Denna vecka har HR Digi internationellt besök i podden av Stacey Harris, Chief Research Officer och Managing Partner på Sapient Insights Group. Stacey tillsammans med sina kollegor har varje år, i 25 års tid, tagit fram en rapport om hur det står till på HR tech marknaden. Rapporten skiljer sig från de flesta andra rapporter och besvaras över hela världen av er användare inom just HR Tech. Frågorna och svaren berör allt från användandet av HR system till learning och analys, där 56 olika kategorier och över 200 leverantörer utvärderas. Rapporten tillhandahåller data, insikter och praktiskt kunskap om hur du och din organisation kan lösa olika utmaningarna inom HR. Ta del av Staceys och Annas kloka ord och tankar kring just detta - vilken data samlas, vilka insikter kan vi dra och vad betyder det att vi kan jämföra vår data från 25 år bak i tiden?
För att rapporten ska bli ännu mer integrerad i den svenska marknaden behöver vi din röst!
Vi på HR Digi tillsammans med Sapient Insights Group önskar att just du bidrar med din kunskap och erfarenhet för att hjälpa Stacey och hennes kollegor, att hjälpa oss med insikter och data om den svenska marknaden. Genom att du bidrar skapar vi tillsammans insikter och data om den svenska marknaden som du kan använda som stöd för din HR Techstrategi. Du hittar mer information här och hur du kan bidra till rapporten här!
Här kan du ladda ner den senaste rapporten!
Här hittar du också Annas erbjudande om Digicoachning.
Om du är intresserad av Deels erbjudande så kom ihåg att skicka ett mail om det.
Transkribering av poddavsnittet:
Anna Carlsson: Idag så har jag utländskt besök i podden och det är Stacey Harris som är HR tech analytiker. Den officiella titeln är Chief Research Officer and Managing Partner på Sapiens Insight Group. Varför jag har bjudit in Stacey är för att jag har följt henne nu under ungefär fem års tid och hon levererar tillsammans med sina kollegor en fantastisk rapport över hur det står till på marknaden för HR tech och vad de gör annorlunda än alla andra rapporter jag tittar på. Det är att det är era röster som hörs i rapporten. Så det handlar om att under 25 års tid så har hon och hennes föregångare samlat in data från kunder eller från de som använder HR tech och aggregerat och sätt ihop och följer då trenderna för, ja vem är det som använder tech? Hur ser det ut? Vad använder man för någonting? Så det är inte bara till exempel HR systemet utan det kommer in på andra områden som analys och learning och så vidare och tillbaks till det viktiga här. Det är att man alltså frågar kunden och jag har ju idag bjudit in henne för att diskutera lite grann kring innehållet i rapporten. Just nu är den ju förstås USA tung. Men jag har en ambition att jag och Stacey tillsammans, ska se till att vi får en rapport för Sverige och det betyder att vi vill ha dig med, dig som lyssnar, du som har ett ansvar för er HR tech miljö eller den som har koll på den och vi pratar om det i rapporten. Vem är det som besvarar den här rapporten? Vad innehåller den och en hel del andra saker. Så, om du är intresserad av att vara med så ska du ju förstås signa upp för att få länken till den och besvara den så fort som möjligt när den kommer ut. Det är en ganska stor frågebas, eller det är många frågor helt enkelt, men man får ju också ut värde av att diskutera det här internt. Vad är det egentligen vi har för de olika områdena? Så man får också en väldigt bra bild över vad man själv har för HR tech i sin organisation. Så, nu så startar vi avsnittet för idag och jag vill gärna att ni som sagt läser rapporten och självklart finns det en länk i poddtexten och om det är någonting du undrar över och vill fråga om er rapporten så har jag läst den flera gånger de tidigare och nu den här den 25:e omgången, så då är det bara att höra av sig eller som Stacey säger i avsnittet. Hör av er direkt till Stacey.
Anna Carlsson: Om du vill ta steg framåt och behöver en partner att diskutera med så kan du nu boka digitala coaching-timmar med mig. Det kan vara allt från att du inte hinner med att tänka ut vad som är smartast för er att göra, att du har svårt att få ihop ett business case som visar på värdet av den förändring du vill genomföra eller att du helt enkelt inte har tid att hålla dig ajour med möjligheterna och vill ha en erfaren person att diskutera med. Du kan läsa mer om erbjudandet på länken i poddavsnittstexten eller på vår hemsida under nyheter.
