Josh Bersin 谈Workday的创新论坛：Why I’m Bullish On Workday Again: The Innovation Summit本周Workday创新峰会揭示了公司由产品主导向市场主导的战略转型。Workday一直以云技术为核心，自主开发了面向对象的数据系统和全球安全架构。然而，随着市场的演进和竞争的加剧，公司在新任CEO Carl Eschenbach的领导下，开始转向市场导向的商业模式。
在这次转型中，Workday开始拓宽其业务模型，更加开放地与合作伙伴合作。公司不再限制API的使用和合作伙伴的接入，而是致力于构建一个像苹果iPhone那样的开放平台，允许更多的行业应用集成到其系统中。这一策略旨在提供更加灵活和综合的企业解决方案，以适应不同行业的需求。
同时，Workday也大力投入到人工智能技术的开发中，推出了基于企业自有数据的微型机器学习模型（micro-LLMs），并在全球范围内调整这些模型以满足本地客户的需求。此外，Workday正在将其人才智能市场向外扩展，通过与多个行业解决方案提供商的合作，强化其在健康护理和金融等领域的业务。
AI技术的应用不仅仅限于技术层面的改进，Workday还通过这些技术优化了用户体验，使得各种任务的完成变得更加便捷。例如，在Workday平台上，用户可以看到AI图标，通过点击即可获得智能辅助完成工作。
在人才管理方面，Workday引入了许多新功能，如智能工作架构中心（Intelligent Job Architecture Hub）以及加强的Workday人才市场，这些都是为了帮助企业简化和改进职位描述和技能需求。
此外，Workday的领导层也展现出了更开放和实用的态度，这对公司未来的发展是一个积极的信号。总的来说，Workday的这一系列战略调整，旨在更好地适应快速变化的市场需求，提高公司的竞争力和市场份额。
Josh Bersin 写了这篇文章，强烈推荐给大家了解下：以下是中英文的供参考
This week I attended the Workday Innovation Summit and there’s a lot to discuss. Having just celebrated its 19th birthday, the company is embarking on a major transformation . And it’s not just product innovation that’s happening, the company is greatly expanding its business model.
Workday Has Been A Product Led Company
Much of Workday’s success goes back to its focus on being “born for the cloud.” Rather than build business apps in a typical database-centric architecture, Workday developed its own object-oriented data system, integrated workflow system, and global security architecture from scratch. Nobody knew the cloud would be so big nor that we’d have “superscalers” like Google, Microsoft, and Amazon as platforms. Nor could we predict the advent of global data governance, AI, or data and apps distributed across thousands of servers.
Well Workday, led by Aneel Bhusri, pulled this off. And not only did they sell architecture, they sold “the Power of One.” In Workday, unlike other ERP business systems, all the applications were designed to work together. No acquisitions, no integrations, no open systems: just a beautifully designed, easy-to-use, scalable enterprise application. (I noted that it reminded me of the i-Phone at the time: beautiful, easy to use, and closed.)
This “beautiful walled garden” served Workday well. While Oracle, SAP, and other vendors struggled to redesign their client-server apps and acquire missing pieces, Workday grew like wildfire and is now a global ERP vendor with more than $7.3 Billion in recurring revenue, 10,000+ enterprise and mid-market customers, and a brand known for trust, customer focus, and quality. And all this happened with a founding team that was largely still in place.
Last year Workday’s co-founder and CEO Aneel Bhusri decided it was time to step back and the company brought in Carl Eschenbach to be CEO. And now things are starting to change. The company is becoming a “markets-led” business.
The “product-led” focus for Workday was both good and bad. Workday was not easy to integrate, there were few APIs for developers, and the company limited its partners. As part of its mission to be pure, Workday prevented many vendors from “partnering” and forced integrators to pay large fees and certify dedicated teams. This “scarcity” strategy created high demand and high prices, and customers actually appreciated it.
All was good, until things started to change. Today, with many competing vendors at all levels of the ERP stack, Workday is becoming more pragmatic. And as I’ll explain below, they’re changing their message from “The Power of One” to “Workday is a Platform.”
Workday Is Becoming A Markets-Led Company
The HCM and Financials market is complex. There are dozens of sub-markets, application areas, and industry solutions to address. An HR system designed for a large hospital system is unlikely to need the same features as a system for a global insurance company. So Workday started to realize its system, while integrated and highly functional, couldn’t keep up.
And within HR itself there are hundreds of vendors who sell recruiting tools, career systems, learning platforms, engagement tools, mobile apps, benefits, and data analytics systems. And each of these sub-markets are being transformed by AI. (Our upcoming research on Talent Intelligence, for example, will show you how fragmented this is.)
Workday was having a hard time keeping up. The company embarked on a series of acquisitions (Platfora, Mediacore, Adaptive Insights, VNDLY, Peakon, HiredScore, and others). This forced the product teams to focus on user interface and architectural integration, somewhat slowing the feature expansion. And many partners who wanted to integrate with Workday (which customers demand) were ignored.
Well under Carl’s leadership, all this is changing. Workday is now fully open to partners, ISV’s, resellers, and industry solutions. Almost 25% of the entire Innovation Summit was focused on Workday’s open partner strategy. And the big message was this: Workday is not a “system,” it’s a “platform.”
What does this mean? It means that if you buy Workday you’re buying a platform like the i-Phone. It works amazingly well, it’s safe, and will sport a family of industry apps to help you build a total solution. This worked for Apple and Salesforce and it’s likely to work well for Workday. SAP has a similar offering, but its level of integration is far more complex. This lets Workday move deeply into new domains and sub markets. (Workday highlighted its new integrations with Shiftwizard in healthcare, Auditoria and Kyriba in finance, and many others. These are not just ISV relationships: Workday is reselling these products.
But there’s much more.
Workday Unveils Its AI Strategy
At last year’s event Workday really waffled about AI. They gave us a lot of arm waving discussions of “Workday AI” but it didn’t make a lot of sense. Well they’ve figured it out, so let me briefly explain.
Enterprises don’t want AI for its own sake and they definitely don’t want crowdsourced data which creates legal risk. They want AI solutions that work on their own data.
Well Workday has now embarked on a wide variety of AI features, each delivered through its own “micro-LLMs” trained on a company’s own data. (Very similar to how we implement Galileo, our AI HR expert assistant.) And for larger AI capabilities they use a global LLM with local weights and biases for each client. (This is similar to how the Microsoft Copilot works.) So your enterprise data trains your “version” of Workday without sharing any data with others.
In some cases (the Skills Cloud, for example), customers can opt to share data anonymously. This lets Workday build a “global skills database” which everyone can share. Vendors like Eightfold, Lightcast, and Draup do this at a massive scale (far beyond what Workday does today), so Workday is now moving into this “talent intelligence” market. (Lightcast is now a Workday Skills Cloud partner.)
Many of these features are simple (rewriting a job description or matching invoices to purchase orders) but powerful. All over Workday you now see a little AI icon to help you complete a task. In fact Workday has already re-engineered about 280 different tasks and is working on around 2,000 in total.
Customers constantly tell me Workday is difficult to use, and it’s largely just because the system is quite complex. These AI-enhanced experiences are slowly going to make the system more and more “I-Phone like.”
Many New Talent Features
Now that the product teams have a strong underlying architecture, they’re going crazy with features. Workday is introducing a new “Intelligent Job Architecture Hub,” for example, to help companies simplify and improve job names, levels, descriptions, and skills. (It also shows trending skills in the external market.) Everyone is going to use this.
The Workday Talent Marketplace, which is not widely used yet, is being enhanced through HiredScore: employees will get Teams or Slack messages recommending jobs. This is an example of “orchestration,” a new buzz-word among AI systems. (Imagine AI booking your trip including hotels, air, car, etc.)
The Workday Manager Hub now shows managers detailed employee engagement data (Peakon has more than 18 billion responses now) and will gives managers “Conversation Starters” to help them start performance coaching, all based on feedback from other employees.
There is a major focus on contingent, gig, and contract workers. For the first time I believe Workday can handle most professional services businesses (including pricing projects based on staff pricing), healthcare and retail (AI-powered scheduling and shift management), and many deskless worker needs. It turns out that healthcare and retail are two of Workday’s biggest industries, so these talent-constrained industries are now a good market.
Let me talk briefly about HiredScore. This company built an in-line “talent orchestration system” that uses AI to show recruiters who is most suited for a job, explain why it made its decisions, and use this data to find and source internal candidates automatically. While this type of technology is widely used in systems like Eightfold, Beamery, Phenom, and others, the HiredScore system is workflow-oriented. Recruiters love it and it greatly improves hiring speed, quality, and internal mobility.
And by the way, despite lots of complaints from users, Workday Recruiting is starting to dominate the ATS market. With more than 4,000 customers it’s becoming a more “safe buy” as companies rationalize their old ATS systems.
As David Somers (head of product) put it, HiredScore is the acquisition that “keeps on giving.” In other words the AI team at HiredScore is now going to work with Workday’s Skills Cloud team to evolve and improve that system. The Skills Cloud, while beautifully visioned and named, has had limited success. With HiredScore’s help (and the leadership of Athena Karp, founder and CEO), this system will get more attention. (That includes more content partnerships and a broader set of tools.)
