Sapient Insights Group – HR Tech 2022 Series – Perspectives from the 2022 Survey

Connect with Sheryl Herle:

• 

Connect with Susan Richards:

• 

Connect with Teri Zipper:

• 

Connect with Dwight:

• 
• dwight.brown@salary.com

Connect with David:

• 
• 
• david.turetsky@salary.com

 

Podcast Manager, Karissa Harris:

• HRDataLabs@salary.com

 

Production by Affogato Media

Resources:

• Sapient Insights Group
• Compensation Consulting Services
• HR Data Labs Season 5 Episode 3
• HR Data Labs Season 5 Episode 1

• “Vendors are building out all these toolsets, and clients still aren't using them, and they're moving more to core BI tools that are layered on top of data warehouses.”
• “One of the questions that we ask [in our survey] is, ‘What are you using your HR analytics tools for?’ . . . What was beautiful to see this year was that while HR metrics in general are still leading, DE&I was #2 this year.”

Announcer: 0:02

Here's an experiment for you. Take passionate experts in human resource technology. Invite cross industry experts from inside and outside HR. Mix in what's happening in people analytics today. Give them the technology to connect, hit record, pour their discussions into a beaker, mix thoroughly. And voila, you get the HR Data Labs podcast, where we explore the impact of data and analytics to your business. We may get passionate and even irreverent, that count on each episode challenging and enhancing your understanding of the way people data can be used to solve real world problems. Now, here's your host, David Turetsky.

 

David Turetsky: 0:46

Hello, and welcome to the HR Data Labs podcast. I'm your host, David Turetsky. Like always, we try and find brilliant people inside and outside the world of HR to talk to you about what's going on in HR data, analytics, technology and process. Today I have with me my friends from Sapient Insights. Hello Sapient Insights.

 

Sheryl Herle: 1:03

Hello, David.

 

David Turetsky: 1:05

It was almost time perfectly. Thank you. That was Susan Richards, and Teri Zipper. And some guy with a cart in the background. Like a shopping cart. It's got a bum wheel, always. And we have with us today, a new principal consultant, Sheryl Herle, who just started how many weeks ago?

 

Sheryl Herle: 1:26

Oh, a year ago.

 

David Turetsky: 1:27

Oh, it's a year ago now.

 

Sheryl Herle: 1:29

It's all relative in COVID timeframe.

 

David Turetsky: 1:31

Yeah, that's true.

 

Susan Richards: 1:32

Pre COVID. Post COVID

 

Teri Zipper: 1:33

It all morphs.

 

David Turetsky: 1:35

The world of time stands still.

 

Susan Richards: 1:36

Yes, it does!

 

David Turetsky: 1:38

So today, we're gonna have a fun conversation about talent analytics, workforce analytics, people analytics. We're going to talk about what you found, in this year's survey. The new Sapient Insights survey on HR technology.

 

Susan Richards: 1:54

The 25th anniversary version of this survey.

 

David Turetsky: 1:59

But now it is formally owned by Sapien Insights.

 

Susan Richards: 2:02

It is!

 

David Turetsky: 2:03

That's something to celebrate.

 

Susan Richards: 2:04

It is always something to celebrate.

 

David Turetsky: 2:06

And the fact that it's 25 years old talks about the longevity and the usefulness of the data from the survey. So thank you for doing it from the entire industry. So why don't we first start with one of my favorite things to do on the HR Data Labs podcast. What's one thing that no one knows about you? Sheryl, you're in the hot seat.

 

Sheryl Herle: 2:37

Oh, wow. Gosh, I'm pretty open book so people know a lot about me.

 

David Turetsky: 2:42

Wow. Come on, one thing.

 

Sheryl Herle: 2:47

And looking at others like what did what don't you know about me? Just to be able to answer.

 

David Turetsky: 2:51

So Susan, It may have been Pam who answered this one when we did the podcast last year?

 

Susan Richards: 2:56

Yeah I think it was!

 

David Turetsky: 2:57

Yeah, yeah. So you could, if you'd like to if you could?

 

Susan Richards: 3:01

Sure I'll pop in with something!

 

David Turetsky: 3:03

Okay.

 

Susan Richards: 3:04

I sang in choir in college.

 

David Turetsky: 3:07

You did?

 

Susan Richards: 3:07

I did.

 

David Turetsky: 3:09

Anything you want to give a rendition of right now?

 

Susan Richards: 3:11

Not right now. I need a few more drinks.

 

David Turetsky: 3:14

Yes. And by the way we're drinking sugary drinks.

 

Susan Richards: 3:15

Come and see me at the karaoke bar.

 

David Turetsky: 3:16

Okay. We'll have to do that later.

 

Teri Zipper: 3:17

Sugary drinks.

 

David Turetsky: 3:18

Teri, How about you? Anything you'd like to confess to?

 

Teri Zipper: 3:20

I once worked at a cemetery. And I used to draw the plots for the burials. So this is a very interesting job.

 

David Turetsky: 3:29

Very!

 

Teri Zipper: 3:30

Where they a funeral director would call me and say, Hey, Teri, I you know, Mrs. Smith died and she's in, you know, Holy Rosary. 25. You know, so I go get the big deed book out and look for her plot. And then I have to draw the map for the grave diggers to go out and dig the plot!