Anna Carlsson: Deel HR är den första globala leverantören där du kan hantera alla dina medarbetare i ett enda system. Med Deel HR kan du anställa vem som helst varsomhelst med bara några knapptryck. Du får ett smart system där du hanterar både anställda och alla dina konsulter. Med Deel HR får du hjälp med allt annat krångligt som hjälp med visum, kontor och utrustning när företaget expanderar internationellt. Deel HR hanterar också alla dina löner varsomhelst i världen via en kontakt, utan en massa lokala lönehanteringsbolag. Allt via Deels globala payroll-funktion. Deel erbjuder nu dig lyssnare att anställa en person gratis via Deels plattform. Skicka ett mail till hej@hrdigi.se med titeln Deel för att ta del av erbjudandet. Det gäller under hela 2023.
Anna Carlsson: So, hi and welcome to my podcast, the name HR Digitaliseringspodden, but that's probably a bit difficult for you. So, hi Stacey! How are you doing today? Where are you sitting today?
Stacey Harris: I'm doing well. I'm in my office in the United States, in North Carolina, if anybody knows. Kind of the East Coast area. I live in a little town outside of the East Coast on Raleigh Durham in North Carolina. So, we have nice, beautiful spring weather here. The flowers are blooming so I can't complain. I'm in a good spot not traveling this week.
Anna Carlsson: Great. So, and it's so good to have you on the podcast I would like to start by asking you to introduce yourself in the best way you can and how you became an analyst.
Stacey Harris: Yes, that's always an intriguing conversation. I think you and I started one of our first conversations was you know what is an analyst, right? It's always the question I get. So yeah, I'm currently and hopefully we'll be for quite some time the Chief research officer at Sapient Insights Group as well as a managing partner. So, it is my own company owned, women led business with my partners Terry Zipper and Susan Richardson. We started the organization about two and a half years, almost going on three years now. Just at the heart of the 2020 pandemic for many organizations. We spun off what was a long-standing research function that I had been working with for a company called CR Cedar and joined it with Susan Richards Company which was an advisory services firm that had been doing sort of change management and consulting and advisory around HR technology and combine the two entities to create what is now Sapient Insights Group. And I've been having a really great time understanding sort of how I can take the research that I've been doing for a very long time and expand on its access across very different markets including global, but also learning how to be a small business owner, which has been a bit interesting because I've always worked inside of companies and not own my own business. So that's put a new spin on my thinking about HR technology as well. Prior to that as I had mentioned, I owning my own business and running Sapient Insights Group and being a chief researcher there, I was an industry analyst and a researcher at large corporations, so one of them was CR Cedar, which is where I started the big annual HR system survey about. Eight years ago, I took that over from Lexi Martin. Some people might know her name. She had run it for about ten years before that before me and then prior to that I was at other analyst firms that the people might know, like Brandon Hall Group and Diversion Associates. I was Josh Persons, 13th employee, good friends still of Josh. And so, before that then, and that was my research career and my and analyst career. Before that, I was a practitioner, much like and other people who might be on the line listening. I was starting out in training and development, got my degree in in instructional technology, actually designed and developed and ran learning functions and then started into organizational effectiveness and then talent management. And you know, from there it just kind of snowballed into doing a lot of HR technology and system implementations inside of big companies in the United States and internationally. When I left that, it was well probably where a lot of people might be out today, I was actually laid off. Back in 2008, during the last time frame when we all sort of were struggling with the economic times, I was laid off and I had to make a big decision at that point in time. Do I kind of continue on the path that I've been on, which has been sort of a manager and leader inside of HR functions? Or did I take a leap of faith and start working for a very small company at that point in time, which only had, as I said, I was a 13th employee and start doing this really neat thing that I had always wanted to be a writer and always had wanted to do sort of research in this space and that was Diversion Associates. And so, I got a chance to start doing surveys and interviews and talking to a lot of companies about what they were doing. And that's how I became an industry analyst. And for those who might not understand what an industry analyst is, it's sort of a mix between sort of like a journalist but in a specific industry and a subject matter expert kind of all tied into one. So, we are depending on who the analyst is the goal this as much as possible to be vendor neutral and that's always a tough thing because it is this very challenging world where you're always talking to the vendors about the work they're doing. They're showing you what their products are. They're trying to make sure you understand because then you write about it, and you do a lot of evaluations for organizations around what type of products they need. But you also have to listen to the practitioners and what their challenges are and what their needs are. And then you also have to listen to oftentimes the investment community who's talking about what they're trying to buy and where the markets at. And so, an industry analyst tends to be kind of that in between role and what most organizations and most people find is that they're looking for an analyst who they trust. And what it comes down to is building your brands, that you have trust, making sure that you are always upfront and transparent about you know, where your data comes from and how your data should be used and making sure that you're always neutral in your fact sharing and your information that you're sharing to the market. And so that's really what I've been doing for the last 15 years. It's a very different role and a lot of people sort of are like it's not quite an influencer, but that's what a lot of people sometimes think it is, especially vendors who like to well, why can't you say something nice about my product and like well, I'm not here to be influencer, I'm here to actually give the facts about what's going on. And it's not quite a journalist either because you are doing things that you have to figure out sort of how to help the buyer make decisions. And that's not always just about sharing facts, that's about getting data around what the buyer needs. And so, it's been an interesting road for me to travel. So that was a very long explanation. So, it wasn't too long.
