Transcript
Mark:
Welcome to PeopleTech, the podcast of the HCM Technology Report. I’m Mark Feffer. My guest today is Ian White, the founder and CEO of ChartHop. They refer to themselves as a people operations platform that connects and visualizes all of company’s workforce data in one place. We’re going to talk about the action aspects of data, why data matters to engagement, what it does for managers, and the importance of organization-wide knowledge, all on this addition of PeopleTech. Hey, Ian, thanks for coming in. ChartHop calls itself an analytics platform. How do you define that?
Ian:
We really started as a data foundation. One place to unify all of your organization’s people data into one platform. The people and finance teams, managers, execs, can all implement initiatives like headcount, comp planning, reporting, performance reviews. At the same time, we’re a platform not just for management and not just for the people operations team, but actually for the whole organization. We help the whole organization share data. Employees can access your org chart, employee directory and personal employee data to get the information that they need to feel connected and engaged. We started as a people analytics platform and what we’ve actually done is transitioned to being a people operations platform because people analytics and the data foundation is really core to what we do and is still a big piece of what we do. But the processes and operations that we support for the modern people ops leader goes well beyond just the analytics piece. We think of analytics as a way to power all of the different actions, insights, and activities that drive people operations.
Mark:
So, you’re just trying to focus more on the operations part to get the message across that you’re about more than just the data. [inaudible 00:02:21].
Ian:
That’s right. Data is great. Data, it’s really important. Step one is to actually pull your data together and make sense of it and maybe get insights out of it. But even more important than data is what kind of action can you take on the data? So, we become the central point of action for the programs and processes and initiatives of the people operations team.
Mark:
Why is that important?
Ian:
I think it’s important because for every company that has people to manage, you want to make sure that you’re creating an environment that is successful for everybody in it. You want to make sure that people have clarity on the work that they do, that they’re well-supported, that managers are empowered with the information that they need. And the people operations function is people-led business function that makes sure that every person in the organization is both managed and well-supported.
Mark:
It strikes me that this isn’t the kind of area that people are talking a lot about right now. The talk in the businesses about engagement and experience and not really about operations and making things happen. How does it fit though with experience and engagement?
Ian:
I think it’s really key that you have an employee-centric experience that you put in front of your employees. For us, we think of employee experience as being directly intertwined with operations. If you are going to run, let’s say, a performance cycle or a comp cycle or one-on-one feedback or any of those kinds of things that you put in front of employees, those are operations, those are people operations. They’re cycles or practices or processes that are being run, but the manner in which they’re being presented to employees and particularly the way that employees can engage with that data afterwards and during, it’s not… A cycle is not just a way for the HR team to gather data, but is actually a way for everybody to be empowered and aligned on what we’re doing. We think of them as actually one and the same, that a core component of a people operations platform is that every employee and every manager has this central place to create a stronger experience for them.
Mark:
How is this all affecting employee expectations, and is it?
Ian:
Employee expectations, obviously a lot of different shifts over the last few years. I think there’s been a generational shift. With the pandemic, everybody reevaluated in some ways they’re philosophy on work and how they related to their employer. I think that employers that are creating strong cultures and want to retain top talent are still creating really strong experiences. And I think what employees expect more and more is a level of transparency that comes with partnership. Things like how am I being compensated? What is the way to advance in the organization? These are things that I think people expect a little bit more answers from their people operations team or their managers or their leaders than maybe they did a few years ago.
So, it becomes really important, can you self-serve that information? Can you have really good ways of communicating that information and can you do that in a way that matches the employee experience and the culture that the organization wants to create? The way that our organization might share our ranges or bends might be different than a way a different organization would. And that’s that level of almost radical personalization is an important piece of, I think, any platform that interacts with employees and managers.
Mark:
Actually, you just use the magic word, which is managers. Because whenever I get into a conversation like this about new tools, new systems, it tends to really be preoccupied with the employee. The manager has so much responsibility in making experience work, engagement work and all of that. How does the manager fit into your equation?