 

David Turetsky: 3:49

Oh, well, it's laudible because needed to happen. People needed to grieve.

 

Teri Zipper: 3:54

I never knew that existed until I actually had to do it.

 

David Turetsky: 3:56

Fascinating set of skills.

 

Sheryl Herle: 3:57

And I was being way too analytical because I was thinking something that nobody knows about me, but that's a big

 

David Turetsky: 4:03

You can have some people knowing about you. one. It's going on a podcast, so

 

Sheryl Herle: 4:07

Yeah.

 

Susan Richards: 4:07

Everybody's gonna know it once you say it! You don't want a deep dark secret!

 

Sheryl Herle: 4:11

No, that's what I'm thinking like, what are my dark secrets that I want to bring out of the closet right now? No. But yeah, interesting jobs are, I have a similar one. But I worked for the RCMP for a summer and I got to be the girl that put the lineups together. So the cops would come in and essentially say we think this guy did it. Find six other people to put in the photo lineup that looks similar to this individual.

 

David Turetsky: 4:31

Okay, so just to translate. She's talking about the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

 

Sheryl Herle: 4:36

in Canada. Yes. Yeah.

 

David Turetsky: 4:38

So you put the schedules together for the police. That's cool.

 

Sheryl Herle: 4:40

Yes. Yeah. Worked in that photo room one summer.

 

David Turetsky: 4:42

Wow.

 

Sheryl Herle: 4:43

The things we did to make money, right? Yeah.

 

David Turetsky: 4:47

So that ends the entertainment portion of the show.

 

Susan Richards: 4:51

It'll get better, it'll get better.

 

David Turetsky: 4:53

It gets better.

 

Announcer: 4:55

Like what you hear so far? Make sure you never miss a show by clicking subscribe. This podcast is made possible by Salary.com. Now back to the show.

 

David Turetsky: 5:06

So let's talk about it. One of the things that we'd love to hear from you is, what's the perspective you gained from the survey that maybe surprised you about what's happening with analytics today?

 

Sheryl Herle: 5:17

Well, I think what's really interesting is that we're, you know, this is our launch for the survey, right? We unveil our data tomorrow morning, in fact, and our survey data is collected back in May, June, July is sort of when we run the survey, and we haven't been here, we haven't been here for a couple years. I mean, last year, there was a small group here, but coming in this year, HR Tech is back, like, the show feels bigger than ever, the booths are spectacular, vendors have put a lot of money being back in here. And yet, not a lot has changed, right? We're still struggling with some of the same HR problems, there's different interfaces on stuff and people have some unique solutions going on. So when you really try and look for, like, what's new in the industry, I think there's more vendors than ever. But, you know, are we really hitting the mark with the right thing. And then when we when we marry what we see here, with what we're hearing in the data, that's where it's really interesting, because we're seeing that people are still struggling with a lot of the same things are still upset with their vendors for some of the same usability issues are the same configuration issues, or, you know, the lack of reporting capability, those kinds of things. So I think that's interesting and worth diving into to say, why are we moving the needle on that? Why is the industry rich with money, but we're not putting it towards problems that HR is still having.

 

David Turetsky: 6:28

One of the problems that we've had to help companies with a lot is fixing their underlying data before they actually start on the process.

 

Sheryl Herle: 6:35

Absolutely. Fancy systems!

 

David Turetsky: 6:36

And it's kind of shocking to me that, in 2022, very fancy HRIT and enterprises systems like we're still dealing with terrible demographic data in Oracle, SAP, PeopleSoft ADP systems. And we spend a lot of really expensive, really time with clients fixing core data that you expect to be just pristine. So why hasn't that changed? Why hasn't that gotten sunlight? You know, the data, the underlying data for these analytics?

 

Susan Richards: 7:11

Well, it's interesting that you mentioned that we were doing a workshop earlier this week. And it was on developing an HR technology strategy. And one of the the commonalities amongst almost everybody in the group, when we asked about what the obstacles are to presenting, and are developing and presenting an HR Technology Strategy was mistrust of the data quality. And, and it was really interesting, because the people in the room and we had 300 people in the room. And most of them practitioners, people who live, eat, sleep, breathe, data, and technology. And they were all very confident in their data. Where there was was lack of confidence was at the manager and the executive level. And and I believe there's even a fear of presenting data to those levels, because there is such mistrust.

 

David Turetsky: 8:10

Absolutely. Yeah.

 

Susan Richards: 8:11

And I think that's a tragedy. I think we've got to fix that.

 

David Turetsky: 8:14

One of my, the fun anecdotes that I usually tell when I present on people analytics is the old story of going into the CFOs office to try and defend headcount data. And they'd say, you know, we have x number and you have y number, why are they different? And the immediate point, you know, their immediate finger point is, HR data is always wrong. But as you say, we're counting different things. You're counting GL butts in seats, or you're counting GL headcount, FTEs maybe, and I'm counting butts in seats. So it's completely different.