Anna Carlsson: But it's interesting to listen because that's part of what I do in the smaller area of Sweden versus globally or US from the beginning I assume and then and globally. But it's still that balance between listening to vendors and to clients and understanding. So, you are moving in between all of these roles all the time. Yeah. So, I recognize it even in my smaller little world.
Stacey Harris: And I think you know everyone who is in these roles you know I always tell people is that there are some analysts who make their bones or make their make their brand off of being sort of mean and you know kind of always saying really tough things in the market right. And there's some who are you know sort of say really nice things about everybody and sort of there's no, you can't really tell sort of the differentiation between what they're saying and the marketing that's coming out of some of the vendors and I think it's a really hard balance to say i need to figure out what's good but I'm also not here to you know, I think my sense of the market is that there is a vendor for every customer and a customer for every vendor. I really have found, there have been very few times in my life where I've gone into a as an analyst and got into work sensation, wow, nobody should buy this product. I mean there have been one or two but not many. But I always also say that you know what I am really find critical and I think all the people out listening probably know this because they've bought products probably from time to time that didn't fit them is that when someone gets influenced to buy a product that isn't right for them, it doesn't just hurt the buyer, it hurts the vendor as well because the vendors trying to twist or move or do things or they get bad reviews that don't really meet sort of the things that they actually do well. It's kind of like you know being in a in a really bad relationship.
Anna Carlsson: Yeah.
Stacey Harris: So, I think it's important for us to actually do the kind of work that we do because there is an important sort of matchmaking role in it, right.
Anna Carlsson: Yeah, it's interesting because everyone I meet from locally here that develops different solutions. They are all so passionate about their why and we all have to remember that they have their why and we have to understand it to choose the right one for us depending on what organization we are and what results we are looking for. So yeah, very interesting. So, before we jump into because you have a very big client perspective on your research, but I would like to ask how would you describe digitalization for an HR person and what is really then the difference with HR digitalization?
Stacey Harris: Ohh, that's such a tough question, right. Because I think the whole world sometimes gets caught up on this word digitization, which it is an important and critical word, right. Because I do think that there's a lot of companies that still run many things in a manual way, right. Even though they might be using technology, they still run it the same way they did before. They just have a technology maybe doing it instead of, you know, people. And I think, you know, my sense of sort of that going to the next generation of digital is that you are not just using technology to do things faster, but you're using technology to enhance or optimize the work that you're doing, right. And I think that's probably the difference between just automation which is what we see most HR technology doing and the next digital generation, right. Because if you think about where we were at say for smartphones, right, I used this example just the other day I was talking to someone and I said, you know, I got my first smartphone, I remember I had a family member who got hurt in a car accident. And I remember looking at that smartphone and it was back in the day of the BlackBerry, so I won't, you know, one of those old ones. And I remember it was like, I don't know how to make a phone call on this because it was just, you know my wrote memory wasn't quick enough to sort of remember how that I had to tap the screen and do this and do that. And I remember thinking, boy, this thing is a terrible phone, right? If we've judged, it based on what we thought about a phone should be. We may have never gotten to where we've gotten to with smartphones, which are now sort of information tools for us. And I think it's the same thing with the digitalization. When we think about it across all of our businesses, if we judge all the technology on how well it automates what we used to do, oftentimes it comes out lacking. But if we look at where we could be or what our possibilities are, oftentimes that's where I think it's really exciting. The only thing that I would also say about digitalization is that one of the things that we've seen in our data and in other data where we've done some research with some other organizations is that digital organizations, the next generation of digital organizations are much more likely to be more comfortable with risk taking and focusing on innovation, which is kind of that process I was talking about. And that's hard when you're when you're especially if you're a more mature organization and you're very conservative in how you think about. How you have to manage data and how data will flow across your organization, and it means you have to have people who really understand data inside of your business. And we oftentimes haven't done a good job of that in HR. We haven't created HR development and education programs and HR conversations that focus on being data forward as much as people forward. We know it's important to be people forward. We talk about being human and we talk about being good with our empathy and good with our storytelling. We very rarely talk about understanding where data comes from, how to value it, how to understand it. That isn't something we teach in a lot of our courses or universities or certifications effectively. And I think that is a real gap for the HR community.
Anna Carlsson: Agree. Thank you so much. So, I'm thinking about we should jump into the report that you publish every year. I came across it the first time I was at HR Tech. That was about four or five years ago. So, then I listened to you for the first time, and I tried to dig into it and understand it. But I would let you describe what is this fantastic report that I've just read for the last week from page 1 to 174 something.