This means Workday’s recruiting system (which is one of the most critical business systems in today’s talent shortages) is now highly coupled with the internal mobility and job architecture system, something customers desperately want. I still believe systems like Eightfold and Gloat are far more advanced, but Workday is catching up.
Management Culture And Trust
And then there’s the biggest issue of all: Workday’s leadership. I spent some time chatting with Carl Eschenbach and he has a very different persona than Aneel Bhusri. Carl clearly wants Workday to go after new markets: new geographies (EMEA, Asia, Japan), new industries (healthcare, pharma, retail), the mid-market segment, and channel partners. Workday is now actively searching for resellers, mid-market integrators, and ISVs to round out the solution.
As always, the leadership team at Workday is highly aligned and much more pragmatic. Many times I would attend a Workday event and feel a slight sense of arrogance at the top. As with all successful software companies, it’s easy to think you’re always right when things are going well.
I believe this has changed. I actually found Workday to be humble, attentive to new issues, and open-minded to new ideas, new partners, and self-inspection. This, to me, is a bullish sign. And from top to bottom the company is focused on trust, AI safety, and customer service.
One more thing I want to point out: the “Workday as a Platform” idea. The company now realizes that this highly proprietary, business-optimized system can no longer be sold as a beautifully walled garden. The company is building a massive set of easy to use development tools, expanded APIs, and programs to attract software developers, partners, and integrators. Now, when customers ass for functionality Workday can look for a partner to resell or embed. The company is losing its “if we didn’t build it we don’t trust it” mentality.
I also believe this leadership team really likes each other. As many of you know, team culture is massively important in the tech space. Things change so fast and there are so many competitors the company has to stay aligned. I sense everyone really understands what’s going on.
Growth Potential
Will Workday accelerate its growth above its respectable 17% per year? Well the company has challenges. Many of its legacy clients have found a plethora of advanced tools around Workday and I know large companies that are switching back to SAP. And despite all the new features, Workday is an older, complicated, rigid system.
That all said, I think the company is managing its transformation well. Let’s watch to see how all this plays out.
本周我参加了Workday创新峰会，有很多内容值得讨论。在刚刚庆祝了其成立19周年之际，该公司正在进行重大转型。而且，不仅仅是产品创新在进行，公司的业务模式也在大幅扩展。
Workday一直是一家以产品为导向的公司
Workday的成功很大程度上归功于其专注于“为云而生”。Workday没有采用典型的以数据库为中心的架构来构建商业应用程序，而是从零开始开发了自己的面向对象的数据系统、集成的工作流系统和全球安全架构。没有人知道云计算会如此重要，也没有人预料到我们会有像Google、Microsoft和Amazon这样的“超级计算”平台。我们也无法预测全球数据治理、AI或者跨数千服务器分布的数据和应用程序的出现。
在Aneel Bhusri的领导下，Workday做到了这一点。他们不仅销售架构，还销售了“一体化的力量”。在Workday中，不同于其他ERP商业系统，所有应用程序都被设计为可以协同工作。没有收购，没有集成，没有开放系统：只有一个设计精美、易于使用、可扩展的企业应用程序。（我注意到这让我想起了当时的iPhone：美观、易用且封闭。）
这个“美丽的围墙花园”为Workday服务良好。而Oracle、SAP和其他供应商在重新设计其客户端-服务器应用程序和获取缺失部分时挣扎，Workday却如野火般成长，现在已成为一家全球ERP供应商，拥有超过73亿美元的经常性收入、超过10,000个企业和中端市场客户，以及以信任、客户关注和质量而闻名的品牌。而且，这一切都是在创始团队基本上仍在位的情况下发生的。
去年，Workday的联合创始人兼CEO Aneel Bhusri认为是时候退居幕后了，公司聘请了Carl Eschenbach担任CEO。现在，事情开始改变。该公司正在成为一家“以市场为导向”的企业。
Workday的“以产品为导向”的重点既有好处也有坏处。Workday不容易集成，开发者可用的API很少，公司也限制了其合作伙伴。作为其保持纯净使命的一部分，Workday阻止了许多供应商的“合作”，并迫使集成商支付高额费用并认证专门团队。这种“稀缺”策略创造了高需求和高价格，而客户实际上对此感到满意。
一切都很好，直到情况开始改变。如今，随着ERP堆栈各层面的竞争供应商越来越多，Workday正在变得更加务实。正如我将在下文中解释的那样，他们正在将信息从“一体化的力量”变为“Workday是一个平台”。
Workday正在成为一家以市场为导向的公司
人力资源管理(HCM)和财务市场非常复杂。有数十个子市场、应用领域和行业解决方案需要解决。一个为大型医院系统设计的HR系统不太可能需要与为全球保险公司设计的系统相同的功能。因此，Workday开始意识到，尽管其系统集成且功能强大，但它无法跟上。
而且，在HR本身，有数百家供应商销售招聘工具、职业系统、学习平台、参与工具、移动应用程序、福利和数据分析系统。每一个子市场都在被AI转型。（例如，我们即将发布的关于人才智能的研究将向您展示这是多么的碎片化。）
Workday很难跟上。该公司开始了一系列收购（Platfora、Mediacore、Adaptive Insights、VNDLY、Peakon、HiredScore等）。这迫使产品团队专注于用户界面和架构集成，从而在某种程度上减缓了功能扩展。许多希望与Workday集成的合作伙伴（客户需求）被忽视了。
在Carl的领导下，所有这些都在改变。Workday现在对合作伙伴、独立软件供应商、经销商和行业解决方案完全开放。整个创新峰会将近25%的时间专注于Workday的开放合作伙伴策略。而且重要的信息是：Workday不是一个“系统”，它是一个“平台”。
这是什么意思？这意味着如果您购买Workday，您就是在购买一个像iPhone那样的平台。它运行非常好，安全，并将配备一系列行业应用程序以帮助您构建完整解决方案。这对Apple和Salesforce有效，对Workday来说可能也会很有效。SAP也有类似的产品，但其集成程度要复杂得多。这让Workday能够深入新的领域和子市场。（Workday突出显示了其在医疗保健领域与Shiftwizard、在财务领域与Auditoria和Kyriba的新集成等。这些不仅仅是独立软件供应商关系：Workday正在转售这些产品。
但还有更多。
Workday公开其AI战略
在去年的活动中，Workday对AI真的犹豫不决。他们给了我们很多关于“Workday AI”的手势讨论，但这并没有太多意义。好吧，他们已经想通了，让我简单解释一下。
企业并不是因为AI本身而想要AI，他们绝对不想要可能产生法律风险的众包数据。他们想要的是可以在自己的数据上运行的AI解决方案。
现在，Workday已经开始了各种AI功能，每个功能都通过其自己的“微型大语言模型”交付，这些模型是在公司自己的数据上训练的。（这与我们实现的Galileo，我们的AI HR专家助手非常相似。）对于更大的AI功能，他们使用一个全球大语言模型，为每个客户本地调整权重和偏差。（这与Microsoft Copilot的工作方式类似。）因此，您的企业数据训练您的“版本”的Workday，而不与其他人共享任何数据。
在某些情况下（例如技能云），客户可以选择匿名分享数据。这让Workday能够构建一个“全球技能数据库”，每个人都可以分享。像Eightfold、Lightcast和Draup这样的供应商在大规模（远超Workday目前的做法）上做到了这一点，所以Workday现在正在进入这个“人才智能”市场。（Lightcast现在是Workday技能云的合作伙伴。）
这些功能中的许多都很简单（重写工作描述或将发票与采购订单匹配），但功能强大。在Workday的各个地方，您现在都可以看到一个小AI图标，帮助您完成任务。事实上，Workday已经重新设计了大约280个不同的任务，并且正在处理大约2,000个总任务。
客户不断告诉我Workday很难使用，这主要是因为系统相当复杂。这些通过AI增强的体验将逐渐使系统越来越像“iPhone”。
许多新的人才功能
现在产品团队拥有了强大的底层架构，他们正疯狂地推出功能。例如，Workday正在推出一个新的“智能工作架构中心”，以帮助公司简化并改进工作名称、级别、描述和技能。（它还显示外部市场中的趋势技能。）每个人都将使用这个。
Workday人才市场尚未广泛使用，现在正在通过HiredScore进行增强：员工将通过Teams或Slack消息获得推荐工作。这是“编排”的一个例子，这是AI系统中的一个新的流行词。（想象一下AI预订您的旅行，包括酒店、飞机、汽车等。）
Workday经理中心现在向经理们显示详细的员工参与数据（Peakon现在有超过180亿的反馈）并将给经理提供“对话开始器”，以帮助他们开始绩效辅导，所有这些都基于其他员工的反馈。
还有一个主要关注点是临时工、零工和合同工。我相信Workday首次可以处理大多数专业服务业务（包括基于员工定价的定价项目）、医疗保健和零售（AI驱动的排班和班次管理），以及许多无固定工作场所的工人的需求。事实证明，医疗保健和零售是Workday的两个最大行业，所以这些人才匮乏的行业现在是一个好市场。
让我简要谈谈HiredScore。这家公司建立了一个内嵌的“人才编排系统”，使用AI向招聘人员展示最适合某个职位的人员，解释为什么会做出这样的决定，并使用这些数据来找到并自动获取内部候选人。虽然这种技术在Eightfold、Beamery、Phenom等系统中广泛使用，但HiredScore系统是以工作流为导向的。招聘人员非常喜欢它，它极大地提高了招聘的速度、质量和内部流动性。
顺便说一句，尽管用户有很多抱怨，Workday招聘正在开始主导ATS市场。现在已有超过4,000个客户，随着公司对旧ATS系统进行合理化，它正在成为一个更“安全的购买”。
正如产品负责人David Somers所说，HiredScore是一笔“源源不断的收益”。换句话说，HiredScore的AI团队现在将与Workday的技能云团队合作，以发展和改进该系统。技能云虽然构想得很美，名字很漂亮，但成功有限。在HiredScore的帮助下（以及创始人兼CEO Athena Karp的领导下），这个系统将得到更多关注。（这包括更多的内容合作伙伴和一套更广泛的工具。）
这意味着Workday的招聘系统（这是当今人才短缺中最关键的商业系统之一）现在与内部流动性和工作架构系统高度耦合，这正是客户迫切需要的。我仍然认为像Eightfold和Gloat这样的系统更先进，但Workday正在迎头赶上。
管理文化和信任
然后是最大的问题之一：Workday的领导层。我花了一些时间与Carl Eschenbach聊天，他与Aneel Bhusri的个性非常不同。Carl明确希望Workday进军新市场：新地理区域（EMEA、亚洲、日本）、新行业（医疗保健、制药、零售）、中端市场细分市场和渠道合作伙伴。Workday现在正在积极寻找经销商、中端市场集成商和独立软件供应商来完善解决方案。
一如既往，Workday的领导团队高度一致，更加务实。很多时候，我参加Workday的活动，都能感受到顶层有些自负。就像所有成功的软件公司一样，当事情进展顺利时，很容易认为自己总是对的。
我认为这已经改变了。我实际上发现Workday很谦虚，对新问题很关注，对新想法、新合作伙伴和自我检查持开放态度。对我来说，这是一个看涨的信号。而且从上到下，公司都专注于信任、AI安全和客户服务。
