3Sixty Insights #HRTechChat with Rachel Jordan, Vice President of HCM Product Management at Unit4

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Joining me for the #HRTechChat video podcast is Rachel Jordan. At Unit4, provider of business software for human capital management and enterprise resource planning, as well as financial planning and analysis, Rachel is vice president of HCM product management. Just like several of her fellow relatively new additions to leadership at Unit4, Rachel has a strong a pedigree in the industry.

Unit4 is a vendor keen on finding the best ways to align and combine HCM, ERP and FP&A. The possibilities are intriguing, and you’ll be hearing more about these from 3Sixty Insights as we stroll through the second half of 2022. Think of this episode of the podcast as an appetizer. HCM technology (including the ethos behind it) has evolved drastically over the past five years, from a focus on talent management to one of supporting the success of people. (Those are two different things, yes.) HR continues to mature in its role, from a largely reactionary position mired in transactional work to one aspiring to proactively support organizational growth and strategy — and capable of doing so.

It makes sense. Organizations have had to adapt their HCM systems broadly and deeply, especially since the pandemic took hold and ushered in work from home, hybrid work and other dynamics once considered novelties or exceptions to the rule. HR’s charter now is to facilitate and advocate for the employee experience, and the HCM system is no longer just a database of people, but an ecosystem to support a total employee lifecycle that has, on average, become unconventional and nonlinear — e.g., career progressions no longer track straight, effective internal mobility hinges on accurate insight into soft skills, etc. Better-delivered information from payroll and compensation strategy and regarding employees’ skills influences the employee experience by optimizing internal mobility, facilitating tenure, and rendering current and future personnel costs more predictable.

All this change changes the fundamental calculus that HR and other organizational stakeholders must follow to justify their proposals to invest in HCM systems. One way for them to make this argument is to show the value of HCM data as HCM systems become better connected to other domains of the enterprise and the related data becomes more easily combinable in real time. The idea is to shorten the time it takes to figure out how or whether this or that decision regarding people success would deliver value to the organization.

As my conversation with Rachel ultimately implies, HR leaders and other HCM-immersed internal organizational stakeholders in positions of influence should emphasize that one major benefit of all this is not only greater organizational agility, but stability, too. Data that an HCM system produces can give employers invaluable insight into which actions are best to take. The ready availability of this data, especially when it’s the result of data exchange between systems supporting areas of the business that need alignment anyway, means leaders can take these actions early.

I thoroughly enjoyed speaking with Rachel, a font of wisdom in this industry.

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 latest episode of the HR Tech Chat video podcast. And today I have with us as our guest, Rachel Jordan, who is Vice President of Product Management for HCM at Unit Four. Welcome, Rachel. Hi, thank

Rachel Jordan 00:20
you for having me.

Brent Skinner 00:21
Yeah, yeah, I’m excited about this episode. We’re going to solve all the problems in HCM in the next half hour. I assure our audience

Rachel Jordan 00:35
pretty simple.

Brent Skinner 00:36
Yeah, very, very simple. We want to talk today around, you know, without HCM, his idea that without HCM, your organization, will have a really tough time I want to say fail, it seems almost extreme. But maybe not really. Maybe we could talk just, maybe you could just give us a little bit about your background, and then we could start talking about the evolution of HCM systems.

Rachel Jordan 01:07
Sure. So for my background, I’ve actually spent the last 20 years in various aspects of HCM I spent a lot of time in learning and development. And, you know, it’s, it’s been really interesting to watch how everything has changed. The systems used to be so tactical, and they were viewed very much as just systems that you know, you have to manage your employees, put them in the system, you’re entering data. And really over the last five years, especially, there’s just been a huge shift. And HR itself has a huge role in the success of a company. And that is so different, that there’s really more of a proactive role in helping companies achieve their goals and participate in making initiative successful. It’s just been a big shift. And along with that shift, of course, all the technology has changed. And I think the definition of HR and what they own is very different. So HCM system of today looks entirely different than it did just a few years ago.