Stacey Harris: Yes, yeah, yeah. Don't scare anybody about how long the pages are. It's always I tell people like download it and then sit with it. Don't get scared by how big it is. So, this report is now in its 25th year. So that's probably the most important thing to know about it is that it was started in 1997 by Lexi Martin as a small report on this new thing back then called HR self-service. When people didn't even understand what self-service was or the fact that we were going to be giving applications access to employees and they were trying to understand at that point in time it actually was a very global company called the Hunter Group. That's who was sponsoring it or who was Lexi was working for. And the Hunter Group basically said we need to understand this new technology because it's very different from what we've been putting in place for the last ten or 15 years. And what's, what's really nice is that Lexi then continued that same survey with different questions, but a lot alike. So, we would change like half of the questions and then keep some of the new ones every year for 17 years. And then I came along, and she wanted to move into a new role in a new organization and she really wanted to find another analyst to own it, not just you know, because you there's a lot of surveys that get done every year. Deloitte does really big surveys and PwC and you know individuals, consulting firms do surveys, but no one had done this sort of year over year of the same questions. And so, what she was looking for was someone who would respect the fact that this had, when we look at research longitudinal data basically the ability to look back year over year at how things had changed. And I was thrilled by it because I had been working with a lot of research firms at that point in time and they were always a point in time look, right. We were able just to say a survey about what was going on in performance management this time or what was doing, what was happening and learning at this point in time. And those are always really good. But you get such a different perspective when you kind of step back and look across. And so, I took up the mantle of this research and I expanded it so that it covered, because at that point in time it was really just for large organizations because that's who all of whom was buying HR technology at the time. I expanded it down to the smallest companies in the market and expanded the kind of applications that we were asking. So, we now ask, it's a survey that is now in its 25th year and I've run it for the last ten years and it basically covers 56 different applications that we consider under the HR technology framework that are large enough that large and small corporations are both buying them. And it covers over, we counted 250 different vendors who get evaluated in our survey for all of those various 56 different applications. And then basically every year, we ask not only what people are using in their HR technology, how they're using it, what goes around it. So, what practices have changed management, what strategy do you have in place? What business outcomes are you getting? We then also asked about emerging technologies because there's a lot of new things that are happening that aren't completely out in the market. So, it really becomes a very large survey. We break all the rules when it comes to survey taking. But then every year we publish the full report and share the aggregate findings with the entire community. If you participate in the survey, you get those findings early plus you get a mini benchmark that is only for specifically for you. That can be done by region or industry or size. And you also get to be part of our community where we share a lot of information on an ongoing basis that comes out of that data on a regular basis. But our thinking is that this has been a community effort for a very long time, and we want to continue to make it a community effort. And so, we launched it every year at the big HR technology conference in the US. But then throughout the year, I do sessions at, I've done them at the Unleash, at the HR Tech Europe events, at the HR Asia events. That's basically what I do is I run around the world sharing the data each time. And what I tell people is when they participate in this research that it does take a lot of investment and time, but you get so much out of it. I've had, I have people who have taken this survey now literally who have been in their jobs and have taken it for over 15 years and every year feel like that it adds value to what they're trying to do in their organization. So that's to me the best recommendation you could have for a survey.
Anna Carlsson: Absolutely. And the sizes of the organization. You say you have all types of sizes nowadays, so how small, when you think it's valuable to share data and get data back?
Stacey Harris: Yeah. So that's a good question. So, we originally used to do the cutoff around 200 and then we went down to 50 employees. Currently now we actually take all data. Even if you're a company of two or three, we're finding that organizations are leapfrogging right over manual paper-based processes and they're getting HR technology as some of the first technology inside their businesses, right. So, we track even if you're using Quicken as your payroll system, right. Or if you're using some local small tool. Because what we find is we want to see that progression of changes as you grow and mature in organizations and that's part of the power of the research. This year we had over 5000 responses to our survey even though it's a very large survey and we head over, after we clean because we clean the data extensively. We don't just take responses, we go through, make sure they're valid, make sure the companies are valid, make sure the people are valid. Even the smallest companies. It takes a lot of effort on our research team to go in and make sure we get publicly supported validation data. And so, we had companies as small, I think our smallest was maybe three employees. That we had in the data set this year, but we don't discount people because of how small the company is. Sometimes we'll have like a one single person who will take it who is a consultant for a larger firm that happens. And so as long as we can validate that the firm that they're doing the data on is a valid firm we'll take that sometimes too. But I think the smallest one we had this year is an actual company was three employees. But we go all the way up to the largest companies in the world, right. We get you know the British healthcare system is you know the largest employers in the world right. Some of those organizations are massive as Amazon and Google and so what's been interesting, is to get this wide breadth of data and then to have over 2515 individual companies because we do, because if it's more than one person who answers from a single company, we'll consolidate that data down. That's what you're really start to get a sense of what's happening in the market right. You know what percentage of companies are really adapting the HR technology. What's the difference between sort of a company of 50 employees versus a company of 500 versus a company of 5000 and 10 000. And there are some really distinct differences and I think that's it's important that the research you know acknowledges that.
