Episode 234: From Deployment to Impact: Maximizing Business Value with HR Tech (with Matthew Brown)
With new HR technologies arriving faster than ever, many organisations are quick to jump on the next big thing. But in the rush to modernise, are we losing sight of the real business problems we’re meant to be solving?
In this episode of the Digital HR Leaders podcast, host David Green is joined by Matthew Brown, Director of Research, HCM at ISG, whose diverse career spans practitioner, former Chief People Officer, and now respected industry analyst. And together, they tackle a fundamental question: Are we truly leveraging HR technology to create business value, or are we just keeping up with trends?
So, tune in and join them as they explore:
Why the disconnect between HR and tech adoption persists, and how to bridge it
The risks of adopting AI without clear business purpose
Why data quality remains an overlooked but critical obstacle
What HR tech vendors should be doing to ethically upskill their customers
When reimplementation of existing systems may be a smarter choice than replacement
How to distinguish genuine tech partners from transactional vendors
If you’re questioning whether your HR tech strategy is driving real results or just driving activity, this conversation, sponsored by Hibob, offers timely insight, practical guidance, and fresh perspective from both sides of the industry.
HiBob is a fast-growing new leader in the HCM market. In fact, according to HR tech guru Josh Bersin, HiBob is one of the few SaaS companies that have successfully cracked the code on user experience.
Josh Bersin says that Bob is not only feature-rich but genuinely enjoyable to use.
Read his review of Bob as an HR tech analyst and user at www.hibob.com/davidgreen2025.
[0:00:00] David Green: With new HR tech emerging at what feels like breakneck speed, it's easy to feel like we're constantly chasing the next big thing, hoping it's the answer to our biggest HR and people challenges. So, here's a question I keep coming back to, "Are we really using HR tech to solve meaningful business problems, or are we sometimes just implementing it for the sake of it?" I'm David Green and joining me today on the Digital HR Leaders podcast is someone who's spent much of his career thinking deeply about that very question. Matthew Brown, HCM Research Director at ISG, brings a wealth of experience from across the HR and HR tech landscape, and a perspective shaped by years spent evaluating what really works when it comes to technology and the people function, both as a practitioner and former Chief People Officer, and now as an industry analyst. So, today Matthew joins us to offer his candid perspective on why many organisations are still struggling to bridge the gap between the promise of HR tech and their practical implementation, and what needs to change to close that gap.
We discuss the role of AI in HR, and whether the rush to adopt new tools risks overlooking the core business problems we're meant to be solving. On top of this, we also dig into the long-standing data quality challenges that continue to hinder progress, the responsibilities of technology vendors when it comes to upskilling their customers, and why sometimes the smartest move isn't a new system but a fresh approach to the one you already have. We have a lot of ground to cover, which I'm sure you're going to gain immense value from, so let's get things started with an introduction from Matthew Brown himself.
Matthew, welcome to the show. You have a really interesting background. So, to start things off, please can you share with our listeners the journey that brought you to where you are today; and maybe also for those that aren't sure, just explain what an HGM Research Director does?
[0:02:07] Matthew Brown: Absolutely. And first, thank you for having me today. I'm super-excited to be here in the conversation we're going to have today. I'll sort of answer them in reverse order. So, the world of an HCM analyst is really rooted in deep research, advisory, consultation work, thought leadership, educational components, specific to the world of HR technology. Some analysts narrow in on very specific slices, like recruiting or learning. I run the full gamut, from payroll to workforce management, everything in between, and a few things outside the scope. And it's sort of all wrapped into my passion. And a little bit about my journey and how I got to here. I always tell people I started in the learning and development function many, many years ago by not so politely walking through the side door. And what I mean by that is, I was born with an insatiable curiosity for technology. I love systems and tools and understand the power they can bring when we're leveraging them strategically, and had an opportunity to be an LMS administrator to which I said, "Absolutely, I'll do that job. Tell me what an LMS is".
So, I got very quickly educated on learning management system, and then wanted to be really effective at maximising the impact of the technology. So, I spent a lot of time with all of our practitioners doing process mapping, really trying to make sure I understood the realities of their days, so that I could configure the system effectively. And that naturally with my curiosity led me to say, "Oh, I want to do more", became a practitioner. So, I started with instructional design, facilitation, virtual facilitation, leadership development. And at some point, started to feel like perhaps we weren't getting as much bang for our buck. Our learning programmes were having good impact, but maybe not as great of an impact as they could. So, in my pattern, I now know to be a pattern, I knocked on the next door and said, "Let's go into the HR door and let's first understand the technology".