Brent Skinner 02:12
Yeah, yeah. I’ll concur with that statement. II know it’s interesting, you know, 360 insights we speak of concrete and abstract HCM, it’s just a way to kind of categorize different types of activities in HCM, concrete HCM being sort of that, that highly automatable heavy administrative load that HR has been long known for, and that technology has, for a very long time been helping with to add efficiency. But it’s also been this, this this activity that sort of relegated HR to that relegated HR for such a long time to sort of a cost center role thing to be contained and minimized. But abstract HCM is really what you just described is being a partner to the business and being involved in helping to draw the most out of the workforce, and helping to support the employee experience and ultimately contribute to the success of the employer brand. So I am completely on board with you on that. If we were to look at this, maybe drill down a little bit, how does the fact that the employee experience always happens whenever wherever the employee is, for example? How does that affect how we think about older terminology for talent management and certainly for HCM and older terminology we use for HCM systems, and thinking around them versus new ideas like people in Parliament, for example.

Rachel Jordan 04:00
I think it’s, it’s one big shift in that was from top down to more bottom up. There is a lot of focus now on empowering employees, it’s less about an organization telling them what they need to be doing. And it’s kind of we flip the script a little bit. We empower employees by presenting them with opportunities, options, we use systems that help them to forge their own path, and figure out how to get value from the company not just how they can provide value to the company. And I think that’s another big shift is how do we as employers, you know, how do we bring value to the person. And so with all of that, it really became a focus on talent around engagement. And really, if you look at the employee lifecycle, from hire through retire, the center of that, really the time you spend at the company, that’s where we’re putting all of our focus now. on development, career planning, that’s where a lot of the focus is gone. And it also contributes to culture. And a lot of focus on culture.

Brent Skinner 05:10
What is threat? What, just kind of sit on this for a minute, what is driving this this attitudinal sea change? What’s driving? Where was? Where was the pivotal sort of, you know, turning point is it was a recent like the paint I’m thinking pandemic, but this has been going this this march toward this has been sort of inexorable for a long time, like, what, what is really driving this?

Rachel Jordan 05:41
That’s a great question. And I agree, this really started well, before the pandemic, I think there’s a couple of things. One, there’s a lot of transparency of data and information that we never had before. That also means we are more mobile, we can find opportunities a lot easier, or more global culture at this point. So you can work for any company anywhere. And what that means is, I think that it’s really put employees in the driver’s seat, they can be picky, they can really go after what they want, and what’s important to them, they have a lot more ease of access to opportunity than ever before. So what that has resulted in is a highly competitive market. And we’re seeing that, especially now post pandemic, more than ever, it’s extremely competitive out there. And it’s really an employee’s market. It’s really the responsibility now is on the employer for employee retention, what are you going to do to keep your employees? And it’s definitely been, I think, a rapid shift technology has a huge part to play. Again, it’s I think it’s a lot of transparency and availability, and access to data.

Brent Skinner 06:58
Yeah, I agree with you, you know, the evolution of technology itself has sort of opened our eyes to a little bit well, more than a little bit in terms of what the employee employer relationship can be, I was gonna say should be, but can be, right. There’s, there’s definitely a lot of that. And in talent, mobility, again, facilitated or made possible, again, by technology is driving this. So you said, employees are the workforce, whether it be you know, existing employees or potential employees, they’re, they’re in the driver’s seat more so than they were previously. I like that, that that way of putting it out, I like to say that the power dynamic is shifting. But I also, I don’t know if I like to say power to even though it’s true. I, I like how you put it, let’s put it that way. Yeah, absolutely. And so it’s sort of a technology sort of prompting us gently over time, to change our attitudes and certain terms of what it means to have employees and, and how they can you can contribute to them. It’s a mutual, it’s a relationship of relationship of mutuality in these sorts of things. What is something HR absolutely must have, in order to break free from, you know, sort of the old reactive ways, its reactive transactional roots to play a more strategic role in the organization.

Rachel Jordan 08:36
I think it’s crucial at this point that your HR systems are have a connectedness to the rest of your organization. So to have an HR or an HCM, that is completely connected to all the different aspects of your business financials, you know, sales, everything needs to be connected. I think, again, with that availability of data that is so important, it gives insights, it lead to do forecasting. And it really adds a lot of strength for an organization to have an HR that has complete line of sight, into everything that can make them successful. And so it’s there’s been, there’s been a shift for a while now that data is becoming really important, the data is there. And what we’re realizing now is we need to have it all connected and have access to it so you can make sense of it. Bring it together in meaningful ways.

