Author: Kyle Lagunas

Kyle Lagunas is the Head of Strategy & Principal Analyst at Aptitude Research. He’s spent over a decade studying innovation cycles in HR and talent technology—with leadership roles in both the solution provider and practitioner space—and brings that breadth of experience and insight to his work advising vendors and practitioners on the ever-evolving world of talent. He’s a transformational talent leader, top industry analyst, and non-nonsense strategist with a reputation for bringing a fresh perspective to the table.

Before joining Aptitude, he served as the Head of Talent Attraction, Sourcing & Insight at General Motors where he led the go-to-market functions of the company’s global talent acquisition and played a pivotal role in transforming their recruiting strategies and processes. At Beamery, his role as Director of Strategy put him at the intersection of customer experience, sales and marketing, and product.

At Aptitude, Kyle brings together all aspects of his career to bridge the ever-growing gap between talent leaders, their stakeholders, and their solution providers to power more meaningful outcomes.

Automation & AI Podcast

Trust, Tech and a Little Skepticism: Making AI Work for People

Post author By Kyle Lagunas
Post date November 22, 2024

On this episode of Transformation Realness, Kyle Lagunas is joined by Opal Wagnac, Senior Vice President of Market & Product Strategy at isolved. With her sharp insights and fresh perspective, Opal doesn’t hold back on what it takes to bring enterprise-grade solutions to businesses of all sizes while keeping it real about AI’s potential — and limitations. At the center of her approach is a mission to ensure that technology serves us, not replaces us. “Technology is not going to solve all your problems,” she says. Sometimes you just need a real human on the other end of the line.

Opal is passionate about helping small and mid-sized businesses compete with larger organizations by providing them with practical, enterprise-grade tools. For isolved, this means not just providing tech but supporting SMBs every step of the way as they integrate and utilize AI effectively.

Recorded live at HR Tech 2024, this episode dives deep into the challenges and opportunities of using AI responsibly, especially for small to mid-sized businesses. Tune in as we explore why trust, empathy and a little skepticism go a long way in keeping HR real.

AI Isn’t Magic, Honey — it’s the New Electricity

Opal kicks things off with an electrifying comparison — literally. She compares the dawn of AI to electricity, noting how every revolutionary tech has a bit of a rough start before it becomes a staple. “There’s this fear, there’s this trepidation,” she says. “And at one point, electricity had the same fear and had the same trepidation.”

Like electricity, AI needs understanding and adaptation, not fear. Just as we don’t think twice about whether a restaurant has electricity, AI will eventually be a standard‌ — ‌but only if we integrate it thoughtfully.

For Opal, this AI evolution calls for a good dose of healthy skepticism. Instead of blind trust, she’s all about asking the tough questions: “We need more critical thinkers,” she insists. “And I emphasize that word critical. Criticize the AI. Please do. Just to make sure that you’re also not creating the same repetitive mistakes.”

AI’s real value is in how seamlessly it can serve human needs — but it’s on leaders to ensure the technology remains human-centered.

AI Needs Real Change Agents, Not Just Cheerleaders

For Opal, trust in AI-powered HR solutions doesn’t mean blind acceptance‌ — ‌it’s about thoughtful implementation and a willingness to question the tools themselves. “To me, HR is a change agent,” she says. “So accept your role as a change agent and start making some changes. So even if the AI is telling you X, Y, Z, start challenging it.” This stance is at the heart of isolved’s approach, where Opal emphasizes that real progress in HR requires actively questioning AI’s outputs to ensure they’re serving the right goals.

Opal underscores that while enterprise-grade AI solutions can support SMBs, they also need to be backed by real human support and an ethical framework. By layering technology with hands-on consulting, isolved ensures that their clients feel equipped to handle AI’s capabilities without compromising on human connection.

Diversity for the Win: No Room for One-Track Thinking Here

Opal’s big on shaking things up and bringing in diverse perspectives‌ — ‌because if everyone thinks the same way, innovation doesn’t stand a chance. She encourages HR leaders to expand their circles and take advice from unconventional sources. “Learn from other people’s mistakes,” she advises, “because you won’t live long enough to make them yourself.” Her point? The best solutions come from a wide variety of voices, and pigeonholing people based on titles only limits what’s possible.

Opal underscores that HR leaders need to look beyond the obvious. By valuing each person’s unique journey and experiences, HR can foster a more inclusive and adaptable workplace culture. “They didn’t just fall out of the sky and be an HR generalist. There was something else before that, too,” she says. “So for the most part, when you’re engaging with someone, you’re getting the whole person and all of the experiences that make them.” That’s why she encourages everyone to dig into diverse perspectives, and the innovation will follow.

Big thanks to Opal for keeping it real on AI, the need for trust, and why HR must step up as change agents. Her takeaways? Don’t just follow the tech‌ — ‌challenge it. AI might be the new electricity, but it’s nothing without the people guiding its use. For all you HR pros out there, remember: it’s up to you to make these tools truly transformative. So stay curious, keep asking questions, and let’s get real about shaping a future where tech serves us‌ — ‌not the other way around.

People in This Episode

Opal Wagnoc: LinkedIn

Transcript

Kyle Lagunas:

Hello, my little blueberries, te-he-he. Welcome to another electrifying episode of Transformation Realness, the only show all about people who are trying to make the world of work less shitty and have the guts to share their story. The good, the bad, and most of all, the real. It’s produced in partnership with Rep Cap and hosted by none other than yours truly, the magnetic, magnanimous, magnificent, Kyle Lagunas, head of strategy and principal analyst at Aptitude Research, the boutique research firm leading the charge in HR tech and transformation. Get into it!

Today I’m joined by somebody who knows a thing or two about shaking things up. Opal Wagnac, Senior Vice President of Market and Solution Strategy at isolved. Opal’s on a mission to help businesses of every size access enterprise-grade solutions. And if you thought AI was just a fancy buzzword, well, buckle up. From electricity to the internet and now AI, Opal’s got stories and analogies that’ll make you rethink everything you thought you knew about innovation cycles. And yes, Roomba is named Zaza, because of course it is. You’re going to hear all about it. All right, this conversation is full of laughs, insights and a healthy dose of truth bombs about what it really takes to drive change in HR today. Check it out.

Okay. Hello everybody. My little blueberries. We’re back with another special episode of Transformation Realness. We are coming to you live from HR Tech 2024 in the Glider AI booth. And I have with me another very dear friend. Opal? Do you want to say hi to everybody?

Opal Wagnac:

Hi everyone. I’m so glad to be here. My name is Opal Wagnac, and I am the Senior Vice President of Market and Solutions Strategy at isolved.

Kyle Lagunas:

And what’s isolved?

Opal Wagnac:

isolved is a HCM provider, not just of product, but also of services. Really servicing the SMB in the mid-market space. And we cover everything from a bevy of products and solutions, from HR services to talent acquisition services, as well as the full scale of HCM.

Kyle Lagunas:

So just a little bit of stuff. No, I love it. And honestly, isolved is a bit new to me. I had a really great briefing with them a while ago, last month or so. But I was really excited to see you on stage for the opening session at Women in HR Tech, and especially when you were sharing with me a little bit about the first point of view of, look, we’re living in crazy times. Innovation cycles are just going rampant. But I really loved the story that you told about electricity. Can you tell us about that? Yeah.

Opal Wagnac:

Yeah, absolutely. So, of course, when the question comes up about, well, how are we supposed to embrace AI? And it’s always like that new thing. It’s like, oh my gosh, there’s this fear, there’s this trepidation. And at one point, electricity had the same fear and had the same trepidation. What do you mean light is coming out of the ceiling? What do you mean that I’m holding to this candle and I’m walking around one room to the next? Where’s this light coming from or how does it work? Electricity, I can’t see it, but I see its effect.

And I’m like, okay, you don’t see wind either, but you see its impact. And so with electricity it had to go through this enormous learning curve. And I believe it was Andrew Ng who said, like, “AI is the new electricity.” And so it literally had to get to a point where, here we are, if I’m making plans to go to dinner with you, I’m not going to ask, does the place have electricity? You would probably look at me like I had three heads. And so I understand where Andrew Ng was coming from with really trying to embrace AI. But if I look at electricity, I don’t know about you Kyle, but I wasn’t around when electricity was discovered.

Kyle Lagunas:

No, me neither. I’m very young.

Opal Wagnac:

I can’t remember what that learning curve was about. But I can read about it. However, in our lifetime we’ve seen the internet. So to me, I look at the AI — as AI as the new internet. Where there was a time where it’s like, what do you mean I can talk to someone in real time that’s in Singapore? And so actually we had a laugh about it, what was your screen name again?

Kyle Lagunas:

Oh, my first screen name was “Hello.” Because I didn’t know that I wasn’t chatting yet. I just got prompted with a box and I wrote Hello.

Opal Wagnac:

Wow. Very original. So Hello being your new screen name to talk to people. Mine was Talk and the number 2 Opal.

Kyle Lagunas:

See, you already had the acronyms. I love it.

Opal Wagnac:

I was just trying it out, but just thinking about it…

Kyle Lagunas:

You were cool from the beginning. Don’t play.

Opal Wagnac:

Thank you. Thank you.

Kyle Lagunas:

I really like it, especially because I think the electricity allegory, there was a lot of fear around electricity. People didn’t understand it, they didn’t know how it worked and so they didn’t trust it.

Opal Wagnac:

Right. Right.

Kyle Lagunas:

And I feel like especially in the HR organization, which has been historically extremely risk-averse, that the perceived risk and danger with this has really stalled, I think, some meaningful innovation. It’s like if I use AI to create a new drug, a new pharmaceutical drug, no one really understands that. But if I’m using AI to create a more data-driven performance management program. Or if I’m using AI to implement more equitable pay practices. Like everybody gets paid, everybody has performance reviews. We know what that is. And so it’s like the exposure, the level of connection to these perceived risks, the use cases for AI in our space, it’s actually a ubiquitous understanding of the stuff.