So, I took control of the technology started doing implementations of various modules for the HR team. And through that, found great success in really doing deep process mapping, "Let's understand a day in the life of not just the way we typically do it in an implementation, but let's really go deep". And then that led to, "Oh, I feel very compelled to do those things. I'm a turns out I'm a people person, not just a tech person". And so, worked my way through the entire function of HR, from top to bottom. Along the way, took a couple of detours. I had tried my hand at it management, tried my hand at building a marketing function and sustaining marketing function. And all of that culminated in being the Chief People and Culture Officer at a learning technology software provider. So, sort of everything all came together in a beautiful way, and I really poured myself into that. And quite honestly, I could probably continue in that path. But I felt that the more I was sitting in that CHRO seat, creating strategy, helping the organisation find its footing, the further away from the technology I was getting. And I had an amazing team supporting me, but there was not a technologist necessarily in the team, and that's what I continue to find in my career. The HR function is really wrapped with people people and not technology people, so you end up with a lot of disconnect.
[0:05:52] David Green: So, with that background, the technology obviously, a people person as well, and actually having worked as a practitioner, and now obviously working in the HR tech analyst role, what would you say is your personal HR superpower, given your very career within the space?
[0:06:10] Matthew Brown: I think there's two, and they're very related. One of them is translation. And to expand upon that, I think really being able to speak the language of all parts of the business fluently, I can speak technology, I can speak finance, I can speak operations, I can speak HR. And so, it creates an interesting opportunity to change the dynamic and conversations and gain consensus, and sort of help the entire organisation find its path. The other superpower really lies, years ago, I had a recruiter that deemed me the purple squirrel. And, when I asked her what she meant by that, she said, "You're a people person, and that comes through very loud and clear, but you're also a technologist, and you're a right brain, left brain, and you're pushing all the things at the same time, and it's fascinating to watch". But I think it sits at my ability to really bring together people, process and technology with purpose.
[0:07:10] David Green: Two very good superpowers to have. And actually, translation is certainly something, again, bringing it to the people analytics space, we see is really important. The translator, typically someone with pretty strong consulting skills, can understand the business problem and translate it into something that analytics people can go away and investigate, and then translate the analytics findings back into business speech so that they can actually resonate with the stakeholder or stakeholders, and they can turn those insights in decisions and to outcomes. But again, if you think about that in the wider HR space, that translation piece is so, so important. And how often is it, and again, love to hear your thoughts on this, Matthew, that sometimes HR functions and business leaders are talking different languages? They're talking the same language, but they're using different words and they don't quite understand each other sometimes, do they?
[0:08:02] Matthew Brown: Yes. Well, a lot of that I think just happens by way of how the functions are designed and the purpose of the functions. When we're representing our function in the business, that sort of really supersedes anything else we might come into the conversation with. And at its core, I always have to remind myself, HR people are people people. There are some exceptions, you might have a handful of technology people sprinkled in, a handful of data people. But generally speaking, the HR people and in the functions today, they're drawn to the function more than likely because it's that pull to be that people person, the heartbeat of the company, create connections, create different experiences in the workplace. But also, that gets coloured by the history of HR. HR comes from a long history of being seen as the compliance arm of the business, right, really remanded to a much narrower scope over the years. And so, there is I think some defensiveness that just enters into those conversations and clouds our ability to really approach it with that translator mindset.
When you're in an environment that is fully supportive and really committed to a people-centric strategy, it's a little bit easier to pull out of that and really have those meaningful translatory conversations.
[0:09:20] David Green: And actually, you said there, HR's reputation for compliance or as being a support function; and we've seen, as I'm sure you've seen in many organisations around the world, many companies have moved that from that support function to being a strategic partner, and usually data and analytics and technology are helping the tools to help them to do that. But I wonder, and again, interested to hear your thoughts on it, I wonder if sometimes we put HR at the centre as HR professionals, because it's easy, because we understand it. And again, based on an episode we did a couple of weeks ago with Dave Ulrich, maybe we need to be putting the stakeholder at the centre, whether that's the employee, whether that's the business leader, whether that's the general manager, or maybe the customer perhaps as well. Dave tried to stretch our thinking to actually think about HR interacting with customers as well. I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.
[0:10:13] Matthew Brown: I love everything about that. I think that we could easily stretch to have HR interacting with the customers. Certainly, in certain circumstances, it's a little bit easier to imagine. But I do think over time, businesses have gotten really entrenched in the ways that we started, right? If I think about business in the '60s and the '70s and the '80s and the '90s, there was an evolution in terms of where HR played the role that we played, whether we had access to two-way dialogue, whether we were more in the seat of just answer to those who come to us or sit here and push out to the compliance related updates.
When you take HR out of the centre of the conversation, it's my opinion, it's always been my opinion, when you put the employee in the centre of the conversation, not just the performative, let's put words on the wall that say employees matter, but let's actually invest in doing what's right for the employees, the rest of the things have a way of sorting themselves out. Yes, you've got to have some guardrails, you've got to have some process in place. I'm not going in and a completely blind, optimistic mindset. But when you do put focus on the employees, and that same logic could extend to customers, then it shifts the focus and everybody's able to orient to a shared purpose.