我还想指出一件事：关于“Workday作为一个平台”的想法。该公司现在意识到，这种高度专有的、业务优化的系统不再能作为一个美丽的围墙花园来销售。公司正在构建一套大型的易于使用的开发工具、扩展的API和吸引软件开发者、合作伙伴和集成商的计划。现在，当客户询问功能时，Workday可以寻找一个合作伙伴来转售或嵌入。公司正在失去“如果我们没有构建它，我们就不信任它”的心态。
我还相信这个领导团队真的很喜欢彼此。正如你们许多人所知，团队文化在科技领域非常重要。事情变化如此之快，竞争对手如此之多，公司必须保持一致。我感觉每个人都真正理解发生了什么。
增长潜力
Workday能否将其每年17%的尊重增长率加速？好吧，公司面临挑战。它的许多老客户发现在Workday周围有大量的先进工具，我知道一些大公司正在回归SAP。尽管所有这些新功能，Workday仍然是一个较老、复杂、僵化的系统。
话虽如此，我认为公司正在很好地管理其转型。让我们拭目以待，看看这一切将如何发展。
Workday
2024年04月19日
Workday
BetterUp Manage: Pioneering AI-Powered Platform For Leaders
BetterUp公司最近在其Uplift大会上推出了一个名为BetterUp Manage的领导力发展平台，这一平台采用人工智能驱动的评估和个性化学习方案，彻底改变了专业发展的途径。该平台具有高度的可扩展性和可定制性，能够与Workday、Oracle和SAP等主要系统无缝连接。BetterUp Manage不仅为领导者提供服务，也支持任何寻求发展专业能力的个人。通过整合最新的人工智能技术，BetterUp Manage为传统的领导力培训行业带来了革命性的变革。
这次大会中，BetterUp还邀请了英国的哈里王子Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex 和亚当·格兰特，哈里王子是BetterUp的首席影响官。。。
This week I attended the BetterUp Uplift conference and I really was impressed. This is a company that exploded into the market with an innovative coaching and employee wellbeing network built around an assessment called the “whole person model.” Through a set of shrewd marketing and sales strategies BetterUp established a leadership position in this market, growing to a billion dollar+ valuation.
This success encouraged many competitors to form and now the market for AI-enabled, targeted coaching is large and crowded (vendors include Torch, CoachHub, Growthspace, Sounding Board, Bravely, and a new breed of AI systems).
Essentially what BetterUp did was democratize business and professional coaching. Before this trend coaching was a rarified, expensive offering reserved for under-performing leaders or high-potential executives. Today, with BetterUp, anyone can go through a meaningful assessment, get assigned a relevant coach, and start a coaching session in minutes. The system is well designed and easy to use and BetterUp’s coaches are all trained (most of the coaching vendors use a lot of the same certified coaches – they are not BetterUp employees).
As a corporate solution, BetterUp goes much further. The data collected through assessments is available for analysis (anonymized) so companies can find pockets of stress in the organization. You can look at assessments by team (minimum of 10 people), tenure, level, and other factors. This lets companies like Chevron or Cisco understand the issues new employees or new managers have, for example.
In the last few years the company moved into wellbeing by offering a solution called BetterUp Care, which targets benefits buyers. But the more strategic and interesting offering is the new platform I saw this week, now named BetterUp Manage (it was originally called Connect).
BetterUp Manage is the first highly personalized, scalable management development platform I’ve seen. It brings together AI-enabled assessment, personalized learning, coaching, and AI-driven narrative support. It’s quite an impressive product, much of it was developed by the team at Motive, who was acquired by BetterUp in 2021.
BetterUp Manage is an out of the box personalized leadership development solution. And you don’t need to be a “leader” to use it. The system steps you through the Whole Person assessment, then asks you questions about the types of soft-skills issues you face (many specific scenarios), and then gives you a customized learning path, week by week, along with a professional coach.
Since it’s built on an AI platform there is very little manual work behind the scenes so it’s enormously scalable. Large companies will want to customize it and BetterUp is prepared for some of these requests. And the system connects to Workday, Oracle, SAP to automatically understand your role and level.
The reason I’m so excited is this: the management training industry is a confusing, messy, red ocean. There are thousands of consultants, coaches, books, courses, and executive education programs. L&D executives have to constantly build custom solutions, evaluate vendors, and hope that an offering will stick. This pure complexity, coupled with the fact that every company is unique, has led to many specialized leadership development firms (and some big ones like Franklin Covey).
So what most companies do is mix, match, and custom-build leadership solutions. And they’re not simple: we developed a model we call the 4-E’s to understand this: Education (courses), Experience (developmental assignments), Exposure (mentoring and coaching from leaders), and Environment (a company-wide focus on leadership values and behaviors). All these elements play a role in developing leadership skills.
Companies like IBM, Cisco, and Marriot can afford to custom build these solutions, but many companies don’t have the focus. BetterUp Manage is a way to personalize, scale, and democratize this solution and leverage the increasingly important role of AI.
I met Alexi Robichaux almost a decade ago and his passion and energy still drives the company. While BetterUp is a bigger company going through the growing pains of any $billion valued growth business, the culture and passion for clients is clear.
Remember that buying L&D solutions is not as simple as buying a product and turning it on. Every training solution, platform, or program you buy must be carefully aligned with your company’s culture and rolled out with care. Otherwise people simply say “another training program from corporate I can ignore.”
BetterUp, for all its startup-like innovations, has overcome this problem. Customers value the system, they get strong adoption from employees, and the company works hard to advise and consult.
It has always been interesting to me that very few content companies ever become very big (Skillsoft is the only one that never seems to stop). And the reason for this is simply the nichey, highly diversified needs of many industries and companies. BetterUp, as a platform-centered company delivering a high-touch solution, has the potential to break this paradigm. It has enormous potential, given the rapid acceleration of AI behind the scenes.
I consider BetterUp one of the “Trailblazers” I talk about with clients, and BetterUp Manage is definitely something to watch.
Workday
2024年04月12日
Workday
Will Chatbots Take Over HR Tech? Paradox Sets The Pace.在快速发展的人力资源技术领域，Paradox.ai 已成为领跑者，其先进的对话式人工智能平台彻底改变了招聘流程。通过利用自然语言处理和人工智能，Paradox.ai 提供了一个全面的解决方案，涵盖了从最初的职位申请到入职的整个招聘过程。该平台不仅简化了筛选和面试安排等繁琐流程，还提升了应聘者的整体体验，显著改善了招聘时间和招聘质量指标。
Paradox.ai 由亚伦-马托斯（Aaron Matos）于 2016 年创立，目前为联合利华、CVS Health 和通用汽车等大客户提供服务，实现了 90% 以上的招聘流程自动化。
Paradox.ai 凭借其强大的集成能力和大幅缩短招聘时间、降低招聘成本的能力，在人力资源技术领域充分体现了对话式人工智能的变革力量。
Chatbots used to be tinker-toys. You type, try to get help, but usually result in “please call support.” Well all this has changed.
