Say "Hello" to the new HR Suites

Hey,

Who’s your employee?

The answer to that question used to be simple. But in 2021, your workforce consists of a variety of workers: employees, contractors, independents, gig workers and many others. So when it comes to your HR Solution, you have to make a decision: who’s in and who’s out?

Do you add everyone who’s ever worked for you to the solution to keep track of performance? Include only permanent employees? What about contractors: should you record them? It’s time to define the worker groups you have, and the services you want to offer them. And let’s not forget the license fees you want to pay for them. Can your current HR system offer that?

The new HR Suites are designed from the ground up to help you manage a varied workforce: short and long term workers, people with different payment needs or benefits requirements. These suites start with today’s workforce in mind: they assess the needs of people and build solutions to fix these issues, instead of creating a solution that’s solely focused on the needs of HR. They are also built by taking advantage of the latest technologies.

I’ve reviewed many of these solutions in the past months to better understand why people think they need to build a new HR suite to support today’s workforce. Often, these founders start with a personal frustration about the employee experience. I interviewed the founders of Everee and Peoplehum to discover what was missing and why they decided to introduce new HR solutions.

Because I discovered so many new entrants, I added an overview of newly funded HR suites that gives you insight in the many different ways founders try to disrupt this space. Together, these young companies pulled in over 0.6B$, which demonstrates investors’ interest. I hope the list provides you with inspiration to look further than the usual suspects when it’s time to buy.

Have you tried TwitterSpaces yet?

In other news, Twitter made me a beta-host for TwitterSpaces: a new feature to have audio chats. I’ve hosted a number of sessions, and met some wonderful people. Twitter still has some ways to go before it’s ready for mainstream, but I see a lot of potential, also for in-company usage.

You can read about it in what I like about Spaces - and what not. I’ve also created a How-To Guide. And if you want to experience a Space session, look for the daily invite on my Twitter timeline: join me to crowdsource my next presentation about the future of work and share your thoughts.

Have a great day, Anita

---

Insights & Ideas on HR Suites

Gartner publishes a yearly guide with a hype cycle for HCM Technology. It details the latest technological innovations on the market. You can download the 2020 version, courtesy of Microsoft. No registration required.

Last month I introduced you to Viva, Microsoft’s new Employee Experience Platform. As we learn more about Viva, people are thinking through its enhancements for the HR space: Is Viva the disrupter it claims to be?

When you are contemplating new solutions to improve the employee experience, be mindful that EX is not 'a thing' – it should be a comprehensive program and you need to focus on removing friction beyond HR. This article offers a few ways to achieve that.

What’s next in the world of work?

It’s March, and so there’s an explosion of “one year of pandemic” articles. I’m going to hop on that trend by sharing A year after lockdown. It takes an indepth look at the multiple ways work has changed in that time: from how we communicate to how we learn, including predictions on which changes are here to stay.

Remember my January newsletter on Skills? LinkedIn has just released their 2021 Workplace Learning Report stating that “In 2021, it’s all about rapid skill building at scale”. It certainly is. For 59% of L&D professionals, reskilling and upskilling is the top priority while resilience and digital fluency are the top skills.

What about events?

Are you planning to visit an in-person conference or event this year? My guess is that most of us prefer to play it safe and wait until 2022 to return. Attending virtual conferences has surpassed my expectations, especially considering the short preparation time. But there’s room for improvement, and here are my 10 tips to deliver a better experience.

How To Make The Virtual Conference Experience Better: 10 Tips - HRTechRadar — hrtechradar.com It's been one year since covid-19 broke out here. Next month, it will be one year since international travel came to a halt. I've been working from home

See you next time!

Do you have comments, questions, tips, links for the next issue? Send me a note or schedule a free chat.