IF INTERESTED #169: HR Tech Stack Part III - Talent Management

Return of the Talent Management

hi,

This is the third and final part of the HR Tech Stack series. This issue will be about talent management tools: performance management software, succession planning, employee listening and talent marketplace.

Again, I am not an expert in software, my notes and experiences aim to start good conversations, not to make definitive conclusions.

1. Performance Management Software:

Chances are that you are using the performance management tool of your Human Capital Management (HCM) Software, that is either Workday, SuccessFactors (SAP) or Oracle. Especially if you are a big enterprise, with multiple locations and couple of thousand employees. In that case, you are bound by the functionality and user experience of your HCM. Given that data on performance and potential is used in almost all HR areas, having those interfaces and information in the HCM is not a bad thing.

Before I move to other players in the market, I should mention Microsoft Viva. Microsoft bought Ally.io a while back and integrated their goal setting and OKR follow up features to MS Viva, which will surely connect directly to your emails and Teams chats. It is a big thing, given how smart Viva is becoming, every feedback email can then be used as suggestions like “you gave good feedback to Sara about the report, do you want to add that to her goal evaluation?”. MS Viva will soon emerge as a good performance management tool.

Other players aside from the HCM Performance Management modules:

Notwithstanding the large enterprises bound by their HCM, there is still a big market demand from SMEs (small - medium enterprises) to have inexpensive and more nimble performance management software. That makes the market lively, there are dozens of decent tools with smart and easy to use functionality.

Here is a recent page that has a good list and a comparison: Comparison of Best Performance Appraisal and Management Software

There are software like 15Five, that I have never heard of, which looks simple and fit for purpose for smaller businesses.

A few examples include Trakstar, BambooHR, Engagedly, Namely (yes, they are real software products, not random nicknames from high school kids). 15Five is one that I have never heard of, which looks simple and fit for purpose for smaller businesses. You can find the links in the first comparison page I posted above.

Below is a screenshot from “Namely”. Looks decent, also has recognition elements and some reporting tabs.

Trakster’s approach below looks simple but covers all essentials, supports Mac and Windows, has additional engagement and applicant tracking modules.

In short, this is a huge market with good players if you are a small to midsize business.

What to look for in a performance management software:

1. For HCM Modules, I will repeat my broad approach: Stick to their standard flows and screens. Every organisation wants to have their own customised flow but those HCMs have seen many organisations, and customising what they have will only create headache for data integrations, interfaces, etc. I am talking about the flows, where to click, and what to evaluate after which step. The definitions are up to each organisation.

2. Design flexibility. Almost all performance management modules of HCMs have flexibility for you to design your performance management scales (three scales, five scales etc), potential definitions and 9-box grids if you want to. They will even allow you to create “what” and “how” approaches for performance evaluation. If they don’t have that flexibility, then you need to look for a separate tool. Every 5 years, your company will change the definition or scales or performance management so, tool fields should be flexible.

3. Feedback flexibility. Easy to get feedback from stakeholders and customers (famous 360). Simple interface to ask for feedback, something like an Uber driver rating, that can be sent and evaluated right on that page with a few sentences. The questions here should be designed by thoughtful talent management experts, questions like “would you work with this person again with a complex assignment” are good ways to collect data. Obviously simple functionality like having anonymous feedback from a group of people should be there as well.

4. Simple definitions, visible, everywhere. Leaders sometimes forget about the details of definitions. What does “high potential” mean? should be in the relevant page popping up and reminding the users. Those add-on softwares are called tooltip or user onboarding companies. There are many of them in the market.

5. Easy note taking for the manager. Real time notes are powerful, we don’t want the leaders to sit with a blank canvas at the end of the year thinking about the performance or potential of their people. On the spot feedback requires a very easy interface and must be almost one click away. No leader will take those notes otherwise. Why can we not record short voice messages for our future selves about the performance of our people? And then the software transcripts that and puts in the goal evaluation field? Or send a short voice message through the system to our employee? It is easy, really.

6. A good mobile app. (which seems impossible for HCMs, their mobile apps are just bad). The quality of the app will drive adoption. The performance check-in’s (that don’t take place near as often as we in HR delude ourselves in to thinking they do), can be converted to easy one line messages in the app. “Well done, good insightful facilitation and on-time first phase completion”, sent through the app after the project meeting, and saved in the system.. Wouldn’t that be a delight.

7. Additional data flexibility. You should be able to add insights from conversations about the future aspirations, the skills they need to develop, the skill they developed most, etc. The software should allow this information to be entered easily and the interfaces designed quickly.

8. Reporting and analytics. This is not only showing bar charts about how many of your people received exceptional performance. The software should have more advanced insight based dashboards. Easy for the leaders to combine custom views like engagement trends vs salary evolution for high performing employees for the past 5 years. Yes, I am serious : ).

2. Succession Planning:

I haven’t seen a separate Succession Planning software, they come together with performance management software, or as a module in HCM.

I will not go deeper into succession planning software. I always have seen succession planning modules as applicant tracking systems. The moment you see all your roles (that you are planning succession for) as roles you are recruiting, and keep a detailed list of short, mid and long term candidates with their matched skills and to be developed skills, you have a pretty decent succession module.

