Name: The Future of HR: What’s changing and what it means for 2026
Uploaded: 2025-12-04T19:30:05.727Z
Duration: 1 h 5 s
Description: The Future of HR: What’s changing and what it means for 2026

Transcript for "The Future of HR: What’s changing and what it means for 2026": Welcome, everyone. We'll get started here shortly. But, thank you for joining. Alright. Alright. Cliff, you ready to get started here? Let's do it. We. gotta talk about the future. We should, start at the present. No doubt. Alright. Well, first, I just wanna say welcome to everyone. Thank you for joining. We're looking forward to having a great discussion with you all today on the the future of HR, and specifically what's changing and what that means, for 2026. As we, as we think about this, and as I was preparing for today's session, I started to think back, to when I started in the HR tech space. And for for those of you that don't know me, my name is David Farhi. I am the VP of sales here at Rippling, overseeing our broker channel sales team. And and and with that, I've been in the organization or been at Rippling for a few years, but been in HR tech for close to twenty. So I was kinda thinking back to when I started in this space in 2005, and how much, right, the HR tech and payroll tech landscape has changed, and what, right, what was important to HR buyers previously, you know, what the remits have been within the organization, and it's just been awesome to see the journey, right, over the last twenty years. But it's even more exciting to think about where where we're going in the next five as we think about that. So one of the stats that jumped out to me before we jump in here, as I was looking at, the Sapient Insights Group study that was put together was that only 30% of organizations plan to increase their HR tech spending in 2026. And just for some context, if you if you look at the last five years, the that that actually peaked at about 47%. So it's a 17 you know, percent drop or, like, a 30, you know, 35% reduction, from the high in the last five months five years. So what's that I mean, what that was signaling to me is you all, right, the HR leaders that are on this call or, right, the consulting professionals that are on this call, right, you all are tasked with finding ways to do more with less, right? There's much more of this ownership of driving outcomes as an organization. And with that, right, you need to find ways to to do more within the budgets that you have and all the different things that are happening within the organization. So not an easy job. Appreciate, right, everything you do to help move, right, the employment force, forward here with, with all of that work. But it was just an interesting sign to me on how things are changing and how, right, you have to rethink your strategy to get more out of the budget that you had, previously. So with that, right, let let's hit on what the agenda is today, and then I'll introduce really who are gonna be the the key speakers for us, today. So first, we'll go through a brief introduction, then we'll, we'll have a nice fireside chat with, Stacey and Cliff. Very much looking forward to that. They're gonna dive into, like, what's the data saying, what's Sapient Insights Group HR system survey findings, and then we'll leave some time for a for a q and a. You'll see, on the sidebar of your, of your screen, you should see q and a tab where you can post any questions that you have. We'll reserve the last fifteen minutes to do that. Then we will have a nice Nintendo Switch giveaway for a few lucky winners. So excited to to to end with a little holiday cheer, and then we'll close out with, like, some key takeaways in closing. So with that, I do wanna introduce the stars of the show that'll be really driving the conversation here today, and I'm lucky to just be a host to to facilitate the conversation. The two individuals that we have, are joining us are Stacey Harris and Cliff Stevenson, both from Sapient Insights. So very excited to have them. Just by brief background, and I'm gonna read this because I wanna make sure I don't get it wrong. So So if you look, it sounds like I'm reading, I am, right? Stacey is the chief research officer and managing partner at Sapient Insights Group, and she's been leading the HR tech and organizational research for nearly two decades. And she oversees the annual HR system survey that all of this data comes from, that we'll be talking about today. And then Cliff Stevenson, is Sapiens director of research, and she's one of the primary authors of the survey white paper, and has extreme deep expertise in analytics, emerging HR tech, and talent practices. So incredibly lucky to have both of them here with us today. And we do have some questions teed up, as we think about getting going here to just keep the conversation flowing and and really make this feel informative for you all. So Stacey and Cliff, thank you for joining. Great to be here. Thank you. I'm excited. Well, so with that, I'll I'll I'll kinda kick us off with the first question, to to get us moving here. As you think about, right, how HR buyers and business leaders are rethinking their approach to HR and the benefits, landscape heading into 2026, can you share a little bit about how they're thinking about that and what might might be changing? Yeah. This is a really big conversation right now because HR is massively shifting kind of their thinking about, what's happening in HR and benefits. Some of it due to what's happening here in The United States, but a lot of it was happening globally. Right? One of the things that we know is that HR is being asked to not only step up to be more strategic, but to also partner more with their IT function and their finance function and their HR function. I don't know, Cliff, if you wanted to share a little bit of the data that we had on that and talk a little bit through it, but, they're being asked to invest heavily in that partnership and to invest heavily in, what's happening in the AI market as well. And so those are some of the big changes that we're seeing take place across the HR space, including into the benefit space. Yeah. That's it. I you know, you started off right at the beginning, with talking about, the, spending, being lower than it has been in quite some time. And what's happening concurrently with that is that there's also more systems. Right? We're being asked to manage more systems, So it's the classic sort of doing more with less. Right? As those budgets go down, not only are there more systems, there's more complex. Stacey mentioned the growth of AI and other types of systems that require a lot of resources, both in terms of the technology, but also the people and the skills needed to manage all of that. So what are people looking for? They're looking for systems that can help them do that, systems that can help them manage these systems, both in terms of technology and the sort of internal systems within their company. We're gonna talk a little further about, you know, this sort of idea of putting together these clusters of systems, but you need to rely on technology that really works with integrating and combining all this data. Right? It is more of a not a replacement for people or the work they've done, but ways to get things done more efficiently. And so people are being very deliberate about their buying choices based on that. You