I think one of the challenges we have with putting customer first, I worked in a couple of industries where that was the mantra, "Let's put the customer first". I go back to, "Your customer is never going to have a better experience than your employee". And so, if we put all the focus on them and not really inside for the employee experience, we're telling our employees in our workforce that they're not the centre and that there's someone else that takes higher priority over them. And in all reality, the way we solve the turnover problem and the retention problem that we've chased for so many years, is to be all-in on putting that employee at the centre of the conversation. And that means investment in appropriate resources, that means being honest about the problems we're trying to solve and how we go about solving them, not being afraid to invest in proper technology and other supporting resources that help our people do the best they can do every day.
[0:12:31] David Green: And again, listening to you, Matthew, sometimes if you're a listener to this programme, you're working in an HR function that maybe is a support function, I suppose there's two things there, that perhaps the ambition of you as HR professionals in that function, have a higher ambition that you can become a strategic function. But then the other area is the perception of the leaders, because if the leaders see HR in a company as a support function, it's quite hard to get out of that, isn't it, I think. And that's where you've got to then prioritise the right things and show an impact. And if you show an impact, then maybe you can move forward with that journey.
[0:13:15] Matthew Brown: Absolutely. It's built into us from birth to model the behaviours that we see exemplified by leaders and other people, and maybe elevated positions relative to our function. And so, when we see a leader really commit, it creates a permission structure that we all get swept into. And if that is a closed permission set in a closed mindset, then that's how we behave; if it's an open mindset, then that's how we behave. And so, a lot of it, I mean I hate to lean into some of the cliché statements and ideas that are out there, but it really does centre in that permission structure and the dynamics that we have come to expect. Now, I am excited that as newer generations enter the workforce, they come in with a perspective that hasn't been shared before. They were born in a world surrounded by different expectations, different technology, different access. And so, I love the idea that we will soon be questioned consistently on why are we doing it this way and why can't we explore other options, and really bring human back to the workplace.
[0:14:33] David Green: A shout-out to our sponsor for this episode, HiBob, a fast-growing new leader in the HCM market. According to HR tech guru, Josh Bersin, HiBob is one of the few SaaS companies that have successfully cracked the code on user experience. Josh Bersin says that Bob is not only feature-rich but genuinely enjoyable to use. Read his review of Bob, as an HR tech analyst and a user, at www.hibob.com/davidgreen2025.
And obviously, the second superpower you talked about was the purple squirrel -- I see you've almost got hair that's nearly purple on there, Matthew, for those watching on the YouTube video, and if you're not, go and check it out -- and the fact that you're able to bring process people and technology together, which I think leads us nicely to the next question. Obviously, you're spending your time now evaluating the HR technology space and helping practitioners and vendors, I guess, make sense of that. Why do you think there's still a disconnect between HR and the adoption of advanced HR technology?
[0:16:02] Matthew Brown: I think some of it goes back to the generalised statement that I made earlier, HR is really comprised of a lot of people people and not necessarily data people or technology people. And so, there is somewhat of a challenge there in just trying to get some of the basics in terms of technology configuration, let's stand some things up. Another aspect, during my time as CHRO, one of the things I came to realise very quickly is that my day was not my own, my strategies and my goals were not my own as much as I wanted them to be. My function by design is to support the needs of the business and the needs of the employees in the business, which means when they have a problem, that problem doesn't wait for my calendar to open up or for me to feel like I am free enough. It's my responsibility to be there, to become accessible, and to respond to those needs in real time.
I can remember my routine sort of closing out my day, look at the calendar for the next day and get myself mentally prepared, "Okay, I see I have seven meetings on the books tomorrow". I wake up in the morning, that is now reduced to four. And then by 9.00am, I see ten more added to the calendar in smaller increments. And so, it just kind of ebbs and flows. And I share that because that means I'm having to be present, which means no matter how much I want to invest in education or getting deeper into how I can make technology work better for me, that always has to come second to the needs of the workforce.
Additionally, software providers have a hand in this challenge as well. The way that we have marketed software for years does not help the situation very much. Providers tend to lean very heavily into very hot capabilities or buzzwords, so think right now in the current moment, AI and skills and analytics. And so, they're trying to check the box and say, "We're relevant in this conversation", but they fall really short of education as it relates to those topics. And when you put the two pieces together, there is just this huge gap between my reality as a practitioner and getting informed and educated, and the software providers kind of bringing some of that to bear. We might get some education during the implementation life cycle, but that is often very limited to the scope of implementation, the scope of what I'm turning on right now. And that ongoing touchpoint to really understand how my business is evolving and how to ensure that I am getting educated along the way, so I can make the most of the technology investments that I have, still has a lot of room for improvement.
[0:18:48] David Green: And how do we change that, both from a HR perspective, but also from a technology vendor perspective as well? Is it the translation superpower that you were talking about as well? We probably need some of that in there, don't we?