Anna Carlsson: And you said how many different categories of solutions are in the report right now?
Stacey Harris: There's 56 different categories. So that includes all of like the social technology that people are using. That includes all of the sort of variations underneath sort of core HR talent, time management, even the analytics and planning, which is a lot of different layers in that, right, because people are still using a lot of technology that's off the shelf in some cases. And then the emerging technologies. Then we have another, I think we're at twelve this year now twelve applications where we actually get what we call user experience and vendor satisfaction about those applications and that's what we call our voice the customer section of the report. We can't do that on all 56 or that would be the longest survey in creation. But we do on twelve of the like the you know you're core HR mesh, your payroll, your learning systems, your recruiting systems. We really want to get like the primary tools that you use in those areas, the user experience inventor satisfaction ratings on those and that really is quite interesting as to understand every year sort of the dynamics between what people feel is creating a good user experience both inside the company as an HR professional and for their employees. But then what's the difference between them and that relationship they have with the vendor, which is the vendor satisfaction rating. And then we put that into a quadrant every year. That's our version of a quadrant if you have to have one, but everyone always wants one.
Anna Carlsson: But I'm thinking also, so this must have expanded a lot over the years then with all the categories, what have you seen, what's the history you have seen over the HR systems market?
Stacey Harris: Yeah, that's a really fascinating conversation and one of the nice things about having my own company is that we're starting to build a team behind me, which I was so excited. We just hired a Director of Research this this fall because the wonderful thing and the not so wonderful thing about working for a small firm, which as I was before as a thought leadership piece is you never had additional resources to do things like look back and do a year over year analysis, right, of sort of how things have changed. Like you generally kind of knew where they were changing, but you didn't look back and crunch 25 years of data all at once, right. And so, we're actually starting to do some of that now. We're starting to look back over the years and we can start to see that the rise and fall of certain things. So, it's been interesting to see this you know increasing adoption. You know, when I first took over, I can remember Lexi and me having this really heated conversation about would talent management systems ever become sort of a big enough to do voice of the customers around at that point in time, right. Because they were just kind of, you know, business unit specific and you know, people want their learning solution. But you know, we, you know, we have this whole conversation about it and so it's been interesting to watch. Now you watched the core HR and payrolls rise. And then sort of then you saw this really what I used to call the sexy time for talent management, right, when everybody wanted talent management systems, and everybody had a talent management suite that was back in there. And then all of a sudden, the big firms bought them all up. So, SAP bought SuccessFactors and Oracle bought Taleo, and you know. And then you know we basically got into this where oh no, now all the talent suites are actually owned by the ERP's and HRMS. So now everybody's going back to point solutions. It's never I would say a linear journey is what we've seen in our data, right. It's always been this sort of, this big company sort of it grows to sort of a big company model. And then what we see is these point solutions come in and say, hey, I've got some really innovative things. And then all of a sudden, they start to aggregate and then you start to see the big companies say, oh, I need some of that. And so, they buy them. So yes, it has grown over the years, but it's also interestingly enough done some consolidation too, right. For a while everybody had a talent suite and now that number is much lower than what it used to be, right. You know, now we're, you know, everyone might have time and attendance, but do they have leave an absence. That was something that for a long time we didn't have in the market, but COVID created a real need for leave and absence systems to manage that more effectively for a lot of people. And so, we see a lot of growth and change the nature of technology market that's really driven by what's happening externally and what is happening by sort of the buying market of the actual businesses themselves, which is sort of interesting to watch if you've never sort of looked at it that way.
Anna Carlsson: So, who is the reader of the report? I guess I mean if they spend so much time in answering all these questions. I looked at it once for my client that I were with, but I never finished it. So, I've started it. But you have a lot of people doing it, and I really hope that my listeners will do it as well. So, we can get some data specifically for Sweden or more data for Europe. But who are they?