know, they're they're everyone's kind of under the same pressure in different ways, right? They have different outputs they're expected to make, but universally what they're looking for is how do I find something that combines all of these disparate inputs, all this data, as we've all sort of moved toward a database decision making model in ways that work with me. Not I have to go find this or I have to go do this, but, you know, bring it all together. It should make sense. It should be intuitive. It's everything we've been taught from our consumer tech. I think that's a big push of, this idea of, okay, efficient make me efficient. Get me this sort of, toolbox I can rely on. Yeah. And I think, Cliff, you know, if we kind of lift what's driving some of that, and, David, I think you had started to talk about this, is that, Yep. not only the need to sort of integrate and get our data all into one place, but when we do it right, then we're able to answer the questions our businesses are asking, right, to be that more strategic partner on the on the strategic level. And what's been nice about our research and our data is that because we've been doing it for over twenty eight years, and it's been this long standing depth of sort of year over year looking at not just the systems, but the processes and the and the approaches organizations are taking to HR, we've been able to start to connect that dot to the business outcomes as well as the approach that HR is taking to being a leader in the organization. And what we have found and, because I'm a data junkie, so is Cliff. We love our data, is that, you know, correlation isn't causation. Everybody knows that if you're really good at data, but that it does correlate, year over year for the last, really 10, but we we're just showing the last five years here, that if you are seen as a strategic HR function, no matter what size, small, medium, or large, but this doesn't really matter on size of the organization. We've done a lot of slices on that. If you're seeing a strategic HR function, you're much more likely to get better business outcomes. Now the question is which came first, the chicken or the egg on that. Right? Was it the fact that you were seen as strategic, or is it because you are strategic you are getting more outcomes from your HR function? But that correlation we've seen over and over again, and it really is quite high, almost double digits, whether or not you're just seen as compliance or whether or not you're strategic as your function. And what Cliff Stevenson was just shifting to there on that next slide, which is part of being seen as strategic is the, is is who you're partnering with inside the organization. And I think this gets to that why maybe budgets may be down slightly. Again, still a lot of people are investing, but budgets may be down slightly. Part of it is because we've spent a lot of money on HR tech, and now they're saying, okay. I wanna see the outcomes from it. I wanna I wanna get something that I can tangibly touch, and particularly when we're talking to our partners in our business, which includes finance, IT, the operations, the CEOs. CEOs, when we when we break down our data, because we have a lot of people who respond to our research and our survey and our data, CEOs feel that HR is very strategic. They're they're they've already bought into the fact that we're at the table. We're we're here. We're having a conversation. David, you probably see it more often than we do when you're on the ground working with a lot of them. Right? But who doesn't see that we are strategic sometimes is ourselves. HRs are kind of our worst our own enemy sometimes. But more so, we're struggling with our board and governing groups if we have a board of directors and our finance functions, particularly if there's our individual finance partners like in IT or finance analyst. They really still consider a lot of times because of the way they interact with us that we are more compliance focused. That's the opportunity, I think, to really change the dynamics. It will increase the budgets, and it will increase the ability for us to kind of work more strategically across the organization. Yeah. Yeah. No. And and and thank you for that. And I think it comes back to probably the key point you said before, which was, right, being outcomes focused and and. driving right results and being able to attach the initiatives and strategies that you're driving to, right, revenue for the. organization, and that's not always the easiest thing. I don't know if, you have any thoughts around that or we can move to the next topic, but, clearly, right, being able to tie the the initiatives you work on and the tools in which you're tracking and measuring that in to to the outcomes for the business is critical. It's absolutely necessary. Go ahead, Cliff, and then I I can add to it. was. gonna say, yeah, that really is that where that sort of integrations and all the aspects we were just discussing come into play. Right? The sharing of information, that bidirectional data transfer is so clear because when that happens, and one of the things we've also seen correlated to success or at least correlates to being perceived as strategic, is in the sharing of metrics, the data that you can provide. That answers a lot of the questions. people have. You know, HR is not the only one under this pressure of, doing more and having more and more information. Right? And it's that getting the signal from the noise. And so when you're able to do that, when you're able to provide clear answers and have that data, that is what allows all of those departments to view you in that manner and to start driving outcomes because they now know, what sort of resource are on hand, what capabilities they have, or what they need to get to, and you have the same capabilities of knowing what resources you have from finance, from IT, or whoever the case may be. That is what really starts to move it forward because it's not a matter that in those organizations that they're not strategic. It's that they don't realize what you're doing because there's not that information sharing happening. Yep. Yeah. And, yeah, and I'll just add to that that, you know, outcomes are are a conversation. Every conversation you have about HR when we talk to to leaders is it shouldn't be just what is engagement or how many open recs do I have or, how quickly can I onboard someone? It should be, if I onboard them more quickly, how much faster can I get to, a a business outcome that's important to me? So that should be maybe it's an operations number. Like, how how quickly can I get people up and serving our our, restaurant people? How quickly can I get people on the production line for for manufacturing? Every metric that you have on HR should be tied to a business metric, and that's kind of what Cliff Stevenson was talking about. They have to be tied together. And that's an HR converse HR has to be comfortable having that conversation and know what that conversation looks like. And it's hard sometimes. We've got a lot of stuff on our plates, but it's a really, big ask. But I think it gets easier when you've got tools and data and information at your fingertips. Right? Yep. Great. Well, I I feel like we could continue to talk on this topic for a while, but for interest of of keeping keeping the conversation flowing and, hitting on some