3Sixty Insights #HRTechChat with Pete Tiliakos, Global Payroll Product Strategy Leader

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It was my distinct pleasure to have Pete Tiliakos, global payroll product strategy leader, as my guest for this episode of the #HRTechChat video podcast. Pete’s latest role is just the proverbial tip of the iceberg when it comes to his experience, expertise and, really, authority in the domain of payroll. Most recently, Pete was an analyst at two different firms. Before that, he was payroll solution architect at IBM and senior consultant, human capital management, at Deloitte Consulting, in that order. Back in the early aughts, notably, he was payroll leader for shared services at Disney Worldwide. Put differently, to say Pete is an expert in payroll is an understatement. Returning to the present, “It’s an exciting time to be in the industry,” said Pete, who’s also a member of our Global Executive Advisory Council. “It feels like all that experience has really caught a wave.”

During our chat, we shared takeaways in the wake of this year’s triumphant return of the HR Technology Conference & Expo. Triumphant does seem like an appropriate word. Regarding the conference, “To me that was the biggest, boldest, most vibrant, most alive event I’ve seen in a long time,” Pete said. “There’s a lot of talk about a recession and a slowdown and things, but what we’re seeing is that talent is still very important. And then, of course, we saw payroll well represented.”

The possibilities around payroll are greater and more progressive today than we even would have fathomed 10 years ago. The train has left the station, so to speak, and our concept of what payroll can and does mean has expanded. “I just think it’s great to see all the investment and focus on payroll,” Pete said. “COVID really provided that spotlight, where payroll became infinitely more important compared to how it had been treated in the past.”

It’s almost as if business leaders are finally seeing the processing of payroll for what it is: not a mere cost to contain, but an investment, just as their people’s pay itself is an investment, too. Pete and I delved deeply into all of this, the transformation of payroll — as evidenced by our conversations out in the wild, at HR Technology Conference — and how payroll professionals can seize the moment to become strategic advisors to their organizations. It’s one thing to be highly skilled in work that organizational leadership may view as background noise. It’s quite another to become bearers of crucially informative data that can change the C-suite’s basic understanding of the workforce. That’s when payroll and strategy start to occupy the same sentences.

I really enjoyed this discussion with Pete and highly encourage readers to tune into this episode. Additionally, Pete has just launched a podcast of his own with industry veteran Julie Fernandez. It’s called the HR & Payroll 2.0 podcast, and you can find the latest episodes and their newsletter here.

Our #HRTechChat Series is also available as a podcast on the following platforms:

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Transcript:

Brent Skinner 00:00
Well, hello everyone, and welcome to this the latest episode of the HRTechChat video podcast. And I am very, very happy to have with me today very good friend of mine. Someone you may very well know. Pete Tiliakos. And he is Global Payroll product strategy leader at Alight Solutions, but that really is just scratches the surface of your background. Pete. Welcome. Yeah.

Pete Tiliakos 00:27
Thank you, my fan. Glad to be here.

Brent Skinner 00:29
Well, yeah, thank you. Thank you. That’s, that’s high praise, as Nick Cage was say, I believe in any event, maybe you could share with our audience for those of us, those of them that may not be familiar with you, just your background. I know. It’s, there’s a lot of a lot of background in payroll, and I just want to maybe you could unpack that for them.

Pete Tiliakos 00:50
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. Yeah. And thanks for having me. I really appreciate being here. Yeah. So Pete iliacus. Obviously, you mentioned that I’m a longtime payroll leader in the space, I’ve been, what were the HR as well, I shouldn’t just say payroll, I’ve done quite a few things. But most recently, I’ve been an industry analyst, like yourself, covering the HCM technology market and global payroll and payroll services space, you know, for a couple of firms over the last five and five, almost six years. And then prior to that had a very long career in really HR outsourcing and shared services. So as I like to say, I’ve kind of grown up in transformation world, and done everything from practitioner to pre sales to sourcing advisory and consulting, to being an industry analyst, and now, you know, helping shape a product, you know, here to light so, yeah, really, it’s really an exciting time to be in the industry. Like, all that experience has kind of caught a wave, you know, in some ways, so having a lot of fun doing it.

