A roundup of HR and HR tech updates in February 2021.
With organizations keen on getting the best talent on board, five major companies have made additions to their team or reshuffled few top leaders. Also, most of the tech products launched this month focus on the new priorities like workforce management and employee experience, post COVID-19.
Table of Contents
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- Oracle updates Employee Care Package to manage workforce post-COVID
- Parity.org launches ParityINDEX for firms looking to improve gender and racial balance
- Topia launches innovations to help companies ramp up employee experience
- Microsoft launches a new employee experience platform
- Stoke Talent releases accelerated payments tool for freelancers
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- Workiz partners with Gusto to help home service businesses
- Cornerstone and Microsoft join hands to support employees’ learning needs
- Globalization Partners and Sage Ink Technology join hands for an integration partnership
- ID.me & Sterling launch partnership to transform background screening
- Namely & Work Number from Equifax join hands to boost verification process
- Ceridian to acquire Ascender, eyes at leadership in Asia Pacific Japan
HR Hiring Watch
Limbach hires Melissa DiMuro as Chief People and Culture Officer
Limbach Holdings, Inc. recently announcedOpens a new window that Melissa DiMuro had joined the team as chief people and culture officer, bringing 18 years of human capital leadership expertise. She was associated with GE Aviation for the last 14 years, where she worked as a senior HR leader most recently. DiMuro was earlier oversaw organization effectiveness and restructuring; recruitment and assimilation and created and created the human capital strategy and strategic workforce plans. It is this expertise of hers that Limbach will leverage to expand. Charlie Bacon, Limbach’s president and CEO said, “Melissa’s deep experience and demonstrated success will allow Limbach to meet these strategic challenges and continue to lead the industry in safety, execution and technical capability.â€
Dynamic Signal gets a New Chief People Officer
Dynamic Signal has appointedOpens a new window Regan Cain as chief people officer, a new leadership role for the organization. Before the new role, Cain served as VP of human resources at Dynamic Signal. As the company is now focusing on people-first communication throughout its organization and Dynamic Signal’s clients, Cain’s primary responsibility will be elevating Dynamic Signal’s internal offerings with an emphasis on diversity, equity and inclusion as well as maintaining an environment where the employees have a voice. “I’m appreciative and excited for the formal opportunity to help intersect our company purpose and mission within our own organization and build stronger employee connection, inclusion and engagement,†he said.
Armor appoints Heather Hepler as CHRO
Leading global cloud security software company Armor has appointedOpens a new window Heather Hepler as chief human resources officer (CHRO). She joined the organization in 2019 and played a fundamental role in strengthening morale, improving collaboration, and embracing diversity. In addition to being CHRO, Hepler will also serve as the newest member of the executive leadership team. Mark Woodward, CEO at Armor said, “Having an inspirational leader like Heather to ensure we are recruiting and retaining the best in the business is essential for our ongoing success. She has made human resources a strategic asset for Armor’s evolution, and we look forward to the future.†Hepler’s accomplishments were also recognized after Amor made it to the list of “Top 100 Best Places to Work†by the Dallas Morning News.
Dana Bennett joins Udacity as new Chief People Officer
Udacity has recently announcedOpens a new window that Dana Bennett will be joining the team as chief people officer. Bennett has 20 years’ experience of working in companies like Mozilla and Apple. She is also the latest member to join the executive leadership team of Udacity, which has been accelerating its business into new areas for the last three years. The company’s CEO, Gabe Dalporto, said, “I’m thrilled that Dana has joined us in our journey. She has a proven track record of recruiting, developing, and retaining top talent, and will be a force for innovation within Udacity. She is also passionate about building a diverse and inclusive workforce which is core to our culture.â€
IQ-EQ gets a new Group Chief People Officer
IQ-EQ has named Caroline Bagshaw as their new group chief people officer. She will be bringing 26 years of experience in total. Bagshaw has experience in a diverse range of industry sectors, including technology, pharma, and financial services, including 18 years’ in regional and global HR leadership roles. Before IQ-EQ, she was the interim head of people at Monese. She has also previously held senior HR roles with Standard Chartered and GlaxoSmithKline.
HR Tech Product Launches
Oracle updates Employee Care Package to manage workforce post-COVID
Oracle has recently updatedOpens a new window the Employee Care Package within Oracle Fusion Cloud Human Capital Management to help businesses maintain safety in workplace post-COVID. A new “Return to the Workplace Journey†mentions all the guidelines which will not only help keep employees safe by assisting them to understand new processes, training, and safety protocols but also help HR leaders analyze critical workforce data, including testing and vaccination reports.
Topia launches innovations to help companies ramp up employee experience
Topia has launchedOpens a new window a series of new innovations across its global talent mobility platform for companies who need help in real-time to manage remote and distributed workforces. The new capabilities in its compass and plan solutions will also provide efficient, transparent tools that will help organizations maintain agility and deliver a better employee experience.
Parity.org launches ParityINDEX for firms looking to improve gender, racial balance
Parity.org has recently come upOpens a new window with a diversity, equity and inclusion tool, called ParityINDEX, to help companies improve the gender and racial balance. ParityINDEX can give daily updates about the workforce to leaders if they connect their human resource information system with the inclusion tool. This will help organizations pinpoint problem areas and see COVID-19 impact on their workforce in real time.
