Episode 172: How to Buy HR Tech and Use It Effectively (Interview with Madeline Laurano)
In this episode of the Digital HR Leaders Podcast, host David Green explores the dynamic world of HR technology and its impact on businesses globally. And who better to join him on this conquest other than Madeline Laurano, Founder of Aptitude Research, and a leading voice in HR tech analysis.
The conversation takes a deep dive into the fascinating developments in Generative AI and AI in 2023, distinguishing between the hype and the reality with practical use cases. You can also expect to learn more about:
The major themes and innovations highlighted at the HR Technology Conference in Vegas and Unleash World in Paris;
The misuse of the term 'talent intelligence' in the HR tech market and its impact on the industry;
How economic fluctuations are affecting investments in HR technology;
Practical tips for HR professionals on navigating the complexities of purchasing HR technology and keeping up with market developments;
Anticipated key developments in the HR technology space for 2024 and the technology firms to watch out for.
Whether you're an HR professional, business leader, or tech enthusiast, this conversation between David Green and Madeline Laurano is a valuable opportunity to stay abreast of the latest trends and prepare for the future of HR tech.
This episode is sponsored by HiBob, the modern HR platform for how you and your people work today. Check it out at www.hibob.com.
[0:00:00] David Green: With research from Statista predicting that by 2026, global digital transformation spending is forecast to reach $3.4 trillion, and with recent findings from UNLEASH showcasing that 70% of organisations have either maintained or increased investment in HR technology in 2023, it's clear that digital transformation in HR is a key focus for businesses across the globe. Staying on top of the innovation in the HR tech market is a challenge for HR leaders and professionals. To help us navigate this labyrinth, I'm delighted to be joined in this episode by one of the industry's leading analysts.
Madeline Laurano is the founder of Aptitude Research, a firm dedicated to understanding the evolving conversation required by changes in how technology is delivered and utilised by organisations today. Madeline will share her insights from the recent HR Technology Conference in Las Vegas and UNLEASH World in Paris, the two most significant HR technology events on the planet. We'll explore the intriguing developments in generative AI and AI in 2023, and we'll also uncover the findings from Madeline's recent research studies on demystifying talent intelligence and the current state of strategic workforce planning. So let's get started with a brief introduction to Madeline's background and her view of what the role of an industry analyst entails.
[0:01:37] David Green: Madeline, welcome to the show. Before we get started, can you give a brief introduction to you, your background, and what the role of an industry analyst actually entails, because I think some of our listeners probably aren't sure about that?
[0:01:50] Madeline Laurano: Thanks, David. I'm so excited to be here. I've been an analyst, as you said, for a very long time. So I've worked at some large analyst firms, I worked for Josh Bursin for a while, and then started Aptitude Research almost nine years ago. So, we do research on HR technology. My areas of interest are talent acquisition, employee experience, talent intelligence is a big topic for us right now at Aptitude. And the role of the analyst is a strange one because I think a lot of people are confused. I think it's probably, more analysts are in this US market than in the UK market than what you'd see. But we cover and write about HR technology, we go to a lot of different conferences and speak about different technology providers, and we're very, very opinionated.
[0:02:36] David Green: Now, we had a great conversation, I think the day before UNLEASH started in Paris, And we were talking about the state of HR technology and some of the trends that we're seeing in the space. And our listeners are always keen to understand the key trends within the HR technology space, which obviously attracts a lot of attention and investment. You recently not just attended UNLEASH but also the HR technology conference in Vegas the week before; you did the double, and arguably those are the two biggest HR technology events on the planet. What were the key themes that emerged for you from the two events?
[0:03:10] Madeline Laurano: Yeah, so I mean the events were amazing right, those are the two important ones that everyone is at and everyone should be at. When I think about the themes and the trends that we're seeing, it's all around AI and skills. Those seem to be the two big topics that everyone's talking about, and that will impact how we talk about other themes, strategic workforce planning, talent intelligence, recruitment retention. It's all around this idea of, how do we use AI, how do we use a skills-based approach to make better decisions on the talent that we're going to attract to our organisation and the talent that we need to retain?