some other points, maybe I'll pivot to, the next, the next topic. Does that work? Works good yet. works. Okay. So this one's a little near and dear to my heart, considering that I've been in the space for for twenty years and, have historically, right, been looking at the same names for for that twenty year period. You know, so my question to you is, right, in a in a market where from an HR tech vendor perspective, the major players have predominantly been, right, the names that we all know from a household standpoint. What trends or emerging vendors are you starting to see today or gaining momentum? And more importantly, like, what are the factors that are driving their growth and kind of market adoption? Yeah. Well, it's a wonderful coincidence that this happens to be hosted by Rippling because Rippling is one that I would name. And, you know, all jokes aside, what sets Sapient Insights Group's data apart is that, yes, we've been doing it twenty eight years, and it is the largest most comprehensive global survey that we're putting out that is out there that is available. But also the the data that's provided in the report, now somehow three eighty pages, so, you know, pretty comprehensive, is pulled directly from that survey data, meaning people say this is what we're paying for, this particular platform, these are the platforms we have in place. This is what when do our purchasing approach? Then we ask them questions about their user experience and their vendor satisfaction, is the system meeting their needs? All anything you could possibly think of, including up to comments. So we can kind of get into the why, they're answering things the way they are. And we are starting to see a number of different companies that had been pretty much dominated. You know, there were a bunch of companies have the word pay in their name that seemed to be very popular for some reason, but, there's a lot of companies that are in there and they sometimes seem to be, putting out, you know, this there's an expression, right, you know, there are solutions, in search of problems. I think when a lot of the newer people that are coming up are instead looking at the issues that companies are facing and say, what can we build to solve that problem? Right? They are they are basically solutions built on to answer a specific problem and then to go from there and to meet the needs. And we see that reflected in both the scores that we have, which, and again, if you look in our main report, this is the same numbers you all you will see on there. I can say that, Rippling is on there, there's a few, other company names that you might recognize, and, Rippling's at the top, and we see this very fast growth, from a number of factors. Number one, I'd say, is Rippling has been spot on in noting that this partnership between HR and IT needed to happen. There had been a growing gap, almost a competition between the two, and it was a little prescient for them to do that and to make that a big core part of having that integration and having all these different systems feed into one area because AI, relies on both HR and IT working together. It's not a matter of one needs to rest control of the other. They're going to have to work together, and we're gonna talk more about that. But I think that's been a big part of their success. There's been, a lot of focus on not just relying on here's the newest, functionality. Right? We rarely see that as something that drives someone's decision to both buy and to keep the systems they have. They don't go, oh, it had this feature that no one else has. Instead, it's a mixture of a completeness of service, a ability to customize, and more than anything, to have the service level that they're looking for. Right? Because things change very quickly, and you need to be able to change with it and meet the needs of your customers. I think that's something that we see reflected in the comments. And then I should be noted too that Rippling, was just as high last year. Right? This is not you know, they've just sort of come up. We've we've seen them grow and grow quickly. And a lot of the newer, systems that have come up, some of those names you see near the top that aren't those legacy systems, have done the same of really focusing on service and listening to their customers, listening to users or potential buyers to see what it is they need. Yeah. And I and I think to add to to where Cliff's conversation is, just to remind, organizations who may not know us in our research, the chart that Cliff's showing here is our mid market HRMS market. So mid market for us is 500 employees to 5,000 employees. So really important to sort of note the size group. Yeah. Yep. Rippling does very well in both that and the SMB market. Right? And, and part of the shift that's happening is this sort of, the the range at which these organizations are meeting the needs of the buyers, right, from from kinda pretty large all the way down to very small and and needs because, even the smallest company or a mid market company has a lot of the same complexities of a very large global company, which I think the other piece that that we're seeing that the buyers are very interested is in technology that can meet their needs at a global level even if they are mid market or small. Right? That's a that's a hard thing to deal with both on a payroll front, on a on a time front, and a benefits front. And the newer entrants coming to the market are really saying, yeah, that's a that's a core component of who we are from a starting perspective. It's important also to note in our data that, again, Cliff and I are vendor neutral. We we we basically are representing the voice of the customer. When you look at charts like these, mid market HRMS, mid market payroll rate, the customers are really telling us what is critical to them. How are they, how are they making decisions, not just on who they're gonna stay with, but also, who they're gonna sort of connect with based off of their partnerships. So the other side of that conversation, I think that, David, you mentioned a couple of times when we were talking about this early on. And and I know we have a kind of a mixed audience of practitioners as well as some of the the brokers on this on this group, is that, who you're connected with is really important to, where your integrations are at, those those deep API integrations. Because without that, there's no single platform that can do everything. We we've kind of solved that conversation in the market now, but that integration conversation becomes really, really powerful too, like, who is in your your marketplace, about I actually just looked at the analysis. On the mid market level, about 70% of mid market, customers are already using some sort of a a marketplace to make a decision about what other technology they're gonna use, and about 20% of them are using it extensively. Right? So we do know that that's a big part of the decision making process as well. The other thing I think that that, Cliff Stevenson, you hadn't touched on yet, but I think is really important, particularly when you look at where Rippling sits and where some of the other organizations who are new in the market are sitting, is, that user interface. You'll notice that we track both user experience and vendor satisfaction. Vendor satisfaction is all about that customer service. It's all about your