[0:19:00] Matthew Brown: I definitely think there is a need for more of that translation support, really to help the business understand what it really needs. Oftentimes, we articulate it based on something we've seen in the market, "I need AI, I need a skill-something, I need a widget that does this", but we're not really informed on how to communicate that in meaningful ways that can translate to the technology without that translator. Again, I think as we see leadership dynamics change with generational shifts, as we see the global workforce really coming together to share experiences in ways that they haven't before, we'll start to see some of that internal courage in organisations to challenge the status quo, to really try and reimagine how we get work done.
What's beautiful is that we're in a moment I think where the pressures being put on businesses by their workforce are being mirrored by the pressures being put on software providers. So, the way product design has evolved, right, every HR system that I look at has now, if they're not already into a consumerised user experience, they are moving very quickly in that direction, because the demands of the technology have changed. It's no longer a back-office function, and the technology for HR is no longer viewed that way. It's really viewed as more of a destination. We need to get employees there to do all the things all the time, not just once a year or twice a year.
So, as that starts to happen, the categories within the HCM landscape have become a little bit more grey. What used to be a traditional separation between learning and performance is now not quite as clean and cut and dry. HRIS is blending into employee experience and employee engagement quite a bit more. You're seeing the experience touchpoints really come through, and even payroll and compensation. So, I think as the workforce dynamics change, it's putting the right kind of pressure on the technology providers, and we're seeing capabilities change, we're seeing the focus on not just making the tools easier to understand, but how do we also expand them to be more strategic in nature, so that you don't just get one thing out of that piece of technology, you can get five things out that might impact other parts of the business.
[0:21:30] David Green: And I guess what, listening to you there, Matthew, as well is hopefully the technology and maybe the subfunctions within HR are becoming slightly less siloed as well, because that's always been a challenge, hasn't it?
[0:21:42] Matthew Brown: That's the hope. It's one of the things I things I see, I've shared with a number of people in my network, as I become an analyst and really stepped out of that practitioner life every day. I'm getting a renewed sense of optimism for the future of HR, all functions, because I'm seeing really, really wonderful innovation on the tech side, not just performative. Let's all say we have 100 things we can do with AI, but actually looking at how the system expands to enable more capacity, but also create more meaningful connections; seeing HCM providers put one foot out toward FPNA as an example. I mentioned earlier, HR and finance don't have the best of relationships, we don't always get along. One is about, "Do what's right", the other is about, "Spend less". And it's hard to do what's right without spending a little bit. So, as we see platform capabilities expand, as we see providers start to change some of their scope and shape, it is starting to tear down some of the silos.
I think with AI and skills in particular, we're able to do a lot of good work to move talent acquisition out of a standalone silo, and actually start to blend it more thoughtfully with learning, which blends into performance, which changes the expectation around compensation. So, it's a really nice ebb and flow that's starting to happen, that hopefully will result in this world that I have such optimism we're headed toward.
[0:23:15] David Green: You're living this every day as an HR tech analyst. There's been a massive wave of interest since ChatGPT was launched, what, two and a half years ago now. Some might even call it hysteria at points, in AI across the HR function. Are we in danger of adopting tools without first asking whether they actually solve a meaningful business problem? You kind of alluded to that earlier. I hear this from people saying, "We want to use AI", or a few years ago, "We want to use organisational network analysis". It's always like, "To solve what? What's the challenge you're facing?" I mean, is that something you're seeing a lot of at the moment?
[0:23:48] Matthew Brown: Yes. On one hand, I see fantastic innovations with software providers when I get analyst briefings, and I get to look at the roadmaps and I see just how comprehensive the approach is. And then, I delve back into my practitioner reality and think about can I see value? Sure. Am I ready to receive it? Probably not. And more importantly, is my organisation ready to make the changes it needs in order to receive it and employ it for purpose? So, there's always going to be a tendency to overhype and get into this hysteria mindset. We've seen it with skills, we've seen it with several things over the years. And it's sort of this reaction of, "We want to be relevant in this moment", and the conversation in this moment is about those topics. But we tend to rush too fast to get there, to try and be relevant without stopping and turning over all the rocks, and asking ourselves the hard questions about, "What is the problem and the root problem and root cause?" We, I think, too often get into trying to address the symptoms because that's a bit easier to do. Turnover will be an endless example for me in so many different ways, but historically we have tried to solve turnover in different ways, and I don't know that anybody's really solved it, because they continue to try to attack the symptoms rather than the root cause.