Brent Skinner 01:47
Yeah, I’m very impressed with their career. And and, you know, just I’ve mentioned also, you know, I will I credit you with sort of bringing me the last 5% In terms of understanding just what what exactly employers have recordar for instance, you know, I, I said, I said who would who would be good to explain this to me and Pete and I reached out to you and you were a great up there. So thank you very much. HR Technology Conference and Expo. This is very much on everyone’s mind this week, and we a lot of us, were out there last week in Las Vegas at the Mandalay Bay. I heard somebody today say it was Mandalay Bay isn’t necessarily one of the swankiest resorts out there. And that was the first time I’ve heard I, I’d ever heard that. It’s one of my favorites. I love that place. They have a great house band, at least back several years ago that I used to sneak out to watch every once in a while when I was out there in Vegas, but um, lots of really interesting stuff happening in the HR technology world and HR in general. What are your thoughts coming out of the last week? So?

Pete Tiliakos 03:01
Yeah, yeah, I thought it was great. I don’t know about you. But I mean, my feet still hurt. My legs are sore. And I just got my voice back over the weekend. So and I’ll admit, I did not stay up terribly late. I didn’t really I don’t really drink a lot. So for me, it was just the talking and the networking just loud music right in a dryer, I think where are you out? But well what that to me that I think I’ve been to the last seven ish or so HR tech conferences. To me that was the biggest, boldest, most vibrant, most alive, probably event I’ve seen in a long time. Now, last year was a little bit of a hiccup because of just everything going on. I think it was bad timing. A lot of people wanted to be back. But it just was weird time. But this year, it was it was spot on. Right. I heard 8500 people or two total participants. That’s incredible. Maybe one of the bigger ones I think I’ve attended. And yeah, I mean, I think the cool thing we learned last week that there’s a couple things I think I walked away understanding is that one, you know, and a number of your peers have put data out there around and you guys have as well around the fact that yeah, there’s a lot of talk about a recession and a slowdown and things but what we’re seeing is that talents is still very important. And firms are spending money on tech and services. So I thought that was very, very refreshing. I know I saw some others say this, I felt like I ran into a lot of folks that were there to to invest big banks were there, I saw some VCs and private equity. So that was that was really positive, right? That shows you that that aligns to what we’ve seen so far, the first half of the year and the spin that’s been going on in the space still being spot on to 2021 if not maybe going to going to pass it. So all very positive, I think for the industry. And then of course I think you know, if you looked around the room, you saw a lot of the things that were that are important right now and that’s talent. Recruiting for sure is was very well represented as it always is a lot of AI in that space. Right a lot. A lot going on there. And Certainly around I think, you know, learning and development, no doubt skills are absolutely imperative, right? retaining your talent developing your talent. So all that was huge. And then of course, we saw payroll right when my favorite area payroll was well represented, I think we saw all of the, you know, the mid market small market players there that you’d expect to see a good sprinkling of Global Payroll providers, but also the EO ours right the booths are getting bigger the seat you know, the C suites getting larger and more impressive on some of those some of those firms and so I think it just underscores Oh, and And let’s not forget earned wage accesses, right as well, that was very rich there. I think that’s become pretty much the standard and payroll, you have to have that financial wellness connection and, and flexibility. Part of it. So, yeah, it was good to see all those things were a priority. And, and yeah, and buyers were out, vendors were out, everyone was having a good time, it was nice to just kind of get get her way back together.

Brent Skinner 05:53
Oh, man, the IRL, in real life was just great. And the also the F two F face to face. I had more than one opportunity in the past couple of weeks to read an email that had IRL and F two F both in the same sentence. And it just felt good. You know, regarding payroll. Payroll is I agree with you, having been at the conference too. And just the conversation, the chatter, industry chatter around payroll for the past year, especially it payrolls are becoming a lot more than just payroll processing. And it has been for a while. But there’s, you know, you and I both been analysts, so we had to bring in the term inflection point, but I’m gonna do it. But it feels like we’re at this inflection point, or we’ve crossed the Rubicon, if you will, right. Where, where payroll, payroll will never again be what it was, in my opinion, Awa earned wage at earned wage access is a perfect example. In all, its you know, it’s kind of it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s variance, or that might not be the right word. But you think about streaming PAY ON DEMAND pay. Just the possibilities around payroll are more today than we would have even fathom. And even I’d say maybe 10 years ago, for sure. 10 years, 10 years ago. Like what are your thoughts? They’re like around the technological innovation today? Yeah,