Brent Skinner 09:30
Yeah. And it be readily accessible for food to produce, you know, predictive and maybe even prescriptive analytics. Where do you think those where do you think that data? Who, who is most benefited by having access to that data? Or is it every

Rachel Jordan 09:53
Yeah, this is a it’s actually I would say it’s two big groups. It’s the organization itself is the business. It’s actually the employee. Ways, the employees have a lot to gain when you suddenly begin connecting all of the data points and accompany managers. So with a lot of insights becomes, I think it becomes a tool that you can use every single day. And if a company is really good at it, and the tools are really good at it, you don’t even notice. And it’s something that becomes natural. It’s organic, it’s built into your processes every day. That’s kind of I think, the Nirvana, that’s where we really want to be, it would be heaven, if all of your data was connected. And just it was where you need it, when you need it all the time. So I think that’s really where systems are trying to evolve to you can see it in pockets right now, throughout the industry. I know, that’s something that, you know, we have a large suite, and we’re always focused on making sure that we’re connecting the right data points, and it’s where it needs to be. Yeah,

Brent Skinner 10:56
it almost sounds like it. And, you know, we’ve, we’ve had some conversations previously, before doing this episode. And I know that concept that came up with sort of this idea of an eight cm warning system, for the organization almost sounds like, you know, if you have enough information coming from enough, you know, nooks and crannies of the organization, then, then you’re going to have a really good sort of understanding of what’s next or, or, or ability to kind of predict what’s likely to come next kind of like, you know, when there, there’s a earthquake, early warning systems, or I think we’re better at at meteorology, I think, probably then geology when it comes to those early warning systems, but you know, a hurricane, Early Warning System, or these sorts of things. So, and this is an extreme, you know, we’re, we’re not talking about evacuating the organization if there’s an HCM or emergency, but this idea that you can make some, you can become a more agile organization.

Rachel Jordan 12:00
I love that. Because there’s actually an interesting way to look at it. If you take the weather example. Yes, I think with an early warning system, we can look at known variables to say, Look, you have a certain population of people that are retiring and X number of years, we can look ahead, forecast that and now prepare, we can look and say, Wait a minute, based on the hiring over the last year, you’re getting a little top heavy, or or your bottom heavy, you’re losing expertise in the middle layers, there’s a lot you can do to really examine your workforce and make sure you’re prepared. And I think skills is interesting. There’s a lot of new skills with managers. Imagine a system that could warn you that there’s certain behaviors occurring with one of your employees that maybe they’re looking for a new job, maybe they’re unhappy. You look at absences that are trending, maybe they’re taking more time off than usual. Or maybe they have a health problem, and you need to be concerned. So I think there’s all kinds of ways early warning systems can be super effective. And, you know, we joke about well, we can’t really predict earthquakes, the pandemic was an was the earthquake. I think that was where I think the early warning system could have told you, maybe back in the end of 2019, are you prepared if the worst happens where your business model suddenly won’t work? Because the variables have changed. And we did see that. And this is where two years ago, I guess now, there was such a big focus on organizational agility? Because we realized there are earthquakes in business. Unfortunately, they don’t happen very often, but they do happen. And are we prepared when that happens? And so HR was asked that question, what are you doing to make sure that we can pivot if needed, and one of those major variables changes and HR systems are well positioned to do it? If we plan accordingly, and we, again, position ourselves with the right data points and the right analytics.

Brent Skinner 14:05
Yeah, yeah, I think you’re right. But by the way, I love the little bit when you can take the metaphor so far, you No, you’re right. The pandemic, pandemic really was the earthquake, it was that it was also that exclamation point, at the end of what was looking like a sentence around, you know, around this, this move to, you know, respect the workforce more or to engage with the workforce more and you see it more as a mutual relationship. You’re absolutely right about that. Oh, that’s so interesting. It’s so interesting, you know, in terms of in terms of the need of HCM technology, and addressing business challenges, if we could kind of focus on that for a little bit here. I know we, we hear a lot about hybrid working speaking of the, you know, the earthquake of the pandemic and how something is sort would have exploded. And that you know, the terrain. Really trying to keep that metaphor going the terrain isn’t nice, necessarily the same as it used to be right. What do you think are some of the consequences from the standpoint of obtaining and making sense of people data within the organization, when you have a much more sort of dispersed workforce geographically now than you used to?