Opal Wagnac:

100%.

Kyle Lagunas:

Like, hey, this could actually be really disruptive. But I think we don’t know how it’s going to work. And so we’re not sure, candidly, whether we can trust HR to figure it out. You know what I’m saying? It’s like there’s this point right now where it’s like, what are we going to do here? Is HR going to take this and run with it? Can they? And I think they can.

Opal Wagnac:

I think they can too. Because when it comes to our own personal lives, AI is all over the place. We talk to Alexa to ask them, okay, what are those stats of Michael Jordan doing against LeBron James? Or even sillier things than that. So even using everyday natural language processing in our daily lives. I look at my kids. My kids are never going to ask, “Well, what are your AI solutions?” They don’t know what AI is, but they know the absence of AI.

Kyle Lagunas:

At four years old they’re asking if you have Wi-Fi. They’re coming up to me at my house, my niece and nephew. Like, “What’s your Wi-Fi password?” I’m like, bro.

Opal Wagnac:

Exactly. Exactly. So even the Roomba, right? We gave her her name. Her name is Zaza.

Kyle Lagunas:

Zaza?

Opal Wagnac:

Yeah. Yeah, Zaza. Because she earns her keep. And not to try and genderify her with that name but we felt that Zaza was very fancy. Instead of Jeeves, we felt Zaza.

Kyle Lagunas:

She’s a fancy girl.

Opal Wagnac:

She’s a fancy girl and she does a lot. And I think about all the type of innovation that goes into that. So this is the world in which they live in. So my kids will never look for a movie. Netflix better recommend. Even their friends are recommended to them. So living in a world of recommendations, and that is their day to day. I can definitely find areas within HR very easily. It’s easy for me because I look at a lot of the things, a lot of the questions that we’re constantly asking.

I was actually overhearing a conversation with one of the sales leaders and she was trying to help her son. It was like adulting 101. I was eavesdropping on it. So this was very interesting. You’re going to laugh at this one. And so of course, he’s like 26 years old, so he needs to get off his mommy’s insurance and get a real job. And so he got a real job. Check. And now he is going through the whole enrollment process. And he starts to freak out. He’s like, “Mom…”

Kyle Lagunas:

Because it’s complicated.

Opal Wagnac:

“… what Is a deductible? What is that? I never learned in college? What is that?”

Kyle Lagunas:

What’s home insurance and what’s a lifetime maximum?

Opal Wagnac:

Exactly. So all of these things during the enrollment process. And then he’s like, “Wait a minute, I got to count how many times I’m going to get hit by a bus next year to figure out how much I’m going to spend to go to urgent care? How morbid is that?” Right? So in thinking about it, you know what, he wasn’t wrong. Because he’s lived in a world where things have been recommended to them.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah. Served up to him.

Opal Wagnac:

Literally served up. HR already knows, I know that you’re a single male. I know that you have no children. I know that you’re a nonsmoker. I know so many things already about you. As a matter of fact, I know who you really are, not your street name, but I know your government name. You know all of these things, and yet you won’t even serve up to me, what’s the recommended plan?

Kyle Lagunas:

I actually only have a legal name. I don’t have a street name.

Opal Wagnac:

You don’t have a street name?

Kyle Lagunas:

No.

Opal Wagnac:

We got to give you a street name because-

Kyle Lagunas:

Don’t be fooled by this ink.

Opal Wagnac:

No, listen.

Kyle Lagunas:

I’m actually a square.

Opal Wagnac:

You have street cred, my friend.

Kyle Lagunas:

I’ve got some rizz.

Opal Wagnac:

You’ve got a Kyle high vibe.

Kyle Lagunas:

Well, listen, let me back it up because I really like where you’re going with this. You and I had been in this space for a while, right?

Opal Wagnac:

Yes.

Kyle Lagunas:

And you are new into this role, and I’m actually really excited for this role for you because we need really passionate but also informed voices that are really pushing this narrative forward, that are challenging the industry. Especially from the solution-provider side, especially focused on SMB and mid-market.

Opal Wagnac:

Yes.

Kyle Lagunas:

Everybody’s ignoring this whole… Which is the hugest employer market in the world.

Opal Wagnac:

It is.

Kyle Lagunas:

And we’re all talking about enterprise issues. So I love this for you.

Opal Wagnac:

Thank you.

Kyle Lagunas:

But look, you and I know that AI, we’ve been talking about AI in the space for a while. And not even that long ago, three years ago, it was a buzzword. We were just talking about it as a future thing.

Opal Wagnac:

Exactly.

Kyle Lagunas:

And literally overnight it has become ubiquitous.

Opal Wagnac:

Of course.

Kyle Lagunas:

You’re saying, I’m not going to ask if a restaurant has electricity. I’m not going to ask if HR is using AI. I want to know, how are you using AI?

Opal Wagnac:

Yeah. So this is your new baseline if you think about it, right? So many of us work for SaaS companies. Your company wouldn’t exist if the internet wasn’t there, right? So many of us have jobs. My job didn’t exist 45 years ago. So just even thinking it through, we’ll now have to be at the cusp of like, well, what are the new jobs going to be if AI is the baseline? So if the internet was the baseline, here we are today. Can you imagine if AI is the baseline?

As a matter of fact, I don’t even think we’ll put those two letters together again. Because no one even says the internet anymore. People just say Wi-Fi. It augments itself from one generation to the next. So I can only imagine what my kids are going to call it. They may call it, I don’t know, the internet went to the what? The cloud?

Kyle Lagunas:

I mean, do we still talk about the cloud?

Opal Wagnac:

I know, right?

Kyle Lagunas:

Well, look, before we even get there, I feel like HR is feeling this pressure. We have to get to a point of literacy. The business is asking us all these questions about AI. And like, I don’t know, girl, I’m an HR expert. I’m not an AI expert. But I honestly am feeling this massive paradigm shift where, and this is the tough part for HR, is being an HR expert’s not enough.

You have to know how this stuff works and how this stuff doesn’t work, what it does and what it doesn’t do. Because we do, in order to be effective leaders and effective stewards of the trust of the workforce, we have to make sure that we are actually using these things effectively. And ethically. And so we do need to get better versed in these. It can’t just be the internet. It can’t just be AI. We need to really start to figure this stuff out.

Are you finding in your role that you are having opportunities to answer some of these questions and lean into some of these things? What are some of the stuff that you’re really trying to get done at isolved?

Opal Wagnac:

Right, right. So just looking at the world of, especially like you mentioned before, when you’re looking at AI, you’re looking at all of these solutions. We should not stop questioning. Just because it’s there, we need more critical thinkers. And I emphasize that word critical. Criticize the AI. Please do. Just to make sure that you’re also not creating the same repetitive mistakes. And now all you deal is-

Kyle Lagunas:

You can’t take anything for granted.

Opal Wagnac:

Yeah, just take it and you’re systematizing it too. And if we’re really going to try and truly be these change agents, to me, HR is a change agent. So accept your role as a change agent and start making some changes. So even if the AI is telling you X, Y, Z, start challenging it. Okay, is this what we want for the future? Especially in an area like here at HR Tech, you see a lot on talent acquisition. And there’s been so much that has been done. At isolved we’ve done a tremendous amount of work around talent acquisition, especially even though we’re servicing the SMB and that mid-market space.

Kyle Lagunas:

Which is underserved, to be honest.

Opal Wagnac:

It’s very underserved. And I believe it was a stat like 99% of all businesses in the U.S. have less than 500 employees. So just think about that. Yes, there is a churn rate, but there’s also a much more impressive growth rate too. And so if they’re also trying to fish from the same pond as those larger enterprises, they should be able to get the same good talent.

Kyle Lagunas:

They have the same problems. They might not be at the same scale, but it’s…

Opal Wagnac:

Exactly.

Kyle Lagunas:

Right?

Opal Wagnac:

So everything is fair game for them too. So they deserve the same type of enterprise-grade solutions, so to speak. They deserve the right type of AI solutions.

Kyle Lagunas:

Well, you know what they deserve, what they also need? Is to know they can trust their partners.

Opal Wagnac:

Oh, 1000%.

Kyle Lagunas:

That’s one thing that I think is really interesting about y’all’s approach is you really are layering in best practice consulting and professional services with the technology too. I’ve seen, and you have too, a lot of people in the space, you can build a mousetrap and you got to hand over the mousetrap with the book to implement it. And sorry, I’m a technology vendor. You do what you need to do. I did my part, which was give you the software. I really like seeing you guys committed to helping your customers succeed.

Opal Wagnac:

Absolutely.

Kyle Lagunas:

Especially knowing you and your passion and your opinions. We need it. Right? It can’t be kid gloves. Like I said, the problems that HR leaders face in a global enterprise, the scale might be bigger, but we are facing those problems on the home front too.

Opal Wagnac:

Exactly, exactly.

Kyle Lagunas:

And we need have somebody that’s going to help us navigate this next level.

Opal Wagnac:

Yeah. Because technology’s not going to solve all your problems. Let me say that again for the people in the back. Technology is not going to solve all of your problems. So there’s going to be some times where you actually want to get on the phone and not be prompted. You actually want to speak to a real human because you’re dealing with people. It’s a very dynamic world that HR basically has to serve. And our tastes, our styles, everything changes. So if everything is constantly changing, you’re also going to need to deal with some very complex issues.

And the beauty about what isolved does is that we do not shy away from that service model. We recognize the fact that yes, there’s plenty of our customers. We have over 177,000 customers. So we take our same learnings from those customers and we produce HR services. Especially even understanding the notion that once upon a time, it was very easy for you to find someone that had 20 years of HR experience. That has been cut in half.