[0:03:44] David Green: Yeah, and there's definitely a lot about AI and definitely a lot about skills as well, and this year in particular. But it reminds me a little bit, I think we talked about this in Paris actually, it reminds me a little bit of around 2017, 2018, and everyone was talking about AI and HR, and then it didn't go completely away, but it certainly moved to the sort of second tier of conversations. And obviously, this year has been a huge buzz about generative AI, but also AI as well, not just generative AI. And a number of tech firms have made recent announcements in this area, many of them made them in Vegas and or Paris. What are your thoughts on this topic? How much is hype; how much is reality? How can listeners, many of whom are HR practitioners, see through some of the noise and really understand what's going on?
[0:04:29] Madeline Laurano: Yeah, I think there are really two things that I'm seeing right now. The first is, the opportunity for what AI can do in HR is tremendous, and we haven't even seen that full opportunity come to fruition. But the opportunity to be able to help recruiters, HR leaders, candidates, employees, managers do their jobs better and have a better experience is tremendous. And we're just at these beginning stages of where we're seeing that opportunity go, so I think that's one thing. And then the other piece of it that impacts that first theme is, companies are still so confused about what is AI, what does AI do, and how they should think about it when evaluating providers, and I'll give you an example.
There's a large provider in the space, does very well, one of my favourites to talk about, and they had a company approach them and say, "We're interested in buying AI, now we budget for AI". And they said, "Well, what do you mean; what are you buying?" They said, "AI". There was just this vague abyss of what this was. So, I think companies are very confused. I think many of them have moved past a lot of the misperceptions that existed around AI. I think they understand that it doesn't necessarily introduce bias, it doesn't necessarily provide a negative experience, it can actually do the opposite to both of those things, it can actually mitigate bias, and it can provide a better experience. But I think companies are still so confused about what AI is and what providers play in that space.
[0:06:02] David Green: Yeah, it's interesting because I think the whole AI conversation -- there was a really good paper, I think by BCG, it was published a few months ago around generative AI and HR, and it talked actually that HR teams are now investing, which they thought it was going beyond the hype a little bit and they didn't go into what they were investing in, but they talked about the two opportunities: one, exactly as you said, "How can we make HR programmes more effective to support all across the talent lifecycle, maybe build some proficiency in perhaps and take some of the repeatable tasks out of HR practitioners' day-to-day job and help them on that journey from support function to strategic partner?"; and then the other thing they talked about was around how HR can support the organisation and play a coordinating role, because obviously we read lots of things around how AI will impact on jobs or will impact on certain tasks, automate certain tasks, and we need to think about how we look at jobs in the future.
You talked about the other big trend being skills, which suggests that we're moving away from having the job at the centre of how we organise HR to actually looking at skills, and it's a very different world. I don't know, again, some guidance that you might offer to people listening or what you're hearing from vendors around this.
[0:07:20] Madeline Laurano: It's very similar. It's this kind of situation where companies understand why they need a skills-based approach. We can't just think about jobs, we're thinking about talent, and that's a big shift and there are huge benefits to that. And then, the other piece of it is, companies are very confused about how to get started. They know why they need a skills-based approach, but they don't know how to get started, they don't know what they need to get started. And we find that companies get stuck, we call it "stuck on skills", they get stuck in the skills strategy piece, where they're either using the strategy and the change management as very separate components to the technology, instead of a holistic approach where they don't know where to start. They think they need to assess all the skills that they have within their organisation, which is a monumental task that will take five years. Or they don't know if they should be looking at technology providers or consulting firms to help them with that process.
When we ask companies what they're doing in that skills-based approach, companies that are stuck on where to get started, 67% of them are just using their own internal resources to think about and assess the skills of an organisation. And that is incredibly time-consuming, and we know that's incredibly manual work, it's not dynamic, it's not what skills should be, which is a dynamic approach.
