Research

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HRD: HR Facing Rising Compliance Strain – Report

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For HR leaders, compliance demands are expanding rapidly while governance and technology investments lag behind, according to a recent report. Three in four (75%) respondents say their compliance needs have changed, according to a survey of 500 U.S. professionals across HR and adjacent functions. And 54% report that those needs have increased over the past two years, reflecting regulatory expansion, pay transparency rules, data privacy obligations, wage‑and‑hour enforcement and scrutiny of automated decision‑making. “HR compliance in 2026 is not fundamentally broken. It is under increasing structural pressure,” says Mitratech’s State of HR Compliance 2026 report. “The central challenge is not widespread compliance failure. It is the growing gap between expanding obligations and the infrastructure required to manage them sustainably.” People strategy top challenge Also, 41% of […]

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Webinar: Beyond Borders – HR Solutions for Paying and Managing Non-U.S. Talent | June 24th @ 12pm Eastern

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Join 3Sixty Insights Principal Analyst Nicole Roberts as she participates in Flex HR’s Beyond Borders: HR Solutions for Paying and Managing Non-U.S. Talent webinar, a discussion focused on the challenges and opportunities of managing a global workforce. The session will explore key topics including international payroll, compliance, worker classification, and strategies for supporting talent across borders. Nicole will share insights from her experience in workforce management and HR technology, helping attendees better understand the evolving requirements of global talent management. Whether your organization is expanding internationally or refining its global workforce strategy, this session will provide practical perspectives for HR, payroll, and business leaders. Learn more and register here: Beyond Borders – HR Solutions for Paying and Managing Non-U.S. Talent

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Monthly Research Recap | May 2026

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Recent Report Publications: Mitratech: State of HR Compliance 2026 Study The State of HR Compliance Report, developed through survey research and analysis conducted by the 3Sixty Insights team in collaboration with Mitratech, examines how organizations are navigating the growing complexity of workforce governance, compliance operations, and AI oversight. The study explores key challenges including fragmented systems, documentation and auditability requirements, operational consistency, and evolving expectations around explainability and accountability as HR functions continue to intersect more closely with risk, legal, and enterprise operations. Case Study: How MacLean-Fogg Used Quantum Workplace to Create a Thriving culture MacLean-Fogg, a family-owned precision manufacturer with approximately 2,100 employees, partnered with Quantum Workplace to modernize its employee listening and talent management strategy across a predominantly frontline workforce. After struggling with […]

Infographic: Inside MacLean-Fogg’s Engagement Transformation Using Quantum Workplace

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This infographic highlights how MacLean-Fogg transformed employee engagement and retention by implementing Quantum Workplace. By reducing survey completion time from 30–40 minutes to just 5–10 minutes and expanding response methods through email, text, and QR codes, the organization increased participation rates from below 50% to 81% over two years. The improved employee feedback strategy unlocked measurable business outcomes including more than $3 million in savings, 260 fewer employee exits, and stronger leadership development, accountability, and career planning initiatives. The infographic also emphasizes how AI-driven, site-specific action planning and better participation data enabled more informed operational and workforce decisions.  

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Video: Why Analyst Coverage Is Breaking in the Age of AI and Exploding Vendor Growth

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  At 3Sixty Insights, the pace of change across the software and technology landscape is accelerating beyond what traditional research models can realistically keep up with. In this video, Nicholas Biron explains how the rapid expansion of solution providers, continuous product innovation, and growing volume of vendor communications are fundamentally reshaping the way independent research must be conducted. As a result, 3Sixty Insights is evolving its approach to market coverage. Moving forward, the firm will prioritize vendors that actively engage in direct, ongoing conversations with analysts. These real-time discussions provide the context necessary to better understand go-to-market strategy, customer outcomes, product direction, and market positioning. Secondary inputs — including earnings calls, websites, AI-generated summaries, press releases, and curated customer stories, still provide value, but they […]

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Case Study: How MacLean-Fogg Used Quantum Workplace to Create a Thriving culture