Pete Tiliakos 07:39
yeah, well, that’s where I get goosebumps, I get excited, right, I was a practitioner back in my day, you know, came up in the payroll world, initially in my career, and yeah, I’m passionate about the industry, right, I want to see us all have a great parallel experience, whether we’re an employee or the practitioner, everyone deserves that fantastic, you know, experience, right? It shouldn’t be, you know, fingers crossed, I hope my paychecks right, because it shouldn’t be the complete opposite, right? That should be the exception of a blunder. And it should be very, you know, explanatory and clear what is going on with your with your pay. And so I think it’s just super refreshing to see all the money and innovation and, you know, just the focus on payroll, right, I think that COVID, certainly, or at least a pandemic timeframe, really, I think, created that that spotlight as you point out, right, where payroll became infinitely more important than what you know, it had been treated as in the past. And I think a lot of organizations have looked at payroll to, you know, to what we kind of talked about as a processing center, not really all that valuable, really just a cost center, Kate, you know, a cost location that only gets more expensive, and maybe even the biggest spend in the organization as far as their costs, right their labor costs, so, but what we’ve seen is that payroll is incredibly important and holds incredibly rich data. And ultimately, despite all of that great stuff we saw in the expo room, and all the great things that you learned about, if the paycheck doesn’t get there, for those employees, all of those bets are off, it really doesn’t matter, right, you can have all the best intentions and technology. But if you don’t bring all those things to the table in a way that makes sure the employee is whole and is being treated with respect and they feel that they have control over their pay. It’s not gonna last very long and so, you know, what I think is super refreshing is now you’re seeing so much more of an emphasis being put on leveraging technology to alleviate the practitioner from being that sort of simple process or making them more of an analytic resource to the business allowing them to focus on you know, projects and you know, advancing the you know, the company strategy and using their data to help make some positive change in the organization. And on the flip coin, you need the employee now getting you know, that that that, you know, very, very empowered experience, right where they do have control over their payroll data, and they do have control over their career and their flexibility, enablers like earned wage access or what theirs schedules are and that sort of thing. So all of that coming together I think is just, it’s great, right? It gives the practitioner a better experience the employee a better experience and ultimately means, hopefully in a modernized state better outcomes for the business as well.

Brent Skinner 10:13
Oh, totally agree. And two things that you mentioned, two things sort of jumped out for me. Just now data, your payroll data, right. And also the employee, the experience, the pay experience. So humor me for a second here? You know, it seems like the payroll is becoming more of an experience, right. It’s funny to think of PE as being inexperienced, but But I think, you know, in hindsight, we’re seeing that, that it definitely is it definitely wasn’t previously, it was, well, it was an experience by you know, by technically speaking by the, you know, the, you know, the dictionary definition of the word experience, but, but none of the connotations that come with it with the word experience, it’s just, you know, is, it was this thing that was in the background that happened every one or two weeks. And if you’re elsewhere in the world, maybe once monthly, and that’s it. Now, because of technology, you have more of an opportunity. There’s, there’s more. Yeah, there’s more of an opportunity to to initiate an experience with your pay that met. Yeah, that’s it, you know, pay used to be like a reactive experience something you something that happened to you. And now pay is something that you can make happen.

Pete Tiliakos 11:38
Yeah. Yeah. Arm it there. Yeah,

Brent Skinner 11:43
that’s a great word. I’ve heard that elsewhere. And I wish I could remember where it because yes, you’re absolutely right. Some of the vendors even are using that terminology. Yeah.