Rachel Jordan 15:26
I think it’s been fascinating to watch. I think, at first, we all rushed to make sure we had the tools we needed, just to do our jobs. But then it became interesting, because I think a lot of companies noticed how much they relied on things like interpersonal communication in person. How much? How much could you understand the culture or the sentiment of your direct reports? For example, because you all met every single day in the office? Could you still? Could you still communicate with employees as effectively? Did you have the same level of transparency of sentiment than you did before? So I think there was then a rush to realize we have to close those gaps. And so employee engagement became really, really important. How do we connect now, with all those employees? And the other the other aspect of it was to is just making sure you’re inclusive, and everybody has access. Not everybody works well, that way. It was, I think, especially challenging for a lot of people. You had the additional stressors of balancing work and home. I think anybody with pets or children had some really interesting, interesting meetings. Dogs barking, you’ve got you know, contractors walking by and maybe children knock on your door. And so it’s been really interesting that we all had to adjust. And I think, believe it or not, though, HCM has a big part of that. It’s really hrs job to know, are their employees struggling? are they handling things? Well, so a lot of things came out where I think there’s been a lot more focused now on culture. Making sure that again, there’s equal access for everybody, that you’re paying attention to stress, stress levels, work life balance was hard. For global companies with time zones, suddenly, I know you’re home. So clearly, you can have meetings anytime of the day. And that’s not true. So I think there were some additional challenges there with needing some guidelines and some parameters around how do we work together? Now that we are all home all the time, but you have to be very careful. What kind of

Brent Skinner 17:49
sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt, but this kind of occurred to me. What kind of data do we have a bit does HCM have available to it now? To me, what kind of HCM data is available? Now that wasn’t previously? By virtue of the circumstances now that we find the hybrid working in these two, we have more data now that we can make better decisions?

Rachel Jordan 18:14
We can I say we can because again, the tools are there. And this is where I think the discussions are helpful to help people see how they can use the tools that have, I think you’ve got from a tactical perspective, is it important to know how much time people are spending in the office versus at home? Yeah, there’s a lot of data to be had there. If you’re well, if you start tracking that on things like your timesheets, you can track it in other ways. But that’s one way of doing it. I think that again, HCM systems, most of them, you hopefully have survey capability. I know that’s something we put a lot of work into, as well to say, let’s make sure we can send out pulse surveys. And we can tap into what people are thinking in an anonymous way. So we have a lot of tools now, from your tactical data points to see the tools people are using, how they’re spending the time. And then we also have whether or not they’re taking enough time off. And then we have tools like engagement surveys. So we can just ask them, How are things going for you? What’s going well, so the data is definitely there. And it’s just a matter of I think, again, making sure you’re using everything and in the best way. And then taking a look at your data periodically and making sure you pay attention to it. The final thought I’ll add to that is you can use all the tools you can ask all the questions, but if you don’t turn around and react to the results, you’re not taking full advantage and you’re not getting the benefits.

Brent Skinner 19:49
Yeah, yeah. And you and you need a way as an organization to know exactly what to do, and, and some sort of a motivation to do it. You Your what I’m hearing is, you know, with pulse surveys and these sorts of things, you can get some very, very valuable insight into the world and to the people of the organization, you know, the employee sentiment, their, you know, their sense of belonging, what the culture is like, across the organization. And then obviously, that can help with retention, right, and HCM, so HCM data plays a, you know, integral or I would say indispensable role in driving retention. And you can also kind of tease out some information or some, some Inklings into, you know, internal mobility what, what people want, internally and what the organization has in terms of internal mobility, these sorts of things. A couple of quotes,