 

Susan Richards: 8:47

And those butts may be full time employees, they may be contingent workers, they may be consultants, they may be part timers, they may be job shares, they may be volunteers,

 

Sheryl Herle: 8:57

And what day and hour, did you pull your your data? And did the overnight feed already go through in, you know, the UK? And yeah, yeah, it's so data is imperfect. But we get hung up on that. It's always just an indicator, like, we know that things. You know, if someone said to you, it's 72 degrees out today, well, do you just sort of trust that, like, it's kind of around this weather where I'm going to put this kind of clothing on? Yeah, like, do we need to know exactly 71 or 73?

 

David Turetsky: 9:24

So if you lived in Massachusetts, you'd have to wear a sweater in the morning, because it's probably 50.

 

Sheryl Herle: 9:28

Yeah, just layer up and go on with your day. Right? But we get really hung up on the numbers and, and trying to point the finger that, well, your data is wrong, and therefore we dismiss the whole discussion that goes along with it.

 

Susan Richards: 9:42

One of the things that we're really focused on from now until the next couple of years is trying to help our HR partners become better business people. And our data tells us that for the last five to seven years, there's not been a marked increase in the number of organizations that say their HR partners are truly strategic partners, it's like 46% right now. And our goal is to help, and it has been static for the last five to seven years. And we're really trying to work with our HR partners to help them get better stats. So we're encouraging and challenging our HR partners to get to 55%, being seen as a strategic partner by the 2025 HR Technology Conference, so that we can report out better data or better results. And one of the ways that I think we can do that is start at the individual level, and work with those HR partners, those data technologist to help them start to tell the story around their data. And rather than backing away when someone challenges their data, explain what's behind the data, tell the story with the data.

 

Sheryl Herle: 10:54

And be confident about yours, even though they're guidelines or directional numbers.

 

Susan Richards: 10:59

Yeah, I mean, there's they're always reasons.

 

David Turetsky: 11:02

Exactly. You don't need a page of assumptions, you just need to be confident in what you say.

 

Susan Richards: 11:07

Right, and be able to, and be able to talk about it intelligently. And in the terms that the rest of the business can understand.

 

David Turetsky: 11:14

Absolutely.

 

Teri Zipper: 11:15

That just means that the people at the board level from an HR perspective, whether that's the CHRO, or the VP of talent, or the head of compensation, who's oftentimes at the board meeting, right? They can defend those numbers, right. It's not just about, you know, being able to give them the reports, they've got to be able to defend the data. And that was one of the things we talked about at our session was the fact that the practitioner, the people on the HR, functional side, need to really understand their technology, and what they've got, how it's driving, helping drive the business, and you know, how it's generating business outcomes for them.

 

David Turetsky: 11:52

Well, one of the reasons why we got this reputation is because we didn't know the business, we were administrators. And we were pen, pencil pushers, or paper pushers, or both. And a lot of times, and you guys,

 

Susan Richards: 12:07

Now we're button pushers.

 

Sheryl Herle: 12:10

In many ways!

 

David Turetsky: 12:12

But because what we've done is we've just taken the forms we had in that manila envelope, the personnel action form, and just made it webified, automated. And is it adding more value? Well, no, not really. And so we're still managing those processes, even during COVID. What did HR have to do, we had to count people, we had to figure out whether they were home shorter, they were still coming to office what they had to, and we were still doing a lot of the, I guess you can say compliance work for the government on, you know, the COVID numbers. And so instead of being seen as cheerleaders, which we're not, instead of seeing being seen as strategists, which we're trying to be, we were seen is that connective tissue, which is a nice thing to be thought of, but we still weren't adding the business value, or we still weren't seen as adding the business value, to be strategic.

 

Susan Richards: 13:07

And I think a lot of my HR colleagues were afraid to step in that limelight. They were they were afraid because they, they weren't confident in the data, they weren't confident in their processes, they weren't confident that they were going to be able to stand up and defend what they were telling the business.

 

David Turetsky: 13:26

And by the way, from what I've seen about the data, they have absolutely every right to not feel confident about the data. And that's something we just got to get better at.

 

Susan Richards: 13:36

Gotta fix that!

 

David Turetsky: 13:38

But it's not the technology's fault. It's the processes we put into the technologies that have messed it up. And so a lot of times, what we're doing is spending time fixing those processes, fixing the underlying whether it's the onboarding process, or whether it's the job change process, or promotion process, to codify things better.

 

Teri Zipper: 13:58

And I don't think that's going to change. I mean, given the number of processes that we have, and the acquisitions and the business growth. To me, I mean, fixing people's data is a retirement strategy.

 

Susan Richards: 14:11

It's never gonna be perfect!