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What You Need to Know For manufacturers, building a highly engaged and high-performing workforce is a business imperative. When both are strong, output, retention, and results follow. However, hearing from and gathering feedback from this kind of workforce can be difficult since employees are not at a desk with consistent access to email and the internet for a standard 8-hour workday. This can make it challenging to obtain honest, anonymous, high-quality feedback, which in turn makes it harder to tackle issues related to turnover, culture, and compliance. MacLean-Fogg, a family-owned precision manufacturing company with roughly 2,100 employees across multiple facilities, faced exactly this problem before partnering with Quantum Workplace. What followed was a vendor switch that triggered a wholesale transformation of the company’s approach to […]

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Market Alert: Phenom Acquires Plum to Anchor a Full-Spectrum Assessment Stack

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What Happened On April 28, 2026, Phenom announced the acquisition of Plum, a provider of psychometric-based talent assessment. The deal, Phenom’s second in ten weeks and third in roughly four months, brings Plum’s proprietary Role Model™ technology into Phenom’s agentic platform, adding behavioral and durable-skills measurement to an already expanding assessment stack. The move follows the February 2026 acquisition of Be Applied, which introduced adaptive cognitive assessments, and the January 2026 acquisition of Included AI, which deepened workforce analytics and planning capabilities. Taken together, the three deals reflect a deliberate architectural strategy: Phenom is assembling a more unified candidate and employee assessment and validation capability rather than a set of discrete point solutions. Why Plum — and Why Now Psychometric science is not new. Industrial-organizational […]

Mitratech Article: Your 2026 Human Resource Compliance Checklist – What to Prioritize First

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Insights from the 2026 State of HR Compliance Report to help you prioritize what actually matters. We all know the saying: if everything is a priority, nothing is. And right now, that tension is very real for HR team leaders who are balancing talent goals with rising expectations around process consistency and proof. Compliance work has expanded in ways that are easy to feel and hard to neatly quantify. New compliance requirements keep showing up. Enforcement patterns shift. Everyday decisions generate more questions that require proof, consistency, and documentation. In the 2026 State of HR Compliance Report, 75% of respondents said their compliance needs have changed, and more than half (54%) said those needs have increased over the past two years. Those shifts appear in […]

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Mitratech: State of HR Compliance 2026 Study

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The State of HR Compliance Report, developed through survey research and analysis conducted by 3Sixty Insights in collaboration with Mitratech, explores how organizations are navigating the increasing complexity of workforce governance, compliance operations, and AI oversight. The study examines several key areas impacting enterprise organizations, including fragmented systems and workflows, operational consistency, documentation and auditability requirements, workforce policy enforcement, and the growing importance of explainability and accountability within AI-assisted processes. The findings highlight how HR compliance is increasingly intersecting with legal, governance, risk, and enterprise operations as organizations work to operationalize compliance more effectively across distributed teams and evolving technology environments. Research and analysis for this initiative was supported by the 3Sixty Insights analyst team, including contributions from Dylan Teggart. Read the full study here: […]

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Analyst Insight: The AI Access Axis – The New Dimension of SaaS Pricing

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Executive Summary SaaS pricing has evolved by expanding dimensionality. Seats defined the early era of subscription software. Secondary metrics such as contacts, storage, and API volume introduced more precise alignment between usage intensity and revenue capture. Cloud infrastructure later normalized consumption-based economics, reshaping how enterprises approached variable cost. Artificial intelligence introduces a structurally distinct axis. Unlike traditional software features, AI capabilities carry measurable marginal cost while simultaneously generating measurable business output. Vendors are responding by formalizing what can be described as AI access pricing: a monetization layer that meters access to intelligent automation through structured, business-aligned units. It is important to distinguish between subscription as a revenue model and seat-based pricing as a specific implementation. The pressure AI introduces is not against recurring revenue itself, […]

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The Uncomfortable Truth About Modern Analyst Coverage