Thanks to advanced NLP (natural language processing) and AI (retrieval-augmented generation) chatbots are entire applications. They can answer complex questions, search databases, and invoke transactions on your behalf.
Pretty soon we’ll be able to ask our phones “please find me a flight to Los Angeles next Tuesday morning” and the system will check your location and calendar, look at flights, and book you a seat.
Where is this going in HR? Well the leader in this space is Paradox.ai, a company that pioneered the application of conversational AI in recruiting. And their system “defines the category.”
Let me explain.
Recruiting Is The Perfect Market For Conversational AI
Recruiting is a goldmine for automation. When you post a job, applicants want to ask many predictable things: “How much does it pay?” “What are the hours?” or “What uniform do I need” or “What are the benefits?”
The recruiter, a person devoted to filling positions, has to answer all these questions and more. They have to screen candidates, schedule interviews, check for qualifications, and look at credentials, experience, and more. It’s time-consuming, error-prone, and filled with wasted time. (That’s why talent acquisition teams have many “scheduler” and admins.)
The average “time to hire” is over 45 days and often the process goes on for months. And throughout the experience the job seeker is left wondering “when will they call back” or “what else do I need to know?”
(CEOs cite hiring as the third most time-wasting process in companies, following emails and meetings, estimated at “40% wasted time.”)
Paradox uses Conversational AI to solve this problem. And because this is a “narrow but deep” space, the system does many things we can learn from in all our AI efforts.
Paradox was founded by Aaron Matos in 2016. Aaron’s vision was to transform the candidate experience, revolutionizing the way candidates apply to jobs. Today Paradox has become a complete Conversational AI Recruitment Platform (chat to apply, scheduling, candidate support, ATS, assessments, onboarding, career site, and more), serving clients like Unilever, CVS Health, Pfizer, L’Oreal, Nestle, McDonald’s FedEx, Compass Group, Disney, and General Motors.
The platform automates tasks such as screening for requirements, interview scheduling, reminders, offers, and new hire onboarding. And because it’s so easy to use, it helps companies radically improves time-to-hire and quality of hire. Based on my conversations with clients, Paradox can automate more than 90% of the end-to-end hiring process, saving hiring managers hours every week and increasing candidate conversion by more than 10 times.
But this innovation did not happen overnight. As you know, going to a candidate website and looking for a job is a frustrating process. There are often hundreds of jobs listed, a complex scrolling website and very hard to even determine what job to apply for.
You might argue that the website paradigm for job applications was never really a good idea in the first place. People don’t want to browse for jobs: they want to apply for a job that’s best for them. So the first thing Paradox did was create an easy to use assistant (Olivia) so candidates could ask questions and schedule interviews. And this meant that Paradox had to build integrations with every ATS and personal email and calendar tools out there.
Then, as companies started to use Paradox for scheduling, the company added more. Today Olivia, the chatbot, can integrate with background check vendors, schedule interviews, deliver assessments (Paradox acquired a conversational assessment Traitify designed for this), and function as an ATS … all from a mobile phone. In many ways Paradox can be “the integration platform” for candidates and recruiters, stitching together the messy systems behind the scenes.
This turned into a massive opportunity. Just as the Google Assistant or Siri hopes to be our single contact with the internet, Paradox partners with systems of record like Workday, SAP, and Oracle to bring conversational AI to any company. The company’s revenues have grown 11 times in the last four years, and are now nearly doubling each year.
For customers Paradox has been amazing. As the candidate pipeline speeds up (by an order of magnitude), clients get higher quality candidates with dramatically reduced staff. (Staffing administrators can almost go away.)
Consider high-volume hiring companies. These businesses (McDonald’s, Compass Group, Neighborly, FedEx, Disney) hire service-related workers on a regular basis. Their revenue is dependent on having enough people. With Paradox they can set up a “continuous recruitment process,” one that even hires people the same day they apply.
Paradox has become essential to these companies growth, often paying for itself in less than a year (through reduced hiring staff, reduced spend on job ads, and reduced turnover.)
Today, as Paradox built out its ATS, customers can rely on the platform to integrate front end tool (job portals and candidate support) to back end tools scheduling, ATS, onboarding) most of which are legacy. One of our clients has 27 recruiting tools and they anticipate replacing more than half of them with a platform like Paradox.
What about higher level white collar roles? Paradox works here too. General Motors uses Paradox along with Workday (ATS), (branded Evie) to redesign the process.
Interview Scheduling: Evie automates scheduling of phone screens and interviews between recruiters, candidates, and internal teams. This has reduced the time taken for interview scheduling from an average of five days to 29 minutes.
Candidate Experience: Evie interacts with candidates from the moment they land on GM’s career site until the completion of their interview. Candidates appreciate the immediate communication from Evie after they apply or complete an interview, and enjoy the autonomy to select and change interview times.
Efficiency and Cost Savings: The automation of interview scheduling has led to a major reduction in the cost of external contractors for coordination.
Career Site Interaction: Evie sits on GM’s career site, answering questions from potential candidates about jobs, benefits, and company culture. This interaction enhances the candidate’s experience and provides them with immediate responses to their queries.
Where Is Paradox Going
The company is perfectly positioned to continue its growth as companies look for AI solutions to improve the productivity and effectiveness of recruiting. And demand is high: the 2024 PwC CEO survey found that recruiting was considered the #3 “most bureaucratic process” by CEOs (following email and meetings).
The impact on recruiters? All positive. Clients tell us they can redeploy hiring staff to help recruiters focus on the most important part of their job: talking with candidates.
But there’s a much bigger story. When a job candidate is handled efficiently and effectively the process becomes a brand-builder for the candidate, improving quality of hire. Ambitious job seekers will not put up with (or wait for) a messy, confusing hiring process. So not only is the process faster and more efficient, the quality of hire goes up.
Companies are desperately looking for AI solutions that work. As Paradox has proven, when you focus deeply on the problem, conversational AI can be transformational.
Listen to my conversation with Adam Godson (CEO) and you’ll hear the details. This is where the HR Tech market is going.
Workday
2024年04月04日
Workday
Workday收购HiredScore的意义，这可能颠覆人力资源科技领域Workday计划收购HiredScore，这是人力资源技术领域的一次重大变革。HiredScore是一家领先的基于AI的招聘匹配工具提供商，此举将大大增强Workday在人才智能和招聘方面的能力。这次收购预计将整合HiredScore的专长到Workday的系统中，显著改善其应聘者追踪系统（ATS）、技能云和整体人才智能产品。此战略性收购可能会重塑人力资源软件市场，迫使其他供应商加速他们的AI计划，可能激发一轮新的收购热潮。
以下是原文：
This week Workday announced intent to acquire HiredScore, a leading provider of AI-based matching tools for recruiting (called “talent orchestration”). While it wasn’t discussed much in the earnings call, this deal is a big positive for Workday and could have many implications for the HR Tech market.
Let me explain. (I have not been briefed by Workday yet, so more information will come as I learn more.)
Right now there is a massive marketplace war for high-powered AI-based recruiting tools (estimated at $30.1 billion). Historically dominated by applicant tracking systems (ATS), this market provides essential technology to help every company grow.
The ATS market, which is more than 25 years old, has been rapidly transformed with high-powered AI tools that help with candidate matching, search, skills inference, and sourcing. And now that AI tools are readily available, these systems are becoming big data platforms loaded with billions of employee profiles, running complex AI models to help match people to jobs, projects, and gigs.
Most ATS vendors (including Workday) have slowly extended into this space through matching. The original idea of a resume parser (software that reads a resume and scores it against a job description) has evolved into complex text analysis and AI-powered inference technology, forcing ATS vendors to invest.
As the ATS vendors enhance their AI capabilities, a parallel universe of AI-first Talent Intelligence vendors emerged. These vendors, like Eightfold, Gloat, Beamery, Phenom, Seekout, Skyhive, Retrain, and Techwolf are building skills-centric big data platforms to match people to jobs, gigs, and mentors. These systems do much more than rate matches: they identify skills, find adjacent skills, match people to careers, find mentors, and more. They are essentially open big-data AI platforms built on vector databases that can be used for many enterprise apps (job architecture design, skills planning, internal mobility, pay equity analysis, etc.). In many ways they represent the future of HR Tech.
(Read our Talent Intelligence Primer for more.)
As the Talent Intelligence vendors grow, they start to deliver “HCM-threatening” platforms that impinge on the HCM “System of Record” idea. If you have all your employees, candidates, alumni, and prospects in Eightfold, Phenom, Seekout, or Gloat, for example, Workday or SAP look like a tactical payroll and workflow management system. (ServiceNow also understands this, and is building talent intelligence into its workflow platform.)
Up until now the big HCM vendors like Workday, Oracle, and SAP have struggled to build these new systems, largely because their original architectures were not AI-based. So they’ve attracted customers with offerings like the Workday Skills Cloud or SAP Opportunity Marketplace that aren’t fully completed yet. We have talked with dozens of Workday Skills Cloud customers, for example, and they see it as an important “skills system of record,” but its real AI matching and inference capabilities have been limited.