Kyle Lagunas:

I know.

Opal Wagnac:

So where do you find the expertise to move your business forward?

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah. Absolutely.

Opal Wagnac:

As a business owner, you recognize that there is a need and there is a void. So looking at HR services, looking at talent acquisition services. You know you want to be able to acquire talent. However, actually to really be successful in talent acquisition, you need to be able to market. You can’t just take your job description and plop it out there on Twitter. Good luck with that. You need to be able, like, sorry, you need honey to catch some bees.

Kyle Lagunas:

That is part of the problem, right? I mean, because guess what? They’re competing for talent, not with their direct backyard competitors, they’re competing with those big budget companies too. Right?

Opal Wagnac:

Exactly. Exactly.

Kyle Lagunas:

Well, let me ask you then, if you are going to give one word of advice to folks to navigate this next year ahead, what would it be?

Opal Wagnac:

Well, definitely, I would say expand your circle. Because one thing about just being locked in, you’re never going to understand the problems that you’re about to face. And at the same time, I always tell my kids, learn from other people’s mistakes because you won’t live long enough to make them yourself. So that’s one part of it.

The other part of that is the diversity of thought. Also look around you. I think that there is a lot that we can do there, just even by expanding our circles ever so slightly. We don’t have to look that far. But really doing things in a way that, “Well, she’s not an HR expert, so why would I ask her?” Oh no, you should definitely ask her. Or, “She’s of a different generation.” No, you should definitely ask them too.

And you’ll be surprised that whenever we tend to pigeonhole people based off of their title, the truth is they didn’t just fall out of the sky and be an HR generalist. There was something else before that, too. So for the most part, when you’re engaging with someone, you’re getting the whole person and all of the experiences that make them.

Kyle Lagunas:

You know what this is giving Kamala… You didn’t just fall out of a coconut tree.

Opal Wagnac:

Yeah, you sure did…

Kyle Lagunas:

No, I really love it. I have actually seen, because I’ve been on the conference circuit all year long, and this is the most disruptive year I’ve seen.

Opal Wagnac:

Wow.

Kyle Lagunas:

But I also love seeing the community. People are coming together. They are sharing their war stories and their successes and learning together. No HR person is an island. Find your people. Find us. We care.

Opal Wagnac:

Yes. We’re here.

Kyle Lagunas:

I mean, we have a lot of opinions. I don’t know.

Opal Wagnac:

You’re never short of them, and neither am I.

Kyle Lagunas:

Well, thank you for coming and chatting with me for a little bit. If anybody wants to find you, they can hit you up on LinkedIn?

Opal Wagnac:

Yes, absolutely. You can find me on LinkedIn.

Kyle Lagunas:

All right. Thanks, babe. I’ll catch you again soon.

Opal Wagnac:

All right, love you.

Kyle Lagunas:

And just like that, folks, another fantastic conversation in the books. Huge shout out to Opal for dropping some serious wisdom and for reminding us that tech is only a tool. At the end of the day, it’s the people who behind it who make the real magic happen. That means you. Whether you’re running a global enterprise or a 50-person small business, it’s clear we all face the same challenges. The only difference: scale. And as Opal said, the key to navigating it all: expand your circle. Because let’s be real, none of us are going to live long enough to make every mistake ourselves.

So if today’s episode got you thinking about AI, or had you Googling deductibles mid-show, know that you are not alone. These are the conversations we need to have. And if you’re still curious, definitely hit up Opal on LinkedIn. Check out isolved. She’s the kind of person who tells it like it is, and then helps you figure out what to do next. I absolutely adore you, even if I candidly don’t remember how to pronounce your last name. I’m sorry, Opal.

Anyway, thanks for tuning in my friends. Remember, transformation doesn’t always happen overnight. And you don’t have to go it alone. Keep it real, keep it curious, and keep asking questions, whether it’s from your Roomba, your kid, or Alexa. We’ll catch you on the next one. Until then, stay kind, stay curious, and for the love of Zaza, don’t forget your Wi-Fi password. See you soon.

Tags HR Technology, Recruitment Technology, talent acquisition

Podcast

Hiring Assessments That Do More Than Just Check Boxes

Post author By Kyle Lagunas
Post date November 20, 2024

In this episode of Transformation Realness, I sit down with Satish Kumar, the innovative CEO and co-founder of Glider AI, a leading skill validation platform. Satish’s background in education tech brings a fresh perspective to HR, blending rigorous assessment standards with hands-on practice for real-world tasks.

And it’s exactly what the industry needs right now. With candidate fraud on the rise, companies are facing challenges they hadn’t prepared for, and it’s impacting hiring quality at every level. Satish explains how Glider’s tools give hiring teams the confidence they need by validating both technical proficiency and integrity in candidates.

This conversation with Satish is loaded with insights for anyone who wants to make their hiring process more transparent, strategic, and future-focused. Whether you’re struggling with candidate fraud, looking for ways to use assessments as part of a long-term talent strategy, or just curious about what’s next in HR tech, this episode will give you plenty of ideas to chew on. Grab a coffee, tune in, and let’s get real about what assessments can do for your team!

Are They the Real Deal? Why Candidate Authenticity Matters More Than Ever

Let’s talk about authenticity — something we’d all love a little more of in hiring, right? With remote and hybrid work now the norm, it’s harder than ever to know if your candidates are the real deal or just playing the part.

So, how does Glider AI help? They’re not just doing traditional assessments: they’re creating a process that gives you confidence in the authenticity of every hire. It’s about knowing that the person behind the screen actually has the skills they say they do. “Our goal is to … give you the confidence there’s no cheating at all,” Satish says. No second-guessing, no crossed fingers‌ — ‌just a system that’s built to help you hire the right people, every time.

And it’s more than just a skills check. Glider’s assessments include hands-on tasks that mirror real job responsibilities, giving you a real-time peek into a candidate’s problem-solving abilities, work style and creativity. In a world where hiring remotely is here to stay, Glider’s tools are like having a truth serum for candidates.

Hiring for Today, Planning for Tomorrow

Now, here’s where Glider’s approach gets even cooler. Most companies treat assessments as a pass-or-fail moment, but Satish takes it a step further. Instead of just thinking short-term, Glider’s assessments are designed to be the start of a bigger conversation about a candidate’s future at the company. “We can chart that journey for the candidate,” Satish says. Imagine using the same data to help new hires grow into roles they haven’t even applied for yet!

Glider’s assessments gather insights on broader skills and career potential, which is gold for HR leaders trying to build a talent pipeline. So, instead of just hiring for the role in front of you, you’re creating a development roadmap that keeps employees engaged and moving forward.

This approach is all about setting employees up for success from day one and giving them a vision of where they’re headed. It turns a one-off assessment into a strategic tool for long-term planning and career development, helping companies keep top talent and reduce turnover. Glider’s assessment data becomes more than just a hiring tool‌ — ‌it’s a foundation for a talent strategy that goes beyond the present.

Straight From the Frontlines: Learning From the People Who Make Hiring Happen

Here’s one thing I love about Satish: he’s not just a tech advocate: he’s motivated by understanding people. Glider’s approach to building assessment tools isn’t just theoretical. Satish is out here connecting with real HR leaders and practitioners to learn about the daily challenges they face in hiring. In fact, that’s his main reason for sponsoring this season of Transformation Realness: “Learn from the practitioner, listen to them, what they’re doing — and at the same time, share that knowledge with the world,” he says.

Satish is all about hearing the gritty details‌ — ‌the obstacles, the breakthroughs and everything in between. This isn’t just lip service, either. Satish genuinely believes that Glider’s tools should reflect the reality of today’s hiring challenges, and he’s making sure the product evolves to meet them. This real-world input means Glider stays adaptable, evolving as fast as the hiring landscape changes.

Satish’s commitment to continuous learning and genuine connection means Glider AI is a platform that’s rooted in the real experiences of people in HR. In a world full of tech that promises to “revolutionize” hiring, it’s refreshing to see a company that’s grounded, practical and truly dedicated to making hiring better.

People in This Episode

Satish Kumar: LinkedIn

Transcript

Kyle Lagunas:

Hello, my little blueberries and welcome back to Transformation Realness, the only show all about what’s going on in the world of work: the good, the bad, and most importantly the real. Maybe you’ve heard of it. It’s been a minute since our last little episode. I have been on the road pretty much nonstop speaking at industry conferences, moderating executive summits, and sitting down with some of the most innovative solution providers and forward-thinking HR and talent leaders, literally, in the world. Did you miss me? Are you ready to get learnt and turnt? Are you ready to get real? Well buckle up buttercup: we’ve got a lot to cover.

We’re also trying something super new, this very special season, I’m calling the Transformation Ecosystem EP. And it features quickfire conversations recorded live from HR Tech conference in Las Vegas. We have practitioners like Donald Knight, chief people officer at Warner Brothers. We have solution providers like Rebecca Carr, CEO at SmartRecruiters. And we have extra special guests like Keith Sonderling, former commissioner of the EEOC, and my personal bestie, Madeline Laurano, my stunning business partner, the founder and principal analyst here at Aptitude. Can you even?

We also have our first-ever sponsor. Oh my God. The Transformation Ecosystem EP was made possible thanks to underwriting from the team at Glider AI. I know I make this all seem absolutely effortless but, to be honest, Transformation Realness is a serious labor of love. And working with an expert team like Rep Cap, it ain’t free y’all. You’re going to love this season. And I get to keep doing this work because Satish and Joseph at Glider believe these conversations are worth amplifying. I’m so humbled by their support. Okay. But enough from me, let’s jump into our first episode. And never forget to like and subscribe.