Pete Tiliakos 11:51
Yeah. You know, and I guess that’s a great way to describe it and experience. And I think that their experience is still has an opportunity to even improve further, right. I mean, if you think about, if you think about the way in which you mentioned earlier, like just the continuous calculation methods that are technology that’s coming online, right, the interconnected nature and the digital nature of earned wage access, right, like, even you know, while those are great for financial wellness, they’re helping employee solve some financial wellness challenges and address gaps in their, you know, maybe in their, in their finances through to the next paycheck, I think what you’re actually seeing is all of that technology, right? Those integrations, that continuous calculation, the digital native sort of payment capability is all really lending itself to the point where we’re probably going to see pay cycles begin to break down, right? Why should I wait to get my paycheck when I’ve earned it, and I have bills, right? Or I talked to someone the other day, you know, an executive, and he was sitting there thinking about earned wage access. And I remember him saying, he’s like, you know, what, I wouldn’t mind having a little bit of my money to invest sooner, right for my 401 k versus waiting until, you know, two weeks or whatever, that’s, you know, net present value, right? We were all taught that. Yes. You know, I think that you’re right, it is becoming an experience. And I think that the more that these things, this technology proliferates, and straight through processing and machine learning and such gets deeper into payroll, I think you will see a real a real world where we might break down those pay cycles and have this democratization of payroll where employees are kind of deciding their own experience, right, when and how I get paid when and where, and really meeting their own needs. And that flexible kind of, you know, model that I think we’re all kind of leaning towards as employers.

Brent Skinner 13:29
It’s very interesting. Just that the payroll breaking down the payroll cycles. That’s, that’s fascinating. To me, it reminds me of something, you know, that occurred to me a while back is, and is this just, you know, it’s funny how how you go back to pre technology era, right? Like, way back, let’s, let’s say you’re in the Wild West, and you’re a hired cowboy, right. And how are you getting paid? You’re getting paid and, you know, pieces of silver, or whatever it is? Yeah, well, I guess it was American, US currency at that point. But then you’re getting paid at the end of the day in cash. Yeah. Right. And there was, there was no sort of infrastructure around payroll around getting paid. But it’s really interesting after we kind of instituted you know, I and I’m not familiar with the like, the very early days of payroll technology, right. It’s like, you know, you had the very earliest computers that wouldn’t even necessarily look like computers to us today. But, but there was became systematized and then there was a, you know, there was a a necessity to go into a more formal cadence less a less informal relationship between the worker and the pay. And so we ended up with pay cycles, right? And here we are, today, with a payroll technology having evolved for such a long time. Time at some point, some point, you know, this master became the servant right at some point, right? So for instance, in the beginning, we had the payroll cycles, because the technology could really only or, you know, whatever it could handle a common batch process. Yeah. And now, you know, some point, I don’t know, mid 20th century became, you know, what, we have these cycles because are, you know, that were made, were developing, innovating the technology to fit the cycles. And now we have this, this this, like, almost a terrible, I guess it is, it’s probably not the right word, but definitely not the right word. But we have this, these enormous, for terrible, enormous, but it was sunk costs in these systems yet, or, frankly, against the backdrop of, of everything, you’re talking about the pay experience, or these innovations in modern payroll, like ew, a and some of the other stuff coming down the pipe Pike, like streaming pay, and even autonomous pay, which is very much in the distant, the distant future of work, but it’s coming. You’re right. I mean, at what point is, does the sort of the existing infrastructure kind of fall away? At what point do the two organizations reach sort of the aha moment where they’re like, Okay, you know, what, we’re not going to worry anymore about this sunk cost? Because we’re actually missing out somehow, financially, more so by, by claim to it?

