of the recruiting workforce gets laid off while the number of applications explodes.
The fraud idea works for recruiters because that kind of screening radically reduces the number of resumes that need to be evaluated. Each vendor came prepared with horrifying anecdotes. But when I asked for data (you know, kinds of fraud and their occurrence in, say, 50,000 resumes), there was no data to be found. They didn’t really enjoy me pointing that out.
· Data Layers
The key to successful deployment of any of the new technology is the HR Data layer. It’s radically incomplete and full of conflicting bits. But, the new tech depends on data quality and provenance. And the HR Department’s ability to see itself clearly is at stake.
If you’ve followed the recent governance articles (more to come), you’ll see that the journey began with Aderit. Better than the others, they have cracked the questions and structure. HR, by design, is a function that holds many different perspectives. Rather than squish it all down to a flat layer, the Aderit approach makes room for all of the various viewpoints while maintain solid revision history and change logs. They understand that the absence of data is data.
I got a chance to talk with One Model. I’ve been following them forever (as well as their predecessor companies). One Model is the first place you can see the intersection of HR and business data combined to help visualize the organizations ROI on AI.
· Workforce Intelligence
This is what people analytics becomes. There were a large number of companies delivering different things under this moniker. From Mustard Hub (predictive analytics) to Salary.com’s compensation centric approach, this category includes sourcing solutions, skills architectures, labor market economics, reputation measurement, and the standard stuff of transactional insights.
I’ve been talking about and championing the use of data to understand the workforce for 15 years. It’s a delight to see it maturing into a real segment.
· Governance
Most of the vendors with an AI offering (that was most of the vendors) had something to say about governance. But, the vendor’s idea of governance and the organization’s need for governance are different things. Vendors can provide important information about the performance of their ‘agents’. Governance, however, is a deeply internal process that is the way companies will mange risk. Governance is liability protection and the articulation of authority, responsibility, and accountability.
Since the company is liable for the actions of the Ai it uses (at least currently), the work is largely internal and answers the question, ‘who is responsible for the AI performance.
Haley Friary-Schenk of Humanicore.ai proposes a certification function. That will certainly be necessary for insurance and reassurance purposes, But, it seems to me that follows the internal development of a governance structure.
All agreed that it’s early in the evolution of governance and that the challenge is steep. Governance is in place and complete when it becomes a part of the way work gets done rather than an exception reporting regime.
· Most likely to succeed startup
Jim Jenson of Traxxion, is easily the startup most likely succeed. Jim grew up in the heart of Ultimate Software (which became the core of UKG). Then he performed miracles at Dayforce. He’s pulled together a team of Ultimate alumni to deliver a workforce management (WFM) and scheduling platform. Between the team pedigree and Jim’s experience navigating growth, this is the play to watch.
Going to HRTech involves drinking from a firehose of data and experience, The analyts’ room gives me a rarified look at things. Of course, there’s more to tell and I will.
Photo by Christian Paul Stobbe on Unsplash