[0:08:40] David Green: And I think you struck at the start there, that one of the key things about it is it's a focus on talent. And certainly when I see the example at IBM, and I've spent some time at IBM as most listeners will be aware, during the time when IBM was taking a skills-based approach to talent, what I found there was that it actually put the employee more at the centre, and they were thinking about how we can understand, first of all, understand skills and the gap between what we've got and what we need, I guess, for the strategy of the organisation, which is obviously good, and it's great that HR can support with that; but then more about that is how we use this to support learning and actually recommend learning opportunities to people that's actually going to help them with their career within the company. And we can tell them, for example, "If you do acquire these skills, then these are the sort of career paths you can have in the organisation as well. So, that's good for employees and good for the organisation".
But at the heart of it, it seems to be about putting the employee at the centre, which I think is a good progression from maybe where we were. I don't know what your thoughts are around that because I guess it's such a confusing marketplace, because there are so many vendors out there that support part of the skills journey. I don't think there's one organisation that supports across the whole life cycle and all the various things that you might need to do in an organisation to really use skills proficiently.
[0:10:03] Madeline Laurano: Yeah, it's such a good point and I think that's exactly right. I think, well, skills is not new, right? We've been talking about it for a long time, whether it was at IBM, or we've done briefings together there. But where we're at now is that it's not skills just for the benefit of the organisation, which is something that employees have no input in. They just are waiting and trying to either understand how they fit into the skills framework, companies are developing them for a very long period of time, and they don't really connect employee and employer. Where we're seeing the skills-based approach now is that it's the benefit for the individual, and that's a huge shift. It's saying, "We're going to actually see you for who you are, for your potential", which is a big word now in HR tech, "for your learnability, and we're going to connect you with the right career opportunities for you in the future".
Also, it's not just internal ability. I mean, that's the most obvious use case of a skills-based approach. But for talent acquisition too, to be able to say to candidates, "We're not just going to pick apart the keywords on your resume and try to match you to a job, because we know that doesn't work and we know that limits a lot of individuals, especially when you start talking about diversity, equity, and inclusion, but we're going to see you for the complete picture of who you are. And that includes not just those keywords under resume, but all of that potential for where you can help drive change within our organisation".
[0:11:23] David Green: So, something that's very much linked to skills, and another area I think that there is increasing confusion around, is talent intelligence. And I know you've done some recent research around that and around demystifying talent intelligence. I think you highlight how you're seeing that many HR tech providers are labelling themselves as talent intelligence, which tells you that there's an important area, for a start, when in fact they are not. I mean, could you talk to us a little bit more about this and why do you think they are referring to themselves as talent intelligence, and how is it affecting what we might call the real talent intelligence or talent acquisition?
[0:12:50] Madeline Laurano: Yeah, it's so interesting. So, we just did a study on talent intelligence and a couple things come to mind. First is when we do surveys, typically we get a very small sample of CHROs that participate. And this study, we had over 100 CHROs take this survey, which to me just screams at how important this topic is for organisations. But there was a big disconnect between how HR is thinking about talent intelligence and what senior executives in a company even know about talent intelligence; where they're all pushing skills, they don't really know what talent intelligence is. So, there's a gap in communication and how this is being translated internally within an organisation. So, I think that's the first area of concern. It's like, this is such a popular topic, but there's very little understanding about it.
We found over 70% of companies are increasing their investment in HR and talent intelligence, and let me see if I get this right, but I think it was 27% know the providers that play in that space, and only 28% actually are able to define what talent intelligence is. So, we know it's important, we know it's so exciting, but we have no idea what it is, and we don't know the providers. And that's a big fault, I think, of our industry in general. I think we have a lot of providers that are using talent intelligence as marketing messaging. We're seeing providers, any provider that has access to data, that collects data, that is analysing data, is basically saying, "We're talent intelligence", because they think it's some kind of data play, and that's not what it is.
