Bill Kutik isn’t screaming from the stage, “you kids get off my lawn!” but it does feel as though the unspoken theme of the 17th annual HR Tech conference is the changing of the generational guard. As the highly visible baby boomers prepare for the next phase of their lives they seem to be making quite a show of their exit from the stage. Naomi Lee Bloom’s quasi-retirement announcement is a perfect example of the resistant-to-change /embrace-the-change tension happening now.
It seems like an emotional need of the HR Tech baby boomers to know that they are fully credited with creating the future ̶ even if it’s up to the Gen Xers and Millennials to implement that future. As damning evidence you’d need to look no further than the 1st breakout session of the program: “1st Annual Next Gen Influencers Panel: Getting Out From Behind the Baby Boomers”.
In an eerie mirroring, there is a transition going on among the vendors exhibiting at the conference as well. The old guard of on-premise technology is almost fully ceding the industry to cloud-based systems. All of the ERP solutions such as SAP have their recently acquired cloud providers, like SuccessFactors, out in front to deflect any old-school perceptions. Come to think of it, if I had a quarter for each use of “Cloud” on this Expo floor, I’d be writing this blog post from my cool island fortress. The mid-market firms (ADP, Ultimate, etc.) are as relevant as ever, not needing much transformation for their SaaS.
Additional Conference Notes
- Lots of vendors bringing solutions based upon the increased Wi-Fi and broadband infrastructure such as video interviews, telepresence, etc.
- There is so much acknowledgement of the role of implementation in thwarting the marketing promise spewed by the HR Tech vendors.
- Integration is still being spewed as a synonym for interfaced. On this point a panelist, Maksim Ovsyannikow, SVP Product for SmartRecruiters, had a great observation: “there are only 2 ways a vendor can prove integration: 1) provide a fully documented API doc and 2) provide referenceable clients.”