Announcer:
Welcome to People Tech, the podcast of the HCM technology report. We are recording from HR Tech in Vegas, brought to you by our friends and partners at Fuel 50. Here’s your host, Mark.
Mark Feffer:
This is People Tech, the podcast of the HCM Technology report. I’m Mark Feffer and we’re recording today from the exposition floor of the HR Technology Exposition and Conference. And I’m joined right now by Mervyn Dinnen. Merv, why don’t you take a minute and introduce yourself.
Mervyn Dinnen:
Thank you, Mark. Yes, I’m Mervyn Dinnen from the US. I’m based in London. I’m an analyst, writer, speaker around HR talent work tech trends. I collaborate with HR, recruitment tech companies to kind of research what’s going on, and to write reports. I’ve coauthored two books called Exceptional Talent and Digital Talent, and I have a brand new podcast called HR Means Business, which is based on the HR happy hour network, in which I’m looking to hopefully explore some of the trends that we’re hearing about here, the big issues for HR.
Mark Feffer:
So as you’ve been wandering around here and attending sessions and all that kind of thing, what are you seeing that really strikes you this year?
Mervyn Dinnen:
The first thing that struck me when I walked in is, because obviously this hasn’t been on for three years, and if I think back to all the previous HR tech experts, I’ve been to every one since 2012. As you walk in, there’s usually huge booths from people like Workday, and ADP, and Oracle and Success Factors. And that, that’s usually the first sign. Walking in the expo hall this year, it’s all recruitment. If you look at the big booths as you walk in, it’s Paradox. It’s Eightfold, it’s Phenom, it’s, there’s a big shift there. And I think it represents a lot of the challenges we have in the market, which is talent, how to find it, how to hire it, how to retain it, develop it, keep it. And the fact that it’s, I suppose the AI, the data organizations, and the recruitment ones that seem to be front and center. And a lot of the sessions I’ve been in are very much around these kind of challenges, around finding talent, keeping talent and areas like that.
Mark Feffer:
Well that’s something of a double edged sword, isn’t it? Because on the one hand it gives employers a lot of options, but on the other hand it can be confusing.
Mervyn Dinnen:
Yeah, I think it is confusing. I get the impression from the odd conversations I’ve had with the attendees that there’s so much advice out there and so many different ways to do things that it is quite confusing. There’s no real kind of, well this is the obvious… There’s no consensus. Yeah, this is the way you find the talent you need, or this is the best way to hire them. This is the best way to assess them, this is the best way to integrate them. There isn’t that, because everybody I suppose is offering something slightly different. But I think it’s been a gradual progression there. I mean we’re sitting on the Fuel 50 booth, and I remember seeing Fuel 50 back in 2016, where Anne had a group of analysts to show us the system, to demo it. And back in 2016, internal mobility didn’t seem like it was something that would be a huge sector within the HR tech industry.
But I remember the discussion that I had with her at the end, saying that it will become a talent acquisition issue gradually. Because yeah, if I go back to when I started in the workplace, that’s how you got on, joined a company, and they developed you, and they moved you around and they gave you new challenges within the organization. And then we went to the phase where the only way to develop your career is to keep changing companies. And now we are in a time where a lot of the accent is on retention and development of talent and skills. And so we’re back to looking internally first, which is a good thing.
Mark Feffer:
Do you think there’s any need, or would it be advantageous for a vendor to get involved at the talent acquisition phase, and do pretty much everything all the way through the exit?
Mervyn Dinnen:
Well, I think that there’s a lot that are hoping to do that and that’s by acquisition. So I don’t think, if you are very, very good at one thing, it doesn’t necessarily follow that if you then move into a different part of the ecosystem, that you’ll be as good there. So what I see is the larger organizations acquiring the smaller ones, who are doing things that are different to what they do, and can offer a much more specialist offering to clients. So I think it’s the whole suite, as opposed to just one large organization that say they can do everything.
Mark Feffer:
Would you say this is a healthy industry?
Mervyn Dinnen:
A healthy industry? Can you define that?