 

Teri Zipper: 14:13

Never gonna end at some level. I mean, some companies are really, really good at it, but there's always gonna be somebody who needs it, right? It's always, I always tell my husband, you know, they'll see somebody dressed in this outfit that looks like it's from the 70s. Right, and he's got the 70s hairdo and everything. And it's like, it's always somebody 70s. Okay. It's always the 70s for someone. And I think, you know, same way for data, it's always going to be somebody 70s

 

Sheryl Herle: 14:38

Yeah, I don't think I've been in an organization for any length of time when you kind of really dig into the data, and then someone will tell you, Oh, that field, oh, well, that was because we needed a field to stick things into and that one allowed for six digits. So we actually stuck the hire date in that field. But when you pull it on a report, it actually means something like, but you have to have that legacy knowledge to figure that out. And to your point around acquisitions and stuff. We're seeing more and more of that. And I think you know, there is something to be challenged out to the vendors that are here too, because they rush implementations and they don't go in and they don't care about the client's data. And I don't know how we ever get that to happen. But you know, they're layering on the fancy systems, but no one's going in and doing the core work. And that never gets included in business cases to go back and clean data. And it's always just like, we need to get this done now. And you know, so you're still just serving up nice dashboards in a different look. But you're not actually changing, you know, the data, and the numbers that are coming through.

 

Susan Richards: 15:34

Well that's expensive!

 

Teri Zipper: 15:34

Well of course they don't look like what they're supposed to look like, because the data is a mess. You get your first report, you're like?

 

David Turetsky: 15:41

Yeah, this looks like crap. What we've been telling people going through an acquisition is add in time, and add in budget, to fix the damn data and process before you go into a new system. It's kind of like taking all your old crap from your old car, and taking a brand new car and taking all the dust and the mold...

 

Sheryl Herle: 16:00

and the French fries under the seat?

 

David Turetsky: 16:02

Exactly. And just throwing it into the new car. You'd never do that, would you? Well, why would you do that with your HR system? And that's exactly what we're doing. You're not going to extract the old oil, you're not going to take the oil filter, you're not going to take the gas out of the old car, leave it there. Start fresh.

 

Sheryl Herle: 16:17

Yeah. But this goes back to how things are business case. And this is like a passion for me is, you know, let's really think about what this project is going to take, let's not just take the number that we got from the vendor, and pad that a little bit and stick that in our business case, you know, the vendor is giving us one thing, but again, they're gonna rush us through an implementation because they want to go live, and they want to recognize the revenue. And then you get into a project and you realize you don't have the time and the money and the people and the resources and the right skills to actually deal with the data. So then you're like, Well, we're gonna go live, because we've already set a date. But we'll just work on the data later. But it doesn't work.

 

David Turetsky: 16:51

Well, one of the things I've told companies who are in that situation is, before you even start with the vendor selection, what are your goals? Are you just changing systems because somebody thinks, what was the term? He never got fired for implementing Workday?

 

Sheryl Herle: 17:05

Yeah. Well, back in the day, it was a different vendor. But yeah.

 

David Turetsky: 17:10

Why are you moving systems? What was the critical issue that that system wasn't doing?

 

Sheryl Herle: 17:15

What are you trying to solve?

 

David Turetsky: 17:16

What are you trying to solve for, and then ask what the return on your investment is going to be? And one of those should be, we're going to get a new system that has new capabilities that we don't have right now. Because our company is growing, and the old system can't handle it. Right? That's important.

 

Sheryl Herle: 17:31

And so what we hear in the survey and why people are moving is like the clients are screaming out and saying, We just can't do enough with our data. So great, we've got these BI tools, we can do nice dashboards, but we don't have the skills, we didn't spend the time doing the training and the project. So we've got this live tool, but no one who knows how to use it. And most people that we're finding in the research are sitting on a system that's five to seven years old right now. And so what we're seeing this year is they're ready to change the reporting analytics tools. And a huge portion of them, which is kind of surprising is they're not using the tools that are embedded in the platforms. So vendors are building all these tool sets, and clients still aren't using them. And they're moving more to core, you know, BI tools that are layered on top of data warehouses. So you know, we're seeing Microsoft BI take over market, more market share, and surprisingly, like even Google and Amazon's analytics tools, you know, so it's, it's changing the industry a little right. And we've got vendors here, they're spending a ton of money trying to put together the nicer dashboard and more capability on the dashboard. But then we hear clients who are survey saying, Oh, I couldn't change how it looked. So I still had to export it and move it over to Excel so that I could move it into our colors or, you know,

 

David Turetsky: 18:46

Because we all know, colors are one of the most important things when you're reviewing a dashboard.

 

Sheryl Herle: 18:50

Absolutely. Because, you know, see those bar charts in the wrong colors, obviously doesn't mean anything.

 

Teri Zipper: 18:56

One of the things we had in our presentation in the workshop on Monday was a question about how do you know when it's time to change your HRIS system? And the first thing that popped into my head was that every answer from the HRIS team is that it's a data export.

 

Susan Richards: 19:14

Right, right.

 

Teri Zipper: 19:15

Like every time you need to do something, well, we just need to export the data.

 

Sheryl Herle: 19:19

So it means you're working around your system. Right? You're not actually using it anymore. Yeah.

 

Teri Zipper: 19:23

I mean, I felt like that was sort of the number one.

 

David Turetsky: 19:26

So let's talk about that for a second tools exists today that API's are there, that ETL is exist, that, in fact, ETL is exists to the extent that they have the native interfaces already built with most of the systems on this floor where they don't need to leave. Maybe what they're really needing is a better integration tool that enables them to get out the data the way they want to and be able to then use the Power BI or the whatever the tableau or whatever the tool set is du jour.