Pete Tiliakos 16:35
Yeah, yeah, I think there’s actually more organizations hanging on to outdated sort of on premise stuff, right. And, and you can kind of understand, I mean, payroll is one of those things that people are afraid of, right, if they don’t understand it, they’re, you know, I would even argue there’s sometimes a lack of respect for payroll in the past, it’s getting better, but I think there’s been a lack of respect for it, because I think they didn’t understand it. And so I think it’s been one of those things, if it isn’t broke, let’s don’t fix it. And so, yeah, we’ll just like you have some folks that are really holding on to the bitter end with their core HR, you know, on premise solutions, they’re doing the same with payroll. And what the reality of it is, is there’s a world of opportunity for their for their operating models, right? With that new technology, it’s not going to solve everything for you, right, we all know that technology is not not enough, it’s just the vehicle, you’ve got to you’ve got to sort of consume the diet, if you will take on the diet and, and make the evolution, I don’t like to say change anymore. I like to say evolution, you really do have to evolve self as an org, from these pathways. But I think it’s it’s doable. And I think the good, the good news is, is that more organizations are achieving a truly global model. Now, right there, you know, maybe they’re not getting to one single vendor, they can, it’s possible, but some are choosing to have a few. And that’s okay. But it’s way better than having maybe 47. And, you know, having a different experience in every region. And I think there’s an opportunity now more than ever, with all of this technology to bring it all together. And when they modernize it, right, it gives them the opportunity to be more agile and more resilient as an organization. But you know, going back to that point about the modern solutions, what I love about them is they’re incredibly flexible, right? Like our offering, for example, or our, our solution, just like many of our peers is very modular, so you don’t necessarily have to go and sort of solve all that at once. You can very much bite off the pieces and digest it as you as your organization needs. So yeah, I would agree there’s a lot of folks that are holding on to some outdated stuff. And as these things are coming online, we’re seeing adoption, but I think there’s still a lot of runway for firms to really get themselves to where they need to be to be ready for the next, you know, next volatility, right, pandemic, whatever. Right now, you always have to do this just to compete, right, earn wage access is almost table stakes. For certain industries to compete with someone next door, you’re fighting over talent for so

Brent Skinner 18:49
I totally agree with you on that. If you mentioned payroll, getting a you know, getting more not not always having received respect, you know, struggling to get respect. And in to me, that’s where, and we’ve had this conversation previously, around the data. You know, first of all, there’s, there’s so much really, you know, rich, very pertinent, yeah, usable, insightful strategic data in of all things, payroll, right. And it took me a while to kind of wrap my head around that, you know, else, payroll information, so, no offense, but I mean, I kind of like think, Oh, it’s this is basic, you know, but then you really think about it. No, that’s, that’s, that’s, that’s, that’s where that’s where it’s at is payroll data, right. Yeah. And in their organization, payroll departments, that are that are starting to embrace this aspect that they have this data and they can be, they can be. They can show themselves to be of strategic importance to leadership. In the organization, and yeah, there are some, some success stories around that. I know that.

Pete Tiliakos 20:06
Yeah, payroll holds a tremendous data set. Right. And a lot of times it’s not understood. It’s also not relied upon if it’s not, if we’re talking about multiple systems data having to be brought together manually, it’s not going to be trusted, right? It’s not real time. It’s not, it’s not often accurate enough for timely enough for people to act upon, too. So yeah, you know, but now, right, you have a lot of opportunities with integrations and cloud systems and much of this modern landscape that we’ve that we see coming online, where firms have the ability to get at that data in, you know, in a moment’s notice, right? Hey, CFO needs a report on this country or that country, we’re making a decision about something, that data can become very, very powerful when it comes to figuring out workforce decisions paid, you know, looking at pay gap stuff, you know, oftentimes payroll has the most accurate data in the organization, right? It’s, where do we all go when we have something to change, and we are always made sure our paycheck is right. So yeah, that data is really rich. But I think it also takes a being it being reliable. So you need the tools to make it reliable. And you need the tools and the understanding of how to work with it, and what to do with it. And if payroll can do those things, and can can pivot their role away from that simple ticking time process or to more of an analytic storyteller can help the business sort of see where there’s opportunities to make some changes, maybe improved processes, maybe help them in a decision making for collective bargaining agreement, or, you know, give them data to help them decide about, you know, where they expand to, or something like that, that’s going to be where payroll is going to level up, right, and give it give it the opportunity to be more of a strategic adviser versus the, you know, sort of simple processor of the past. And that will change the perception as well. Right? And hopefully, it’s going to take a top down sort of bottoms up approach, right? Yeah, leadership’s gonna have to look at payroll, give them give them that support the opportunity to perform, and then payroll is gonna have to, you know, obviously, step up to that challenge and champion that. So, but it’s exactly right. Because

Brent Skinner 22:02
it is, it is I love that term, level up payroll again, that, you know, to me, it’s like, an engine room, right. And on a big ship, you know, like, it’s, you know, as a payroll administrator. If you’re, you know, I think we can all agree that there’s some very complex things that an payroll administrator must do. And so these people are professionals, absolutely. But at the same time, at the same time, try it, try to get a, somebody in the C suite to, to really, you know, have a take the time to listen to and appreciate that, right. It’s this, this is not a, this is not to, to qualify it or anything like that. It’s just this is kind of just one of these, that’s the way it is. Yeah.