Microsoft launches new employee experience platform
Microsoft Corp. unveiled Microsoft VivaOpens a new window – a new employee experience platform to bring tools for learning, wellbeing, employee engagement and knowledge discovery. The best part is the platform offers new experiences that integrate with the productivity and collaboration capabilities in Microsoft Teams and Microsoft 365. While talking about Viva, CEO Satya Nadella said, “Every organization will require a unified employee experience from onboarding and collaboration to continuous learning and growth. Viva brings together everything an employee needs to be successful, from day one, in a single, integrated experience directly in Teams.â€
Stoke Talent releases accelerated payments tool for freelancers
Freelance management system Stoke Talent has come up with a new Accelerated Payment toolOpens a new window , which will enable companies to pay their freelancers, consultants, and contract workers in their preferred payment method and currency within 24 hours. This will solve the problem of freelancers getting paid late or not in their native currency. Stoke Talent is positive that this new tool will help companies set up relationships for long-term success.
HR Surveys
CEOs think managing ‘anywhere’ workforce is a top leadership challenge
A new IBM Institute for Business Value foundOpens a new window that many CEOs are facing problems with managing an “anywhere†workforce. Half of the respondents mentioned the same as a top leadership challenge over the next few years. Mark Foster, senior vice president at IBM Services said, “Many employees’ expectations of their employers have significantly changed. The ‘anywhere’ workforce can require leaders to provide agile technology, to adopt more empathetic leadership models that prioritize employee well-being and to champion flexible and inclusive cultures.â€
Gartner research shows more than half of workforce need new skills
A recent Gartner HR Research notedOpens a new window that 58% of the workforce will need new skills to get their jobs done as the total number of skills required to do a job has been increasing by 10% year-over-year since 2017. The study also found that not only one in three skills in an average 2017 job (IT, finance or sales) are already obsolete, the COVID-19 pandemic has increased skills gaps in the workforce.
Cultivate’s Culture Report helps companies understand their culture better
Cultivate Culture Report, a new feature of leadership platform Cultivate, has foundOpens a new window , with the help of AI and natural language processing, that there are seven core groups of behaviors that define most companies in their digital interactions and together map out an organization’s digital norms and culture. The Culture Report also offers a customized action plan to help companies identify their culture’s strengths as well as weaknesses and rectify the same.
Eagle Hill survey shows 57% of federal employees burnt out
The 2020 Eagle Hill Consulting Federal Employee Experience Survey revealedOpens a new window that 57% of federal employees feel that they are Burnt Out and one in three attributed the feeling to COVID-19. Moreover, the supervisors and senior executives in the federal government reported significantly higher levels of burnout (70%) and almost half of them felt it is because of the pandemic.
Major HR Partnerships
Workiz partners with Gusto to help home service businesses
Workiz, a popular name in the home service management software space, has partneredOpens a new window with Gusto, which offers a simplified, automated payroll solution with tax filing. The partnership is expected to help service professionals overcome challenges with payroll, employee benefits, and HR management and improve the quality of service, and grow their businesses.
Cornerstone & Microsoft join hands to support employees’ learning needs
Cornerstone and Microsoft have joinedOpens a new window hands with the aim to support employees’ growing learning needs and make learning in the flow of work possible. Both of the Cornerstone’s LMS platforms, i.e. Cornerstone Learning and Saba Cloud, would be integrated into Microsoft Viva—Microsoft’s new Employee Experience Platform. This will make it easy for employees to share, engage and discover new learning content without shuffling between solutions.
Globalization Partners and Sage Ink Technology join hands for an integration partnership
Globalization Partners has got into a technology integration partnershipOpens a new window with Sage and integrated its AI-driven Global Employer of Record technology platform with the Sage Intacct cloud financial management system. This partnership will enable joint clients to manage aggregate spend information regarding all internal employees. JP Pruneau, Director, Strategic Partnerships at Globalization Partners said, “Our goal has always been to simplify international business by enabling companies to hire talent anywhere in the world and this partnership empowers companies to take advantage of new market opportunities now.â€
ID.me & Sterling launch partnership to transform background screening
Sterling and ID.me have launched an exclusive partnershipOpens a new window to revolutionize background screening with innovative identity verification solutions. The workforce will now have access to a flexible identity solution that can be used to accelerate hiring and improve background screens. The partnership is significant as 40,000+ businesses and organizations rely on Sterling’s tech-enabled services to conduct screening and ID.me digital wallets have more than 35 million users.
Namely & Work Number from Equifax join hands to boost verification process
HR platform Namely has partneredOpens a new window with The Work Number—database from Equifax. The integration enables Namely to accelerate employment and income verifications. Also, the partnership will help to streamline the automated transfer of information to verifiers requesting employment and income data on behalf of the employees of customers on the platform. The deal between the two companies has also strengthened Namely’s “All-In-One†promise to assist employers with HR tasks.
Ceridian to acquire Ascender, eyes at leadership in Asia Pacific Japan
Ceridian has announced it has entered into a definitive share sale agreementOpens a new window to acquire Ascender — a leading payroll and HR solutions provider. The acquisition is expected to make way for the most comprehensive payroll and human capital management solutions in the Asia Pacific Japan region. David Ossip, Chairman and CEO at Ceridian said, “I look forward to welcoming the Ascender team to Ceridian and to working together on our shared vision to create exceptional employee experiences.†The transaction is expected to close in the second quarter of 2021.