Mark Feffer:
Well, most companies, being profitable, product lines that are leading in a realistic direction, the money that’s being invested in it being well spent, not everything that goes into it being flushed away.
Mervyn Dinnen:
Yeah, it’s an interesting question. The straightforward answer is I don’t really know, but we’re not having this conversation for me to say, I don’t know. I think there are dangers, and I think that if I’m looking at the user end, so if I’m looking at the corporate end, they might get locked into contracts, where ultimately their business goes in a direction where maybe their technology supplies aren’t able to support what they need at that time. I mean, one of the big things for me coming out of… And it’s not a surprise, I suppose all of the events that I’ve been involved with, either virtually or in person here post-Covid, have had very much a center on wellbeing.
So I mean that’s one of those areas where I think that for large tech companies to then try and have some form of wellbeing offering might, it might not sit right. There are a number of quite small and growing wellbeing operators all do different kind of things. And I think that that’s the way to go there. So whether or not any of those will eventually get taken over, I don’t know. But I think that as things evolve, and some of the areas like the wellbeing, and the skills development become very specialized, then the time of the one big tech company that does everything will pass.
Mark Feffer:
Now, one of the things that’s changed over the last three years as you were talking about is the emphasis on skills. Seems like everybody’s talking about skills. A lot of people have opinions on this, but I’m curious just to know what you think, what’s behind it? And is this something that’s kind of a cultural shift, or is it just kind of a business rise for a little while?
Mervyn Dinnen:
I think it’s been a gradual thing. I mean I remember, oh two, three years ago, before Covid, I can’t remember where I saw it, but there was a lot of writing about this shift from job-based HR to skills-based HR. And I think that it’s probably been a natural kind of shift to this concept of the skills. There was the World Economic Forum report back in 2016, 17, about 50% of skills will need to be up upgraded within the next five years. And there’s been a lot of predictions like that, that people’s jobs are changing, and the more we go through digital transformation, we require then different skills within the organization. In fact, that’s covered in part of the book, Digital Talent that I coauthored. So there’s something I think personally human about it. It’s enabling the individual to maybe develop a range of skills and interests that might help them in their career, in their growth, in their wellbeing and their satisfaction with themselves at work.
If they feel that they’re learning more, and doing more, and being able to change. I think that it has to be right. It can’t just be an add-on. It can’t just be, we’re helping our people develop skills, but we’re not going to use them. It’s almost like a hobby thing. But I think one of the things that I see happening in all the sessions I’ve been to, and just going around the hall talking to vendors, is this shift from management and direction to support and enablement. And historically it’s all been about very much…
Organizations, we manage our people, performance management and there hasn’t been this kind of, I suppose, softer, maybe it’s going to be. More post-Covid with the accent on wellbeing, but actually it’s about supporting people, supporting and enabling them, supporting and enabling our people to be able to achieve their best work, and be happy with what they’ve achieved. So I’m not saying that you support your employers in developing skills they’re never going to use, because that then becomes a hobby that I suppose they can do in their own time. But I think that by helping them develop skills, you are helping them possibly to do different work, to do more work, to get more satisfaction from the work they’ve done. And if they’re happy with their development and they’re satisfied, then you’re going to retain them.
Mark Feffer:
I’ve heard it said that there’s three ways to get skills. You borrow them, buy them or build them, which I think is a good way of encapsulating it, but it also strikes me as being a terribly complex problem. If someone in a company corporation is going to try to balance those ways out in a way that makes sense to use contingent workers here, contractors there, full-time people there. What do you think of that?
Mervyn Dinnen:
I think it’s inevitable. And I think that if I go back when I started work, I started working, you remained in one organization. So I think even back then you would bring in people. So you might bring in somebody from outside, borrow if you like, for a three month assignment to do things that maybe nobody in the organization could do, or maybe didn’t have the bandwidth. So I don’t think it’s new, it’s just that the buying part is the thing that’s becoming very, very difficult. So the talent market is challenging as we’ve heard in probably every session at this conference. And every session at every conference over the next year or two is going to be challenges of hiring. We can’t find the people, how do we retain the people? And that’s going to be a challenge. And there are there’s whole reasons, demographic reasons, economic reasons why it’s becoming difficult. And the pandemic, we know people have left the workforce.