 

Sheryl Herle: 20:02

And then we have to recognize we've come a long way, right? It's not all custom reports. So you had to write out your requirements and send them into it and wait for 18 months to get your report spit out, right? Like there's a lot of tools and reports that are packaged within these systems, right? Like many of these, these vendors, they've got 800 custom reports are already in the, 800 package reports are already in there, some that you can customize, but people will always find a unique way. It's like ingredients for a menu right. They're always gonna want to take them and make it into something a little bit different.

 

David Turetsky: 20:30

Because Nana did it that way.

 

Sheryl Herle: 20:31

Yeah, exactly.

 

David Turetsky: 20:32

No, seriously.

 

Sheryl Herle: 20:33

I don't like it, placed like that, right? So there will always be reasons why people want to play with their data and make it look different. But I think the other interesting thing I'm seeing at this show is that some of that AI is coming in to some of the analytics tools where it's not just, here's how you visualize and, you know, 50 million different metrics you can put on a dashboard. But a few of the vendors that I talked to today are now building in these little smart nudges, if you will. So watching absentee data, and then suddenly sending the manager a nudge to say, hey, you know, Cheryl's been off four times the last six weeks, can someone check in with her? And I think that's what's getting,

 

David Turetsky: 21:08

I think that's a cry for help by the way.

 

Sheryl Herle: 21:09

Oh, yeah.

 

Susan Richards: 21:10

You don't think that's ethical?

 

David Turetsky: 21:11

No. I mean, I think what you're telling them is that you need to have a conversation.

 

Sheryl Herle: 21:15

Yeah, you need to have a conversation.

 

David Turetsky: 21:19

Do I think it's ethical? No I think it's phenomenal! I think it's wonderful! You'll never process it.

 

Sheryl Herle: 21:22

I think it is too, because it's like, nobody has Right? But when it suddenly gets fired off to HR, time. And nor are you gonna watch that kind of stuff on a and it gets fired off to the manager to say, can someone just dashboard as a manager. No, right? check in, there's something what something anomaly or some anomaly is showing up in the data, right? So let's let's ping somebody to look at the anomaly, rather than just looking at reports and numbers and metrics.

 

David Turetsky: 21:45

What's the harm in it, too? We're not talking about talking about arrays or talking about why they might be leaving, they're not saying that it's saying, you know, give Sheryl a call. And those are things where ethics aren't a problem, where we start getting into the ethical problems is, is that Well, Cheryl hasn't been promoted in certain period of time, maybe you should talk to her about that, and tell her what the other job openings are going to be? Well,

 

Susan Richards: 22:10

Hint hint.

 

David Turetsky: 22:11

exactly. Well. So the problem with that is, is that first of all, I don't really know that you're about to leave. And I don't know if you really hate your job. And maybe if I introduce those other concepts, you're gonna be like, do Teri and Susan want me to leave? Why are they telling me about this?

 

Sheryl Herle: 22:29

The data nudge shouldn't cause actions that are just not thought about, right, like the data can always only be robotized, so much men, you need a human to kind of look at and go, Okay, so this is what this is telling me. And this is what I should probably do, right?

 

Susan Richards: 22:42

And that human actually has to make judgment calls and have some common sense about them. They can't look at a policy and say, This is what I do in this situation. And my experience with some of our newer managers, is that they're looking for that not even a recipe book, but a checklist of exactly what I do when, and, and critical thinking skills, I think, are at a premium at this point.

 

David Turetsky: 23:10

Well, training managers has always been a challenge, right? How do you train good management technique? How do you use signals that you're getting to be able to find the right time to have that conversation or not to and there are tons of companies out on the floor that have automated, and especially one that I used to work with ADP, that it used to automate it, have an automated push to the manager about here's things we see in your organization. And here's how you should be communicating to your teams. Now, whether the managers did that or not, was really based on their background, but it was trying to push the managers in the back to actually have what should have been proactive and positive conversations. But managers did not have training, or they didn't think managers needed to training to be able to utilize those things. And so it's still you know, it's the Peter Principle, you're promoting someone to their greatest level of inadequacy or incompetence. Hey, are you listening to this and thinking to yourself, Man, I wish I could talk to David about this? Well, you're in luck. We have a special offer for listeners of the HR Data Labs podcast, a free half hour call with me about any of the topics we cover on the podcast, or whatever is on your mind. Go to salary.com/HRDLconsulting, to schedule your FREE 30 minute call today. So we've seen then that there are certain groups on the floor that are nudging and using AI to kind of give hints as to what people might do with the data and with the analytics. What else have you seen that's kind of been interesting to you as you've walked the floor and as you looked at your research,

 

Sheryl Herle: 24:57

I think what's fascinating when you know immediately walk on the floor, see some of the vendor brand names that are now huge. I'm like, Whoa, like, I remember these guys in startup mode six years ago, like they're huge now, right? So people are looking for third party BI solutions. It's definitely a category that's growing within the whole HR tech space.

 

David Turetsky: 25:17

I think one of them you might be talking about is like Visier. Yes, right?

 

Sheryl Herle: 25:20

Yeah, I mean they are a good old Canadian company.

 

David Turetsky: 25:22

They are not a start up anymore!