As it relates to something like AI, we can absolutely rush and get there too quickly without going deeper into that root cause analysis. And an example of that would be, AI started to get traction for HR in a couple of places. It's really helpful to help someone overcome blank page syndrome as it relates to maybe a performance review, or a job description. But here's the thing, I can ask the right question with the right intent using the wrong words and be led down a path that is catastrophic. I may not realise it until I'm ten miles down the road, at which point it's really painful to course-correct. But if I am a manager, who perhaps doesn't really have a good foundation in giving effective feedback for performance, then no amount of ChatGPT interaction is going to fix that. If I don't have proper education in complex prompt engineering, so I understand how to make the technology work for me, again, I can ask the right question, wrong choice of words, and get a very, very different output that leads me in a direction that's not always great.
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So, companies that maybe are doing data quality and HR well, what are they doing maybe differently from others, things that you could highlight, that maybe listeners could then look to adopt within their organisations or, at least look to see if they're doing it well?
[0:28:06] Matthew Brown: I would say that one of the first hallmarks I could cite is just the fact that a dedicated function exists within HR where that responsibility lives. I think about word choices and historically, I would look at maybe the HRIS analyst role being the one that bears some of that responsibility, but just the title of that, very narrow to HRIS, really setting expectation that it's a component of the broader people data set. So, you really need full coverage. And I would say the organisations that are doing well, have said, "This is important, and so we will make sure there is a functional commitment to ensuring someone can live and breathe data quality all day long", to some people sounds super-exciting, to other people sounds super-not exciting. But you will find those people in your organisation who have the aptitude and the passion for it.
Also, I do think it's an integrated function, but I've not seen it work well historically when it is run from a central perspective. So, maybe having central governance and oversight, absolutely; but having all of the functional roles living in a centralised, maybe IT department, which is one of the more common structures that I see, whether we like it or not, when it's centralised that way, if my IT department sees a severe uptick for demand, all hands on deck will be devoted toward whatever that demand is, which means now that HR data piece kind of becomes a secondary priority, combined with the fact that there's just not as much functional expertise. And understanding how the data serves my business processes is something that again, I don't think we invest enough in to advocate in the conversation. So, we make decisions based on labels on a screen or database values that we see in some database schema. But we're not actually translating that into actually, that one piece of data shows up in 17 business processes and the context is different, and then kind of painting that broader picture. So, if I said that a different way, investing in data literacy across the organisation is really time spent well.
[0:30:29] David Green: That leads nicely to the next question actually, Matthew, around should HR technology firms be doing more to upskill their customers, not just on the product features, but also on the responsible and ethical use of technology and analytics and AI tools; and should they even be getting involved in topics such as data literacy as well?
[0:30:51] Matthew Brown: It is my opinion, absolutely 100,000% yes, they should. Fundamentally, I described it a little bit earlier, there's this gap that is easy to spot, somewhere between where me as an employee of an organisation believes my responsibility ends, and the same view from an HR tech provider where their responsibility ends. And historically, I think the industry, as it were, has been guarded. And we don't want to give too much away, we don't want to really go too far into that because at the end of the day, I don't run the client's business and their organisation. So, I should not be making strategic decisions for them, I shouldn't be informing policy and writing process.
What I do believe is there is a need to really be more vocal about all of the context that went into how your product was designed, how it was designed to be used in the real flow of work for an HR professional, which means you're going to need to get into some of those, we'll call it more squishy process areas, that go beyond your features and capabilities, that help customers really make the most of it. It's not enough just to say, "We have this great product and it has all these features and here you go". When we implement, oftentimes that gets very narrowed to just what we're implementing and the problems that we said we were solving on that day. There is a need to come back and revisit over and over and over.
A fun little anecdote I can share. So, when I was sitting as the Head of HR at a learning tech company, I was also very involved in product strategy and advisory and go-to-market motion and customer conversations. It was very kind of all-in to all parts of the business. But even when I was plugged into the iterations, the product design cycles, I would get release notes in my mailbox and would go, "Oh, that's great, I want to look at that. Oh, wait, there's an issue, I need to go deal with an employee complaint or an employee concern, or there's new regulatory consideration I have to give". So, I would hit pause, and six months later would be in the product and would see this new thing show up and go, "When did that…? I knew it was coming, I even helped give guidance to how it should look and how it should work, but how did I miss that it got into the product and there are 14 things I need to do as prerequisite to really enable that thing to work optimally?" So, the realities are good intentions, but we still get caught up in the day to day. And so, I think HR technology solution providers really need to understand that and try to fill in as much as they can, even going more specific into AI, something as simple as just having an HR tech provider come to the table with suggestions on prompt engineering.
I can tell you not a lot of HR teams are really getting educated on prompt engineering, they're getting educated on, "Go use ChatGPT". And a lot of them are using it in the same way that we were conditioned to use Google, with a simple question, a simple keyword inquiry, and really not getting maximum value or output.