Along comes HiredScore, a well respected AI-based matching system with 150 employees and 40+ seasoned AI engineers in Israel. These folks are experts at candidate matching (quite a complex problem), and they’ve built a very innovative “orchestration” system to help line managers coordinate activities with HR business partners and recruiters (more on this later). While I’m sure they’ll continue to build out HiredScore, they can also contribute to Workday’s overall talent intelligence offering, improving the entire system – including the Skills Cloud, Workday Learning, Workday’s Talent Marketplace.
As large as the recruiting software market is, the market for internal career tools, talent mobility, skills inference, and corporate learning is five times bigger. This acquisition gives Workday a shot in the arm to accelerate its entire AI platform strategy. (As the Identified acquisition did back in 2014. Identified was the roots of the Workday Skills Cloud.)
Market Implications Of This Move
This move could change the market for HR software in a few significant ways.
First, Workday Recruiting customers will be thrilled. Workday’s ATS now benefits from a first class matching and candidate scoring solution. This helps Workday compete with the bigger ATS players and gives Workday a new revenue source as they sell HiredScore to the existing 4,000+ Workday ATS customers. (Similar to the Peakon acquisition in Employee Experience.) And the talent orchestration features (kind of like a “staffing copilot”) gives Workday a very unique feature set.
Second, this forces Workday’s talent intelligence partners to step up their game. Remember when Apple acquired Dark Sky, the most compelling micro-weather app on the market? Once they integrated it into Apple’s other apps, the market for third party weather apps went away. Workday could limit its partner network to avoid letting HiredScore competitors into the ecosystem.
Third, this forces HCM vendors to accelerate their AI. Since HiredScore is such a well-respected product (every client we talk with adores it), it will become part of Workday demos and sales proposals quickly. Workday’s HCM competitors will start scratching around to find a similarly mature AI vendor to acquire. And that could kick off another round of acquisitions, similar to the frenzy that took place in the mid 2010s.
Finally, there’s one more scenario, and I give this good odds. Not to be outdone by Workday, the Talent Intelligence vendors may just expand their ATS capability and decide to go “full stack.” I wouldn’t be surprised to see this happen.
Why Is AI-Based Candidate Matching So Important
Why is this technology so important? Well if you’ve ever tried to recruit on Indeed or LinkedIn, you know why. The quality and reliability of “candidate matching technology” is a lynchpin of a talent platform. Just as Google Search crushed Yahoo, Excite, and Inktomi, a powerful next-gen matching tool adds an enormous amount of value. Not only does it speed talent acquisition, it fuels all the internal mobility, career portals, skills, and eventually learning and pay systems.
Why do I say this? A “match” is a sophisticated problem. Unlike a Google search which looks at text and traffic, when you search for a person to fill a role you have to think about dozens of complex relationships. What are this person’s skills and capabilities? What are their credentials or certifications? Who else are they connected with? How likely will they fit into the job, role, and company? What is the impact of their industry experience? What tools and technologies do they understand?
And it gets much more complex. The Heidrick Navigator platform (built on Eightfold), uses AI to assess functional skills for management and leadership, identifies a person’s “ability to drive results,” and more. This important application of AI powers many of the most important decisions we make in business.
That’s why the Talent Intelligence space is growing so fast. As of this week there are more than 1,800 Director or VPs of “Talent Intelligence” in LinkedIn, and that number is up almost six-fold from one year ago.
Can Workday take the lead in this emerging space? It’s impossible to tell at this point, but the horses have left the gate and the race is on. This deal sets the players in the right lanes and feels like the earthquake to shake things up.
Workday
2024年03月01日
Workday
Is DEI Going to Die in 2024?Josh Bersin 的文章讨论了 2024 年多元化、公平与包容（DEI）项目所面临的重大挑战和批评，特别强调了 "反觉醒 "评论家的攻击和克劳迪娜-盖伊（Claudine Gay）从哈佛辞职的事件。报告探讨了多元包容计划在当前的文化战争中扮演的角色、人们对它的看法以及法律挑战对多元包容计划招聘和投资的影响。尽管存在这些挑战，贝尔辛还是强调了发展型企业的实际商业利益，展示了成功的战略以及将发展型企业融入业务而不仅仅是人力资源的重要性。他认为，应将重点转向在所有业务部门嵌入包容、公平薪酬和开放讨论的原则，并指出，未来的企业发展指数至关重要，但需要适应和领导层的承诺才能茁壮成长。
Is DEI Going to Die in 2024? By Josh Bersin
For anyone working in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), it is safe to say that it has been a tough start to 2024. For a while now, there has been a concerted attack on DEI programs, with ‘anti-woke’ commentators and public figures querying their value, worth, and even existence.
Those attacks increased enormously in 2024 with the resignation of Claudine Gay from Harvard. While the call to resign was supposedly related to plagiarism, one can’t help but feel that her position as a leading DEI advocate also fuelled the demand.
It means that DEI has come under increased and sustained fire, and despite the many benefits provided by a good DEO program – to both employer and employee – there is a feeling that 2024 could be the year that DEI fades away. How likely is this to happen, and what would the impact be if it did?
DEI and the culture wars
Anyone living and working in the US (or most other countries worldwide) over the past few years will have likely heard of the culture wars. Brought on by declining trust in institutions, growing inequalities, and the proliferation of technology, the culture wars involve opposing social groups seeking to impose their ideologies.
All manner of things has been caught up in this, from what’s on the curriculum at schools to taking a knee at sporting events and from definitions of what constitutes a woman to allegations of tokenism in the workplace. DEI has played an unwitting but central part in the culture wars.
There’s a perception that DEI programs are ‘woke’ and prioritize ethnicity and gender over achievement and ability. In August of 2023, an attorney filed (and won) a lawsuit against a VC firm that gives grants to black entrepreneurs. Similar suits have been filed against firms with diversity hiring programs, scholarships, and internships.
The resignation of Claudine Gay has reinvigorated the commentary around DEI programs. Josh Hammer, a conservative talk show host and writer, wrote on the social media platform X that taking down Dr. Gay was a “huge scalp” in the “fight for civilizational sanity. ” It was described as “a crushing loss to DEI, wokeism, antisemitism & university elitism,” by conservative commentator Liz Wheeler, and the “beginning of the end for DEI in America’s institutions,” by the conservative activist Christopher Rufo, who had helped publicize the plagiarism allegations against Claudine Gay.
When something is as consistently criticized and devalued as DEI programs have been, a toll is inevitably taken. That is certainly indicated by the latest hiring data for DEI professionals. According to data from labor market analytics company Lightcast, hiring for DEI positions in the US is down by 48% year over year, in the middle of an economic boom. Clearly, DEI investments are under attack.
And when you look at companies doing layoffs, DEI jobs are frequently high on the list of jobs to cut. I even heard a recent podcast with four well-known venture capitalists – three agreed that “doing away with DEI programs” was top on their list.
The value of DEI
Given this criticism of DEI programs, one could be forgiven for thinking such programs carry no value to HR and the wider business. Yet many companies invest in DEI programs, and the value is high in almost every case I come across.
Our Elevating Equity research in 2022 and 2023 found companies focus on diversity and inclusion for very pragmatic reasons, including:
An inclusive hiring strategy broadens and deepens the recruiting pool.
An inclusive leadership strategy drives a deeper leadership pipeline.
An inclusive management approach helps attract diverse customers and markets.
An inclusive board drives growth and market leadership. (proven statistically)
An inclusive supply chain program improves sustainability of the supply chain.
An inclusive culture creates growth, retention, and engagement in the employee base.
Organizations are not prioritizing DEI programs because they are woken or as a box-ticking exercise. They do so because DEI provides real and tangible business benefits. Workday, one of the most admired HR technology companies in the market, has pioneered DEI internally and through its products, and the company has outgrown and outperformed its competitors for years. Their product VIBE, an analytics system designed for this purpose, shows intersectionality, and helps companies set targets and find inequities in leadership, hiring, pay, and career development.
But some law firms have posited that these types of programs are illegal – is there a case to answer?
DEI legality
In response, it’s important to consider the massive and complex pay equity problem. Until the last few years, most companies had no problem paying people in very idiosyncratic ways. The Josh Bersin Company looked at leadership, succession, and pay programs worldwide last year and found that there are massive variations in pay with no clear statistical correlation in most larger companies.
This problem is called “pay equity,” and when you look at pay vs. gender, age, race, nationality, and other non-performance factors, most companies find problems. Is this a “DEI” program?
When we looked at pay equity in detail last year, we found that only 5% of companies have embarked on a strategic equity analysis. While most companies do their best to keep pay consistent with performance, these studies always find problems. Would it be considered illegal to analyze pay by race or nationality and then fix the disparities?
The future of DEI
DEI is undoubtedly a complex issue, and many organizations will be uncertain about the best course of action. Despite the current wave of criticism, there has been vast investment in DEI strategy over recent years, and business leaders are highly unlikely to let that fade away.