 

Sheryl Herle: 25:23

No, not at all.

 

David Turetsky: 25:24

Yeah, they're like the 800 pound gorilla. And what I wanted to talk to you about about those are think about that kind of a company. What they are right now is a data ingestion and a data platform that it provides out of the box just incredible analytics. I'm a big fan of Visier's. And we've had a lot of their folks on the program. In fact, we have Ian Cook tomorrow, we had Zack Johnson today. And one of the things I love about Visier is, is that they don't try and do too much. But they have those pieces or those modules that people can adopt. And over time, they can grow and take everything, or they can just focus on little things. And they are actually doing a lot of embedding, too. Yeah. So I love what they're trying to do. But there are obviously lots of new competitors in the space as well.

 

Sheryl Herle: 26:06

Well, my fear for them is that they're specific to HR. And I think, what is if you want to think predictions, now I think, you know, the folks like the Microsoft are going to win out, right? Because they're always going to be selling into that CIO. And we're going to have that core technology infrastructure that, you know, someone is always going to say, Well, we've already got that, why do we need to go and get a special HR, you know, analytics tool. Analytics is analytics at the end of the day. So why aren't we just using the tools we've already got?

 

David Turetsky: 26:34

And we'll build out the domain because we know it, right? We know how to do headcount report, we know how to calculate turnover. And so that's one of those things, though, that they underestimate when they start the project, and then building it out on Power BI. And then they realized later on that the domain wasn't suited.

 

Sheryl Herle: 26:51

And then my other fear on Power BI is it takes a skill set to use. So we go right back to where we were 15 years ago about writing our requirement and putting it into the specialists in the IT department to get our HR report out. Right?

 

Teri Zipper: 27:03

Well, I think that, you know, it's one of the things I said to the people at Visier was, you know, they almost need to be the Intel inside, right? Nobody wants to buy a dashboard, you know, and look at your analytics, they want those analytics in the process.

 

Sheryl Herle: 27:24

But the beauty too that, and I'm gonna say it in the Canadian way, Visier, when they first started one of their competitive advantages was they had the benchmark data, or they at least had the KPIs and the metrics kind of sorted out for HR. They said, these are the 100 things that HR should track. And so we've already built that into the product. And that was brilliant. And that was only what, 8? 10 years ago, whatever it was, I don't know, time flies, but nobody else was doing that. They were just saying, well tell us what your data is. And then we can show you how to make it look pretty, right. And they took it that extra step, right. So I hope we don't lose that because we need that we need that consistent KPI data model in our industry. And we all have to start comparing apples to apples, right? So we can make the argument to that, well, Power BI doesn't work for us. Because we're not finance, we don't have the same metrics as finance, we don't have the same metrics as sales, right? We have very specific industry benchmarks that we track and monitor.

 

David Turetsky: 28:17

But remember that conversation we had before about that crappy data in HR, and sticking that six digit code in that field instead of hire date? That's the problem. If you're going to plug in any system, like Power BI or whatever, and somebody's going to use standards to say, here's how turnover gets calculated. If you didn't use the fields as they should have been, then you have a lot of work to do to fix what was broken on implementation. And so that means when you go to Visier, Visier sorry, they actually accommodate for that in the implementation. You know, if you've screwed up your field mapping, don't fix it.

 

Sheryl Herle: 28:57

Let's make this work.

 

David Turetsky: 28:59

Yeah, they make it work part of the implementation strategy. So a lot of this comes back to data and comes back to can you afford to have crappy data in your core HR system, because it's going to drive a lot of the behaviors that you have in ingesting and utilizing the people analytics going forward.

 

Sheryl Herle: 29:18

Right. And this is where HR needs to get more strategic too because there's so much data. So how do you really zero in on what's important and what drives the business? And what, what metrics executives need to pay attention to?

 

David Turetsky: 29:28

And that's why I go back to the core processes and develop all of those data, and to try and fix the most important impactful like onboarding and then promotion, job change, termination. And what does that affect? That affects term reasons, that affects the job table, that affects the core employee demographics? And then we can talk about DE&I, right? Can't do DE&I metrics without actually having a lot of that employee demographics data and having it correct.

 

Sheryl Herle: 29:57

Yeah, so this is what it is a little insight into tomorrow morning because We're so close to sneak out some of our findings. But one of the questions that we ask HR is, so what are you using this data for? Right? What are you using your HR analytics tools for? And compliance used to be top of the list for years, right? Of course, we're just we're just producing reports for compliance. What was beautiful to see this year is that HR metrics in general are generally, you know, still leading. But DE&I was number two this year.

 

David Turetsky: 30:23

That's awesome!

 

Sheryl Herle: 30:24

HR has has now started to shift and use their data for the pertinent business issues that are happening today. Because the next one on the list is employee engagement. And then we've got retention and managing HR costs, you know, so it's all stuff that we're seeing right now around, who are we hiring? How are we doing in that? You know, well, recruitment market, how are we retaining people in today's hot competition market?

 

Susan Richards: 30:47

So I'd like to see more progress over the next Right. couple of years in business focused metrics for HR. So I love

 

Sheryl Herle: 30:58

Not just headcount!