[0:34:12] David Green: Yeah, but I mean again, and I know it's challenging being an HR technology company as well, particularly if you're going through several rounds of investment and you've got big numbers to achieve, and do you want to get involved in consulting with your customers as well or helping upskill them? But again, at the end of the day, one of the key measures of success and renewal presumably is adoption and the value, and does it meet the business case that your client has put together to invest in the product in the first place? So, it's kind of in the interest of the HR technology firms to do that, and I guess it's also in the interest of the HR functions that bring these HR technology firms in as well to get the return on investment. So, I love the way you describe it. There does need to be a bit more of a closer meeting in the middle, doesn't there, moving forward, particularly with AI?
[0:35:11] Matthew Brown: Yes. And as I talk to practitioners, as I talk to software providers, I continue to see evidence that this is a problem which needs to be addressed. We will hear reporting out from software providers that say, "I have 10, 20, 50, 100", fill in the number, "I've got all of these live use cases in my software, tied to AI, and we see 90% adoption, we see 50% adoption", and they cite these statistics. And then, pushing a little bit further to try and understand, "Can you tell me, when you say 90% adoption, does that mean, like, describe that to me? Does that mean everybody has adopted the same one use case? Have they adopted five or more use cases? Is it the same use case from one industry to the next? Is it the same use case solving the same problem? Did these customers actually express that these were inherent problems they were looking to solve? Or did they happen to have the hammer and then start trying to find the nails?" And I'm not having a lot of deep conversations in that regard.
But similarly, when I talked to the practitioners, I will ask it from the other perspective and find very similar situations, in that they don't often have all the problems nailed down, partially because they don't understand the full breadth and scope of what is possible using AI as it exists today, whether it be gen AI or agentic AI, or even some of the diffusion models that I'm seeing start to make their way in. We're sort of both looking at it going, "Oh, that's not my problem". And in reality, I think both sides of that conversation have a responsibility to go much deeper and maybe two steps beyond where they are today.
[0:36:57] David Green: And thinking again, Matthew, you talked about companies should look to reimplement their tools on a regular basis. And again, if you're thinking from an HR technology firm perspective, well, you tie that in, obviously I guess, with any renewal as well. So, it's in the interest of an HR technology firm to go in and just look, "How effectively are you using this tool today? What functionalities are you not using now, which you didn't need maybe three years ago, but maybe you do now? Or maybe there's new functionality that we brought in that could help you solve some of these problems that you've got?" So, it's all about that kind of partnership approach, I guess, as much as everything else, isn't it? And this is a key thing. I mean, I always say this too, you've got to choose a technology firm that you feel that you can have a partnership with. It's easy to say that; what does that actually mean? So, how can HR leaders separate true partners from transactional vendors?
[0:37:57] Matthew Brown: This is something that I started doing about 15, 16 years ago in my career, and I held tight to this approach, in that I will not engage. I look for certain signs, that are relevant to my specific organisation and its needs at the time I'm building those relationships. And if I feel the transactional vendor experience, right, if I feel like I can describe you as a vendor, that is a clear sign that you're not going to be part of my down selected, considered potential. And when pressed, the way I like to describe that partnership mindset is really, you see an active, invested interest from both sides in the conversation. It's not me showing up saying, "Tell me what your system can do. Here's my two problems, go solve them". And from a provider standpoint, it's not showing up saying, "Here's all the great stuff we do". It's really taking a step beyond that to understand the needs of the business, to have recurring touch points. This sort of mindset of this re-implementation, it feels overwhelming, because a lot of times implementations can be painful. We find things that we didn't intend to find, because we don't do proper planning up front. We look at the symptoms, we don't look at the root causes, and then things get derailed.
But the way that a lot of software providers approach that relationship, or that touchpoint, is in quarterly, maybe even semi-annually business reviews, where they're bringing forward some information to you to show you as business, how you're using the system. Those data points feel good until you start to dive deeper, right? Knowing that I have 92% engagement is great. When I dive under that and try to understand what does engagement mean, does it mean they logged in once in a 30-day period? Well, what if my goal was to log in ten times in a 30-day period? So, we don't have those sort of deeper data points to anchor to during that initial journey.
You said something that's really important that I want to amplify, which is when I implemented, I implemented on that day for my business as it existed then. When new features come out, they may or may not be relevant to my business today; they may or may not be relevant to my business three months from now, if that's as far into the future as I can see. So, having these real-time conversations helps to uncover business strategy. And again, you need some translation, because the HR team will show up with, "Here's the pains I'm feeling today", and those pains have to be translated into capabilities and potential functionality. Similarly, on the other side of it, I can't just come to you with, "Here's the list of ten things you're not using today", because it's often much deeper than that. It's, "Do you understand the prerequisite work that needs to happen in order to turn that feature on and have it work as designed?" In many cases, this is why people, I think, tend to throw out the systems or feel like they just need to replace it at the end of contract, because they've not done the work to maintain it. You don't buy a car and drive it off the lot and never put gas, never put oil, where you don't ever not service that vehicle and then get mad when it breaks. You put the time and attention into it. The same thing should apply to our technology. We should care and feed for it as much as possible so that when things change, we're better equipped to adapt and to kind of shift gears.