Stacey Harris: Yeah, I would love to get like a Sweden specific pocket. I told you once that we had actually, it was it was a really neat experience. We had an organization out of Russia who had pushed for a group of Russian companies to respond to the survey back in the day and that you know that was about ten years ago but and we were able to get enough to get a response data set. Now we're doing that with Australia and so we're we do this from time to time and we'd like to try and keep it going that if we can get enough in a particular region, we can give the region back their data and the particularly in a country, right. And that's really exciting to be able to do that for organizations and for groups of Regional Professionals who want to get together and have a conversation that's about just the data that makes sense within our country, right. And so, what we've seen in you know the market is that the person who generally takes the survey is not the head of your HR function generally especially you know because most surveys that everybody wants is the CHRO and the VP of HR to respond, right. And ours is kind of a unique survey in the snack that it's the person who's really at the center of buying and managing your HR technology. For small businesses that might be each of VP of HR or your CHRO. But in most mid-size organizations, large organizations, that's more of the director of HR IT, maybe even it's a, it's a manager of HR partnership models, but that's over systems, sometimes it's HR analytics function. The other thing that we've done over the years too is that for organizations where they really are very large, when you go into the survey that one of the first things you get asked is what sections would you like to take? And there's a I want to take everything. And then you can also limit yourself to maybe I just want to take recruiting or just want to take analytics or just want to take learning. And that sometimes is helpful too because then you can sort of send the survey off to some of the people inside your organization. And we see a lot of people who will send it out to like ten different people. And then we do the collapsing and combining for them. So, the person generally who's at the center of it is the HR technology role. But then we do see oftentimes they'll send it out to other people to get more responses or sometimes they'll, one of my favorite things is and I've gotten done several conference calls with this people were literally get in a room and answer them together. So, they like to do a lunch and learn kind of thing where they all get together. And so, like maybe one person knows one section, another person knows another section, someone knows all the strategy and they answer it together and I love that I've had people little conference begin while they're doing that. So, we do understand this question. How should we answer...?
Anna Carlsson: Yes!
Stacey Harris: People get really excited about it, especially because they get their benchmarking out of it every year. So, I think a lot of people really enjoy doing it.
Anna Carlsson: And what exactly they get the benchmarking where we versus the world and how does our vendors stack up versus other vendors and so on. But is it anything else the readers have brought to you as comments?
Stacey Harris: Yes. So, you know I think the vendor community and most of all loves the voice of the customer and the vendor stacking and ranking. We get you know either they love it, or they hate it depending on where they fall in the voice of the customer. But buyers general, you know that's good when you're getting ready to buy but you're not always buying, right. So, what we've over the years they've come to us to really ask about the maintenance data, right, like how, how much, how long does an update take on average, right. How many resources does it take to manage these systems. So, we have a lot of questions about spending budgets each year, maintenance models and resourcing along with the emerging technology areas which are something people really, they don't oftentimes get that in their sort of day-to-day sort of ability to be able to read about everything. I also have, you know, I've gotten some really good feedback from a couple of long-term people who've taken this survey year over year and one of the things that I always found fascinating is that a good friend of mine um Jim, who always told me I use this like my annual check in with my systems. He's like, it reminds me to ask other departments about what they're using or what they may have bought. It reminds me to think about you know am I thinking, you know you always throw in questions that are unique about data and how you're using it and analytics go. So, it reminds me to think a little bit about am I really optimizing my systems the best way that I can. And then you know, and he says and then I get a printout at the end of the questions. You could get a printout of the questions at the end of the survey and he's like, and now every year I've got a list of what systems I had, because I can now go back ten years and tell you what systems I had ten years ago and show you the progression of my systems, all because of your survey data. I said, well, that's nice. I had never thought about it. But yeah, so I do think that when people take it, they you know at the point of time it's a lot of work and the mini benchmarks are great, and the data is great. It is if you kind of take it year over year where those people find value in it over time because it shows the progression oftentimes of your career or of your companies’ architecture or of where you've been at in sort of organizations. We've seen a lot of that kind of conversation too.
Anna Carlsson: So how many European answers do you have? Or Swedish maybe? Maybe you can't go down that low at this point.
Stacey Harris: But I think we only had like five Swedish headquartered organizations this year. It wasn't, it wasn't enough to even be able to a do a sample cut on that. But again, I said we had over 2515 responses. Over 7% of our data comes from the European market. So that's still a lot of about 120 to 150 organizations are headquartered in the US, but we also have 698 global organizations, which means a lot of organizations who might be headquartered elsewhere have employees in those regions. So that data is very all-encompassing. What I would love to do and it's funny because 7% isn't, I used to have about 13% out of the European market of my data set, but that was when I had 1600 responses. So, I actually have the same amount of responses now that I used to get back then. It's just that it's a smaller overall percentage of my data set because Asia Pacific is actually really pushing to get more able to respond to the survey. So, we've seen an uptick in that market across their various regions and countries. But yeah, no I am always trying to increase data and very aware that and very open minded the fact that a lot of the systems and I have a very US centric look at things right. Like it's one of the reasons I was so excited about working with you Anna is that you and I start talking. I was like we're creating a network of people who can help me look at the data and give me the perspective because you know we all see it through our own lens that the challenge about data analysis right is that we can be biased in our own views. And so, it's important to me to build a network of professionals who live in every country, in every region who can take a look at our day and say, oh. Oh well, here's why that is that. So, one of the data points we got this year, but that was different. In the US 48% of the market has mobile HR technology. In the European market, it is only, what did I say it was, it was 38%, right. I think it was we're mobile at this point. In the Asia specific market that's down to 29%. All that was sort of odd to me because I know how mobile friendly a lot of those regions are and I said boy and it would be great for us to dig in and figure out why is the European market seeing less mobile specific HR technology than what we're seeing in other regions, right.