Hello, my little blueberries. Welcome back to Transformation Realness. The only show all about people who are doing their best to make the world of work less shitty, and they’ve got the guts to share their story, the good, the bad, and most of all, the real.

It’s produced in partnership with Rep Cap Media, and hosted by yours truly, the ever so glamorous, definitely down to earth, Kyle Lagunas, head of strategy and principal analyst at Aptitude Research, the leading boutique research firm covering HR tech and transformation. Get into it.

Today’s guest is a very special, Satish Kumar, CEO and co-founder of Glider AI, which, as you all know, was the underwriter of this extra special EP. He’s the kind of entrepreneur I love talking to: bold enough to tackle big challenges, but grounded enough to know exactly where things can go wrong.

Satish and I dig into Glider’s unique approach to skills validation, and why it’s more than just a way to weed out unfit candidates. It’s about building real opportunities for growth. Satish’s background in education tech, also, adds a really cool twist to the conversation. Think of it as teaching for the corporate world, but with more swag.

So, if you’ve ever wondered how to assess talent beyond checking boxes, or how to sniff out candidate fraud before it tanks your hiring funnel, you’re in the right place. Satish and I have a lot of tea to spill. Let’s dive right in.

Hi, Satish.

Satish Kumar:

Hello.

Kyle Lagunas:

How are you doing?

Satish Kumar:

I’m doing great.

Kyle Lagunas:

You want to introduce yourself to everybody? Who are you?

Satish Kumar:

Hello, everyone. This is Satish Kumar. I’m the CEO and co-founder of Glider AI. Glider AI is a skill validation platform for talent acquisition and talent management.

We are here to validate the candidate quality, combat candidate fraud, and provide practice-based learning for your employee. Through our sophisticated assessment platform, intelligent interview tool, we are able to solve candidate quality issue, and provide enterprises value on the investment on the skills.

Kyle Lagunas:

I mean, super cool. Honestly, this is not your first foray into the space of skills either, right? Like you found a new opportunity to solve some problems here, but you’ve been an innovator for a while. What did you do before you got into HR tech?

Satish Kumar:

Great questions. Not many people have asked me this. I come from education technology background. In fact, I ran my last edtech company for nine and a half years, and there, I was trying to identify the mastery of kids in the K-12 classroom. And that was the most satisfying part of my professional journey, actually.

And from there, when the company got acquired by a private equity firm, my two co-founders went with the last one, and I was the crazy one to start anew, but in the process, I am bringing all the pedagogy. In fact, I have the IPO of the last company as well, and we built a lot more things on top.

And that is very much applicable to this market, because, earlier, I was tracking the mastery of kids in the classroom, now, I track the mastery of professionals in corporate world.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah, super cool. And I mean, HR tech is a really dynamic space, right? It’s a really interesting space. How long has Glider been in business? Because I only actually met you earlier this year at Transform. Stacia Garr introduced us, which I’m very grateful for.

As an analyst, I look at a lot of products, and I see a lot of interesting ideas, but when we sat down, I knew that you really had something different. And I do think that your background coming from proctoring in a different space, like delivering innovation in a different space has really helped you have a much more nuanced point of view on the market.

But, yeah, how are you feeling about… I mean, skills is everywhere. How do you feel like you guys are standing out in the market?

Satish Kumar:

So, one of the key part that I say that, in the world of remote work or hybrid work, when somebody say, “Hey, this person is great, good quality,” well, it has to mean two things. The candidate is competent, and genuine, because a lot of candidate fraud happens in this hiring process, what you don’t know what you don’t know. But once you find even one issue, then, you question what happened to other thousand candidates that have gone through the process?

And our goal is to create, by design, a process through technology that will give you the confidence that there is no cheating in the process at all, and then, have all the audit trails available so that it gives you the comfort.

Kyle Lagunas:

I would, also, say that, from my point of view, former talent acquisition executive, I needed to have the right tool to make sure that we were effectively assessing for the skills that we needed. Right? I mean, I actually need to make sure that I had something that was going to give me the right insight on whether somebody could do the work that I needed them to, or not.

I mean, there have been tech assessments for a long time, but there’s some really unique stuff that you guys have with Glider. Do you want to share some of that?

Satish Kumar:

So, one of the key part that we offer as part of our solution, is that it’s a hands-on task. Assessment has been there since ages, right? But what you do inside that, how you do it matters. And how confidently the outcome will give you the proficiency level of individuals can only be driven by how you assess.

So, our approach has been we can simulate the client technology stack for the tech roles, or for functional roles, the kind of job they will be doing after joining the company. And then, we say, “Hey, if anybody can do this task, they should be given opportunity to proceed further in the interview process.”

Kyle Lagunas:

Oh, see, that’s really interesting. Like, honestly, I don’t think that you are far away, then, from assessing for the job that somebody’s applying for now. But then, also if you look and see where do people in this role go next in the company, why don’t I go ahead and see how much potential do I already have for what’s next.

So, let’s assess for right now, but then, also, let’s go ahead and get some data and see where is Satish right now for being software developer two, software developer three, or running a product management team, right? Like why don’t we just go ahead and get that going?

Satish Kumar:

Since we have done so many evaluations, we understand that what is the need for role A versus role B versus role C that could be in the progression path. So, we already understand that part, right? So, if I have to recommend person A, “Hey, you are at level A,” but you know what, the real need for level two is this, because we already assessed other people and have been successful at level two.

So, we can chart that journey for the candidate further, showing that this is the area you need to…

Kyle Lagunas:

I mean, I really do love it, especially because, look, we invest a lot of money in the assessment. Whether we’re talking about technical assessments, behavioral assessments, there is a lot of spend that goes into these things, and I have rarely seen an organization that uses that insight, that information from the assessment to build a development plan to onboard those people.

Like we really use it to decide if we’re moving you forward or him forward or her forward, and then, that’s it. And so, it’s really cool to see you guys are designing a product that’s going to have that, it’s designed to have that extended value. It’s designed to help get that person onboarded into a development plan. That’s super cool.

Satish Kumar:

Thank you.

Kyle Lagunas:

Can I ask you a different kind of question?

Satish Kumar:

Sure. You’re always on for a surprise, I know that.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, honestly, it’s kind of a weird one, but like, I have never podcasted in somebody’s booth before and it means a lot to me that you all were willing to sponsor this, and I have to ask, why did you like, sure, we’ll have Kyle sit in our booth and talk to a bunch of people, but, yeah, again, thinking budgets are finite, resources right now are really precious, what made you think that this might be worth it?

Satish Kumar:

I think the primary reason was that, while we are at HR Tech conference, which is a large conference, there are so many practitioners out here already, and they have their own experiences in the domain that they work in. Wouldn’t it would be great if we can capture their thinking process brain while they’re there already, as against scheduling them one by one outside?

And you happen to be here offering this help, hey, I can pick their brain, what they’re doing in this skill world, and because that’s core to us as well. So, for me, primary: learn from the practitioner, listen to them what they’re doing, and at the same time, share that knowledge with the world as well. And who better could do than you sitting here at one place, so thank you for that.

Kyle Lagunas:

No, honestly, I have to say vendors don’t get enough credit for underwriting the community that exists. These moments are not possible without underwriting from vendors like Glider. And I think that you should be proud of that. I mean, not only are there practitioners here that you want to hear and learn from, this is an opportunity for them to have, like, to stand out in the market, right? And to have an asset for their own career brand.

I mean, look, I sat down and had a really cool conversation about skills, and I was at HR Tech Conference. No, I didn’t speak at the conference, but I did sit down with this really cool analyst, Kyle. You know what I mean?

Satish Kumar:

Yeah. Yeah.

Kyle Lagunas:

Like you’re underwriting something that’s really important. So, I think it’s super cool. You should give yourself credit for it.

Satish Kumar:

Thank you. You rightly said that even practitioner got to showcase what they have been doing, get this in a platform to share with the world. So, not just learning for me, but saying learning through the world as well.

We always want to do better, right? And they’re the real practitioner who can share things that wouldn’t otherwise, and doing just Zoom remote doesn’t cut it. Being there live, face-to-face makes so much difference to get the nuggets out of…

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah, I think so, too. And it’s like, it’s a connection point. Right? And I mean, people come to this, yeah, they come to sit in some sessions, yeah, they come to learn about what the new vendors are building, and what that cool tech looks like, but they really are wanting these moments where we can sit down together and share some ideas, and like, I don’t know, wax philosophical, right?

Well, and I hope that you get dollar-for-dollar ROI. I know ROI is like, everybody’s under that pressure. But I did want to ask that question, because this is something that is, I think, important for the space, and I appreciate you making it possible.

Satish Kumar:

Thanks to you.

Kyle Lagunas:

What do you think we’ll do next year? And I mean not just mean you and me, but what do you think is going to be happening at this show next year?

Satish Kumar:

I think this show is already so big.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah.

Satish Kumar:

I think we need little more structure how vendors like us can get more time with the practitioner. I mean, what we did here was just to get to that part, right? And thanks to you that you’re willing to do that here. But, in general, this show is so big. I think there has to be some structured way for the practitioner to participate, [get] time with the vendors who are showcasing there. Right?

And one big challenge here is that, because all the talk track are on the second floor, for them it’ll take time out of those and come and show which vendors are waiting…

Kyle Lagunas:

And they wander around aimlessly, maybe, see somebody that’s nice to them, like the name of a company doesn’t really dictate what they do. I’m 20 minutes into a conversation with somebody, and I realize this isn’t relevant to me. Do you know what I mean? Like that happens.

No, I think there is a lot of opportunities, especially like everything’s changed, the way that we engage, the way that we learn, the way that we shop for new partners, it’s all changed.

I would like to see some opportunities where, maybe, these shows evolve a bit more to enable some more of that, too. I think that the old playbook is not going to cut it anymore. It’d be cool to see what maybe they can dream up.