I mean, talent intelligence is exactly what we've been talking about this whole conversation. It's using the power of AI and skills to help make better decisions around talent. It's very different than a traditional system of record within core HR; it's very different than an ATS system, than an LMS system; it's drawing insights from the data to better inform how companies think about talent.
[0:14:40] David Green: And a lot of it is external data.
[0:14:41] Madeline Laurano: A lot of it is external data, and that's the other piece of it. It's not just the internal data, it's external data as well.
[0:14:47] David Green: So, moving to more investment in technologies, we've literally just launched our Insight222 People Analytics Trends Research, and this is the fourth year we've done it now. As someone who lives and breathes HR tech, what areas of HR tech are you seeing the most investment in?
[0:15:04] Madeline Laurano: Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, I think companies are still investing. We find the same thing; when you look at investment and how it's changed, despite all of the uncertainty of what the next year will bring, companies are still investing and that continues to be the same. We're seeing everything from just replacement, like still replacement for ATS, still replacement for CRM, continuing; and at the same time, companies looking at areas like AI and skills-based technology providers to be able to provide more of either a foundational layer or what we call kind of the core layer. Once you've replaced these core systems and the systems of record, how do you get real intelligence, or how do you use AI to provide a better experience and draw deeper insights? So, there's a lot of investment there. Companies are definitely still focused on experience. I think there was a lot of belief that even if hiring slows down, the candidate experience won't matter as much, and that definitely doesn't seem to be the case.
But one area that was really interesting, I don't know if you noticed this as well, either at HR Tech or UNLEASH, is that the focus on frontline worker and technology to support the frontline worker has been, thank gosh, better than we've ever seen it. I think for the first time, companies recognise that, okay, 82 million workers in the United States are hourly workers. For a lot of companies, frontline workers make up the majority of their workforce, and yet we're making them go through the exact same experience as we would for professional hiring and salaried hiring, or that's true for talent management as well. So, to see all of these solutions, whether it's employee experience or workforce management or talent acquisition, really focus on the frontline worker, I think has been very exciting.
[0:16:48] David Green: Yeah, I mean any specific examples that you've seen of companies that are doing that well? I know there's been a lot about Walmart, I think, hasn't there?
[0:16:57] Madeline Laurano: Walmart, yeah, and I think McDonald's is a case study we've done that we've referenced quite a bit and what they're doing. I mean, conversational AI is a game changer for frontline workers. I mean, many of them don't have laptops, many of them don't have access to a computer or even access to transportation to go in for a job interview, or kind of think about that if they're not getting the job. So, to be able to provide an experience through a chatbot or through a conversational interface is a game changer, and we're seeing companies take full advantage of that. We saw Paradox launch an ATS. So, their customers like McDonald's or Lowe's or Great Wolf Lodge have all had the benefit of being able to use a conversational interface instead of an ATS. And that means everything you're doing, from the time you apply for a job as a candidate to the time you accept the offer, is done essentially through chat, and that's a very different experience that has not been available before.
So, I think we're seeing companies embrace that. There's some of these providers; there's Harri, if you know this provider, so they kind of focus on employee experience and talent acquisition for frontline workers, raised I think $43 million, they announced that last month. I think that just kind of supports this whole idea that frontline workers are really at the forefront of where a lot of technology advances are happening. And then there's text; I mean, text-based solutions are so important and we just still don't see it as much. I mean, we did some research on it last year and I thought the report would just be interesting, but it was one of our most popular reports. Companies still don't understand either how to use text or how they can provide a better experience, either to employees or candidates, through text. And I mean again, it just changes everything in terms of experience.
[0:18:51] David Green: And I know you've conducted some research recently around strategic workforce planning as well.