Anna Carlsson: I could tell you something about it. Yeah. And I mean that's interesting, but it also, I think it has to do with the legislations in each country not allowing to push that you use your private phones, for example. So, it's always a long debate on how to roll out solutions that are mobile. So, you might have them, but you might not be able to say that you have them or push them out in your population.
Stacey Harris: See that's the perfect example, right. There's just that little bit of data on. Cause there's a million legislations for every country, right. And changes and regional differences and I that's the kind of conversation I'm hoping to have. The more data we get from each region and country, the more we can have that kind of, because again if everybody's pushing mobile but they're not thinking about the fact that you've got legislation around that just because the stat says that 50% of the market has mobile. Well, that's not everyone in the market, right. So, our goal is to make sure that the data feels like each region or country can get something out of it that's unique to them too, so.
Anna Carlsson: So maybe you should jump into because the listeners can think about the report as something to look at there are more on the future before we have respondents because usually US is further advanced than we are with maybe a couple of years. I'm just thinking what were your big findings? I mean, now we also passed the pandemic, so it's an interesting time that has passed, uh for this report.
Stacey Harris: Yeah, this was an interesting year right, because you know there was if you go back and look at our report in 2020, there was definitely dips at almost everything. And actually the 2021 was the biggest dip, right, of talent challenges and you know productivity was up, but talent was down, and engagement was down, and voice of the customer was up because vendors were helping people through things, and now we're not. As I've told people, what the data basically showed this year is that where we need to be, but we're not back to where we were, right? So, all our productivity is up, back up to where we were at both in HR and business and talent outcomes that we had achieved in 2019. We're back up and in some cases above that. In all cases. We're seeing still major talent gaps in the European market, which are pretty extensive, right that I think that oftentimes get overlooked because I think that the data in general kind of evens out across all the different regions. But we're seeing one of the number one thing that I saw this year when we looked at where people were spending their planning to increase their overall HR technology spending is still recruiting. A lot of people say, well why are we still spending it on recruiting if we're not hiring as much or even if we're starting to maybe slow down our hiring. Well, our data showed that people are planning to increase overall spending on recruiting because it didn't work for them in 2021 and 2022 like the systems, they had didn't help them get the people they needed fast enough with the skills they needed and that became a barrier to actually getting products out and distribution lines and things. And so, what people are doing is taking this little bit of a lull to fix situations to some extent, right. The second biggest thing and this I think is one of the big differentiators of what we saw in the data between the different regions this year is that we definitely saw that over 50% of the EMEA market plan to increase their technology spending and that mirrors what we saw on the market at about like 47% of the market overall, is aggregate plans to increase over HR technology spending. But the European market also had 15% of it saying they were planning to decrease HR technology spending, which was higher that we saw in any other regions, right. And some of that was because of workforces being reduced. But most of that it looked like was because there was a feeling like maybe they had overspent a little bit during the pandemic, maybe invested. They had to shift where they were focusing some of that money a little bit. And so, we were seeing sort of a decrease in a pullback from some of the HR technology spending in our data set, but not a total market like we're going to see big reductions more just a slight adjustment I think and still a lot of plans to invest in certain areas like I said recruiting. But in the European market what we also saw which I just really thought was interesting is that the number two and three investment areas we're learning and training and skills management and that to me because we see learning and training and skills management in the top five in the aggregate data. And in North American APAC if you look at it separately, but it's always sort of the 4th and 5th, right, it's not right at the top right after the recruiting. And I think that really again goes back to this talent gap that the European market is probably facing. And then after that you know and I think the benefits and wellness is probably has to do more with some of the regions that don't offer healthcare and it's more like this this new, we're looking at sort of the additional things like mental health wellness, right. That goes into that. So, we're seeing some of that investment and then we are seeing more HRMS. If you look globally at the data, the HRMS market is not seeing a flip more of payroll and time management. People are planning to replace a lot of those systems across the board. But the European market is one of the markets that has not what we would say totally transform their HR tech. You were saying that they were behind. I don't know that it's behind per say as much it is a lot of the HR technology even in the market even those that out of the different regions is very US centric in its design. And so, one of the things that we had talked about was like contingent workforces. Most HR technology treats it as a separate module not as part of the recruiting or the primary HR system. And yet we know in the European market contingent workforces is a big part of how you build your workforce initially right, because you take a lot longer to bring people into an organization and it takes a lot longer if you need to reduce your workforce and we don't have that issue in the states. You don't have that issue as much in the Asia Pacific market. And so, they just haven't built contingent workforce models into the HR technology model and that's a big part of what European is facing. So, one of the things we find is that the systems are very differently centered and so a lot more tools have to be connected and integrated. And so, a lot more integrations, a lot more global needs, lot cross-border issues that you don't have in some of the other regions, right. And so, I think that is why we saw sort of a less, they were less likely the European market to completely overhaul and replace HRMS and here at least our data we're seeing that that's starting to happen. We're starting to see HRMS go from maybe what might be a locally owned or a smaller HRMS. You may now be thinking about a more global or a broader HRMS that has more tools with it like talent management or time and attendance built into it, those kinds of things. So those are some of the big themes that we saw this year come out of it.