Rachel Jordan 20:49
the most important one, by the way, sorry, to interrupt you, I think that’s one of the most important aspects of employee retention, it’s its opportunity. Yeah. internal mobility is huge, I think, the days of staying in a company in the same job and simply advancing vertically. That’s kind of a an outdated concept. Now, I think the idea of staying with one company is fantastic. But the idea that they’re gonna move in a straight line is, is it’s not realistic anymore. So I think this is where, again, I love the idea of internal mobility, presenting opportunities to people, making sure you have a culture to support it. And you don’t have people blocking someone’s mobility, because it takes them out of your out of your department, for example. So first is the culture, but then it is presenting opportunity, helping them find opportunities by, you know, showing them, here’s the skills you have. And if you want this job, here’s the skills you need, and we’re going to help you get there. Yeah. So I think, you know, it’s really all of these different pieces. That will we always want employees, I think, to look internally before, if they’re a great employee, you want to keep them and find an opportunity for them find the better fit, find the best fit, and they’ll stay with the company. And I think that’s what we all strive for.

Brent Skinner 22:12
Yeah. And that’s, that’s about transferable skills, and identifying their soft skills and these sorts of things. So you have an expanded, more accurate understanding and view of their, of their of their potential. What do you think is the role of them of leaders in the organization in this sort of in these things? Well,

Rachel Jordan 22:33
I think the first is to make people comfortable asking, Can I move? Believe it or not? I think that’s a very hard conversation for a lot of people to have. And if you have your leadership, letting people know, not only is it okay, we encourage it, that it starts with that top down mentality and culture create the culture that changes positive. I think that’s number one. And number two would be supporting I think the frameworks needed to effectively do it. I think it’s very, you can’t I mean, you can just tell employees, oh, you know, if you find an opportunity, let me know, and I’ll help you. But that’s not ideal. Ideally, they’re supporting the frameworks needed to help again, find the best fit, or set them on a development path, so that they’re prepared for that move, and they’re qualified. So I think it’s both it’s the culture and and I think supporting it in terms of technology, framework, staffing,

Brent Skinner 23:37
you know, all of it. Yeah, I agree. You’re singing my song. firms have organizations justifying or let’s say operationalizing investment in the HCM technology. How should they do that?

Rachel Jordan 23:58
That’s a great question. I mean, I think the first is to make sure that the goals of your organization and the role that HCM plays, an HR plays are aligned. I think, you know, HR, they’re going to deliver the intent of what it is they’re delivering on and when what is their goal? And once you have that, I think it’s then beginning to break it down to say, what do we need? HCM can be incredibly powerful. When you look at how far AI has come. And machine learning, AI, there are so many tools. There’s also just different engagement tools and how you work with your employees to empower them to be more self serving. There’s a lot that can be done. But it really depends on what they’re willing to invest in to achieve certain outcomes. And I think it all starts with making sure HR is part of that conversation. And clear goals means clear action plans to help get you there.

Brent Skinner 24:57
Okay, okay. eights, HR and other HCM amerced leaders in the organization? How can they most easily show the value of investing in the tech for like what’s what are some of the paths of least resistance? Or some quick? Some quick wins for them? Maybe some examples?

Rachel Jordan 25:20
Yeah, I think, number one is you need to be able to show a adoption. I love when companies will roll something out. And it’s ultimately Yes, people love to say, what are the dollars and cents? What was the return of our investment, other investment? And that’s only that’s part of it. But the other part is, first of all, just go back to basics. Can you show how much engagement there was with the tool that you implemented? What was the adoption? Did you roll it out everywhere? And did employees really embrace it? A big part of rollout it’s not all technical. How did you roll things out? And what most companies do with an implementation is they start small, so that they can learn from it, and then roll it out wider. And so I think it’s being very tactical and pragmatic, in how you approach implementing anything. But then once you’ve done that, it’s again, having the idea of why did you do it in the first place, you need measurable outcomes. So I think having a sense of a kind of structure of KPIs from the beginning is important. Knowing how you’re going to measure it at the end. You know, outcomes don’t magically appear, you need to really plan for those from the beginning, know, how you’re planning to measure at the end, so that everything’s put into place.