Ian:
I think the manager is in many ways the most important piece. I actually had somebody internally at ChartHop who we had just promoted into a manager role. And he was like, “Oh my God, I’m seeing so much more of the incredible value of seeing all this data at my fingertips about my team.” I look at technology just more broadly as a way to empower managers to give them the information they need, to give them the tools they need. I think a lot of times a lot of organizations can throw new managers in the dark a little bit. So, we look at a people ops function, one of their key roles is actually to support and empower all the managers in the organization because for frontline employees, how they experience the employee’s policies, the organization’s policies, the culture of the organization, a lot of that’s going to be driven by and filtered through their manager.
If the manager doesn’t have the right tools, doesn’t have the right systems, doesn’t have the right information to actually convey the policies and the practices of the people ops team, nothing you do is going to really work without that manager engagement and buy-in. When we’re building our platform and thinking about our core users and stakeholders, we actually look at that middle management layer as one of the key pieces that we build for.
Mark:
Does that mean you talk to these folks a lot? You’ve obviously had customers and prospects and such. What’s the conversation with them?
Ian:
I think everybody is obviously thinking about it’s a tougher economic environment. How can we make sure that we’re making most of the people we have and that we’re supporting the people we have, top performers and retention for managers? Retention and engagement are really top of mind. So, I think when we talk to folks, it’s usually around how can I make sure that I’m making sure my team feels well taken care of, well-supported, that I have the information I need, I know what everybody’s comp structure looks like, or I’ve got a good read on somebody’s recent performance or engagement levels. Those are things that you want not just the HR team to know about. You want each individual manager at every level to have a good awareness. For teams that are navigating hybrid, remote, some combination, many teams returning to the office, actually just knowing where people are and where people are in that journey has been an important topic as well.
Mark:
You must have had to pivot, making it up as you went along, during COVID. I’m wondering since you’re just talking about people going back to the office, but I’m wondering about people leaving the office. How much did that impact you? How much did that impact the product?
Ian:
Well, I think for us personally, we’re a remote team and we’ve stayed that way. I think we’ve done some great in-person company off sites. We’ve done for hubs where we’ve got a lot of people in a particular city. We’ll have days where we get together, but we don’t have an office and we have no plans to. For our customers and for our product, it was all over the map literally, in terms of what people were doing because we actually added a map feature to our product during COVID so that you can actually pull up on a map, where are all your remote workers, where are they actually working out of? And that helps people figure out where there are opportunities to either set up a temporary office or socialize or just measure what are people’s distance to their nearest office location if they were to do a part-time return to work.
So, just assessing visually and from a data perspective where people are, I think, has been one of the biggest adjustments. But just more broadly, there’s obviously been a lot of changes to compensation policies. We run comp cycles for all our customers and people have very different practices that have evolved around how they approach remote pay versus in-office pay and location adjustments and all of that stuff. There’s been a lot that’s changed on that front. We have seen a lot more return to work or return to office situations, but a lot of companies, like us, continuing to go fully remote as well.
Mark:
You closed a pretty significant round of funding not very long ago. Can you tell me about that?
Ian:
Yes. We were fortunate to be growing still pretty well in this tougher last year that it’s been for tech companies. We were able to raise from a great partner on great terms and feel really good about that so that we can keep just executing and growing on what we’re doing. We went out and raised and talked to a lot of good potential partners and I think we really found the right one through those conversations. It was a good thing to just be able to keep investing in building this really new type of people operations platform. We look at a lot of the use of raising capital as to just keep accelerating our growth and keep investing in the product because as we keep building our product, there’s really nothing quite like it out there.
Mark:
Do you have certain areas you’re going to develop with this money or certain goals in mind for it?
Ian:
We’ve got a lot of plans in mind this year. I don’t want to share product roadmap before it hits, but we’ve been working with some larger organizations as definition partners on some really, really new and exciting ways of managing people in organizations, which I can’t share more about. But when we launch it, it’s going to be, I think, really, really amazing. That’s one thing I’m really excited about. And the roadmap of just stuff we’re building, I think, is really amazing. I just don’t want to share before it’s all out.
Mark:
Good enough. Ian, thanks very much. It was great to talk with you.
Ian:
It was great to talk to you too.
Mark:
My guest today has been Ian White, the founder and CEO of ChartHop, and this has been PeopleTech, the podcast of the HCM Technology Report. We’re 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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