[0:41:33] David Green: Similarly, there's a lot of HR technology conferences around. I've just come back from the UNLEASH America show in Vegas, and obviously there's the HR Technology conference in Vegas in September and then UNLEASH World in Paris, and there are many other HR technology shows around the world that I haven't name-checked there. And one of the things that I've always thought, and I've been going to these things for a long time, is you walk into the vendor hall, if you want to call it that, the expo hall, I think is probably a nicer way of putting it, and there's literally hundreds of vendors. And for someone like you that's an HR tech analyst, that's probably quite comfortable, you can navigate your way around; someone like me that's been in the field for a long time. As an HR professional that maybe gets to go to one of these a year, you probably go sometimes thinking, "Maybe we need to buy some technology for whatever problem, or the case we're trying to solve". What advice would you give to a practitioner that's going there? And is it a case of just really trying to understand what you need before you go, set up meetings; what sort of advice would you give?
[0:42:42] Matthew Brown: In an ideal world, you would absolutely do a lot of your preparation and homework upfront, meaning that you would have those conversations in the weeks leading up to the event with your organisation, really trying to understand what are the needs that we have, what's the real capacity of the organisation to bring in new things. You might, as an example, talk about, "Oh, we're having an issue with learning. We need a learning something or other", but upon further examination, it's much bigger than that. You also need something that brings together learning and performance, something that also delves into skills, something that maybe has the capacity to feed backward into the recruiting life cycle. So, coming in with a full understanding of what your company really needs. And then, talk to your whoever is the gatekeeper for making the IT decisions and the implementation journeys. Make sure you understand realistically what's possible in the next 12 months, because you'll come back to that show 12 months from now and it will be very different, a lot of same names with new messages, a lot of new names showing up. So, don't go in trying to boil the ocean.
Additionally, the expo hall lineup for a lot of these shows is very well documented on the websites for the events. So, take your time to go in and create a list. Look at the different categories, do your research looking at their websites. Don't let the first time you talk to someone be at their booth, because there's too much information to consume and you will come away with very high-level information that makes you think every person you talk to you can solve every problem you have. And in reality, you need to be more precise. Also, don't be swayed. A lot of people have really fun giveaways, and I do understand L&D and HR, I run budgets that are very, very tight. So, all the free things we can get is wonderful. But be really purposeful about your conversations and about discussing what challenges you have and real buying opportunities.
[0:44:47] David Green: And then, before we get to the question of series, Matthew, I'm going to ask my question about AI, and I apologise for that. Again, I think a lot of the challenges that HR leaders are getting at the moment is they're being asked to use AI by business leaders, by IT functions in the firm. What advice would you give, firstly to maybe push back against that a little bit, but maybe more so to try and say, "Okay, if we need to have a strategy for AI within HR, within our organisation, what should be the priorities?" What should they focus on? Should they look at pilots, or what? Maybe give them three things to think about.
[0:45:29] Matthew Brown: So, in short, I think absolutely the first response should always be to push back and really dive deeper into understanding and getting alignment on the problems we are to go solve. If I am going to solve every problem imaginable, that's a very different list of how I might approach and which functions I might start to tap into versus here are the two problems we all agree should be addressed first, and then we can have a crawl, walk, run approach.
From inside the HR organisation, I do believe there is a need for creating a permission structure to go and explore with curiosity. One of the things that I did, when this conversation was starting during my CHRO tenure, was I talked to every person on my team and I said, "Here are some guardrails. There are ways to use the tools safely without putting proprietary or sensitive data into the models. But I want you to go and explore and come back to me with the two or three ideas you have of how it affects your day to day". And so, if you're in talent acquisition, someone who is sourcing has a very different set of needs than someone who is doing the second-level interviews and going through offer extension. In your benefits team, somebody who's managing the broker relationship has a different sort of responsibility or need than someone who is interfacing maybe with business leaders and finance. So, it's empowering people to go and explore, put some guardrails in place so they understand how to do it safely, and also understand not all of the tools are the same, similar to HR technology. Just because you were called an LMS or an ATS, or because you're called generative AI, doesn't mean that the centre of your universe is the same. ChatGPT versus Microsoft co-pilot versus Gemini, they all have a different centre of universe, which means the output is slightly different because their originating filter is from a different vantage point.
[0:47:31] David Green: Really good, Matthew. Then, that leads nicely to the question we're asking everyone on this series, and this should be interesting because you can put your practitioner hat on or you can put your tech analyst hat on, or maybe you can put both on for this one. How can HR use AI to improve employee experience and wellbeing?
