HR Technology Market Watch April- May 2023

HR Technology Market Watch April- May 2023

Executive Summary

More than 75% of companies are looking to adopt big data, cloud computing and AI in the next five years according to the World Economic Forum (The future of Jobs Report 2023) and 81% of companies are planning to adopt new education and workforce technologies by 2027.

The wave of layoffs continues to create uncertainty and stress in the market and expanding outside technology. According to Layooff.fyi tech companies slashed more than 185,000 in 2023 alone compared to 80,000 in March to December 2020.

Management consulting services, transportation, food, media, and finance companies are also feeling the impact and conducting a series of layoffs over the next months.

On the other side, we have seen a lot of activity around Generative AI, skill ontology, and go-to-market partnerships to provide new services/offerings to assist companies in developing an enterprise strategy enabled by AI to unlock business value.

As far as HR Technology, almost every vendor is working on bringing to market generative AI offerings. Some use case where this technology can help are around hire at scale, productivity upskilling and employee self-services.

UKG and Google Cloud announced a partnership to embed generative AI capabilities into UKG’s HCM suite. I look forward to seeing the progression of this partnership and how the market and competitors react to it.

HireVue acquired Modern Hire bringing together a comprehensive platform to address multiple use cases in the talent acquisition space.

Market uncertainty and new talent and organizational demands are accelerating the need to develop skill-based organizations as a new form of operating model for work, and the workforce. AI is playing a key role here to build sustainable talent pipelines and to deploy talent into growth areas of the business and accelerate people development.

Unleash America brought together the greatest minds around HR technology, data, and vendor ecosystem to find new ways to connect talent and skills to value.

Highlights

Generative AI Investments & Partnerships

• PWC is investing $1 billion in generative AI over the next 3 years in partnership with Microsoft and Open Ai to automate aspects of its tax, audit, and consulting services. 
• Deloitte launched its Generative AI Practice to help clients to accelerate the pace of business innovation.
• Accenture signed a GTM partnership with Scale AI to help enterprises to build data and infrastructure to fine-tune generative AI models.
• Amazon enters the race of Generative AI but rather than build AI models by itself, it’s recruiting third parties to host models on AWS.

Generative AI POV

• Mercer released “Chief People Officer’s quick guide around generative AI.”
• Boston Consulting Group (BCG) released “The CEO’s Guide to the Generative AI Revolution”
• Deloitte released “The Implications of Generative AI for Business”
• Accenture released “Accenture Technology Vision 2023”

HR Technology

• UKG brings Generative AI capabilities to market: UKG signed a partnership with Google Cloud to enable its HCM, and workforce management capabilities. This is definitely an interesting partnership since HCM systems are still in the process to incorporate AI-driven solutions. I believe this will trigger announcements from other leading HCM platforms to keep up with innovation, data and AI.
• SAP SuccessFactors First Half 2023 Release: SuccessFactors Human Experience Management (HXM) suite launched its talent intelligence hub, objectives, and key results (OKS) and talent marketplace modules.
• Oracle launched its skill ontology. Oracle Grow, part of the Oracle ME employee experience platform, makes talent development easy by unifying learning, skill development, and career mobility to amplify individual and business success.
• Gloat, the leading talent marketplace/mobility vendor, launched “Skill Foundation” a skill ontology framework to provide insights around talent and upskilling.
• Visier, a leading people analytics vendor, launched its “Skills intelligence API”.
• Unleash HR America brought vendors, business leaders, clients, and venture capitalists to talk about the latest trends and technology for HR and Workplace. Almost every vendor is working on embedding generative AI in their offerings.

What is the Impact?

• Clients are looking for a market perspective around generative AI to drive revenue growth, to increase efficiency and productivity and to find new ways to speed enterprise transformation.
• Technology adoption is a main driver for enterprise reinvention. This capability will require new skills, changes in structures/jobs, talent, and new ways to go-to-market to serve customers.
• Upskilling is a powerhouse to enable organizations to anticipate future talent needs, assess skills, build sustainable talent pipelines, match talent to internal opportunities and develop skills of the current workforce to address business demands.
• Talent and workplace demands are shifting the way organizations are connecting people, data, and technology to support complex business operations.

Relevant Articles

• Bloomberg published: 
  • “IBM to pause hiring for jobs that AI could do?”. See news HERE.
• Harvard Business School published:
  • “Is AI coming for your job?”. See news HERE.
• The World Economic Forum published:
  • “The Future of Job Report 2023”. See news HERE.

More to come! Stay tuned.

Note: All views expressed in this article do not represent the opinions of any entity whatsoever with which I have been, am now, or will be affiliated. My opinions are my own.