There’s an “explosion” in activity for talent management technologies,” according to Boston Consulting Group. But what’s different about all the work technologies that you’re seeing now? What’s happening with work, human resources, and technology that’s shaping this “explosion”?
George Larocque, a leading analyst and advisor in the workforce-management field, has been trying to find that out. Larocque scheduled briefings both with technology companies to hear about their innovations, as well as with business executives to ask about their technology adoption, their success stories, and their challenges.
In a new report on the “2023 Companies to Watch List of Tech Providers” (where SkyHive is one of 18 listed) Larocque outlines the six themes he’s hearing that are shaping work technology. “The intent is to help HR, talent, and business leaders as they attempt to identify which tech providers are leading the next wave of innovation in work tech,” he says.
The six trends emerging from Larocque’s research that he says innovative technologies have in common:
1. They’re in the flow of work. Modern technologies are found “where work is getting done.” That means Slack, Zoom, Teams, or elsewhere. The technologies use APIs to move data to where the customer needs it, even outside of human resources technologies. “Traditional HR technology is more concerned with getting users and ‘owning’ the screen,” Larocque says.
2. They’re employee-first and experience driven. Instead of being built to satisfy the company, they're built to satisfy everyone: the employee, the job candidate, the HR professional, and the contingent worker.
3. Diversity is at their core. Instead of seeing equity and inclusion as a compliance requirement, these new technologies often have diversity as their reason for being.
4. They “participate whole-heartedly in the work-tech ecosystem.” In the past, technology vendors were more selective about who they integrate and partner with. The innovators are more open and “integrate with the apps and suites that their clients need,” Larocque says.
5. They’re all about the data. This can mean data-privacy protection, improved access to data, or just deeper insights from data than ever (using methods such as Quantum Labor Analysis).
6. They’re modern and can scale. Rather than just focus on “cool features,” the most innovative companies, Larocque says, want to deliver insights quickly and make them scalable. SkyHive has found that the best practice in scaling and moving from a jobs-based to a skills-based approach is Horizons, where organizations begin with job architecture, and then broaden into other areas such as closing skill gaps.
Check out the report containing these six trends, as well as the list of SkyHive and 17 other “2023 Companies to Watch List of Tech Providers." And let us know if we can dive deeper into how the Horizons approach is used by companies to scale, embedding data into existing systems and integrating with technologies such as Workday, SAP, and Microsoft.