integration. It's all about your partnerships. But user experience really comes down to not just employee user experience, which oftentimes that's where we spend a lot of time is the engagement of the employees, always important. But that administrator over user experience, how quickly can they get configurations and setups and implementation and those things done? How easy is it for them to make changes in the system so that they don't have to wait months or or how easy to to get a report they're gonna send up to executives? And we see that's often too, some of the newer technologies. It's just making it easier to do all those things. I don't know, David Farhi, from your perspective, but, you know, I know you've been at other organizations. You said you heard a lot of them. Right? Like, what are some of the things that you're you're finding about about what the buyers are asking for right now? Yeah. No. I appreciate that. And I think I think Cliff Stevenson said it when he opened up, the conversation is it's starting to bring, right, the the platforms that the HR, IT, and finance suite. of of, of individuals. Right? So as I kinda call it, like, the the full g and a back office, right, of the organization and making sure that all of their systems flow together, and and are all, you know, driving towards, right, process improvement. Two, Yeah. you know, I did take a hiatus from the HR tech space for three years and came back. So it's shocking to me how much the global landscape has changed. Right? When I left in, you know, 2020, right, right, kind of in the in the COVID time to coming back in 2023, like, just in that three year period, how much the global workforce became such a centerpiece to what organizations needed. But it was just kind of very drastic for me. I didn't mature through it because I I I Mhmm. into accounting tech for for for three years. And then lastly is on the integration piece. It's integrations that are meaningful, that actually allow you to create actual workflows, automation, and reporting versus. some simple demographic data that is being transferred, right, in one system to the next. Like, that's what I'm seeing organizations are looking for because it helps them, right, to start to drive to outcomes to solve challenges so they can accomplish, right, those goals that they have as a as an organization. Yeah. Workflows is a really big conversation, I know, because, that that allows you to set up things the way you need to do them inside your company. It gives you more flexibility, and we're definitely seeing that lead into the AI conversation. Right? Workflows and AI go hand in hand in the market, and those are definitely becoming sort of part of the conversation around it. Right? Yep. Yeah. I think that's a great segue to the to the next question, which is, AI. Right? You brought up the the the two letter term that everybody figure out how to how to solve for. But, you know, there's a lot of talk about it, and a lot of companies are trying to find ways to implement it, both, right, organizations themselves, how do you implement AI within their workforce? But then also, right, the vendors in which they're they're working with, they're trying to figure out, right, how to leverage AI to better serve their customer, which is the HR practitioner. So as you think about that, like, based off the data you're seeing, where where do where do you all see that AI will have the the the biggest impact on HR teams, in in the coming year? Stacey, I'm gonna let you leave because you you already started it with the workflows, but, that I I alluded to it earlier. Right? And I I'll kind of twist the question a little bit where I don't think it's it's gonna have as big of an impact is I don't see it, and I would say the data supports this, don't see it as sort of one to one replacements for people. I know that two years ago, that was the worry, that was the concern, And it was a question that we asked. You know? We asked, you know, are you increasing headcount? Are you decreasing headcount, etcetera? And then we said, you know, is it due to AI? And then we even asked directly, will AI affect, which roles will affect, will affect headcount, etcetera? So, as you can see, that it's just not the case. Yeah. But that doesn't mean that AI does have an effect. It's just that we didn't understand it. We hadn't started working with it. We're only three years into the sort of what we I'd say the modern AI with full gen AI, was really in 2022 when that happened. We've always had predictive analytics and a lot of the stuff. I think just when we use AI, when we use those two letters, it tends to mean, something different, right? So in that time, we kind of thought at first as like, oh, it'll it'll do payroll. AI will do payroll. We didn't even know what that meant. We just were like, maybe. But then we started to realize that no, that's not really where people are finding value in it. It's not also it's not just a trend that kind of popped up and went away where people are using it, but they're using it to improve processes and something that no one ever said three years ago is, you know, this will be really useful for designing workflows, but that's actually where we see quite a bit of it, and that's that's my segue to you, Stacey. Yeah. Yeah. It's you know, a couple of things. One is that that we're we're increasing headcount as fast as we're decreasing headcount because of AI. Right? Like, I don't think there's gonna be as much. I think the idea that we're just gonna sort of go through our organization, we we call it the global labor paradox right now. Right? Like, there's this sort of balance going on, and we're definitely asking organizations what's the big initiatives going on in your organization, and they're planning to increase revenue as fast as they wanna, create efficiency and process improvement inside their organization. The the roles I think that are being impacted in HR the most, I think, which is is really important for everyone who's advising HR to understand too, which is the three ones that that that people said, look. If if we have to pick, that's it's recruiting, it's HR support, and learning. And HR support in the sense of sort of operations, admin questions, q and a areas. Right? Those kind of things. Recruiting, definitely, we're seeing that consolidated a little bit more with AI. Job descriptions and matching and but but you've gotta be careful with that, that you're staying both compliant and and you're not gonna run a foul of any of the the litigation that's happening right now around that area. Right? So you've got that's gonna be an area that people have to be very careful about. And then learning, I think, is an interesting one because learning is one of those safer areas to use AI. We know that it's an area that's important, especially as we look at the fact that right now, it feels like we have an explosion of extra people in the market because of some of the layoffs. But we know that within the next five years, the labor data is gonna show that we have, there's more we will have an environment both in The US and internationally where we have only about three to to to four people working for every nonworking person in our in our populations. And to sort of give context to that, in 2000, that was five people working for every nonworking person. Right? So that means we are gonna get to a point where learning and development is gonna be absolutely critical for us filling these positions because we don't have enough people with the skill sets or the capabilities to do the kind of work that we're gonna expect them to do, and we don't have enough people in the population to actually do it. Health care alone will take up anywhere between nineteen to 20% of our workforce in the next ten years, right, Which means we've got, you know, a limited number to fill the rest of the slots, especially here in The US, but really globally as well. I think the other thing about AI that, we've been talking a lot about is, there is a lot of, anxiety that I'm behind on it, which I think, David, you know, oh, everybody's doing it. I'm the only one who's not. Our data definitely shows that's not the case. You're you're okay if you're just getting started. You're in a good place. Really, one of the things we see in our dataset and this is this is, this chart here talks about small, medium, and large. Small for us is under 500. 