[0:47:49] Matthew Brown: One of the best ways that I've seen it help is really again, if I come back to a central theme, people people versus data people versus technology people. If you can feed structured data into an AI tool, it is fantastic at working through that data, analysing and extracting some trends and insights that help you figure out where the needle is in the haystack. I happen to love data quite a bit, right, that purple-squirrel mindset. I love to play in a creative, but I love the data. And so, sometimes data mining can be an endless exercise. It's a black hole where time stops. Ten hours comes by and I've been in that data-mining exercise. But it can really bring forward some great insights. Even more powerful is it has the ability, if you've given it more context, to extract those insights with sentiment, so you understand generally, are these positive, negative things. So, it really helps kind of find your way to exploring the data and what stories it tells.
The other thing that I would really recommend, and I'm coming to realise not a lot of people are actually doing this in business practice, but one of my favourite uses is actually as a brainstorming partner. I turn on either the audio mode, and I speak to it, which is really funny because I will interrupt it, and it will capture that as if we are having this two-way dialogue. Sometimes, I do it all in writing. But I'm constantly looking at, "Here's who I am, here's what I bring to the table, here's my opinion on this topic, here's my data, all the supporting context, challenge me. You are the CEO of an organisation that is in this industry who has this experience, challenge my perspective, help me brainstorm all the things", whether that's in that preparing for a conversation, whether that's trying to gain insights and perspectives into how other leaders across the business might think, or whether that's just ideating, "Help me find ten ways to maybe do this thing differently.
[0:49:56] David Green: Really interesting. And I guess this is the beauty of it, although it's hard as well, it's developing so fast, isn't it? And that's why it doesn't matter if you're working as an HR tech analyst, an HR professional, or working in the HR technology vendor field, you've got to continuously be learning and upskilling yourself. Otherwise, the danger is you get left behind.
[0:50:20] Matthew Brown: And even though we are in this day where I look back even six months ago, and the conversation around AI, the maturity of AI in practice has certainly gone leaps and bounds from where it was six months ago. I still don't think there is a de facto expert, because it is evolving so quickly that we're experts on AI as it existed yesterday; we're not quite experts on how it's going to exist tomorrow, so we have to be open. And to your point, we have to be very intentional about that continuous learning, continuous growth mindset.
[0:50:53] David Green: As difficult as it is, you've got to try and give yourself some time every week where you can actually learn. And that is so hard if you're a CHRO. As you said, you think you've got nine meetings the next day, you turn up, you've got four, and then by 9.00, you've got ten. It's very hard to actually apportion time like that, isn't it? But definitely, if you can do it, for any listeners, do do it.
[0:51:19] Matthew Brown: I had a software partner a couple of years ago that gave me a great example in their own culture. They called it the 'DEAL' hour and it was a mandate that was adopted across the entire board. And what it stood for was, Drop Everything And Learn. And the expectation was every employee engaged in DEAL hour once a week on your time, but it was this expectation that you would devote at least one hour of time to learning something that we didn't ask you to learn, as a way to foster that learning culture. And something as simple as just saying that's the expectation is transformative.
[0:51:54] David Green: That's great. I love that analogy as well. I've actually written that down. I'm going to try to remember that one. So, Matthew, thank you so much for joining me on the Digital HR Leaders podcast today. To wrap things up, please can you let listeners know how they can find you on social media, follow all the great work you're doing and learn more about ISG, the Information Services Group as well?
[0:52:14] Matthew Brown: Absolutely, you can find me on LinkedIn, matthewwbrown. There are a lot of Matthew Browns. Look for the one with the purple hair, it will not lead you to the wrong person. On X, I am @MBrownISG. And then, for all of the work that I do as an analyst on behalf of ISG, you can visit the ISG website at isg-one.com, or hit ISG-research.net, and look for the HCM bucket or practice area, and you'll find all my analyst perspectives, the research programmes, the buyer's guides and more.
[0:52:54] David Green: Fantastic. Well, Matthew, thanks so much for being a guest on the show again.
[0:52:57] Matthew Brown: Thank you.
[0:52:59] David Green: A big thank you again to Matthew for joining me, and for sharing such thoughtful insights on how we can bring more intention, impact and integrity to the way we adopt and implement HR tech. What I particularly appreciated about our conversation was Matthew's emphasis on intentionality, on taking a step back and asking whether the tools we're implementing are actually solving meaningful business problems. It's a question we don't ask often enough, especially as the pressure to adopt new technologies continues to build. And of course, thank you as always to you, our listeners, for being part of the Digital HR Leaders community. Whether you're listening on your commute, in between meetings, at the gym, on a run, or with a notebook in hand, we appreciate you being here and taking the time to grow with us.
At Insight222, our mission is to empower HR and people analytics leaders to drive lasting business impact. So, if you enjoyed today's conversation, it would mean a lot if you subscribed, rated the show, and shared it with someone in your network. For more industry insights and learning resources, I also recommend visiting insight222.com, following us on LinkedIn, and subscribing to our weekly newsletter at myHRfuture.com. That's all for now. Thank you for tuning in and we'll be back next week with another episode of the Digital HR Leaders podcast. Until then, take care and stay well.