Transcript
Mark:
… welcome to PeopleTech, the podcast of the HCM Technology Report, I’m Mark Feffer. Ian White is my guest today. He’s the CEO of ChartHop, a company that brings together multiple sources of people data onto a platform that aims to make intelligence visual, and actionable. We’re going to talk about the penetration of analytics into HR, the notion of providing access to end users, and some recent moves the company’s made, all on this edition of People Tech. Hi, Ian, it’s nice to see you. Data’s obviously been a big thing in HR for the last X number of years, but I still meet people who aren’t really sure about what people analytics means, for example, could you enlighten them?
Ian:
Well, people analytics is really taking the old challenge of people management, and better understanding your organization, and applying data to it. And I think people analytics, people think about it in different ways, and there’s been, historically, lots of different approaches to people analytics, the way we think about people analytics at ChartHop, and the way that we’ve chosen to tackle the problem is, we think of people data and people management as not just the HR team’s problem, it’s actually everyone in the organization’s responsibility to build and manage a better organization. And so we built our people analytics platform on the premise that if you can share data easily through the organization, in a way that the right people have the access to the right data, at the right time, you could actually build more transparent organizations, more aligned organizations, and ultimately, more inclusive organizations. And so that’s really sort of our mission, to bring transparency to people data in organizations, really has driven us the last couple of years.
Mark:
And how do you make this happen?
Ian:
Well, there’s a lot of different ways. First, you need to have a platform that can visualize data in a way that is appealing to people, that people can make sense of. So we have a lot of different visualizations, one of them is an org chart view where it could superimpose any kind of data you want to. So if you want to be able to see if there are certain parts of your organization that aren’t as happy as other parts of the organization, or plan the organization, understand where compensation is distributed, we make it really easy to do that and visualize. It’s also really important that, at least as we see things, that data be strongly access controlled, so that you can actually share data through the organization.
Ian:
If you think about a spreadsheet of, say, people’s salaries on it, you can’t share that with everybody in the organization, and probably most people, practitioners have, at some point in their career, had some nightmare moment of sharing the wrong spreadsheet with the wrong person, we make that impossible, because the system itself can access control who can see what. And as a result of that, if you can safely share data, then you can actually be more transparent with your people, rather than less, because you’ve got the visual connected platform that allows you to do that. And so we’ve been in business two years, and have really had a lot of success with a lot of customers, what we’re launching now is ChartHop Basic, which is a version of our product that is free for companies under 150 employees, and we want to basically make it possible for every company in the world to get started on their people analytics journey, even if they’re smaller, even if it’s the first sort of steps in their journey.
Mark:
Tell me about thinking behind ChartHop Basic? What led you down this path toward a free product?
Ian:
Well, first, there’s just been so many people that we meet that want to use ChartHop, and just want to be able to get started with as little friction as possible, being able to make use of the product from really early days, if you’re 10 person startup, you probably don’t need a people analytics platform, or you don’t need a giant platform, but you can get started with creating an experience for even those 10 employees that is transparent, gives people a view of roles and responsibilities, and about [inaudible 00:05:10] and org charts that celebrates their birthdays, and all of those things. And then as you grow, you build this whole history of your company.
Ian:
And I felt my experience starting ChartHop, two years ago, we were eight people, and now we’ve just crossed 200, I’ve found it incredibly valuable as we’ve scaled the company to have, at my fingertips as CEO, this real-time view of literally everything going on in the organization. There’s no way I could have built a distributed team without it. And so we want to make it possible for people to get started at any phase in their company journey. And then ultimately, our mission is to bring transparency to organizations. We think we can help a lot more companies do that at all scales and all sizes, if we have a version, or a part of our product that we actually make available for free, and we make the free part the part that really helps change the way people access and share data in their organization, give everybody a real view of their org chart, be able to pull in total compensation, be able to pull in a visual view of a map of the organization, team profiles, employee directory, [inaudible 00:06:43].
Ian:
All of those things, just get everybody started with that, because we know that that can really have a really positive impact, and ultimately, if people have a little bit of a sense of what’s possible with people analytics, we know as they grow, they’re going to invest in more and more, as they just really start to reimagine what’s possible.
Mark:
That kind of begs the question, stepping back a little bit from ChartHop, do you think that technology vendors in general are paying enough attention to the needs of the end user in the HR world? Or is the definition of the end user changing from, say, HR practitioner to HR data professional, for example?
Ian:
Yeah, it’s certainly the way we’ve approached the problem is, can we create an experience that is going to be valuable to every single employee? And I don’t know that all HR tech vendors have always historically done that, I think there’s been different focuses. We’ve really focused on the user and employee experience from the get-go. And we hear a lot from our HR leaders who roll out ChartHop to their whole organizations, like, “This is the first time I’ve rolled out a piece of software that people loved, and were really thrilled about.” Because often, the technology that the HR leader is rolling out is things that… Compliance, or other needs require them to roll out, rather than something that’s really going to empower people. So I don’t know if other vendors have thought about things in a different way or not, but certainly, the way we’ve approached it is to really focus on the user experience of every employee, so that’s how we think about it.