Despite the anti-woke movement, political debates, and the inability of Harvard, Penn, and other universities to speak clearly on these topics, businesses will not stop. Affirmative Action was not created to discriminate; it was designed to reduce discrimination. At the University of California, where Affirmative Action was halted in 1995, studies found that earnings among African American STEM graduates decreased significantly. So, one could argue that they were making a real difference.
DEI will not die – it is far too important for that to happen. However, it’s time to do away with the “DEI police” in HR and focus on embedding the principles of inclusion, fair pay, and open-minded discussions across all business units. Senior leaders must take ownership of this issue.
In the early 2000s, companies hired Chief Digital Officers to drive digital technology implementation, ideas, and strategies. As digital tools became commonplace, the role went away. We may be entering a period where the Chief Diversity Officer has a new role: putting the company on a track to embrace inclusion and diversity in every business area and spending less time pushing the agenda from a central group.
In every interview we conduct on this topic, we see overwhelming positive stories from various DEI strategies. Each successful company frames DEI as a business rather than an HR strategy. While HR-centric DEI investments are shrinking, it’s more like them migrating into the business where they belong.
中文翻译如下，仅供参考：
2024年，多样性、公平与包容（DEI）将走向消亡吗？作者：Josh Bersin
对于那些致力于多样性、公平与包容（DEI）领域的人士来说，2024年的开端无疑充满挑战。近期，DEI项目遭到了前所未有的集中攻击，包括一些“反觉醒”评论员和公众人物对其价值、意义乃至存在的质疑。
特别是随着Claudine Gay从哈佛大学的辞职，这种攻击愈发激烈。尽管她的辞职表面上与剽窃事件有关，但不难察觉，她作为DEI领域的领军人物，这一身份似乎也是辞职呼声高涨的一个重要因素。
这意味着，DEI正面临着前所未有的挑战。尽管高效的DEI项目能够为雇主和雇员带来众多益处，但人们仍担忧2024年可能成为DEI逐渐淡出视野的一年。这种情况发生的可能性有多大？如果真的发生，又会产生何种影响？
DEI与文化战争
近年来，无论是在美国还是全球其他大多数国家，你可能都会听说过“文化战争”。这场战争源于对机构的信任下降、不平等现象的加剧以及技术的广泛传播，涉及到试图强加自己意识形态的社会对立群体。
从学校课程内容、体育赛事中的下跪行为，到对“女性”定义的争议、以及工作场所中的代表性指控等，无一不被卷入这场文化战争。而DEI，在这场战争中虽不愿意却占据了核心位置。
人们普遍认为DEI项目倾向于“觉醒”，过分强调种族和性别因素，而忽视了成就和能力。2023年8月，一位律师成功对一家支持黑人创业者的风险投资公司提起诉讼。类似的诉讼也针对那些实施多样性招聘、奖学金和实习计划的公司提起。
Claudine Gay的辞职再次引发了对DEI项目的广泛讨论。保守派脱口秀主持人和作家Josh Hammer在社交媒体平台X上表示，击败Gay博士是“为文明理智而战的一大胜利”。保守派评论员Liz Wheeler称之为“对DEI、觉醒主义、反犹太主义及大学精英主义的沉重打击”，而保守派活动家Christopher Rufo则称这是“DEI在美国机构中走向终结的开始”。
如此一致的批评和贬低无疑对DEI项目造成了重创。根据劳动力市场分析公司Lightcast的数据显示，尽管经济蓬勃发展，但美国DEI相关职位的招聘量同比下降了48%。显然，DEI正面临严峻挑战。
当提到公司裁员时，DEI相关职位往往是裁减名单上的重点。我最近听到一个播客，四位知名风险投资家中有三位认为“取消DEI项目”是他们的首要任务。
DEI的价值
面对如此批评，人们或许会误以为DEI项目对人力资源和更广泛的商业活动没有任何价值。然而，实际上，许多公司对DEI项目的投资极具价值，几乎每个案例都能证明这一点。
我们在2022年和2023年的《提升公平研究》中发现，公司出于实际原因关注多样性和包容性，这包括：
包容性招聘策略扩大了招聘范围。
包容性领导力策略深化了领导力储备。
包容性管理方式吸引了多元化的客户和市场。
包容性董事会推动了市场增长和领导地位（这一点已通过统计数据得到证明）。
包容性供应链项目提升了供应链的可持续性。
包容性文化促进了员工的增长、留存和参与。
组织之所以优先考虑DEI项目，并非仅仅因为“觉醒”，或者作为勾选式行动。他们这样做是因为DEI确实带来了实际和有形的商业利益。例如，Workday这样的HR技术公司在市场上备受尊敬，它不仅在内部推广DEI，在其产品中也体现了这一点，多年来一直超越竞争对手的增长和表现。它们的产品VIBE，一个专门设计的分析系统，展示了交叉性，帮助公司设定目标，找出领导力、招聘、薪酬和职业发展中的不平等。
然而，一些律所提出这类计划可能违法——这是否成立呢？
DEI的合法性
面对这一问题，我们不得不考虑到复杂且广泛的薪酬公平问题。直到最近几年，大多数公司在个性化支付薪酬方面并未遇到太大问题。Josh Bersin Company去年对全球的领导力、继承计划和薪酬计划进行了研究，发现在许多大公司中，薪酬存在巨大差异，且大多没有明显的统计相关性。
这个问题被称作“薪酬公平”。当涉及到性别、年龄、种族、国籍等非绩效因素时，大多数公司都存在问题。那么，分析基于种族或国籍的薪酬差异并加以解决，这会被认为是非法的吗？
DEI的未来
DEI无疑是一个复杂的议题，许多组织对于采取何种措施感到不确定。尽管面临当前的批评浪潮，但近年来对DEI策略的巨大投资表明，商业领袖们不太可能让这一切付诸东流。
尽管存在反觉醒运动、政治辩论，以及哈佛、宾夕法尼亚大学等教育机构在这些议题上的模糊立场，但商界不会因此而停滞不前。平权行动的初衷不是为了歧视，而是为了减少歧视。例如，在加州大学，自从1995年停止实施平权行动以来，研究发现非洲裔美国人STEM专业毕业生的收入显著下降。因此，可以说这些措施确实产生了积极的影响。
DEI不会消亡——它对此太重要了。然而，现在是时候取消人力资源部门中的“DEI警察”，转而专注于在所有业务单元中嵌入包容性、公平薪酬和开放性讨论的原则。高级领导层必须对这一议题负起责任来。
回顾21世纪初，许多公司聘请首席数字官来推动数字技术的实施、创意和战略。随着数字工具成为常态，这一角色逐渐消失。我们可能正处于一个新的时期，首席多样性官的角色也在发生变化：不再是从中心团队推动议程，而是引导公司在每一个业务领域都拥抱包容性和多样性。
通过我们在这个话题上的每次采访，我们都能看到各种DEI策略的积极故事。每个成功的公司都将DEI视为一项业务策略，而非仅仅是人力资源策略。虽然以HR为中心的DEI投资正在减少，但这更像是它们向业务领域的转移，这正是它们应有的归属。
Workday
2024年02月23日
Workday
Workday: It’s Time to Close the AI Trust GapWorkday, a leading provider of enterprise cloud applications for finance and human resources, has pressed a global study recently recognizing the importance of addressing the AI trust gap. They believe that trust is a critical factor when it comes to implementing artificial intelligence (AI) systems, especially in areas such as workforce management and human resources.
Research results are as follows:
At the leadership level, only 62% welcome AI, and only 62% are confident their organization will ensure AI is implemented in a responsible and trustworthy way. At the employee level, these figures drop even lower to 52% and 55%, respectively.
70% of leaders say AI should be developed in a way that easily allows for human review and intervention. Yet 42% of employees believe their company does not have a clear understanding of which systems should be fully automated and which require human intervention.
1 in 4 employees (23%) are not confident that their organization will put employee interests above its own when implementing AI. (compared to 21% of leaders)
1 in 4 employees (23%) are not confident that their organization will prioritize innovating with care for people over innovating with speed. (compared to 17% of leaders)
1 in 4 employees (23%) are not confident that their organization will ensure AI is implemented in a responsible and trustworthy way. (compared to 17% of leaders)
“We know how these technologies can benefit economic opportunities for people—that’s our business. But people won’t use technologies they don’t trust. Skills are the way forward, and not only skills, but skills backed by a thoughtful, ethical, responsible implementation of AI that has regulatory safeguards that help facilitate trust.” said Chandler C. Morse, VP, Public Policy, Workday.
Workday’s study focuses on various key areas:
Section 1: Perspectives align on AI’s potential and responsible use.
“At the outset of our research, we hypothesized that there would be a general alignment between business leaders and employees regarding their overall enthusiasm for AI. Encouragingly, this has proven true: leaders and employees are aligned in several areas, including AI’s potential for business transformation, as well as efforts to reduce risk and ensure trustworthy AI.”
Both leaders and employees believe in and hope for a transformation scenario* with AI.
Both groups agree AI implementation should prioritize human control.
Both groups cite regulation and frameworks as most important for trustworthy AI.
Section 2: When it comes to the development of AI, the trust gap between leaders and employees diverges even more.