500 to 5,000 is our is our mid market, and and 5,000 plus is our enterprise. But what you see here is the we ask organizations whether or not they're using AI both whether it's embedded in their HR system or as a standalone chat gbt or something like that or Microsoft Copilot. Right? And what we're finding is that, the biggest jump this year was in SMB and mid market, which is great. Right? Like, those were really small last year, only about small percentage, but those about doubled this year in their use of AI at any level. Enterprise organizations, had jumped rapidly in the first year and then didn't go up much this year because they were trying to figure out how to use it. Kinda shows early adoption requires a lot of extra work. Right? A lot of time and energy figuring out where that's at. And so, that change management, the process work, fixing your infrastructure, getting your data clean, that's the work we're seeing most organizations spend time on, getting the right systems in place that that can do it. So AI is a story that we always think, you know, we're we're a little bit more, pragmatic because we get the data from everyone, not just from the the the the people who are shouting the loudest about it in our dataset. And, we also always look at whether or not there's gonna be some real ROI in that picture. And I think this was the one you you like, David, when we've shared this last time was that, you know, yes, we are seeing and, again, this is two years in a row. So, again, there's always that conversation about are they getting better outcomes because they've already were getting better outcomes and so they bought into AI early, right, or not. But those who are using AI are seeing a slight uptick of 5%, 6%, and 8%. Again, not bad. Great to see a little bit of an uptick in your business outcomes and your HR outcomes, particularly things like HR alignment and organizational innovation. But, just to put this into context, the organizations who do effective change management when they're rolling out HR technology get in the range of 15 to 16% bump ups in their HR business and and, talent outcomes. So, yes, you're getting outcomes that are getting bumped up, but you could do a lot of other things too to get those outcomes. So I think that's kind of an interesting interesting conversation. David, I know that was, the only other thing that we didn't talk a lot about, but maybe to mention because this audience, has the opportunity to advise on this conversation. Right? Is that even though there's a small percentage using AI here, I think, Cliff, you've got the 81% in the next chart, right, the third that that slide? Yeah. This is pretty interesting. Yeah. This was pulled from the overall number of survey respondents that, you know, although you might see not as high of adoption of AI in our sort of embedded systems as you might have thought, when we just ask people directly are you using your own AI system, you know, your chat GPT on your phone for instance, to do your job tasks? Yeah 81%, which starts to track a little more of what you might know from asking your friends and working with people, and that's even more, that's higher for, those that are Rippling users. I'd say that's more likely to that group being, generally more tech savvy, group. So this is very, you know, this is the vast majority of users are using AI, and so you just have to start thinking about what are those tools that will support them. There was a wonderful question actually that came in through our Q and A, that asked, whether we thought, in 2026, and I would assume further, if we would see compliance automation growing and if HR would need to take on more legal expertise, or will this be completely through the platform? And I mentioned that I think it'll be both, but part of the reason why is because of, things like this. Right? With all of this new technology, and this is true for every technology, it's not specific to AI, it requires a set of processes. Some of those are going to come internally. How do we use this? What's the best way to use this? And what are the regulations and guidelines around that? So you need to have the right technology, everything. You always need to have the right technology people in place, but you need to very specifically have some sort of sense of what can be used, how can be used, and how do you monitor and track all of that use so that you're able to stay compliant? So, yes, your system will need to do that, and part of what your system can help you do is by giving people what they need. You know, you need need to see what are these tasks that they're doing, and how do I help them stay on a system that is secure, that has all of the provisioning needed through IT in terms of security, safety, privacy concerns, which will always be, HR's remit, right? And how do you work together, to make sure that happens? Because as we can see, especially among this group, this is going to be, a group of high usage and it would be insane to think that, oh, people are gonna start getting paid electronically. We'll just figure out how that works later. No. You have a set of rules around it, you know, when all of this started happening. It's just that this has happened very quickly, and it's not surprising that, anyone would be concerned about what is that compliance conversation look like. Yeah. Yeah. Especially when you when you consider oh, sorry. Go ahead, David. No. Sorry. This is a great conversation. I and and, Stacey, if I'm taking you off topic, pause. me. But I think one of the things that you all shared, when we had a conversation earlier and we were talking about this topic was when when looking to put, right, or leverage AI, right, and I think it was Cliff you said this, it was like, what are the challenges you're trying to solve? And you need to start with those, right, Yes. versus being, for lack of a better term, like, excited at the, you know, the feature functionality, right, Yeah. that maybe is being shown on what AI capabilities are there. And it it's really an assessment of what what are the current challenges we have within the business, and then looking for ways to solve that, right, with AI or, right, solutions in the market. And, like and not going away from the core way that you all have built, right, your your tech stack today, and and thinking that it's any different than