Satish Kumar:

Can I suggest something on that?

Kyle Lagunas:

Oh, yeah, please.

Satish Kumar:

Maybe, there should be a track where vendors can have some hands-on labs.

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah.

Satish Kumar:

And have people walk in and try it out. And they should promote that as well, right?

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah.

Satish Kumar:

As against sharing just the pitches, right?

Kyle Lagunas:

Yeah.

Satish Kumar:

And some people are-

Kyle Lagunas:

I know, it’s like the pitch stage, right? Where you show them your demo. That’s not hands-on. That’s not really making eye contact and getting to know people.

I think that could be cool, especially workshops. People want to come and not just hear things, they want to interact with some of these ideas.

No, that’s cool. Well, if anybody from HR Tech is listening, we’ve got some ideas for you, babies.

Satish Kumar:

Yeah. Absolutely.

Kyle Lagunas:

I know. Come and find us. Well, thanks again, Satish. It’s been really fun so far. I’m looking forward to learning more here while we’re at the show.

Satish Kumar:

Thank you, Kyle.

Kyle Lagunas:

Appreciate you so much. See ya.

Satish Kumar:

Thank you. Bye.

Kyle Lagunas:

Just like that, we’ve reached the end of another incredible episode of Transformation Realness. A huge thanks to Satish for joining me, for coming through, and sharing his insights. Because let’s be real, assessments have been around forever, but Glider AI is one of those providers that’s, actually, making the work smarter and not harder. And Satish, thanks again for making this very special season of Transformation Realness possible.

All right, well, some quick takeaways. First, trust, but verify. Candidate fraud is a lot more common than bad coffee at the office. Second, assessments shouldn’t just measure potential, they should help to unlock it. And finally, if your tech isn’t building a better talent pipeline, what are we even doing here?

Thanks for tuning in, my friends. If you enjoyed this episode, leave a review, tell your work bestie, and shout it from the rooftops. I’ll take whatever promo I can get, honestly. I’m pretty desperate.

Until next time, stay curious, stay sharp, and stay real, my little babies. We’ll catch you on the next one. Bye.

Blog Event

A Future Built on Trust: Key Insights from Workday’s Innovation Summit

Post author By Kyle Lagunas
Post date May 23, 2024

In an era where the pace of technological change accelerates by the minute, staying ahead isn’t just an option; it’s a necessity. I’ve been on the road quite a bit this spring and the market is abuzz with the rate of innovation we’re experiencing. For analysts like me and Madeline, it’s an exciting time!

One highlight of my coast-to-coast travels this spring was Workday’s annual Innovation Summit. Representing Aptitude, I joined a select group of the world’s leading industry analysts for a two-day event where Workday senior and executive leaders shared their plans for 2024 and beyond.

For industry leaders like Workday, this current innovation cycle is an important moment: Customers and consultants alike are watching major enterprise players as a bellwether for how HR transformation is evolving and maturing. From skills-based everything to AI everywhere, the plans and priorities of the big HCMs send ripples and waves through the ecosystem.

Unsurprisingly, Workday continues to make waves.

It’s hard to boil everything the team shared down, but I’m going to zero in on the things I personally found most interesting. And I should note: I’m not a systems architect or a Fin Tech analyst—I’m an HR and talent transformation enthusiast. So, while they had a lot to share around extensibility and Financials, I’ll be covering what piqued my specific interest.

The Big Story: Workday Puts AI and Trust at the Core of Innovation

Workday’s emphasis on AI as an accelerator and enabler of innovation was clear and compelling. As Carl Eschenbach, CEO, put it in the opening fireside chat, “We’re in the midst of the most significant shift in technology. We’re not just leaning into AI,” he said, “we’re going hard.”

More compelling, however, was the emphasis on trust as the cornerstone of their AI innovations—and their competitive edge. While others up and down market are touting dozens of new AI-powered features, Workday is more focused on trust (echoing past positioning when they were leading the way in Cloud-based HCM).

“The way we build product, the way we deploy it, the way we host it: Trust is the next really big thing from Workday.”
Jim Stratton, Workday CTO

From my perspective, this is easy to say and hard to deliver. We all know how easy it is to spin up new use cases for GenAI of late, but what we don’t know is how safe, secure, and ethical these use cases are—or how enterprise-ready they are. As such, I took every chance I could get to probe this positioning. What does trust mean, really, and how is Workday actually delivering on this promise?

As someone rightly called out, participating in regulatory conversations isn’t enough to tout yourself as a leader in safe and ethical AI. But Workday seems to be practicing what they preach.

“There are things we’ve decided not to build, or things that didn’t meet our standards to launch,” said Stratton. “And we’re also applying these same standards to partners in our AI marketplace.”

These standards align to several principles, developed and governed by Kelly Trindel, Chief Responsible AI Officer and Kathy Pham, VP of AI & Machine Learning:

Amplify human potential
Positively impact society
Champion transparency and fairness
Deliver on privacy and data protection commitments

As someone who’s been following AI in HR closely for the last several years, I have to acknowledge some of my personal bias may be showing: I’m tired of use cases, hungry for a different kind of leadership in this area. And Workday’s bold message resonated with me—and their customers were invited to share their experiences as well. “I trust Workday with AI more than any other provider I work with,” one shared during the customer panel Q&A, which is about as strong of an endorsement a vendor could ask for in this regard.

But since I couldn’t help but probe one last time, I took the chance to ask Aneel Bhusri, former CEO and Executive Chair, to comment on this as well during the closing Q&A—and his message was loud and clear: “Trust has always been our biggest differentiator. From Day One, Workday has had best-in-class in security, best-in-class in privacy – because it was the right thing to do, but also because it was expected of us.”

Opening the Floodgates: Workday Makes a Big Play with Partnerships

Though I’m sure the nerds are super excited about Workday’s plans for Extend, I’m an ecosystem addict—there are just too many cool and innovative players in the market ready to solve strategic problems in HR and talent. To date, Workday has been very cautious (some would say calculated) about who they invite into their ecosystem. The partner program has grown steadily in recent years, but now it’s become a key area of innovation for Workday.

It’s a major change in market and product strategy for Workday, and something Carl touted as a significant area of innovation for the company that was pushing the Power of One not that long ago. It’s also bound to create lots of excitement in the HR tech market.

But it’s not a come-one-come-all opportunity: Workday remains firm that partnership is built on mutual trust and mutual value. As Workday focuses its go-to-market for this year at the industry- and geo-level, new partnerships in services, product, and innovation will most likely be focused on accelerating and unlocking new deals in these sectors.

That said, I have a few wish list items as a former partner and client:

Deeper data integrations: I want to roll up labor market and talent marketplace data into my reports on talent supply and scarcity. One of the biggest frustrations I had as a practitioner was the inability to drop in data from Indeed and LinkedIn to my ATS—I was left reading tea leaves when reporting on end-to-end pipeline performance.
Embedded Insights & AIs: We’re now in the Age of AI where we’ll have bots for basically any use case you can think of. Not far on the horizon, in my humble opinion, we’ll also have a major push for interface-agnostic user experiences—and we’ll want the bots we use to integrate seamlessly into whatever UI I’m working from (Teams, Slack, my ATS, my CRM, etc.). One early win for HiredScore was the ability to serve up candidate scores right in Workday’s UI, which spared me from having to push recruiters to adopt the AI we had invested in. More of this please.
More certified integrations: Everyone knows I worked at and implemented Beamery (and if you didn’t, now you know). For anyone who thinks I’m hopelessly biased towards Beamery, I have one thing to tell you: It took us a week to stand up a bi-directional integration with Workday when I was on the customer side thanks to their strategic CRM partnership. Considering everything else we had going on at the time, this felt like a f#cking miracle. But considering how many other great CRM providers there are out there (and hell, how many other great talent tech providers in general), Workday could completely change the game by enabling this kind of experience for all of their partners—and win a lot of goodwill from their customers at the same time.

What I’ve Already Said Before: Workday Plans to Orchestrate the Future of Work with HiredScore

Did you really think I was going to miss the opportunity to double-down on my perspective of Workday’s acquisition of HiredScore (which closed last month)?? Think again, y’all!

Anyone saying that this play was only (or even primarily) about closing gaps in Workday’s Recruiting will be pleasantly surprised to learn that almost every single session at the day-and-a-half event referenced HiredScore—the team and the technology—as a strategic investment and accelerator of Workday’s innovation strategies.

While HiredScore’s matching and scoring AI and Fetch product have brought a lot of value to their customers’ talent acquisition organizations, HiredScore has been quietly expanding use cases beyond this core business including contingent staffing and internal mobility. Both are priority areas for Workday—both as part of their Talent solutions product strategy, and as important capabilities in the industry verticals Workday is targeting (retail and hospitality, government, and business services).

But the biggest opportunity, as related by both Carl and David Somers, Workday CPO, is HiredScore’s innovative work in AI orchestration.

We wrote about this new category of AI automation in a report published at the beginning of 2023, when it was only showing up in IT circles. Today, I hear the term orchestration used by just about every vendor discussing their work to enhance and augment human workers bogged down with myriad, complex process workflows. When we talk about the future of work, embedding AI into the flow of work is an incredible accelerator of innovation—and Orchestration has a lot to offer in this vein.

It’s early days yet, so I can’t say definitively that HiredScore is leading the way in orchestration. I had the opportunity to see this innovation at work during a live demo of HiredScore’s Hiring Manager Copilot at UNLEASH America, however, and the potential of this capability is impressive. I expect we’ll see lots more vendor positioning in this area in the future, and Workday will be a step ahead.

Conclusion: Workday Goes to Market as a Different Kind of Leader

It’s hard to boil the ocean, and Workday shared a ton of content and information at their Innovation Summit this year. The core narrative that I’m walking away with is that Workday has a different kind of blueprint for navigating the complexities of the modern workplace in comparison to others in the market.