 

Susan Richards: 30:59

Yeah, I love the fact that DEI is number two, I'd love to see something like, you know, return on investment, or time to productivity, you know, productivity per employee or revenue generated per employee. And those are the things that the business cares about. And so we, as HR professionals, have to get out there, ask the business, what is it that you need from us? And it's not a turnover report. It's not a headcount report.

 

David Turetsky: 31:27

Totally. Yeah. Because the managers get that and they yawn.

 

Susan Richards: 31:32

They don't care!

 

David Turetsky: 31:32

They have, they don't have any business use for that, unless they're being asked for headcount reduction. And then you're showing them their headcount numbers, and they go alright I'll take the top 10%.

 

Sheryl Herle: 31:42

And even that they're, you know, someone needs to translate that into a what's our actual labor cost, then if our headcount has moved from this to that, how has that affected the bottom line?

 

David Turetsky: 31:50

Right. But but it's another thing, you know, maybe I'm going to get more complicated than I need to, but then let's talk about what skills we're going to lose if we lose those people. And are we going to have to hire back at more money later on those exact skills, which are going to walk out the door.

 

Susan Richards: 32:05

You mean we're gonna hire them back as consultants?

 

David Turetsky: 32:08

For more money. Thank goodness. But but this is where we always make that big mistake, right? We always let people go and then realize later on, oh, shit, we need that skill! Hire them back.

 

Susan Richards: 32:26

That instutional knowledge, that skill set.

 

Sheryl Herle: 32:28

And if we really get to a world where we've got some of our vendors that are playing in this talent mobility space really being effective in the next five years or so, you know, what, what are the new HR metrics look like then? Right, because we're just moving talent around. And hopefully, there's good metrics about what that movement does for the organization, not just counting FTEs.

 

David Turetsky: 32:46

I wish they cared about that. I wish they cared about it now, especially as we're going into, you know, a recession or recessionary period. Because now they're, they need that data now.

 

Sheryl Herle: 32:57

Yeah. And actually, that's interesting. We just had a chat about this, before we roll in here was seeing some players in the market now that are working on analytics solutions for who you off board. When you're faced with, we got to cut the labor force by 20%, or whatever magic number is going to happen during a recession. Right. But how do you start doing that? And doing it with some sort of data? And some, you know, some some criteria that's pumped through a system as opposed to just some subjective exercise.

 

Teri Zipper: 33:28

Right now. It's a list of salaries, right? Where can I cut the biggest the fastest?

 

Sheryl Herle: 33:32

Yeah, but one manager is thinking that and the other managers thinking, Well, I'm just going to cut people that are going to be the most expensive to severence that have been here the longest, right, even though they may not have the highest salaries. So how do you take you know, some problem like that, and apply the right data criteria and run that against your database and at least create the shortlist and says, Okay, here's 1000 people that meet that criteria. But now, you know, to our point, put the, the logical human judgement on there, right, and then make a judgment based on that And, you know, maybe we should look at first what postings we shortlist. have openand see if there's any way.

 

Teri Zipper: 34:02

You mean maybe we should be moving people around?

 

Susan Richards: 34:07

You mean, talent mobility?

 

David Turetsky: 34:12

Yes. Yeah.

 

Susan Richards: 34:13

Yeah, that's still an issue. It was an issue. It was interesting that that last year in our data, that was one of our most significant findings is that organizations even crying out for talent, and having hundreds of openings still weren't leveraging the talent that they have in their organization. And this idea of, I can't let Suzy go because Suzy is too important to my organization. You know, Suzy is gonna walk out the door.

 

David Turetsky: 34:43

Managerial myopia.

 

Susan Richards: 34:45

Yeah. Yeah.

 

David Turetsky: 34:47

And that's also affording.

 

Sheryl Herle: 34:48

Yeah, so I was just gonna say,

 

Teri Zipper: 34:49

Yeah, according FTE if you don't want to lose that headcount. So well, don't let that talent move around.

 

David Turetsky: 34:54

Well we used to encourage managers at many of the organizations I worked for, Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank, we encourage managers to premote people or let them go. Because we had analysts, we had the feeder programs that we could use to bring in other people, and keep putting people through the career ladder. And so we didn't like holding on to talent. And that's why I went to London to do the comp manager role in London for Morgan Stanley because they said, Hey, you're the best comp analyst that we have in the US. Do you want to go overseas and actually be a comp manager? And I was like, Yeah! They said, Have you ever been to London? No. Are you sure you want to do this? I'm in my 20s. Yeah. But they encourage that kind stuff!

 

Sheryl Herle: 35:41

Well, and I worked for the opposite organizations who many of them had a policy where you couldn't move anywhere within a year, right. So even though the job board is open for you, once you become an employee in the organization's 40, 50, 60,000 people big and tons of opportunity, you may have landed in the wrong department or wrong role or not even knew that this other job function existed. But now you couldn't move within a year. And it was just sort of ridiculous HR policy.