that. Yeah. Yeah. I I think that's right, David, is that that what we find is that the organizations who are getting the most out of AI are are oftentimes using a combination of their embedded and their sort of stand alone solutions because what they're doing is they've got a problem they're targeting, and they're sort of connecting those dots in a way that makes that really, really valuable for them. Right? And so there to, you know, Cliff's earlier, they're it's not looking for for a solution. It's it's, they've got a problem and they're they're addressing it. Right? And they're not just building something to build it. On on the flip side of that, I think, is that we do know because if 81% of, for 85% for your customers are using AI on a personal level, the question then becomes what are they doing with that. Right? Like, what is it that they're they're tackling? And what we find most of them, because we have data on this, is that most of it is is pretty simple things. It's it's rewriting job descriptions. It's, updating emails. It's, planning and strategy kind of, helping them sort of think through some of the the those kind of things, re redoing some PowerPoints. What we find though is that about 60% of them are doing it with free technology versus something that the company has paid for. So that compliance and risk conversation that that, Cliff had mentioned earlier is really important. You're gonna have to get your arms wrapped around this idea because they know they HR is smart enough to know that you're not gonna put personal information out there, but you can still scrape some of that on a meta level and see what's happening inside organizations. That's why, ChatGPTs all of a sudden thinks it's gonna be a recruiting software, which we'll wait and see if that actually has the opportunity to do that. Right? But and there was a question I thought, which was actually really quite good. One of the and I think you already answered a little. bit of it, Cliff, which was about the EMEA regulatory environment and and how that is changing. EMEA is much stricter on their data privacy and on their standards and requirements around AI, but they're also very clear about what they expect and how you can expect to use it. And so we actually find that EMEA mid market is they're actually slightly ahead of EMEA US or, sorry, mid market. US customers in the use of AI because they have an answer to all of that. Right? Like like, they they don't feel like they're sort of this, we're kinda waiting to see what's gonna be regulated or not. They already know what the regulations are, and they know where they can use it and where they can't use it. So regulations aren't always a hindrance. Sometimes it does put a a a challenge for for vendors to be able to do some things, but it does sometimes help with clarity for the buyers on that conversation too. So Right. Yeah. That that's really well said because when we've asked people, you know, what are the obstacles, what is stopping you from, using AI, One of the, you know, there's a lack of knowledge, not uncommon, but one of the other highly picked responses was waiting for, regulations. You know, they need to know, you know, what are the lines that I'm supposed to drive within. Yeah. Otherwise I don't want to be out there because anything could happen. So in a way it does sort of relieve fear, but, as I was mentioning, part of the job of the platforms and for any of the systems we're using is in that education is understanding, you know, the system can do a lot of things for you, but you also need to be aware of, you know, what you need to know and what you need to communicate to your people. Yeah. Right. There's a question here also. It looks like from the audience about if everybody is using a personal productivity, how do we have them working together as a team? That's. a tough one. Right? We we we we we've been actually discussing this issue. I I wish there was a a good answer for this one. Right? Because I think, what we've heard from the from the end users is that when the company turns off all use of of personal so if, basically, I I don't allow chat GBT or I don't allow Copilot, don't allow anything to be used personally, and I only yet let my, internal team version be used. That's that's what how they're tackling it. But what we're hearing from the end users is that those internal team versions are not always as good as the individual versions that I had personally developed around my own personal use and capabilities. But, Cliff, I think the big answer here comes down to policies and ethics. Right? Policies and ethics is a big part of it. I think there's a broader I don't want to get you you probably already noticed audience, and I apologize I'll spin off into different philosophies, but something that we've noted, and one of the reasons, we've kind of seen our report gotten so large and the survey so large, because there's a real blurring of line as to what is personal use, you know, what is your personal productivity, What is, that blend between what you need to get done and what's best for the company? And I think that working with teams and working individually, is another sort of blurring of that line. You know, what are the ways that we can, work together and which of these things still you know, how does this align with the business and, you know, what is really the best way? And I think actually, strangely enough, it's some of these tools can help us figure that out. I. know it's strange, but it's a little recursive. But we now have the ability to say, by doing this, we can see the statistics that by us working together or us collaborating on these tools, we have now had a higher output and however that's measured, whatever that metric is. And that has led to better business outcomes because we have all of these data points and we can see that this has driven better sales or better customer retention. And doing that will allow people to see the value in that and won't see it as a, sort of zero sum game. It won't be that if I am more personally productive than, you know or if I help more with the team that somehow cuts into my individual contribution, they instead see it as this helps all of us. It helps me, them, and that together. But that's all just cheerleading unless and nothing gets cheerleading of it. But, that's all just putting people up unless you can prove it with stats and then people see. Yeah. There's the value. They're no different than the companies, right? They want to see the value of it. Yeah. And I think that might have answered a little bit of the next question, too, which is, is it HR's role to define how teams make progress with AI or individual teams? So I think it's, it's it's leadership in the sense that if an organization has the right tools and the right sort of mindset in place, it will allow people to see this is how we're making progress, we're defining progress, it's not vague, we need to do better. But it's these are the metrics. These are the business outcomes. And thank you whoever asked that, you must be a plant, because it all brings it back to those outcomes, right? Tie it to those outcomes. Prove that you are have value. This is this. goes beyond our survey. It's something that's, been a well known fact. This is more of the IO psych world, but people find, they stay at their jobs and they find value in work when they feel that they