By focusing on trust in AI, enhancing platform integration, fostering a more expansive ecosystem, and strategically leveraging new innovative technology like HiredScore, Workday is not just keeping pace with change—they’re setting the pace for their customers.

Blog Podcast

Can We Be Honest About Wellbeing?

Post author By Kyle Lagunas
Post date May 22, 2024

On this episode of Transformation Realness, I’m talking with Natalie Egan, CEO and founder of Translator, Inc., and Steven Huang, director of social justice at the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS). Our conversation today is raw and heartfelt. I try to give every conversation the realness treatment on my little show, but this is one for the books.

Today we talk about how much of ourselves we can and should bring to work — and how there may be a double standard for leaders and HR when it comes to how much of ourselves we bring. We also talk about trauma, therapy and supporting employees when they go through challenging life experiences. Finally, we get real about self love, and we shed some serious tears.

So grab a tissue, grab a notebook and be ready for some serious soul food.

Find the Right Realness Balance

Learning to bring our authentic selves to work while upholding professional responsibilities is a nuanced challenge for HR leaders. On one hand, fostering vulnerability and emotional expression allows employees to feel truly understood and supported. However, HR professionals must also make difficult yet necessary decisions aligned with legal and business needs.

“If it’s all emotion and all vulnerability, we probably don’t go very far,” Natalie says. “You have to counterbalance that with — at least in my case — other personalities, other people that you know, for their own reasons, may not bring everything to work, or maybe just are not as emotional as I am.”

Finding equilibrium requires intentionality. HR leaders can promote authenticity by modeling openness about personal dimensions, while also communicating to employees and other leaders that they should bring as much or as little of themselves to work as they feel comfortable with.

“We’re all human. I don’t think human leaders should be pressured to bring more of themselves at work,” Steven says. “I do think leaders need to recognize that they are a leader, and they should model for others that it’s okay to bring some parts of yourself and not others by being explicit about that. Even if I show up as my whole 100% self most of the time, I should make it clear that I don’t expect you to as well.”

Experimenting respectfully with new approaches can provide valuable support. As Steven shares, one organization “had a licensed therapist come and hold space for whatever people were going through in their life that month. And part of this was a response to the CEO saying, “I can’t respond to every issue that impacts everyone.’” Prioritizing well-being demonstrates care for employees’ whole selves within professional boundaries. With openness and care, HR leaders can navigate this complex role in a way that enables both organizational success and individual growth.

Remember Employees Are People, Too

Creating spaces for meaningful connection is vital for supporting employee well-being. But in today’s mixture of in-person, hybrid and remote working environments, you need a deliberate plan for fostering connection at work. “We don’t interact with each other outside. We’re not bumping into each other at the water cooler. We don’t live near each other,” Natalie says. “We have to be very intentional about that. And I think creating intentional spaces for people to connect is really easy to say — [but] it’s hard to do.”

At Translator, Inc., Natalie gives her team members space during their Monday morning check-in to reflect on the weekend and build rapport in low-stakes discussions. This small investment nurtures the relationships that sustain engagement and performance. Aim to craft a culture where people feel seen, supported and able to bring their best work — however much authentic self they choose to share — to their duties each day.

Test New Ways to Support Well-Being

Creatively explore new approaches for bolstering employee support — and don’t forget to ask them how you can help them feel more comfortable being themselves at work. Periodic pulse surveys or anonymous feedback, for example, allow you to collect employee input without too much pressure on them.

Steven’s CEO took a straightforward approach to handling frequent stressors or triggers employees were experiencing. “Every three or four weeks we had a licensed therapist come and hold space for whatever people were going through in their life that month,” he says. “And part of this was a response to the CEO saying, ‘I can’t respond to every issue that impacts everyone. So what if we just have a space where people can bring what’s impacting them and all support each other?’”

With open communication and frequent evaluation of evolving needs, a variety of support structures may unfold to complement existing benefits and resources.

People in This Episode

Natalie Egan: LinkedIn
Steven Huang: LinkedIn

Tags talent management

Automation & AI Blog

Orchestrating the Future of AI in HR: Q&A with David Somers & Athena Karp

Post author By Kyle Lagunas
Post date April 16, 2024

Last month, HiredScore and Workday announced an acquisition that could redefine the intersection of artificial intelligence (AI) and human resources (HR) technology. This combination brings together two powerhouses in the HR tech space, merging HiredScore’s cutting-edge AI solutions with Workday’s extensive industry-leading HR and Financial software ecosystem.

To understand the motivations behind this deal and its implications for the future of HR technology, we sat down with David Somers, Chief Product Officer at Workday and Athena Karp, Founder and CEO of HiredScore (now General Manager of HiredScore at Workday) to spill the tea. Their insights reveal not just the strategic alignment between the two companies, but also a shared vision for leveraging responsible AI to address some of the most pressing challenges in today’s workforce.

Kyle: This was a deal no one in the market saw coming. What attracted you both about this partnership?

David: We’ve been tracking HiredScore for quite a while. A lot was around really good feedback from joint customers, and even my own internal product team regarding the value HiredScore was bringing to Workday products. My first discussion with Athena was the icing on the cake. We have a unique perspective on AI in the space at Workday – I think we’ve been thought leaders related to the ethical and appropriate use of AI, and we ran over on time – WAY over.

Athena: We realized how much we could do together. For us, we never built our company for exit – it’s always been for impact. Meeting Carl, Sayan, Aneel, and David… it was clear that it is a very entrepreneurial environment, which you don’t typically find at this scale, and it made me realize that we would actually have the opportunity to take our vision even further if we were part of Workday.

At HiredScore, we’ve always loved problems at the intersection of efficiency and fairness, and we found those same values at Workday. With Workday, our vision is accelerated and expanded to build more impactful workforce solutions at a time when there is immense workforce disruption on the horizon and it was just too compelling to walk away from.

Kyle: There are differing opinions on this acquisition. What would you say to the people that think this is just a near-term, tactical play?

David: In all honesty, the matching and scoring wasn’t what captured our interest. It was where they may have been bringing value at first, but what really impressed us was the orchestration and the value we could bring together.

There was not a lot of overlap in our AI offerings. What HiredScore has done is extremely complementary to what Workday has done. This has a really long tail for us here at Workday. We have lots of plans even beyond the recruiting space—and in short order.

Athena: I don’t expect that everyone will understand what we actually do. Our recruiter AI exoskeleton does a lot of what people know us for, but our ability to bring people to their highest level of performance… is that understood? Is the scale of that impact rolled out across thousands of Workday customers understood? It’s going to have a tremendous impact.

The AI industry as a whole hasn’t had quantifiable AI for HR impact stories—most of what we’ve seen so far has been an AI feature war. This is what we’ve been unique in being able to drive with our customers, and if you ask our customers about what we’re able to accomplish together and where that their plans with us are ahead, it goes WAY beyond matching and scoring. They’re dreaming so much bigger.

David: What people don’t understand is that HiredScore does something better than anybody I’ve ever seen – including us: They’re putting AI in the hands of the end user without them even knowing it’s AI. That’s important. A lot of what I see out there is very AI-in-your-face, but at the end of the day that’s not how you get people using and getting value. HiredScore… just works. We want to leverage that across the entire spectrum of Workday.

Athena: There will continue to be many AIs – we’re focused on building things where human and machine innovation feels native, feels natural and delivers impact for every user that leverages it in a clear, quick, and quantifiable way. We are excited to do this at a bigger scale.

Kyle: Considering HR’s approach to AI thus far, what gaps – technical, cultural, operational – do you think we should be focused on closing?

David: We’re product people. We’ve thought a lot about what is technically possible – could we do this and would it help, sure.We’ve done a lot in the skills space, and early on the issues were technical. How could we help them to stop managing the technical issues and focus more on strategy… but then we got to the cultural and operational issues. I’m seeing the same things here with AI more broadly.

Athena: Zoom out and look at enterprise technology, companies that weren’t AI specialists have been busy rolling out AI features. We’ll see consolidation of the smaller companies. The CIO, COO pushing for widespread AI everywhere… Our focus is to find the right problems that deeply impact the business if left unsolved and problems that you need an AI for HR expert in safety, in many types of data, in human plus machine collaboration, and that has measurable ROI. That’s why we developed talent orchestration.

Kyle: Innovation cycles in AI are moving faster than ever. A lot of folks are preoccupied with GenAI, but few are familiar with Orchestration. What is it and why does it matter?

Athena: Orchestration is different from rules-based automation – it gives you the power and capability to take multivariable, multi-stakeholder, multi-step problems and literally orchestrate processes in an optimized way. This lets HR move from “revolutionary RAM triggers” (which took problems we could solve with automation and stopped us from actually considering optimizing that problem – then IT departments were managing all of these threads, and you’re one update, one field change away from disaster).

Orchestration AI understands the nature of a task, the governance, the obstacles. Our clients are having these incredible lightbulb moments; they’re thinking continually about all of the things they can orchestrate.

We have big plans, we have a lot to do, and Workday understands how powerful this can be—and what clients want of both of us.

David: Athena nailed it. It ties to the first question: This is why we see HiredScore as way more than matching and scoring. What we see is a need to orchestrate all of the different problems and processes related to human capital management. AI is the tool that’s going to allow us to do it. HiredScore does that better than anyone.

There you have it! The partnership between HiredScore and Workday marks a significant milestone in the evolution of HR technology.

By combining HiredScore’s AI prowess with Workday’s comprehensive HR ecosystem, this collaboration is set to deliver innovative solutions that address the dual objectives of efficiency and fairness in workforce management. The insights shared by David and Athena not only shed light on the strategic underpinnings of this partnership but also offer a glimpse into the future of HR technology—a future where AI plays a central role in orchestrating complex HR processes and elevating human potential to new heights.