[0:18:56] Madeline Laurano: This is one of my favourite topics this year. And someone asked me, I think, at the end of last year, "What trend do you think will be the most important for 2023?" And I said, "Strategic workforce planning". And we doubled down on the research that we did this year on it, and we did it in partnership with eQ8, which is an amazing provider. And I think that the changes I've seen in strategic workforce planning over the past few years have been just tremendous. We're seeing companies not necessarily relying just on Excel spreadsheets for this, the technology advances, using AI, using a skills-based approach to be able to understand both the supply and the demand for talent, to do dynamic scenarios, to really be able to link strategic workforce planning with a lot of these other trends that we've been talking about. And I think the piece there is like the dynamic piece. It's not something that you're just doing at a point in time and then forgetting about it until next year; it's constant.
There's a whole community of workforce planning professionals for organisations, and this is an amazing community, and there's different resources out there to get involved with them. But not every company has a dedicated role for workforce planning. So, I think when I think about even providers that are innovating in this space, and a lot of providers made announcements this year, I mean, eQ8 is really interesting because they launched this kind of workforce planning for everyone through a mobile experience. It's kind of a great experience where you don't have to be a strategic workforce planning professional to be able to see some of the benefits and to run some of these scenarios for your organisation. So, a lot of really interesting things happening in this space.
[0:20:35] David Green: What I'm interested in, I mean some of the organisations we work with are big Fortune 500 companies, and some are further down the line with proper strategic workforce planning and the skills-based approach than others. Within the sample, within the research you did, where were these companies in terms of strategic workforce planning maturity?
[0:21:49] Madeline Laurano: It's a great question. I mean, I think companies are still mostly very immature with their strategic workforce planning. They're either just getting started or they're just thinking about headcount analysis, and I think for a lot of organisations that's what makes sense. But in that sense, it just becomes a layoff tool. It's just something you use to be able to either justify layoffs or to help executives understand what you need to do to cut costs and save money in terms of people. It's not really thinking about everything we talked about with skills-based approach, which is, how do we think about strategic workforce planning, not just for the organisation as a layoff tool, but also for individuals too, to be able to say, "Okay, there is a plan in place, I understand a little bit more about the goals for my organisation, and it's all built on the same idea of the synergies between an employer and an employee".
[0:22:44] David Green: And as we said, if you can start linking that to learning, if you can start linking that to recruiting, you can start linking that to career pathing and all those things and then that's a win/win.
[0:22:55] Madeline Laurano: Absolutely, yeah. And I think back to the ownership piece, I think we're seeing a lot of it in people analytics too, but sometimes in talent acquisition, sometimes in HR, and I think companies get stuck on the ownership piece. It's like, who should own it and then where should it sit; then who's responsible for it; and then what type of technology supports it? And I think we have to move past that and say, "It doesn't matter. This is a benefit for every single part of our organisation, if the benefits are far beyond HR, so how do we kind of just embrace this as our goals for our organisation?"
[0:23:28] David Green: From the research you did, what characteristics do the organisations that are successfully looking at the skills-based workforce planning doing, from companies that are maybe at less mature levels?
[0:23:41] Madeline Laurano: Yeah, I think it's a great question. I think there's support internally for everyone's on the same page that we need strategic workforce planning, it's not just a point in time, it's not just something that we do in an Excel spreadsheet. So, there's that piece of it. I think the skills-based approach goes hand-in-hand. If you've embraced and you move towards a skills-based approach, then you're going to have more strategic workforce planning. And I think the final piece is, you have to use the right technology provider. Strategic workforce planning is not something that can happen on an Excel spreadsheet, it's just not. That just becomes a headcount tool.
So, if you really want to be able to think about dynamic scenarios, if you really want to think about how can you understand that supply and the demand for talent, you need to have a technology provider to do that, and that can be from a couple different options. There's providers that are core HR systems that have workforce planning capabilities that are a little bit lighter, but maybe can help some companies get started; there's platform providers that do talent acquisition or talent management or people analytics that are offering now some types of modules or capabilities there; and then there's fair-play providers like eQ8, that we were just talking about, that focus solely on this area of strategic workforce planning. So, technology is really helping companies accelerate their maturity into strategic workforce planning.