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Why Modern Research Requires More Than Press Releases and Earnings Calls Over the last few months, I’ve found myself in a familiar conversation with vendors across multiple technology markets, and it usually starts in a straightforward way. One of our analysts reaches out to learn more about a platform, and we ask for a briefing so we can understand the company’s direction, recent product changes, customer adoption trends, and overall go-to-market strategy. We also try to speak directly with customers so we can understand how the solution performs in real environments rather than just in theory. The responses we get vary widely. Some vendors are open, collaborative, and willing to engage in meaningful discussion. Others are far more constrained in their ability or willingness to […]

Infographic: Your Employees Are Already Using AI – You Just Don’t Know Which One

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This infographic explores the growing reality of “Shadow AI” in the workplace, where employees are already adopting AI tools independently due to unclear organizational guidance and governance. It highlights how the absence of a defined AI strategy creates exposure across privacy, intellectual property, and compliance risks, while contrasting unmanaged AI usage with a governed, purpose-led approach built on transparency, clear boundaries, and collaboration. The piece ultimately positions trusted AI governance not just as a risk mitigation strategy, but as a competitive differentiator for modern organizations.  

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Video: The Hidden Reason No One Is Winning in B2B Tech Right Now

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Most software and technology providers are not losing because of market conditions. They are losing momentum because they are stuck in a cycle of constant planning, reorganization, and strategic resets. In this video, Nicholas break down what we are seeing across the market: organizations that continuously redefine their go-to-market strategy but never fully commit to execution. Leadership turnover, shifting priorities, and repeated restructuring are creating internal misalignment and externally, messaging that feels flat, generic, and indistinguishable. The result is a market filled with capable providers, but very few that are truly pulling ahead. He walks through a real-world pattern that is becoming increasingly common, why it is happening, and the impact it is having on growth, positioning, and competitive differentiation. More importantly, he outlines what […]

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Workforce Management in the Age of Unknowns

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Most workforce management strategies are built for predictability. Maybe that’s the problem. In 2026, that thinking may now be a liability as the defining WFM challenges instead seem to be managing what dashboards can’t show you, AI workforce transformation is reshaping headcount decisions, data trust, and risk, as the modern workplace slowly becomes a human-AI hybrid—part judgment, part automation, part AI assistant. These changes will permanently alter the workforce, as a slow, sequenced cut moves through organizations from function to function, quarter by quarter, until organizations look fundamentally different from the way they did 10 years ago. So far, US job losses tied to AI have hit approximately 100,000 in the last 6–12 months, with companies like Amazon shedding 30,000 employees since October 2025, not […]

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The 30-Minute Rule: Why GTM Buyers Are Rewriting How Software Gets Selected

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Here is a great little story on how one GTM team made a software purchase decision. It’s something I believe is a good reminder if you’re still thinking in terms of feature comparisons and vendor evaluations.  Most teams are no longer trying to find the best tool, they’re trying to find something that works quickly enough to justify moving forward. Good enough is winning as long as it returns value quickly and is easy for the team to use.  A Different Starting Point  In a recent conversation with Tom Weiss, the Chief Product and Technology Officer at MX8 Labs, that shift showed up in a way that felt almost casual.  His team needed a CRM. They had tried stretching tools like ClickUp into that role, moved through a couple of alternatives, and ended up in a familiar place. Inconsistent usage, incomplete data, and very little confidence in what the […]

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The Risks of Overconfidence in Compliance Management

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Leadership often assumes a lot of “known knowns” when managing a business. Obstacles, challenges, and surprises are just part of being at the helm of an organization, but there are more unknowns out there than most would care to admit. A balance of caution and confidence is important for navigating these challenges. You don’t want to run a business scared. But there has to be a balance between these two to avoid the grinding halts of being overly cautious and the blind spots that overconfidence can miss. This combination of rising complexity and high self-reported confidence suggests a known knowns vs. unknown unknowns scenario: Known knowns are known things, such as existing or longstanding compliance problems, documented requirements, or tested controls. Known unknowns are acknowledged […]