Anna Carlsson: So, I also thought it was a bit interesting about you, I think you mentioned about the experience of the teams that has dropped. So, the people who work in these areas, HR tech. Does that have to do with that there are more people that we need that more people are taking on technology or what has happened? Do you have anything on that?
Stacey Harris: Yeah, that's an interesting one. So, we ask a lot of demographic questions about our people who participate in our survey and because we want to understand the market, the people who are, we're not only serving from a data perspective but also who are making the decisions every day on the HR technology environments. And what we found is that this year we saw 30% drop in HR technology professionals who had ten or more years of experience on the job and that fit very, very much with what we saw globally happening in the market is that which is a lot of professionals were moving either made the decision to move out of their jobs and didn't go back into similar job roles and or completely just left the market as a whole and went into either starting their own businesses or retired completely because they were able to figure out how to do it because they had caretaking duties that they had to put in place. And so, we lost I would say almost like a full generation to some extent of HR technologist nature leaders who had the background and the understanding of the data and why we bought the systems and how we've built those systems. And so yes, I do think there is more people who are asking for HR technology and so you are seeing people move jobs a little bit more. But I do think we saw just saw a lot of people say this if I can leave the workforce, I'm leaving the workforce, or I'm going into something else that I'm more passionate about. And that happened in all regions, in all countries. I don't think that was an individual country model we saw. Basically, having pensions and retirement and that makes a little bit harder I think in the European market. But even here we saw a lot of people sort of taking advantage of whatever options they had to be able to go in different directions. And the other side of that that I thought was quite interesting is that when you look at the data, here in the European market, we had generally it's about 50/50 females versus males who take the survey, right and in some cases slightly more females than the HR, if you're an HR professional, right. In the European market, it is definitely a much higher percentage of males who take our survey than females who take our survey. And so, one of the questions I have seen is you know, are we also seeing a shift in in demographics as well and in a lot of different cases with the HR technology market. Along with the generational shift along with the knowledge shifts, we're seeing more certifications being picked up, right. So, we used to be at just about 48% of the market that had certifications. We're now over 50% in aggregate. And again, European market is much higher. I think they're like 55% or something like that who have a certification of some format in in HR technology. So, I do think it's an interesting shift where we're seeing people who need more skills, who are coming from different backgrounds and who are who are changing how they think about HR technology inside of companies.
Anna Carlsson: And we need to stop here because we are overtime. I have so many I could continue forever and asking questions. But I just want to point out before leaving you is that the report is free to download. So, I will put a link in the podcast texts and also on our homepage as well so people can find it and download it and I hope people get interested to also answer it and it will come out again for, when is it opening again?
Stacey Harris: Yep. So, the new survey will be out starting May 9th. You'll start to see we have distributors, a large distribution network. You can distribute it starting May 9th and it will run through July 1st. And yes, please if you know I'll continue to talk you know Anna and I will be having ongoing conversations to figure out how we can get more Sweden headquartered specific organizations because we'd love to be able to come out and give you guys sort of your own data set and maybe even then do some conversations locally around that data and maybe even some more podcasts around it. But any questions that your community has about, you know, through the survey itself, please feel free to send them my way. I'm available on LinkedIn, I'm available at Stacey Harris, you can look me up and on Twitter @StacyHarrisHR. I love to have conversations about the research and I'm open to it. We did find out that I was very poor at speaking Swedish, so we will have to do it mostly in English, but because when I was in Stockholm, I struggled a little bit with trying to get the trains right.
Anna Carlsson: No worries. I can assist with the translation if that is needed. Of course, yes. So, thank you so much for attending and looking forward to work together.
Stacey Harris: Yep, definitely. Thanks everyone!