[0:25:00] David Green: What tips would you offer to HR professionals listening on maybe first, how to keep abreast of the developments in the space, because it's a fast-moving space; and then two, the key considerations to keep in mind when buying HR technology?
[0:25:14] Madeline Laurano: It's such a good question, I love this topic. I could talk about this for an hour. But it's crazy to me because during the pandemic, we saw companies buying like crazy, like all of these technologies. It doesn't surprise me to see companies using seven different strategic workforce planning providers, because in talent acquisition, they were just doubling and tripling down on everything, like multiple CRMs, multiple sourcing providers, multiple ATSs even, and none of them were integrating, they couldn't make sense of it. So, we kind of came to this point in the past year where companies were saying, "Okay, we don't really know what's happening in our world and in the labour market for the next year, so we can't just keep buying tech, that doesn't work. We have to be more thoughtful about our HR technology strategy". So, companies are still investing, like we've both seen, but they're being more thoughtful, and I think that's a good thing.
But I think my recommendations for when you're evaluating or trying to make sense of the space is what we talked about earlier, to your point, David, is start internal. What are the challenges you're looking to solve as an organisation? What has not been successful in your investments and technology in the past? Start, we call it journalling a lot. I heard of an organisation refer to it as, it's not Dear Diary, but how do you take notes and just start to get curious internally about what works and what doesn't, what do people want, what do they not want, and just start to get curious about that internal piece of it before you even start looking. And then once you have a clear understanding of what you need and what challenges and problems you're looking to solve, start to be very diligent about how you evaluate providers.
It's not just getting an RFP and going out and looking at different product capabilities. It's looking at the full picture of the provider. What is the company? What does the leadership team look like? Diversity, equity, inclusion is a big priority for organisations. How do we think about how these companies and these providers approach DE&I within their own organisation? What's the percentage of their team that's focused on sales and marketing versus focused on product development versus customer support? If customer support has been an issue for your organisation in the past with different technology providers, you want to make sure that the providers are going to have a good percentage of their employees focused on that. So, start to really pick apart the whole company. You know, what does turnover look like? What does turnover look like on the sales team? What does turnover look like on the customer support team? And then start to look at the product, not just what you find in an RFP, but start to look at what the product roadmap is. It's a very appropriate question to ask, a lot of companies don't ask it.
Then the final piece is thinking about the differentiators. I always ask providers in demos and briefings, "What do you think your top three differentiators are?" And then I like to see if that matches with how I view their differentiators, and it often doesn't.
[0:28:02] David Green: Right, last two questions, Madeline, and I'm going to take advantage of the fact that I've got one of the leading industry analysts in the space. I'm going to get you look into your crystal ball on two things. So, first, we're going to stay with technology. What are the key developments you expect to see in the HR technology space in 2024? And who are the technology firms to look out for, maybe the ones that you're excited by?
[0:28:23] Madeline Laurano: Yeah, so I think generative AI, I think people either love it or hate it, and I am fully on board with it. I think what it can do and the potential it has within a lot of these existing systems is just tremendous again. So, I think we're going to see companies using generative AI more, whether it's open LLMs like ChatGPT, or whether it's developing their own, or using private LLMs in a different way. I think we're going to see more and more of that, and I think that's very exciting. But I think there's not a lot of clarity around companies, what they're using for AI, if this is what they're developing as part of their AI roadmap, or if they're using generative AI. And I think companies have to get really strategic when evaluating providers about what's what, and what these AI roadmaps look like. So, I think we're going to see it. I think it's exciting, but I think we have to be careful too.