Brent Skinner 26:40
Yeah, that’s absolutely. One thing that I would add to that, though, it’s not, though. And also, is this idea that you mentioned that with adoption rates and level of engagement and all this, there’s so much potential upside, when I say potential, I don’t mean like, it might or might not happen. I mean, it’s just there’s a lot of potential, like, maybe there’s different words, there’s, there’s a long tail of great, great value that comes from eight investments in HCM technology and, and in transformational thinking in HR, HCM. visa vie the organization. So if you see, I would argue that if you’re seeing a large adoption rate and lots of beef, if there’s a big difference in in the positive direction, before and after, then you can expect all sorts of corn. Maybe this is a little bit hyperbolic, but a cornucopia, I would say of potential benefits to the organization leading innovation, greater revenue, all these sorts of things that ultimately, KPIs may not we may not be able to devise KPIs that that that didn’t anticipate that at all, or it can measure, we won’t know how to measure it until we, when we see it happen. We might not even be able to say, technically, that well, yeah, that’s because we put that HCM system in place. And yet I would argue that it’s hard to, it’s hard to argue that it wasn’t because we put it, do you see what I mean? So I think that there’s some stuff that that’s what this conversation is really kind of putting a fine point on for me is that there’s, there’s a lot of potential upside to HCM. And it’s not, it’s not necessarily all measurable right away. And once it happens, it might be tough to say definitively that it was the HCM system, but it’s even tougher to say that it wasn’t

Rachel Jordan 28:52
100% I think when you start looking at timelines, say we roll something out anything, it could be a different performance review process, a feedback system, from your peers, it could be new courses in your learning catalog, whatever it is, you’ve rolled out, if you look and say we gave it 12 months, and since then we saw that feedback was given, you know, monthly as opposed to previously it was once a year when we forced people. Now people are proactively going and saying, wow, this person, I’m going to give them feedback because we had an engagement and I was really impressed or happy with their performance. So I think a lot of is because again, making it a part of your culture and making it really easy. Part of this is also you know, again, people can use something once did they come back and continuously use it. If they did, chances are it will contribute with a positive outcome. I think it’s I’ve seen a lot of failure cases where it wasn’t the technology that failed necessarily. It didn’t have supporting infrastructures around it didn’t have the maybe there’s no evangelism, people didn’t even know about it. That’s always fun, you roll out it, you know, roll out a new tool and don’t tell anybody find. So I think it’s not as simple as we bought a tool and put it out there. And people should just note it or use it. You really had a look at all aspects of it. But in and that’s where engagement will tell you a lot the adoption. So again, we adopted it, did people use it? And I think that’s the most important question. Because then if they’re not using it, you need to find out why. If they are using it, I would bet dollars to donuts that they’re one of their KPIs improved, whatever was tied to the rate, again, why did you implement that feature? If it was learning catalog, you should have seen an improvement. So it’s very interesting.

Brent Skinner 30:51
And it’s great to take to achieve those KPIs, those set KPIs, and at the same time, I think the wonderful thing is that we can look at these KPIs as sort of the, the, the, you know, the lowest common denominator, this is this is, you know, this is sort of, you know, this is this is just the tip of the iceberg, right? If we’re achieving these KPIs, we’re probably on the road to some even greater things. Yeah, absolutely. Let’s, let’s talk about, let’s talk about exchange of data. Because it really, you know, data, data is king. And it’s, it’s just keeps coming up. And in this conversation, it really helps to inform leaders decision making, you know, you want the decisions in the organization to be, you know, as well informed as, as possible, right. Just thinking about this a little bit. Where should encode this data come from? to provide a clearer picture compared to what we’ve traditionally had? Or, or, or, or look where we’ve traditionally looked for it. I know, we’ve touched on this a little bit, but maybe we could kind of, you know, tied in a bow here.

Rachel Jordan 32:11
Yeah, I think even when we talk about HCM, I think it’s that can mean many things. HCM is can be very tight, and on a few key features, um, they can be very broad. So I think the first thing is that whatever is in your HCM, you probably have peripheral tools as well. Most customers that we have, for example, they have very large ecosystems of tools. And I think in the end, what I always think of is, what can you What would you consider part of an employee’s or persons profile? What data do I want to know about them? It doesn’t matter what system it’s in. Now, how can we get that to really create one view of a person. And there’s so much power in that. What I want to know is I want your demographic information, I want to know your skills, what languages you speak, the country you live in. So yes, I want basics about you. But I also want to know, projects you’ve worked on. I want to know, roles you held previously, I want to know how you feel about things, and what are your personal goals at the company. So when you think of all of the different disparate systems, just that small amount of data, where they can come from, it can be quite large.