Pete Tiliakos 22:54
Right, right here with drastically over simplified for sure.

Brent Skinner 22:57
Yeah, exactly. At the same time, if you can, yep, you can take that data. Yeah. And you can from the engine room and say, Hey, we we can we have, we can go X number of nautical miles, you know, if we maintain a certain pace, or if we, you know, we do this pace over this, this stretch, and then that over the next and we can go this far, instead of a sudden, all of a sudden, the, you know, the the what is it the? What’s it called? Where the captain is on the ship?

Pete Tiliakos 23:26
Yeah, the whole and the

Brent Skinner 23:29
top like the bridge, the captain on the bridge is like, Oh, I’m

Pete Tiliakos 23:33
not a boater? I’m not a boat.

Brent Skinner 23:34
Neither am I leave it to me to bring in a boat metaphor. We’re not We’re not a seafaring people. But anyways, yeah. So all of a sudden, the captain on the bridge sees the value of information coming from, you know, of things happening in the engine room, right? beyond it being an abstraction, you know, beyond sort of the, the, the idea of, well, I hope the, the, the, the engine doesn’t fail, because we need to stay on this kind of thing, which is what happens in sort of old style payroll, where, you know, the engine fails, payroll messes up, and all of a sudden, the C suite has a sort of a leadership has a sort of a ball of wax to deal with, you know, data. Yep. Just to kind of go full circle on. On data. I had somebody asked me at the show, was one of the large, large vendors, and they were talking about we were talking about the future of work, just kind of riffing on it. And they said, you know, it, it’s interesting, you’re saying a lot of things that were saying, this was the vendor speaking. But one of the things we struggle with is getting our, our, our users to sort of to be able to really, truly, truly Fathom and kind of grasp and wrap their heads around this new future of work stuff that we can do. Write, they’re kind of stuck in, you know, in their, you know, their these were not his words, but these are my words sort of Stockholm Syndrome a little bit you know where they’re, they’re stuck in sort of their administrative work and it just so focused on it and seeing that almost as their entire world and he asked me the guy asked me how can we get how can we get an HR people to start thinking outside of that box and start leasing and understand like fathoming understanding and then comprehending and then embracing some of this future work stuff. And, and honestly, I didn’t, I didn’t know exactly how to answer him first, but then it occurred to me kind of on the spot, okay. And honestly, this I drew on this partially from previous conversation I had with you around this idea of just the data, right. So first of all, like we like we just discussed now, payroll department can show a strategic, the strategic value of payroll of people data to the organization become a strategic, be seen in an elevated they can level up in the organization, right? Well, it occurred to me, if you can get HR people to focus on the data, because that’s something that’s readily available to them as IT technology is improving ever, you know, ever so improving, you know, continually, it’s getting more and more sophisticated by the year by the month, right? If you can get them interested in kind of, you know, waiting, like, Wait, like in water waiting in the I don’t know, what’s with the water metaphors waiting in the data, right? You can almost kind of pull them into the future of work. Yeah. Without them really realizing it until they’re there. Yeah, totally. Mission accomplished.