As the industry watches this partnership unfold, it’s clear that the real winners will be the organizations and their employees, who stand to benefit from more sophisticated, fair, and efficient HR solutions.

Automation & AI Blog

Sourcing Heats Up and with Indeed’s Latest Product Announcement

Post author By Kyle Lagunas
Post date April 12, 2024

Indeed recently announced its latest iteration of AI-powered products: Smart Sourcing. It comes at an interesting time in the market.

On the buy side, Aptitude Research’s latest study on AI in Human Resources (HR) found that 72% of companies anticipate increased investments in AI solutions this year. In the market, HiredScore (arguably the leader in matching and scoring AI) was acquired by Workday, while HireEZ and Findem (both leaders in Sourcing AI) expanded into candidate relationship management (CRM). And for Indeed itself, their first big commercial play in AI matching and scoring with a bold move to a PPA model last year.

We covered the PPA announcement with avid interest. Though Indeed ended up pausing the PPA program, this latest announcement signals they’re not letting it slow them down—quite the opposite.

It’s a good time for a company like Indeed to bet big on AI in talent acquisition. The latest job numbers in the US show strong growth, while interest in recruiting and hiring AI solutions is just as strong.

I had a chance to sit down with Raj Mukherjee, EVP and General Manager, at Indeed to talk about this new offering, their continued investments in AI, and how Indeed is delivering on its mission to make hiring simpler, faster, and more human.

According to Raj, Indeed’s offering has a few key competitive advantages:

First, Indeed’s Smart Sourcing pulls from an active database. “Indeed has a unique offering in that we give employers access to candidates active on the platform that are looking for new roles,” Raj says.
Second, Indeed is seeing a significant improvement in response rates from matched candidates. Raj reported that candidates who are a strong match for a search are 17x more likely to apply than regular job seekers.
Third, Indeed’s connected experience—specifically the ability to schedule interviews immediately—gives employers the ability to quickly convert interested, relevant candidates and get them in front of a hiring manager.

Here are a few of the key things I took away from our conversation—and my observations on this announcement:

AI is officially a must-have rather than a nice-to-have.

As an analyst, my job is to track technology trends across the world of work. We’ve been talking about AI in HR tech for a while now, but the conversation has recently made a serious paradigm shift.

Whereas before, only those most innovative talent acquisition teams were doing significant AI projects, Indeed’s latest push into the market makes it official: we’re in the Early Majority stage of AI in TA. Now, companies, big and small, innovative and ordinary, can utilize machine learning, natural language processing, and Generative AI to tackle some of the fundamental challenges in recruiting.

Things are heating up in Sourcing—not slowing down.

Though we were all sad to see so many of our colleagues in Sourcing impacted by RIFs over the last 18 months, we should all be encouraged to see innovation in Sourcing tech alive and well. Raj cited a US$6 billion market for recruiting automation, of which I think Sourcing could easily be 1/3 or more.

Indeed began running a Smart Sourcing beta in November and has seen substantial adoption among SMB organizations—a market untapped by the leaders in Sourcing tech due to lower profit margins for a SaaS model. Will Indeed continue to push up-market and drive Findem, SeekOut, and HireEZ to rethink their product and go-to-market strategies? I think we’ve only begun to see the ripples that the rapid advancement of AI is making in this market.

Adoption of AI in HR depends on human in the right loop.

Raj and I had a spirited conversation on what makes two use cases that both utilize matching and scoring AI can be received so differently. We all know that “human in the loop” is an important success factor for safe, ethical, and effective use of AI. With Smart Sourcing, a recruiter is in the driver’s seat for most of the workflow—the AI is augmenting their efforts at each step, including GenAI creating outreach messages.

With PPA, the AI was doing almost everything—and the recruiter or hiring manager just had to say accept or reject a matched candidate before moving forward in the process. Hiring remains a hugely human thing, and people want to know they’re in control. Both Raj and I think that Smart Sourcing is putting humans in the right loop by augmenting and enhancing workflows rather than over-automating them.

Indeed remains committed to a dual value proposition for AI in talent acquisition.

Perhaps the most enlightening part of my discussion with Raj was the lessons learned from last year’s PPA play, specifically regarding what they were bringing forward to this new innovation. Raj said, “We have to ensure that the data we are providing to employers and to job seekers—that is, the recommendations, the matches—are trustworthy.”

Having played with Indeed’s recommendation engine myself over the last six months (I created a profile to test their matching and scoring when I did a write-up last fall), I can say that they’ve made a lot of progress since I first signed up. This same matching engine—built on millions and millions of data points generated by users on both sides of the talent marketplace—is powering Smart Sourcing, which makes me optimistic about Indeed’s ability to deliver value with their latest offering.

I’m encouraged to see Indeed continuing to invest in this dimension of recruiting AI. Not only does it serve a real need and enhance user experiences for employers and job seekers alike, but it also further differentiates Indeed from traditional job boards and marketplaces—a space they disrupted a long time ago.

Time will tell just how disruptive Smart Sourcing is for other sourcing AI providers, and I’ll be watching this corner of the market with interest.

Blog Podcast

How to Launch a Skill-Based Talent Strategy of the Future

Post author By Kyle Lagunas
Post date March 25, 2024

On this episode of Transformation Realness, I’m talking with Mara Jones, head of people and culture at Kasa, and Tara Torres, formerly Kasa’s director of talent acquisition and strategic people initiatives. We’re digging into one of the hottest and most complex topics in the industry right now: skills-based talent strategy.

Inspired by a mission to improve diversity, equity and inclusion at Kasa, Mara and Tara immediately singled out assessment and promotion practices as a place to remove ambiguity. Their story demonstrates how, when implemented step-by-step, skills-based strategies can enhance assessment, promotion and the entire employee experience.

Listen in to learn practical lessons from Mara and Tara’s experience piloting their framework, including tips for aligning teams and prioritizing skills-based initiatives for maximum impact.

Start With the Basics

Job descriptions form the building blocks for a skill-based framework, so Mara kicked off the project with an effort to standardize descriptions and build consistency in how her team advertised jobs. “One of the first things that we decided to do was to put together a bank of skill sets that we thought were necessary across the organization,” Mara says. “And so we went into all of our job descriptions, and we just opened up an Excel spreadsheet, and we pulled everything that we could get out of there.”

But then Mara and her team hit a snag. “We started seeing that … maybe the verbiage is not done the same way across all job descriptions,” Mara says. This discovery led to a more individualized approach to defining what the business needed from each role. “We had managers help us identify objectives and key results for the role or for the individual,” Mara says. “And we templatized it, we rolled it out, and we focused on that instead.”

At this point, Mara’s resolution to develop an overarching framework landed on the back burner, but it didn’t stay there long.

Treat Skills Like Currency

The idea of developing a skill-based competency framework stuck with Mara, but it wasn’t until Tara had an “aha moment” that the team picked it back up — with renewed vigor. “The ‘aha moment’ was that this really becomes the shared language for how you talk about talent,” Tara says, “not just internally from a calibration or selection standpoint, but also with the talent themselves.”

Tara’s sudden realization hits on an important point: that skills are the currency of the future of work. “It really started to crystallize for me how you could start to take skills, define them in a way that shows differentiation as you progress through the job family … and then link that through the entire employee lifecycle,” Tara continues.

A shared understanding of skills allows for more strategic workforce planning conversations between HR and business leaders. Rather than just discussing headcount needs, they can talk about the competencies and skills required, making the discussions more collaborative versus just departments giving orders.

Respect Your Partners

To embed the framework throughout the hiring process and employee journey, Tara hosted conversations with HR business partners and hiring teams. Together, they identified a group to pilot a new talent acquisition process based on the competency framework. Their process involved selecting and defining attributes for different job levels and creating associated artifacts such as job descriptions and interview guides.

Tara involved stakeholders in the process from the beginning, and conducted a survey and whiteboarding session to determine the most important attributes for each job. There were challenges in agreeing on definitions, but the approach received positive feedback from business leaders.

“That was the exercise that we went through to define the attributes,” Tara says, “and we got a lot of really positive feedback from the business leaders on how we approached that.”

Mara was especially pleased with Tara’s process and dedication to focusing her attention and energy on producing the best results. Tara made use of existing work and resources to streamline the process and make it easier for the team — which is really important when asking for participation from the people most embedded in daily tasks.

“We have to remember that our operators are constantly focusing on the day-to-day and making sure that the business is running,” Mara says. “And so we have to make sure that whenever we’re bringing them in into initiatives like this, that we do the work ahead of time so that we make the best use of their time.”

Mara and Tara’s journey to designing and implementing a skill-based framework is inspiring, and provides a blueprint you can follow to kickstart that same journey in your organization.

People in This Episode

Mara Jones: LinkedIn
Tara Torres: LinkedIn

Blog Podcast

Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf? Approaching AI With Clarity and Intent

Post author By Kyle Lagunas
Post date March 11, 2024

On this episode of Transformation Realness, I’m talking with Splunk’s Allie Wehling, IO psychologist and head of talent assessment, and Dustin Cann, senior director of people process, compliance and operations. We discuss the nuances of AI in HR, best practices for exploring the delicate balance between innovation and compliance and strategies for implementing AI in HR safely, ethically and intentionally.

With experience both as HR practitioners themselves as well as serving as solutions providers, Allie and Dustin bring an informed perspective to the topic of AI in HR that’s more important now than ever. “That is really important: to understand the practitioner point of view, understand the science — and not just creating a tool that demos really well, but that is actually going to be really meaningful,” Allie says.