are contributing, when they feel they are part of something. So how do you make them feel that? By proving their value, by showing how all of their efforts tie to a bigger picture, with with data, with evidence. Yep. If I if I can just chime in on this one here for a second and and obviously appreciate your perspective on my comment here. As I think about, like, our own organization internally here, right, we went through some of the phases that you just went through, which is, hey. Here is here is the the version of AI that is approved for our organization, and, you know, here are the reasons why from a compliance security standpoint. And then to answer the question here, it was then on, right, myself and the, you know, sales leadership team, that I'm a part of to then define what are the use cases that we want to leverage that tool for, and then who we started to build in, what are started to build in, what are those plays, what does that playbook look like. And then in an off-site, right, where we had our whole sales team together, we did a section where we rolled that out, and we had, right, people showcasing how they're leveraging AI within their work. And then I'm here in in San Francisco for a couple days, and we have a a a twenty twenty six planning meeting. And one of the topics is leveraging set AI in sales. And it's we're gonna be talking about what how do we want to, right, have our organization leverage AI to be more productive? What do we wanna focus on? So I do think HR plays a role in it in the sense of, you know, there's a compliance component to what can we and can't we do, but then there's each business segment needs to then go figure out how to leverage it according to what they're trying to drive. Now HR has things they want to drive within the HR function. Right? Yep. The the revenue side of the house has things that they wanna drive. Right? The, you know, the r and d section has things that they wanna leverage it. So it's it's different by business segment, but there's a framework that needs to be put in place to enable the team to then move in confidence. Yeah. Yeah. My also oh, go ahead, Susan. I hope you're gonna mention what I think you're going to. Well, I, I my big thing is I was gonna say that I that I do think that that's where there are many, my are looking for some guidance. And I do think AI HR has a real role in leading this to your point, right, from both the ethics perspective and from the trust perspective. Right? Like, is the data being used the way I expect it to be used? And then the, you know, I think the numbers we're at 60% still, right, Cliff, who don't have a ethics or a a policy or procedure around how to use AI yet. That's. huge, And I think there's real opportunity there for for HR to start the conversation if they aren't part of it already. Right? Yeah. And something you said, Stacey, that has resonated with me, and I think we might have mentioned it, in other talks before, but I I think it's really important, and I'm I'm still trying to frame away because it's a really good point, is that HR and IT have to come together on AI because AI is a technology that is more human. I think, Stacey, you made a point that, like, I don't you know, people say you shouldn't personify AI. So you absolutely should because HR has to work with IT because it it's not an if then logic gate the way other technologies are. Right? It doesn't work that I send a packet of information, and this is what gets sent back. It works like a person. Yeah. You have to understand motivation, what you can call prompts in AI. Right? You have to understand, it's under sort of the underpinnings and that it's going to tell you what you want to hear in certain cases. I'm talking about generative AI here. It's gonna understand, like, why it does certain things. And so while HR or while while IT may have this understanding of the technology and data transfer transfer and storage and, resource usage, it needs to work with HR to understand the things about, like, ethics and who has access and how it can affect people and the impact of this and how it sometimes hallucinates and why it does that. That's more of an HR question of, like, Yeah, people tell you what you want to hear, and, this is it's just completing the sentence, or This is an aspect of it where it may not give you correct information. You need to let people know that, like another team member, you know, like this team member you've got on sometimes makes stuff up. Okay. You know, and but you know what I mean? I'm I'm being a little flippant, but it's extremely important that HR and IT work together because they have a unique set of skills that each needs to complement each other with. You know, HR might not always understand, you know, exactly how things are stored and why there has to be, you know, label, agreement and stuff like that. But and IT might not always understand why if something comes out differently, even though I gave it the exact same prompts to go in. Yeah. The the the the way I've I've positioned it is that a HR is the only function in the organization that understands, how to manage behaviors and how to manage an asset that doesn't always do what you tell it to do. That's human beings. Right? Finance is so used to having something that that always had a a an exact answer. You you put in a configuration, it gave you exactly what, you know, you were supposed to get. So now these two are having to work together because AI eventually, not all like, we're early on, and I think most of the vendors, you guys included, everyone included, is being very careful careful with what they're doing with AI. They are they are practically putting in just the things they know what will answer, but but you have to be aware that as you start building your own agents or you start connecting agents in that environment that they may make different decisions. And this is where I think these two organizations are connecting. And it gets back to what you were talking about, David, which is each function is gonna do some version of that themselves. Right? So then you have to kind of be the orchestrator in HR. Right? Yep. Well, this is this is really rich topic, and I'm sure we could keep on this for for a while. But I'm gonna I'm gonna look at the clock here and and. have us fire around one one question, and maybe each of you could, answer it in in, you know, sixty sixty seconds each, if if possible, but, you know, expand if you need. So my question would be, right, what's one piece of advice you'd give to, right, brokers, consultants, and HR leaders looking to stay ahead of the change in 2026? This is such go good one. because I'm more likely to keep it under sixty seconds, but also it's never happening. We, Stacey and I, in CB Insights Group, we talk a lot, to brokers. I don't know exactly who all is there, but, if we know you, hi. I yeah. And both of us are also ex practitioners. Right? We were there, and so that means we understand, the sort of activities and the questions that people are receiving, and then they come to us and say, here's what people wanna know. So you need to, you know, obviously, work with your organization you're already working with, but find people that understand the pressures that are on you, and can react. You know, the number one thing is being able to get answers quickly, being able to get answers that you can trust, because