Brent Skinner 33:24
Yeah, I think you make some really good points. And you’re just this is really revelatory, I think, you know, in terms of being able to sort of reconcile various domains of the enterprise to produce a more cohesive or more reflective view of the organization at large. You know, data is king, obviously. And what I’m hearing is that we can combine this data from different nooks and crannies of the organization to to help decision makers, make better decisions informed, be informed better for those. And I guess, I guess the question I have here is what we’re shooting, could this data come from that maybe it didn’t come from previously to provide this clearer picture compared to what we’ve traditionally had?

Rachel Jordan 34:23
That’s a great question. When you think of an employee, you think of with HCM, you might have a small dataset depends on your HCM and how robust it is, and but chances are, that as a company, you have a large ecosystem. And that employee is not using one set of tools. They’re using many and many of them fall under hrs purview. So I think when we look at data, I think of it in two ways again, the people so looking at an employee profile, what should be in that profile, not what Isn’t it what should be look at all of the different In tools they use and see what makes sense. I want to know everything about you. I want to know, roles you’ve held in the past, I want to know what interests you. What are your goals at the company, I want to know the skills that you have the skills that you need, I want to know how you spend your free time sometimes, believe it or not, that can be relevant for something, I wonder if you’re happy, are you sad? So you got your sentiment data that we talked about. So there’s a lot that we can look at, and then getting into the company itself. I wonder what projects you’ve worked on what different roles you’ve held in the company, this can be enormously helpful to connect all these systems. And then an organizational data level. If you think of connecting your financials, your company initiatives and goals, then with your HR system, it’s amazing what you can get out of it. To understand how payroll is connected and impacts billing and project planning, and staffing. So there’s, there’s a lot of different aspects of, of HR, and HCM systems have a lot of wonderful data, but so does the rest of the ecosystem. And so I like to think of it as forming a true view of an employee or any really any user in your system.

Brent Skinner 36:20
Yeah, it’s almost as if the left and right hand are finally talking to each other. But uh, but I would amend that say that the octopus has many, you know, that has eight, eight arms or whatever, they’re all finally working. Conceivably in, in concert. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And being able to kind of mix and match and see things from different perspectives. Simultaneously from a data standpoint, I think you’re absolutely right. This has been just absolutely fascinating. You know, I mean, we’ve touched on so much, you know, operational data, organizational agility, and readiness, we’ve talked about skills and helping employees up upskill to end with their transferable skills to be as, as potentially helpful to the organization as possible and at the same time, increasing their, their happiness or their satisfaction with their work. And, and we’ve talked about we’ve talked about an HCM, B, ACM being sort of a warning system for the organization, to help the organization make better decisions as a whole to to be more agile, and all these sorts of things. Is there anything that we’ve maybe missed that, that you that you’d like to touch on?

Rachel Jordan 37:47
That’s a good question. I feel like we really did run the gamut here. But no, I think, you know, I’m excited for I think what’s coming next, we are endlessly as vendors, you know, we are endlessly pushed by our customers, as they’re telling us what they need. And so with organizational agility, it’s been really interesting, because they said, I think AI is going to play an even bigger role going forward. And I love that everything that we’ve done the last couple of years, has also pushed us to think differently about employee experience, there was such a push in the beginning to consumerize experiences, but that’s really about the interaction with what’s on your screen. It’s not your actual experience as an employee. And so I love that we’ve broadened what we mean by point experience beyond just the software you’re interacting with, it’s I think, making sure that we care about what the employees are trying to do, how well they can do it, how easily. And we’ve really changed the way that they interact with all of the systems in their company. That’s the employee experience, coupled then with all of the effects that has on culture, I just love how it’s all really come together. And and that’s I think my final thought is, I think how employee experience has ultimately changed as a direct result of all of these, all these changes in tech and HCM very well put

Brent Skinner 39:17
very well put, I don’t think I can add anything to that. That I mean, that’s just fantastic. Thank you so much for joining us today, Rachel. I’d really appreciate it. I know the audience will too. And, and, and feel free to join us another time. Thank you for having me. Absolutely.

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