3. Employee Listening and Employee Engagement:

Employee listening requires a separate issue for definition, focusing on the difference from employee engagement. As I am focusing on the software side of the practices, I will be brief about the difference: Employee listening is much more frequent and relies on operational data from any employee touch point as much as survey data from employees. Dystopian examples are “employees who haven’t opened CEO letters in the past 6 months are disengaged and more likely to leave”. That insight about opening CEO letters is operational data that Microsoft Viva produces and can be a much better predictor of attrition. Or significant decrease in the number of people the employee is interacting in Slack or Teams. This is operational data, that is a significant addition on basic employee engagement surveys, but can easyly go wrong and cause unethical practices.

Having covered that difference in a very basic and brief way, I will now focus on the software. Let me start by saying no platform has reached the full “employee listening” place, but employee experience platforms will be able to provide that operational data soon.

Some Employee Engagement players in the market:

1. HCMs have their own employee engagement modules. Similar to ATS (Applicant Tracking System) use them only if you have to use them. If you don’t have the additional budget or resources for a separate software. Most of those employee engagement survey results are not being used by businesses, if you feel that your organisation is also one of those, then don’t spend more money on additional software, just use what you have.

2. Perceptyx. One of the top players in the market. I like their user experience, simplicity and functionality. They have done some good acquisitions in recent years. Especially their acquisition of Cultivate, a, platform to monitor and analyse, communications on email, and other channels. Here is more information about this. This makes Perceptyx closer to an employee listening platform and a much better “coach” for leaders, an important aspect of this market I will mention below. In short, they are a top player, but I have no experience with their scientific expertise about surveys and organisational psychology.

3. Glint. Glint has a good real time survey reporting interface. The user experience is clunky, and not close to a smooth consumer grade experience but better than the conventional employee engagement tools. I found their approach to their customers too rigid, to receive good interpretations, extra analysis were almost impossible. Personally, that is enough for me to take them out as a potential partner. I also am not sure about their scientific organisational psychology advice. They way one asks questions are important, will tell more soon. Their mobile app is ok.

4. Culture Amp. They position themselves as more of an employee experience platform, with employee engagement, performance management and development tools. They received a decent 100 million USD funding last year and focus on their “Culture First” motto with a broader employee experience approach. I think they are far from that goal, but have a good analytics and predictive warning tools for leaders. Good to check them out.

5. Qualtrics. Bought by SAP recently, Qualtrics is an employee engagement and also customer satisfaction / brand awareness tool. They position themselves as an XM Tool (Experience Management Tool). I don’t have first hand experience with Qualtrics, but the power of being in the consumer business and leveraging that expertise in employee engagement could be powerful.

There are some other players in the market, but the four make a good short list. Microsoft can and will do something in this arena soon. Their future of work report was a good pilot that tested their abilities.

What to look for:

1. Scientific Expertise in Organisational Psychology and Survey Methods. This is the most important criteria for me. Companies that can offer decent advise about “how to ask, which question, when and to understand what” are not easy to find. Asking questions and doing surveys are an art form. Check out this short article from Pew Research to get a glimpse. The moment you see a employee engagement company showing up with good university partnerships and a few academic people on your doorstep, then you probably are in better hands. I haven’t seen this yet, companies are quick to offer some shady scientific background, good to question those references.

2. Analytics and Reporting. Good predictive analytics coupled with AI powered sentiment and NLP analyses will be a differentiator. Perceptyx is the more advanced one here, I believe. Good to check that they can go beyond the cliche “underlying reasons” balloon visuals and really get a good grasp of the free text answers.

3. Coaching and Nudges. Can we admit that few leaders use action planning module of these tools. However, an informed and AI based coaching, as Cultivate claims they do, can go a long way. Something like “with the results and trends you have, considering the demographics of your team, the best impact we have seen in the market is to do XYZ”. Merge those insights with some operational data e.g. “stop sending emails after 19.00, as your work life balance score is trending low”. We are not far from that, but it can go dystopian real fast. Caution required.

4. Market Benchmark. I am not sure about that, every company is crazy about seeing a market benchmark for their engagement scores. The value is questionable at best. I want to quote Rob Briner here: “Benchmarking is a lazy way of saying “does this matter or are we fine”. Every company is different, and all results require a thoughtful conversation, telling ourselves “we are better than the benchmark” is not good enough.

5. Easy to use and integrate with a good mobile app. The usual stuff. If the company is proud to say that they can get the survey data real time, it means they live in 2005, skip them. These are basics.

   A good mobile app is more important than other HR practices here. The easy collection of sentiment, on the spot feedback and rating are only possible with a good app and interface. Equally the reporting and data analytics interfaces should be easy to use, informative and mobile.

   An integration to the performance management and development tools will be good if you want to follow up the leadership skill development. I haven’t seen that integration yet.

4. Talent Marketplace

This is the future of intentional talent development and intentional talent flow. I have talked about this at length in my IF INTERESTED #158 here. In short, there are 2 viable options here:

1. Gloat

2. Eightfold

I have also mentioned them in the ATS section in Part I of this series. HCMs are putting considerable resources to develop their own Talent Marketplace modules; Oracle, Workday and SuccessFactors all claim they have talent marketplace solutions. But they still fall short compared to the two above.

I have also used Fuel50, which started its journey as career development management / coaching platform. Some good features, but again not viable compared to Gloat or Eightfold.

Conclusion

This is the end of the three part HR Tech Stack series. I never planned to write three issues, but the whole HR Tech is broader and deeper than I anticipated.

I hope these three issues has helped to give a starting point, and an overview of the ecosystem. Your HR Tech Stack is maybe the most impactful variable that can influence employee experience. As I said at the beginning, in HR we are outnumbered and outmatched in this area, we need a tight joint task force of experts from IT and HR guiding our organisations.

If interested.