you know when I've worked with brokers, back in the HR days, they were almost like a part of the organization. I would have them, you know, explain something that was complicated or difficult, regardless of whether that was from the, you know, the benefit side or anything else. And so you know they get the questions almost directly from employees. Sometimes there's not even a pass through. So they've really got the finger on their pulse and they need to be able to go back, and give those answers quickly. So if you wanna stay ahead of change, you know, find the right partners, find the right people to work with. And I think part of that is finding people that can give you the answers and explain those answers rather than just being like, hey. Here's the voice of authority. Here's what's going on. But say, here's what's happening, and this is the why behind it. Is that was that three hundred and sixty seconds, you said? don't know if you did sixty seconds, but I'll I'll try and, get it to a wrap up here, Cliff Stevenson. So first off, you know, I think the broker community, we see in our data that, HR is depending more on brokers every year. So we it was up, I think, I wanna say 11 to to 15% this year in the use of brokerages as a part of the how I'm running HR, which is really, really powerful. Right? Finance, and accounting is the next one that's growing, right, as an entity that is being, leveraged as a as a help and a support in the HR environment. What I would say is that, for brokers particularly, I think there's a couple of places where they could really think about staying ahead of the market. One is, making sure that they are that they are talking to the vendors not just about what features and functionalities and what they can do either just in the benefits area, but they're talking to them about their entire platforms. That's one of the things we see over and over again that sometimes brokers stay very siloed in what they know because they because because that's the area that they are most experienced in. But buyers, when they come talking, they wanna understand total total package information. So definitely making sure you understand what every vendor that you're that you're looking at advising on, what they can do even outside of just the benefits area. The second thing that that we know is really important, I think, for the brokerage community is to understand that, their buyers are often they don't know the questions to ask sometimes. Right? So having a more proactive approach of reaching out to their buyers, to the to their customers and asking them what business challenges they're dealing with today will help them be better advisors because I think that's the one thing we hear it over and over again is that, I oftentimes didn't even know that there was a solution that could meet my needs, right, that that it was out there or available or connected to to the things. And so not asking just what do you need, but asking what's the business challenge you're having? What is the outcome that you're trying to achieve, particularly from your executives' view, not just from HR's view? Those are the two things I think really make a difference. And then as Cliff said, I think finding those sources or resources, whether that's us or whether that's podcast that you're listening to, whether that is, the, World Economic Forum if you're if you're working across the global entities, whether that's in the The US, you're you're reading the, labor data that's coming out from various organizations on a regular basis. Kind of knowing what's happening, is really critical because you're gonna be asked the all kinds of questions from your buyers. And even if you don't know the answer set, being able to have a list of things you can send them to is always really helpful. And it makes you just look that much more sort of, aware of the market too. So just having that list set by your side, those kind of things are really valuable. So those are probably three things I see that that are really valuable for many of the brokers, who we're working with and talking to every day, David. That's great. Thank you. And thank you both for your time. You know, really appreciate the opportunity to to chat with you all here today. And, as I stated before, I I think we could have kept this conversation going for for a couple more hours, which is awesome. So along those lines, if somebody wants to get in touch with you, Stacey or Cliff, and and they wanna maybe, right, talk a little bit deeper, maybe they have very specific questions they'd like answers to, you know, here's your contact information, but what do you recommend? They just reach out to you via LinkedIn and, and go. from there? LinkedIn is the best way. It's the easiest way to reach out to us and connect with us, and we're happy to answer any questions that they might have on any of the content that we showed or anything that we've talked about. Awesome. Yeah. And like you mentioned podcast, we have a podcast called spilling the tea on HR tech. But, yeah, reach out to us on LinkedIn. Love to hear from you. Great. So with that, I am a I I do want to announce the Nintendo Switch giveaway. It is the holiday season, so we figured, you know what? Might be nice. to, to give you something that you could either use yourself or, for those of you that might want to be regifters. I know we don't have those in the crowd. But, we had a great gift to, to give to to someone in your, on your list. So with that, the giveaway winners are, Debbie Park from VIDA. Congratulations, Debbie. Nick Yates from Spectrum Benefit Solutions. And then our third winner is Brian Hunter from NewWave Benefits and Workforce Solutions. So congratulations to you three. We will send you an email, with the, instructions on how to claim that, switch and, and and, get that here before the holiday. So congratulations, and and thank you for attending. Hopefully, you found value. Hopefully, everyone found value in today's session, as we wrap up. So, for those of you that will not get an email with the Nintendo Switch, you will get an email with a follow-up, for the full Sapient Insights Group report, and some additional resources for you around the future of HR campaign and how you can be better prepared for 2026. So Stacey and Cliff, any closing comments before we, before we wrap? My only comment is that my son is very jealous for all the switch winners, so I'll just let you guys all know that. So thank you. But, no. Thank you guys for for putting this on. I think it's always good when we're talking to the communities that are helping HR, and and this community does a huge amount to help HR. So Yeah. Great. It it really is nice. I I'm working with a lot of you. One of the key things I look for is how many questions are asked. Right? Not just, hey, can we come in and give you the answers, give you lots of questions. And this this group has been wonderful. The HR community, of course, is great, but the brokers, you've always been really great at asking questions. I've got a lot of wonderful questions that came through the q and a, and that's actually got a lot of our discussion. That's what we hope for on a fireside chat. So thank you all. Yeah. Great. Well, thank you both again, and I hope everyone enjoys the holidays and, enjoys the rest of the week. So thank you for attending, and, have a great one. Take care. Okay.