I’m not getting involved in any hashtags, like great resignation, great rehiring, quiet quitting and all of that stuff. That just sells kind of reports on the digital sides. But it has become more difficult to actually attract, hire, and retain the people you need. And so you have to look at other ways that you’re going to achieve ultimately all the company goals. And it might be by borrowing, and it might be by building. I think borrowing it has become more attractive because the increase in remote working, or the increase in organizations realizing that they don’t need people in a location all time, which we’ve seen in the last couple of years. It opens up the world effectively. So in terms of the borrowing, it can be somebody on another continent who’s doing that assignment for you. So that’s been opened up a bit, which is why it’s top of mind. But I think if there wasn’t a problem with the buying, then we wouldn’t be hearing as much about the borrowing and the building.
Mark Feffer:
Now the building seems like a pretty big undertaking. To get their systems to be engaging, and to be useful and all of that. When you look at the learning component of the business, do you think they’re on top of that?
Mervyn Dinnen:
I don’t think most businesses are on top of it yet. Again, walking around a expo hall like this, you’ve got a lot of suppliers with learning content different ways. So whether it’s the subscription model, or whether it’s access to various different things. You’ve seen a lot of growth in that area with the big learning companies, people like Cornerstone, buying up smaller players. So I think learning is an area where people are really, really trying to… It’s a very much a growth area in the HR tech or the work tech market. I think it takes time because people kind of learn differently, and they need different rewards. So it might be that we have people in our organization who will develop skills by pretty much accessing the learning themselves, and doing what they need to do to build on that. Whereas you’ll have people who actually want more learning with somebody there to help them.
But the way we are going is very much the self-directed learning. And the information is there, the learning is there as of when you need it. And I mean a lot of the research that comes out shows that that’s what people want. And it was access to… One of the big things during the early days of the pandemic. I was involved in some research, and it was very important to people to have that ongoing access to learning, particularly if they were used to being in an office or a workplace situation, which they then weren’t. So I think it is important, but I think it’s got to be something that actually helps the company move forward, and helps the company build the skills and knowledge base of their organization. And I think that’s where people possibly need to, I suppose, spend more time in what they’re investing in, to see how it will support the people, how it will support the business.
Mark Feffer:
So how do you see the business advancing itself over the next, say three to five years? Is it going be a significant change? Is it going to be kind of a quiet evolution?
Mervyn Dinnen:
I think one of the most exciting things about working in this space is, the easy answer to what you’ve just said is we don’t know. If we were having this conversation in 2019, what I would’ve said we are going to see in 2020, 21, 22, wouldn’t have happened, because other things happened. And I think certainly in the West we’ve got in most countries a rising cost of living crisis, energy problems, a health or a mental health and wellbeing crisis as well. And I think that that’s possibly changed the game a little bit. And that’s why I say about the language moving more towards support, enablement, rather than management. And I think that it will be an interesting time, but I think organizations will find over the next three to five years, it’s not a straightforward path there. There’s going to be twists and turns along the way and we don’t know what’s going to happen next.
But one thing that has happened is that after the two years of Covid, people as individuals have pivoted slightly in what they want from life, what they want from work, how they want to live their life, how they want to balance, I suppose, work and life, family, outside interests. And I think organizations are learning at the moment how to satisfy that, but also they’ve got to balance it from their own side as well. So I think that how this all plays out over the next three to five years will be fascinating, which will keep us coming to events like this, and will keep the vendors iterating what it is they do. But I think it’s not easy to predict. And those who say, Look, within five years time this will happen and that will happen, might have research, but a lot of it’s guesswork as well.
Mark Feffer:
Well, thank you very much for taking the time to come talk to me.
Mervyn Dinnen:
It’s been a pleasure.
Announcer:
You’ve been listening to People Tech of the HCM technology report. This HR tech series is graciously provided to you by our partners at Fuel 50. For all other HR, sourcing, and recruiting news, check out hcmtechnologyreport.com.