“While most leaders and employees agree on the value of AI and the need for its careful implementation, the existing trust gap becomes even more pronounced when it comes to developing AI in a way that facilitates human review and intervention.”
Employees aren’t confident their company takes a people-first approach.
At all levels, there’s the worry that human welfare isn’t a leadership priority.
Section 3: Data on AI governance and use is not readily visible to employees.
“While employees are calling for regulation and ethical frameworks to ensure that AI is trustworthy, there is a lack of awareness across all levels of the workforce when it comes to collaborating on AI regulation and sharing responsible AI guidelines.”
Closing remarks: How Workday is closing the AI trust gap.
Transparency: Workday can prioritize transparency in their AI systems. Providing clear explanations of how AI algorithms make decisions can help build trust among users. By revealing the factors, data, and processes that contribute to AI-driven outcomes, Workday can ensure transparency in their AI applications.
Explainability: Workday can work towards making their AI systems more explainable. This means enabling users to understand the reasoning behind AI-generated recommendations or decisions. Employing techniques like interpretable machine learning can help users comprehend the logic and factors influencing the AI-driven outcomes.
Ethical considerations: Working on ethical frameworks and guidelines for AI use can play a crucial role in closing the trust gap. Workday can ensure that their AI systems align with ethical principles, such as fairness, accountability, and avoiding bias. This might involve rigorous testing, auditing, and ongoing monitoring of AI models to detect and mitigate any potential biases or unintended consequences.
User feedback and collaboration: Engaging with users and seeking their feedback can be key to building trust. Workday can involve their customers and end-users in the AI development process, gathering insights and acting on user concerns. Collaboration and open communication will help Workday enhance their AI systems based on real-world feedback and user needs.
Data privacy and security: Ensuring robust data privacy and security measures is vital for instilling trust in AI systems. Workday can prioritize data protection and encryption, complying with industry standards and regulations. By demonstrating strong data privacy practices, they can alleviate concerns associated with AI-driven data processing.
SOURCE Workday
Workday
2024年01月11日
Workday
2024年的HRTech：GenAI、分析和技能技术In 2024, the field of Human Resources is experiencing a transformative shift with the integration of cutting-edge technologies such as Generative AI (GenAI), advanced analytics, and skills technology. This article by Dave Zielinski, featured on SHRM Online, delves into the evolving landscape of HR, highlighting the significant impact of these technologies on enhancing the employee experience, improving regulatory compliance, and revolutionizing talent management. Industry analysts and thought leaders share insights on the growing importance of GenAI in HR processes, the challenges of maintaining employee experience in cost-cutting scenarios, and the potential of predictive analytics in optimizing workforce planning.
接受SHRM Online采访的人力资源行业分析师、从业者和思想领袖表示，今年，人力资源职能部门将采用生成式人工智能 (GenAI)，投资于提升员工体验的技术，并采用强大的预测分析和技能技术。
人力资源领导者将转向技术，这些技术不仅可以提高法规遵从性，还可以帮助其组织做出更好、更快的人才决策并重新定义工作方式。
有远见的公司将继续投资 EX
一些分析师预测，随着高管将注意力转向降低成本和提高效率，远离包容性、公平和多样性等问题，员工体验 (EX) 将在 2024 年出现“衰退”；灵活的工作安排；和员工心理健康。员工的工作选择将减少，雇主将收回一些影响力。
不过，尽管许多组织可能会在 2024 年减少或冻结 EX 支出，但专家对此类举措的后果提出警告。
JP Gownder 是 Forrester 的副总裁兼首席分析师。他在博文中写道，根据 Forrester 研究，66% 的技术决策者表示，他们将在 2024 年增加对 EX 或人力资源技术的投资，其中许多投资将旨在提高效率，而不是 EX 结果。
但逆流而上的领导者将在 2024 年获得实实在在的好处。
“通过开发成熟的 EX 计划，您的组织可以提高生产力、降低人员流失率并提高创造力，”Gownder 写道。
其他专家认为，足智多谋的人力资源领导者会在预算紧张的情况下找到投资 EX 的方法。
管理咨询公司光辉国际 (Korn Ferry) 首席人力资源官 (CHRO) 业务的高级客户合伙人丹·卡普兰 (Dan Kaplan) 表示：“人力资源部门将被迫在低迷的市场中保持参与度，甚至在成本削减和削减的整个过程中也不例外。” “这将是一场艰难的舞蹈，但最好的人力资源领导者会找到办法做到这一点。”
光辉国际 (Korn Ferry) 专门负责人力资源问题的高级客户合伙人胡安·巴勃罗·冈萨雷斯 (Juan Pablo Gonzalez) 表示，组织对 EX 的承诺在 2024 年不会减弱，但 EX 看起来会非常不同。
“EX 的本质可能会变得更加个性化，同时也会变得不那么个性化，”冈萨雷斯说。“例如，通过使用 Microsoft Office Copilot、Workday 和 Salesforce 等大型软件平台中已有的人工智能功能，雇主和员工已经改变了他们的 EX。正在发生的情况是，员工与技术的互动越来越多地取代了与人的互动，但与技术的互动已经变得更加适合员工的特定需求和情况。”
亚特兰大人力资源咨询公司 IA 的创始人兼管理负责人 Mark Stelzner 表示，虽然由于组织面临控制盈利的挑战，预算将在 2024 年重新分配，但良好的 EX 相关技术投资将继续为公司带来红利。
“我认为投资 EX 实际上会提高效率并降低成本，”Stelzner 说。“到 2024 年，我们可能会看到组织不断转向‘流程主导、技术支持’的理念。端到端流程的优化通常会导致诸如消除现有技术债务以及统一工具和技术等决策，以减少员工的困惑并优化个性化，从而减少集成良好的接触点。”
Gartner 专门研究人力资源技术的副总裁分析师 John Kostoulas 表示，做出更具战略性的采购决策和改善现有技术生态系统的治理是改善 EX 的两个关键。Gartner 最近的研究发现，60% 的人力资源领导者认为他们当前的技术阻碍而不是改善了员工体验。
Nucleus Research 专门负责员工体验的研究经理 Evelyn McMullen 表示，仅仅为了提高效率而不是 EX 结果而设计的技术投资可能被证明是短视的。她指出，改进的 EX 通常会带来更好的绩效并降低与营业额相关的成本。
麦克马伦说：“考虑到劳动力市场和求职者优势的不断波动，减少 EX 预算的风险尤其大。” “当控制权不可避免地回到求职者手中时，保留 EX 投资的组织将能够更好地捕获和留住最优秀的人才。”
GenAI 从实验转向加速采用
到 2024 年，通过更多地采用该技术，人力资源职能将从涉足 GenAI 转向更深的领域。
随着领导者制定更严格的 GenAI 治理计划以及使用该技术的风险开始降低，人力资源和招聘部门将越来越多地使用其 HRIS 平台中已有的 GenAI 工具来编写职位描述和面试指南、创建敬业度调查、开发培训课程、分析数据，并制定政策。
世界大型企业联合会 2023 年底对首席人力资源官的调查发现，61% 的首席人力资源官计划在 2024 年投资人工智能以简化人力资源流程。
分析师 Eser Rizaoglu 表示：“许多人力资源领导者的 GenAI 之旅仍处于起步阶段，但要么通过现有的人力资源技术提供商获得 GenAI 功能，要么到 2024 年中期购买新的 GenAI 工具。” Gartner 的人力资源研究和咨询实践。
Rizaoglu 表示，许多人力资源技术供应商仍在努力弄清楚如何充分利用 GenAI 的功能，同时平衡保护数据、确保有效治理和考虑道德因素的需求。他表示：“在实现这种精细的平衡之前，GenAI 能力在人力资源领域的大规模扩散将面临挑战。”
Stelzner 表示，虽然去年 GenAI 带来了兴奋并刺激了人力资源领域的实验，但“冷酷的现实”是许多组织仍然没有准备好全力投入。
“到 2024 年，GenAI 采用率的任何增长都可能是渐进式的，包括更好地利用聊天机器人、增强员工沟通的个性化、更加关注人才招聘领域的可能性以及系统升级和实施测试的自动化。”他说。
埃森哲进行的研究发现，GenAI 有潜力改变组织 40% 的工作时间。“这并不意味着 40% 的工作岗位将会消失，而是反映了工作方式的转变，”负责该公司人力资源转型和交付实践的埃森哲董事总经理迈克尔·本亚明 (Michael Benyamin) 表示。“技术将取代一些任务，让员工在工作中变得更有生产力、更具创造力和效率。人工智能是人类能力的倍增器。”
随着 GenAI 开始增强或转变更多的工作角色，人力资源和学习领导者将需要创建敏捷的学习计划，以重新培训员工使用快速发展的 GenAI 工具的技能。许多工人几乎没有接受过如何使用该技术的培训。
Salesforce 于 2023 年进行的一项调查发现，62% 的员工表示他们缺乏有效、安全使用 GenAI 的技能。波士顿咨询集团的另一项研究发现，尽管该技术有望从根本上重塑他们的工作方式，但只有 14% 的一线员工接受过与人工智能相关的技能提升。
Benyamin 表示，随着 GenAI 在工作场所变得越来越普遍，人力资源部门必须帮助制定负责任和道德的人工智能使用政策，并制定培训计划来解决偏见、歧视、数据保护和适当数据使用等问题。
更加关注变革管理，提高新人力资源软件的采用率
专家认为，许多人力资源领导者将寻求通过采用变革管理策略来提高 2024 年技术投资的回报，例如确保员工使用新采用的技术解决方案。
人力资源面临的一项持续挑战是管理云技术供应商源源不断的更新和新功能，导致许多人力资源软件即服务 (SaaS) 许可证闲置。位于加利福尼亚州帕洛阿尔托的 SaaS 智能平台 Productiv 于 2023 年进行的一项研究发现，组织中 53% 的 SaaS 许可证总体未使用。
位于阿拉巴马州亨茨维尔的人力资源咨询和研究公司 Lighthouse Research 的首席研究官本·尤班克斯 (Ben Eubanks) 表示，许多组织低估了如何确保员工在新的人力资源平台和应用程序推出后定期使用它们。
“人力资源和人才技术不是‘按下开关就可以开始’类型的解决方案，”尤班克斯说。“但许多雇主仍然这么认为，并低估了采用该技术所需的行为改变。”
重新思考员工敬业度调查
更多的人力资源和执行团队将重新考虑如何创建敬业度调查以及分发调查的频率，以减少“调查疲劳”。
ServiceNow 高级副总裁兼员工工作流程产品总经理 Gretchen Alarcon 表示，随着组织继续努力寻找“秘方”，让员工在 2024 年更频繁地重返办公室，人力资源领导者将需要使用更有意义的方法测量工具。
她说：“组织将利用员工的声音调查和反馈来分析在办公室花费的时间与员工情绪和生产力的关系。” “这将使领导者能够根据数据而不是假设做出决策，这样他们就可以根据员工的需求、行为和提高生产力的因素来调整重返办公室 [RTO] 策略。”
从改进的技能技术中获益