Mark:
Okay. Well, I think you touched on an answer to this question, but I want to ask this specifically, it’s about Basic, and what do you think it will end up doing? What’s the impact you hope it’s going to have?
Ian:
I think ultimately, every company in the world, there’s no reason they shouldn’t be adopting a people analytics experience from day one, from whatever experience. I want, ultimately, every startup, every company in the world to give ChartHop a try, and we think that that can have a really big impact, if you can share this with your employees and say… I was just reading about a company where people didn’t know who their manager was, because they weren’t having regular one-on-ones with their manager, the org structure was not clear that kind of… And that’s a normal thing that can happen in a company at different stages. We want to make it much easier to visualize and manage organizations at every scale, and sort of make it a no-brainer to get started on that data journey.
Mark:
Another thing that you’ve done recently is you acquired Gather, and I wondered if you could sort of tell me, first, what do they do? And second, how do they fit with you?
Ian:
So Gather is an employee experience platform that really focuses on the moments in an employee’s lifecycle, so someone on boards, someone celebrates an anniversary or a big milestone, someone’s promoted, someone celebrates a holiday, maybe someone leaves the organization, all the moments in an employees journey they’ve really focused on, and they built a fantastic product for Slack-based teams to manage every aspect of the employee experience. I met their founders, we really saw that our missions were really aligned, and that a lot of what we are building in terms of employee experience really lined up with what they were building, and so it made… We also had some customers in common that were super happy customers of both of us, which is great.
Ian:
And so we acquired them, announced that, or completed that about a month or two ago, and their team is going to be leading our actions and workflows product that is basically going to provide an employee experience, like Gather, within ChartHop for all of our customers. Whenever you think about an acquisition, you want to make sure, obviously, there’s good product alignment, and synergies, but most important, I think is making sure that the culture, and mission, and team are really aligned, and we really felt that was the case here. So, super excited for that.
Mark:
Is there something about Slack in particular that interests you, or is there other parts of their product that you saw as a fit? I’m asking because it seems there’s an awful lot of solutions providers who are starting to distribute their products through Slack, and some people have said that that’s the way of the future, that a lot of vendors are going to… A lot of people said that this is the way vendors are going to distribute their products, is through these sort of team applications and all that, what do you think of that?
Ian:
Yeah, I definitely think that’s right. I think Slack is one, and there’s Microsoft Teams, and a lot of companies are using Discord now. Especially in a remote, or distributed environment, or a hybrid environment, the chat apps are where a lot of work happens, where a lot of employee experience happens. And so, tightly integrating with those apps, I think is important for an experience-focused platform. We have our ChartHop wired up to whenever a new hire gets made, the new hire gets their photo and title posted to a Slack channel of org changes. We celebrate the recruiter, we celebrate the person who made the referral, if there was a referral, all of that flows into an org change’s channel.
Ian:
And so our fully distributed team, we’ve got 200 people all over The U.S., really celebrates and rallies around those kinds of moments. A new hire comes on board, or a shout out. We have our company KPIs, our revenue growth, our user growth, all of those things post to a Slack channel every day, so everybody aligns on what are the core metrics that we’re trying to drive together. And so I think a lot of teams work this way on the apps, and I think as a mechanism for distribution, certainly, that’s an important channel, but more important, I think is the tight integration between those chat apps, where a lot of work is happening, and any application that’s sort of defining the work, or the workspace, or the kind of virtual organization that we create.
Mark:
You’ve had a really interesting first part of the year-
Ian:
Yes.
Mark:
A new product, your first acquisition, What’s next?
Ian:
We have a lot in store this year. This is going to be a very big year for ChartHop. When I think about last year, obviously, it was a great year for us, we really went from 30 people to finish the year around 170, I think people, so made a lot of hires in a short period of time, about quadruple our customer account. It was a lot last year, but in some ways, it was really setting up for this year. I think we’re now getting to a point where people are starting to hear about us, they know about ChartHop, and we really have the chance to just impact a lot of companies. So I can’t share all of our plans for the rest of this year, but we have some very, very big launches coming up in the rest of the year, leading up through the whole [inaudible 00:16:09]. I look at our calendar, and we’re just getting started, basically.
Mark:
Well, Ian, thanks very much for taking the time to talk, and I hope we’ll see you-
Ian:
Yeah. No, I really, really appreciate the time, thanks so much.
Mark:
My guest today has been Ian White, the CEO of ChartHop, and this has been PeopleTech, the podcast of the HCM Technology Report, where a publication of RecruitingDaily. We’re also a part of Evergreen Podcasts. To see all of their programs, visit www.evergreenpodcasts.com. And to keep up with HR technology, visit the HCM Technology Report every day, we’re the most trusted source of news in the HR tech industry, find us at www.hcmtechnologyreport.com. I’m Mark Feffer.
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