AI isn’t going anywhere. It’s embedded in every aspect of our work, and if we don’t get ahead of it we’re going to fall behind — and put our businesses at risk. That’s why we’re answering your burning questions about AI. Listen in for some inside intel on preparing your organization to apply AI safely.

Keep People in the Loop

You have an important responsibility to facilitate business decisions, especially around workplace tech. But Dustin and Allie are quick to emphasize that you can’t go it alone on such complex projects. “The organizations that are successful selecting and implementing these tools, especially long term,” Dustin says, “are likely going to be the ones that have the ability to navigate that conversation with compliance partners, lawyers, all of that, by going into these exercises as a team.”

Bringing in different perspectives ensures all angles get considered upfront. It shows due diligence and builds buy-in across teams. Plus, relying on experts helps fill in the gaps where your own knowledge may be lacking, like intricate technical integrations or privacy nuances worldwide.

And don’t forget perhaps the most important stakeholder group of all: your workforce. For any tech adoption to work, you need employees fully onboard — and that means communicating openly and honestly with them upfront. “We need to be really transparent with employees about why we are implementing this AI system, outlining exactly how the data will and will not be used, and ensuring that they have an opportunity to consent to it,” Allie says.

Keep It Simple

When proposing new AI initiatives, gaining approval from legal and compliance stakeholders is crucial. Dustin strongly suggests adopting a clear, simplified narrative to build credibility with these groups. “If I can’t articulate how this works, and what it’s doing, to partners across my legal teams, data protection teams, and so forth, I can’t buy it,” he says.

Don’t get bogged down in the details. Highlight a specific business problem and explain how the proposed solution aims to address it effectively and compliantly. Presenting complex machine learning concepts in an overly complex way may raise more questions than answers.

Dustin also cautions against taking vendor solutions at face value. An ROI study on an interview scheduling tool, he says, could show significant value. But those types of tools depend heavily on interviewers practicing excellent calendar hygiene — and most don’t. In practice, the tool may not deliver the value it promises.

By simplifying your use cases and breaking them down in terms of actual practice, you can explain the value of a solution in your specific workplace. “That’s going to … lead you down the path where you’ve got real applied impact,” Dustin says.

Keep Up With Trends

Staying ahead of the curve is crucial for supporting your workforce in this dynamic environment, Allie says. While being an expert coder definitely isn’t necessary, she stresses that simply checking in on developments every once in a while isn’t going to cut it anymore either. To really keep your organization competitive in this rapidly changing landscape, you need to make following innovations a real priority.

“You don’t need to go take a bootcamp in machine learning and know how to code in Python,” Allie says. “But it is incumbent upon us to keep up with emerging technologies and understand where the market is going.” Equipped with an understanding of the trends in technology — and all the possible use cases — you can lead the conversation about selecting the right AI tools your business needs to navigate current disruptions.

People in This Episode

Dustin Cann: LinkedIn
Allie Wehling: LinkedIn

Blog Uncategorized

HiredScore and Workday: A Lightning Rod Moment for Talent Technology

Post author By Kyle Lagunas
Post date February 27, 2024

Yesterday, Workday announced the acquisition of HiredScore. It’s the biggest news since Oracle announced its acquisition of Taleo, and marks a new era of talent acquisition innovation.

Long has Workday toiled to rise above the noise regarding gaps in their Recruiting product–meanwhile, growing to over 4000 customers worldwide despite being the subject of recruiter and candidate consternation (and the target of industry influencers paid to fan the flames). While some of the frustration has been merited, Workday has steadily grown to become one of the leading talent acquisition systems for small to large enterprise companies.

One needs only look at the pitch decks of any other player in talent acquisition tech to know just how much market leadership Workday has established. Everyone is clamoring for a piece of that pie–by enhancing candidate and recruiter experience like Paradox, expanding capabilities for talent pipelining and lifecycle management like Beamery, or providing deeper recruiting performance insight and actionability like Crosschq.

It feels like only yesterday I was in a room with core members of Workday’s Recruiting product team making the case to grow market leadership and change the narrative by engaging the incredibly dynamic ecosystem of players in talent acquisition tech–breaking away from the “Power of One” narrative. Even then, I never dreamt of something like this.

Meanwhile, HiredScore has spent the last eleven years slowly-but-surely leading the way in advanced AI solutions for some of the world’s most expert talent acquisition teams.

Earning trust and building partnership with clients like Accenture, Johnson & Johnson, General Motors, and Takeda, HiredScore has set the industry standard time and again for new core capabilities. Unmatched matching and scoring AI, unparalleled AI compliance and ethical standards, and (as yet) peerless AI orchestration capabilities have made HiredScore a major player.

Their technological leadership combined with their reputation for being a strong (and market neutral) GTM partner has also made HiredScore a strong (albeit quiet) counterpoint to the rapid rise of VC darlings like Eightfold and Phenom. What HiredScore may lack in market share, they make up for with a nearly 100% referable client base–the most legit success factor in the business.

Likewise, it feels like only yesterday I had my very first briefing with Athena Karp, founder and CEO of HiredScore–where I got completely and utterly schooled on what is actually possible when AI and automation are deployed effectively in talent acquisition.

While I don’t think the gods care much about HR tech, I do think it is incredibly kismet that these two are coming together nearly 12 years to the day since the Oracle/SAP/IBM wave reshaped the HR tech landscape. It’s also just over 12 years since I started my career in this whacky space. Weird!

Looking ahead, I expect this will serve as a lightning rod for vendors to rethink everything–their products, their partnerships, and their competition. Exciting times!

Blog Podcast

Resistance is Futile: You Will Comply! Spilling the Tea on HR Compliance Trends Coming in 2024

Post author By Kyle Lagunas
Post date February 26, 2024

On this episode of Transformation Realness, I’m talking with HR veterans and Humareso president, John Baldino, and director of talent strategy, Robin Schooling. We’re spilling the tea on one of the sexiest, most exciting, most horrifying parts of HR: compliance.

HR compliance is becoming more and more complicated — and it couldn’t come at a worse time for HR professionals, who are woefully burnt out already (something I’m sure many of you are feeling!). The pain is SO real: “A lot of folks have reached the point where they’re self-selecting themselves out of the profession,” Robin says.

In many industries — healthcare, retail, manufacturing — HR professionals faced increased pressure to deliver without having a chance to pause and evolve their work model. It was just go-go-go! And in industries like professional services, HR is often caught in the middle between protecting employee flexibility and business leaders calling for an unequivocal return to the office.

So where does that leave HR professionals in 2024? Buckle in for a no-holds-barred conversation on the complexities introduced by COVID-19 health and safety compliance — and its far-reaching implications for personal liberties and workplace culture.

Balancing Compliance With Compassion

We’ve reached a point where we are just starting to feel the lasting legislative impacts of COVID-19-era cases on things like religious freedom, personal liberty, and political strife. If that wasn’t enough of a mess, HR professionals are learning that following the letter of the law is creating even more friction in the workplace. “From a compliance standpoint, the HR practitioner has a daunting task in front of them to both balance the prescriptive components of legislation,” John says, “and the cultural compassion around people.”

In a lot of places, for instance, the flu took a worse toll on people this season than the COVID virus did. But as John points out, employees might be entitled to paid leave when they contract COVID, they have to rely on personal sick time if they get the flu. That’s just some of the nuanced complexity that HR leaders have to think about: Do we just follow compliance to the strictest rule of the law? Or do we take that as the foundation for a new sick policy?

There’s room for both, but you have to find the right approach for your specific culture and workforce. “I think you start with compliance. That’s the foundation of your house, right?” Robin says. “And you’re building your policies and then your practices on top of that foundation.”

Managing Contentious Conversations

A unique challenge HR leaders faced during the pandemic was the question of masking, which began as a personal choice but evolved into a company mandate. That friction between personal liberties and public safety has haunted us since 2020 — and is poised to be especially challenging during the upcoming election cycle.

“The 2016 election year, 2020 election year — I never saw anything so contentious in the workplace as I experienced those two years,” Robin says. Managing politically charged conversations at work while protecting employees’ psychological safety can be a real challenge. And that’s especially true now that we’re navigating workplace legislation that’s often neither fully developed nor well-defined — leaving employers with uncertainty and a lack of clarity on how to comply.

As an example, John cites a New Jersey state law that shifted unemployment filing requirements from physical paperwork to virtual documents uploaded to a public web portal. Great idea, right?? Well… the portal wasn’t operational immediately after the legislation passed, leaving HR on the hook to explain to employees why they couldn’t comply with the new rule. It’s a nightmare.

Further complicating things: employees today have access to a 24-hour news cycle and are more informed than ever (and increasingly misinformed) of their rights. HR’s struggle to navigate compliance can lead to mistrust between employees — some of whom may be acting in less-than-good-faith — and the business, with HR stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Investing in Yourself to Better Support Others

So what’s a girl to do with all of the compliance complexities in 2024? As daunting as all this is, John and Robin agreed that survival is going to require a new level of self-awareness and self-care.

First, stay informed on a variety of topics: “Don’t just immerse yourself in HR,” Robin says. “You need to be aware of the things that are going on — culturally, politically, economically. You don’t have to be a deep-dive expert in all of these areas, but you need to know what’s going on.” Staying on top of some of the issues helps you manage contentious conversations more proactively.

Second, take care of yourself: There’s a lot going on in the world, and HR is often placed in a tough spot balancing the needs of the business against what’s best for people.

Finally, John says, recognize what a privilege it is to be in our position as HR leaders. “Everyone around us, whether they always admit it or not, needs to know that someone is willing to stand in that spot and be steady and constant in it. There’s comfort and confidence in knowing where I can go,” he says. “And when you stand in that spot, and do so over a period of time — and with compassion — honestly, you win people over.”

People in This Episode

John Baldino: LinkedIn
Robin Schooling: LinkedIn