转向基于技能的招聘和晋升策略的人力资源和招聘领导者将受益于技术的发展，例如使用人工智能和机器学习自动创建、组织和更新员工技能数据库的技能本体，从而显着减少体力工作量人力资源部要求。
下一代本体论和其他新兴技能技术可以使人力资源领导者更轻松地识别组织中的技能差距，然后相应地调整招聘或学习和发展计划。虽然市场上没有真正的端到端技能技术解决方案，但许多人力资源领导者正在将人工智能驱动的点解决方案结合在一起，以创建有效的技能数据库和评估工具。
“到 2024 年，随着组织采用技能智能技术，他们将开始认识到，这不是拥有最大的技能数据库，而是一个不断更新的丰富且互联的技能数据库，”Alarcon 说。她补充说，此类数据库使公司能够了解人才缺口是否是由于缺乏合适的人才或缺乏技能造成的，以及他们是否需要为未来培养、购买或借用人才。
预测分析工具变得更加强大
人力资源从业者和分析师认为，人力资源部门将受益于日益强大的预测分析工具，这些工具将改善劳动力规划和数据驱动的决策。
光辉国际 (Korn Ferry) 的冈萨雷斯 (Gonzalez) 表示：“凭借更大的数据集和改进的算法，人力资源部门应该能够采取一些措施，例如缓和过去几年的招聘盛衰周期。” 例如，冈萨雷斯表示，雇主不会雇佣数千名员工，然后在六个月后解雇其中一半，而是能够更好地预测在合理的时间内他们需要的员工数量和类型。他说：“然后他们可以雇用和培养一支更稳定的员工队伍，以造福所有组织利益相关者。”
Stelzner 认为，许多人力资源部门由于没有充分发挥数据分析的潜力而错失了机会。他说，如果未能投资分析人力资源数据所需的工具和技能，可能会导致洞察力缺失，并阻碍人力资源战略与更广泛的业务目标保持一致的能力。
“从历史上看，人力资源部门也一直在努力解决数据的准确性问题，”斯特尔兹纳说。“这会影响该职能部门依靠报告和数据分析来通知和支持其决策的能力。更糟糕的是，企业的其他部门已经接受过培训，预计人力资源系统会提供有问题的数据，因此在数据清理、报告和分析方面还有很多工作要做，以重新获得整个企业的可信度。”
Dave Zielinski 是 Skiwood Communications 的负责人，这是一家位于明尼阿波利斯的商业写作和编辑公司。
作者：Dave Zielinski
Workday
2024年01月09日
Workday
Sana Raises Additional $28M Led by NEA to Build the Universal AI Platform for the EnterpriseSana, a company focused on building a universal AI platform for the enterprise, has secured an additional $28 million in funding, with NEA (New Enterprise Associates) leading the investment round. This infusion of funding will undoubtedly help Sana advance its mission of creating an AI platform that caters specifically to the needs of businesses.
The Swedish-born Sana scaleup becomes one of Europe’s most highly-funded AI companies with $62M in total Series B funding
May 31,2023 Sana, the leading AI-powered learning and knowledge platform, announced today it’s landed another $28m in an opportunistic investment round led by NEA. Workday Ventures also joined the round. With a combined total of $62m in Series B funding, the Swedish-born scaleup is now one of the most highly-funded AI companies.
Sana's mission is to augment human intelligence through artificial intelligence. To that end, the company has built a category-defining product that blends the best of enterprise search, a learning management system, meeting tools, and a knowledge management system into one single platform.
Underpinning this suite of tools is Sana AI, the company's latest release. Sana AI is an omnipresent assistant that can do everything from search across all your company's apps and take actions in response to natural language commands to generating real-time summaries of live meetings and creating entire learning courses from scratch, and writing SQL to query your data. In other words, it's like ChatGPT for your company's knowledge.
By augmenting an organization's ability to capture, organize, and access knowledge at every step through AI, Sana enables any team to move faster and be more productive—from sales and customer support teams to product specialists and software engineers.
"At Sana, we believe every organization's mission depends on the collective intelligence of its employees. That intelligence depends on knowledge, yet most institutional knowledge today is scattered across multiple tools, trapped in people's minds, and lost in verbal conversations. AI is the key to solving this problem at scale. By unlocking knowledge for every employee across any organization, we unlock global progress," said Joel Hellermark, founder and CEO of Sana. "We're thrilled to have the support from NEA and strategic investors like Workday Ventures on this mission."
Sana wasn’t looking for funding when NEA made its proactive offer. The scaleup had a healthy runway having closed a $34m Series B round led by Menlo Ventures last December. One of the reasons for the additional investor interest is commercial performance: Sana has grown its business 3x year over year.
NEA will be represented on Sana's board by CEO Scott Sandell and Managing Director Philip Chopin. Since joining NEA in 1996, Sandell has played a critical role in many industry-transforming businesses, including Robinhood, Salesforce, Tableau Software, and Workday.
"Sana's past track record and current trajectory are exceptional. Thanks to top talent, bold vision, and rare organizational alignment, we believe they've already built a world-class learning and knowledge platform. But what excites us most is where Sana is going next: indexing every form of an organization's functional data through LLMs to become the de-facto AI platform for the enterprise. The use cases for this type of product are endless," said Scott Sandell, CEO at NEA.
In addition to Sana's commercial growth and ambitious team, NEA was impressed by the level of customer advocacy. The platform is used by an impressive client roster of market-leading companies like Merck, Kry/Livi, and Svea Solar—all of whom praise Sana's superior user experience and product velocity.
"Since day one, we've been amazed at Sana's pace of innovation and commitment to addressing customer feedback. The platform is more than a tool—it's become Svea Solar’s home for learning and knowledge. We see the latest iteration of Sana AI as a productivity game-changer, " said Hanna Manberg, CHRO at Svea Solar.
With the additional funding, Sana will continue expanding its product development and commercial teams across Stockholm, London, and New York offices. Sana's headquarters will remain in Stockholm, where founder and CEO Joel Hellermark founded the company aged 19, six years after teaching himself to code in C.
"Joel is an exceptional founder. This Series B extension is a testament to his technical and commercial prowess and visionary leadership. As we enter the new age of artificial intelligence, we believe the Sana team is well positioned to become one of the world's most successful and impactful AI companies," said Philip Chopin, Managing Director at NEA UK.
About Sana
Sana is an AI-powered learning platform that empowers organizations to find, share, and harness the knowledge they need to achieve their missions. Backed by some of the world's leading investors, operators, and founders, Sana has raised more than $85m to date. The company's headquarters are in Stockholm, Sweden, with offices in London and New York. For more information, head to www.sanalabs.com.
About NEA
New Enterprise Associates, Inc. (NEA) is a global venture capital firm focused on helping entrepreneurs build transformational businesses across multiple stages, sectors and geographies. Founded in 1977, NEA has over $25 billion in assets under management, as of March 31, 2023 and invests in technology and healthcare companies at all stages in a company’s lifecycle, from seed stage through IPO. The firm's long track record of investing includes more than 270 portfolio company IPOs and more than 450 mergers and acquisitions. For more information, please visit www.nea.com.
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