 

David Turetsky: 36:03

This is where policies trip us up all the freakin time! Why do we still have that crap? Do they still exist? And if they do, why! Always ask that three letter question. Why? Why do we allow ourselves to get like put in that position? And here's how the technology gets in your way. Because when

 

Sheryl Herle: 36:17

Yeah. But I mean, when you think about now, how systems can play a game in that, like, if I could not have to go tell my manager, I was even looking at the job board, God forbid. But if I could just indicate that I was interested in the move, and then someone else could say, okay, you know, here's a flag again, why is this person six months in and not liking current role, but still interested in staying with our you log into the career site, it says you're not eligible to company, and now interested in a lateral move? Someone needs to talk to her but maybe not her manager? Because that's review careers yet, because you've only been here one year. obviously a sensitivity.

 

David Turetsky: 36:45

Well, yeah, today they have the policy built into the system to shut you out! That sucks! Why do we do that? It's just killing us! We're kneecapping ourselves. We're literally Tonya Harding ourselves, if that's still a phrase.

 

Susan Richards: 37:03

So the interesting thing that I usually find when I asked six levels of why I'm working with a client, and I say, this is the way we do it, well, why are we doing it that way? Well, because because this is good practice, or this is best practice or consultant told us to do it. Or why did they tell you to do it that way, and you keep digging. And ultimately, what you get down to is somebody somewhere 20 years ago, made a mistake, and got smacked for it. Their, their CEO was upset, their head of HR was upset, you know, it got out in the public. And so instead of solving for that problem, they've solved for the edge case,

 

David Turetsky: 37:51

and codified it

 

Susan Richards: 37:52

and codified it! And now, now, it's like a best practice. It's like, what in the world are we doing?

 

David Turetsky: 37:59

Yeah.

 

Sheryl Herle: 38:01

So I think one of the things that I, you know, you're making me think about this, that, you know, HR isn't thinking right now, they're swamped, right? They're barely able to keep their head above water. They, they've lost a ton of women in the workforce. And let's face it, mostly women in HR still, and, you know, they can't recruit fast enough. So are they really going to think about their data this year or next year? Probably not.

 

David Turetsky: 38:24

But God, I hope so! Because without it, we're not going to be able to make good business decisions to Susan's point.

 

Sheryl Herle: 38:30

Of course not. Yeah, and they also think that they're not going to take on big projects in the next couple of years. Because they, they're just literally keeping their heads above water, like every HR person I know, is so burnt out. And you know, so as much as I see all these vendors here, and I think some of them are fabulous, and absolutely every company should be using you. I just wonder if we're going to see a real slowdown in IT projects in general, because we just don't have the capacity to absorb those projects right now.

 

David Turetsky: 38:57

And we might catch it in the well, we can't afford it

 

Sheryl Herle: 39:00

And the fear of recession. And we better not spend money because what if? Yeah, so you know, my fingers are crossed that we're getting better, we're smarter, but are we actually going to take action in the next year or two?

 

David Turetsky: 39:11

Have you ever thought about why we shouldn't be leaning into investments in downturns so that when the growth comes, we're able to actually handle it?

 

Sheryl Herle: 39:19

The airline industry is a perfect example right now. We should have been leaning in two years ago and getting ready for the flight traffic to come back.

 

David Turetsky: 39:27

And Minnesota with the nurses situation right? Obviously nurses are a really big commodity right now. And now the nurses are out on strike. And they're in a really great position because employees are basically demanding and they're getting.

 

Susan Richards: 39:43

Well, I actually look forward to working with some of those courageous contrarian organizations that are willing to keep moving. And yes, we may go into a recession. Yes, we are still going to have a war for talent. Yes, we're still gonna have all kinds of issues. And yes, we still have to solve business problems. And I'm actually looking forward to finding some of those organizations who are are willing to keep pushing forward.

 

Sheryl Herle: 40:12

Yeah. And hopefully finding smart organizations that say, you know, what we know, you know, our operations or our sales is going to slow down for the next one to two years during a recession. But let's not make that a cut for HR too, right? Because they kept these core functions employed and spinning the wheel and moving things forward in that sort of slow period. You know, imagine what it could be when it comes back.

 

David Turetsky: 40:33

Exactly. Let's fix the ship that's broken, so that when the wheels start spinning fast, we all don't fall off.

 

Susan Richards: 40:40

And can we break some shit that has been in place too long?

 

David Turetsky: 40:45

And ask six levels of why. Yes, definitely. Sapient Insights, it's always a pleasure to talk to you. And we always go on for so much longer than everybody else, because we have such cool things to talk about. Thank you so much.

 

Sheryl Herle: 41:09

Thank you.

 

Teri Zipper: 41:10

Thanks.

 

Susan Richards: 41:10

Thanks, David.

 

David Turetsky: 41:12

And hopefully next year, we'll come back and talk and there wouldn't have been a recession and all those companies that we were talking about did great.

 

Sheryl Herle: 41:21

We'll bring some HR clients.

 

Susan Richards: 41:23

I was gonna say we'll bring some of those courageous organizations with us. That's great.

 

David Turetsky: 41:28

Thank you very much. Take care.

 

Announcer: 41:31

That was the HR Data Labs podcast. If you liked the episode, please subscribe. And if you know anyone that might like to hear it, please send it their way. Thank you for joining us this week, and stay tuned for our next episode. Stay safe.