Then I think we're going to see more companies kind of move away from just these early stages in the skills-based approach, to really starting to see more case studies and examples of ROI on the skills front, and I think that's super-exciting. We're doing this huge project on CRM, so I'm very interested in the CRM market right now and talent acquisition, and we're seeing providers either completely innovate that space, but we're seeing a lot of sourcing providers offering better solutions in CRM. LinkedIn just made a major announcement with their CRM Connect that integrates with companies like Avature and Eightfold and Beamery, to be able to really provide a better recruiter experience through CRM. So, I think there's a lot that's happening, I think it's really exciting.
I think strategic workforce planning will continue to be a big theme. I don't think we're going to see huge advances on the contingent workforce front. I think a lot of companies understand this idea of looking at talent holistically, but we're just seeing that still being really owned by procurement. So, if we can get a skills-based approach and if we can think about talent intelligence and even strategic workforce planning in a more strategic way, then I think the contingent will follow. But I think that those pieces need to happen first.
[0:30:36] David Green: What do you think will be the key priorities for HR, the function, as we head into 2024?
[0:30:41] Madeline Laurano: I think it needs to be linking that recruitment and retention piece. We talked about that and we did some research on it this year, and I think I didn't realise how much of an impact that can have on organisations. I mean, I think everything we're talking about is not just in this one silo of what could be talent acquisition or talent management or employee experience or people analytics, we have to link this into broader goals. And I think if we think about it through that lens of, there are basically organisational goals that intersect all of these different areas, then we can see more maturity in a lot of the things that we talked about, whether that's talent intelligence or skills or strategic workforce planning. But we have to think about those outcomes as not just something that's serving how we find external talent and then how we retain internal talent, we have to think about providing a consistent experience and driving kind of the same outcomes for the organisation.
[0:31:45] David Green: Yeah, and I think that, as you said, linking it to the outcomes that the organisation is trying to achieve, which maybe if there's something that we can do better as HR moving forward, is really connecting what we do to organisational outcomes.
[0:31:58] Madeline Laurano: Absolutely. And I think the other piece would be to really embrace AI. I think for companies that are still, whatever stage you're at, if you're still a little bit unsure about using AI or how to evaluate providers, it's not going anywhere. AI is not a trend that we're not going to be talking about in a few years. It's here to stay, it's changing how work is getting done, it's changing the experience for your employees, it's changing the experience for your candidates, it's changing the experience for anyone that works within the HR function. So, we have to embrace it, we have to recognise that it can drive a lot of good and value within the organisation, but we also have to be very careful about how we evaluate providers. And that's a big change that everyone's been striving for and wanting and hasn't happened. But if AI can not just lift the administrative burden, but make experiences better so that we still have jobs and we're still working, but we actually like our work, and there are very few people that can say that right now, but that's to me, that's too optimistic, but I think that that is what the goal should be.
[0:33:04] David Green: I love that. That's a great way to end it. AI can make work better. I mean, yeah, hey, that would be good. Make us like work better. We both like our jobs.
[0:33:13] Madeline Laurano: We do, we're lucky.
[0:33:14] David Green: So, we're okay! Thank you so much for being a guest on the Digital HR Leaders podcast. Can you let listeners know how they can stay in touch with you, find you on social media, find out more about your work at Aptitude? We will put links to some of the studies that you mentioned, the one around talent and intelligence, the one around workforce planning, I will probably get those links off you afterwards. But yeah, how can people find out more about what you do?
[0:33:38] Madeline Laurano: Thanks for asking. So, you can go to our site, aptituderesearch.com. There's lots of research, it's all free, you can download it. I'm pretty active on LinkedIn and Twitter, so not hard to find. I work with Kyle Lagunas, who's a very well-respected analyst as well, and we're growing our team. We have some adjunct analysts as well.
[0:33:58] David Green: Fantastic. Well, thank you very much for your time, Madeline. I know listeners are going to enjoy this episode. Everyone wants to know about what's happening in the HR tech space, so thank you very much for your time and expertise and sharing so much with us as well.
[0:34:13] Madeline Laurano: Thanks, David. Thanks for having me on.