Pete Tiliakos 26:50
Yeah. Yeah. You know, I think that the hrs role is getting shaped the same way, right? Data is shifting, I think we’ve seen a bit of that there’s a lot more the frontline manager is having to do a bit more of HR sort of transactional role, it feels like an HR is being really pulled to do or should be really doing a lot more strategic things. And I think this data, insights, right surfaced insights, predictive stuff, you know, really connecting the dots on external data, along with HCM data, is giving them a lot of power, right to be able to to be that impactful HR strategy, you know, or, you know, delivering organization that they should be. And yeah, I think it’s gonna be difficult, you know, it is generational, right? There are some folks that aren’t going to embrace some of this, and there are some folks who are really going to get behind it. But I think the more that you can show employees, how it impacts them positively how it’s going to make their job easier, make their role change, and a more, I wouldn’t even say change shift in a way that makes them more of an analytic sort of focused resource, versus maybe a transactional kind of resource. You know, for, it’s not gonna be for everyone, some folks want to maybe remain in that in that old way. But those that are looking to kind of rescale themselves and pivot towards the future, I think will embrace that stuff. And I think they’ll see that it has a positive impact on both the employee and the business, when they can use that those insights to, you know, to help people guide them to good decisions or, you know, bring them to, you know, to a good solution. So, I think it’s a win. And when you can show that to people, typically, people are obviously, if they’re passionate about their role they’re going to be they’re going to engage with that. So, but there’s gonna be some folks, I’m sure, right generationally that won’t, you know, will never sort of adapt. And that’s, you know, that just is the way human nature is, I suppose,

Brent Skinner 28:35
yeah, you know, there’s always going to be sort of an evolution in the role in any domain, or area of the enterprise, right, this is certainly not unique, or exclusive to HR, but it’s just no interest. But it is interesting to think about how it’s changing, you have you have small there, there will always be an up and coming crop of small, small companies, where, where the challenges are, are, are very much, you know, in terms of efficiencies and, and administrative tedium and overwhelming its administrative load is you’re going to you’re going to have those HR people who are living in that world, perpetually not the same people. Yeah, they’ll always be the new sort of crop of them. And then, you know, an organization reaches a stage where, where it, it kind of makes a shift, or it kind of pivots a little bit in it. And it solves for some of that some of some of those efficiencies are related to or inefficiencies related to HR. I can’t tell you how many user conversations we’ve had were just some of the some of the some of the stories are just, you know, man, it’s crazy. You know, I delivered a presentation a couple of weeks ago where we talked to actually a I recorded it to having the blues, right? He took some lyrics from old blues songs. You know, some of them are pretty, you know, pretty, like, down and down and out. And then we took some quotes from our published case studies. And it was bit meant to be a little bit tongue in cheek, but you know, there couldn’t be an argument made for cm blues, right? So yeah, those people are always in that situation. And he really just kind of have to show them, give them the new situation. And then all of a sudden, their eyes, you know, is like their third eye opens, right? And they’re like, oh, I can be so much more than HR is can be seen as more than just this administration doesn’t even have to be administration. Yeah. Well,

Pete Tiliakos 30:43
as they say, discomfort is where you grow. Right? Yeah. It’s where you stress where it challenges you. So yeah, I mean, I hope people are embracing this, these new these new technologies and motivations. You know, it’s a lot of people, I think, fear, like, oh, this stuff is going to come and replace me. And the reality of it is, it’s really never going to replace people right at the AI and machine learning are all great. But the reality of it is, is it’s always going to take that emotional intelligence. And I think the more the practitioners can embrace how the technology can elevate their role and help them benefit the employee in the business. I think, though, you know, I think you can see there’s a lot of positives in it.

Brent Skinner 31:15
Yeah. Well stated, well stated, looking at the time, and that that might be a good place to, to plant our flag there. Yeah, thanks so much. This has been a fantastic conversation. It was great seeing you next next week. It was great seeing you last week, excuse me.

Pete Tiliakos 31:36
Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it and big fan of the show and just love the opportunity.

Brent Skinner 31:40
Oh, thank you very much. And you have a podcast that you’ve started up HR Payroll? Yep.

Pete Tiliakos 31:47
Payroll 2.0. I’ve launched that with Julie Fernandez, the legendary, you know, HR transformation advisor. We are doing a show where we are really doing it’s brand free, sales free. We’re really just doing very authentic conversations around payroll and HR Modernization and helping share really what we know right and what we’ve learned. So check it out HR and Payroll 2.0. You can find it on all the all the podcast channels. And yeah, check us out. First. We’ll be sure

Brent Skinner 32:14
to leave a link for it. Thank you post this this episode. Thank you so much, Pete. It’s been wonderful. Yes, sir. Thank you.

 

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