How Can HR Tech Solve Europe’s Talent Problem, ANITA LETTINK?

00:00:14:

00:00:19: All right folks, here we are again with the ZardCon podcast in English and I'm super happy to have a guest on my show.

00:00:28: I follow for long time.

00:00:29: she has very interesting things about HRTech and specifically about payroll systems.

00:00:36: And her name is Anita Letting, she's keynote speaker and advisor on the future of WorkPayroll in HRTech!

00:00:43: I'm super happy to have you here on the show.

00:00:45: Anita welcome to Saadkorn.

00:00:48: Thank You Gero!

00:00:49: Hello everyone and i am very glad that you invited me.

00:00:54: Oh, thanks for the nice words.

00:00:57: Before we talk about HR tech let's start with yourself.

00:01:01: you've spent more than twenty years at the intersection of HR technology and the future work.

00:01:06: And how did you actually end up in this field?

00:01:09: Yeah

00:01:09: This was all a little bit by accident.

00:01:13: I worked in IT.

00:01:18: I designed infrastructure Put that altogether.

00:01:22: four companies then there within HR company, NGA who invited me for a role where I would do a lot of infrastructure design and self-service because that was suddenly hot topic in HR.

00:01:36: And at first I thought well HR does not IT so what am i going to do here?

00:01:43: But ultimately I joined the company stayed there for close to twenty years and the rest is history.

00:01:51: So thats how ended up on this field completely by accident.

00:01:57: And after those twenty years I left because i wanted to become an independent, um... Wanted to try something different, wanted to start my own company.

00:02:12: Unfortunately or fortunately..I don't- I never know what it is!

00:02:16: Um the pandemic started when I started my company and It meant that a lot of the people I knew from before started to approach me and help them, especially like HR tech startups who could not get in touch with HR decision makers simply because they had other things on their minds.

00:02:42: So it's starting work for young companies to help them figure out, okay now with the pandemic what is changing in work and how should we now shape our offering.

00:02:52: And that sort of builds my reputation.

00:02:57: I enjoy doing that.

00:02:59: so today i basically do three things.

00:03:03: So when you're speaking engagements about future work?

00:03:08: I advise HR tech companies.

00:03:12: I help HR leaders make decisions about HR technology.

00:03:17: You have one umbrella for these three activities?

00:03:21: If i understand it right, that's hrtechradar and i will link this also in the show notes as well as your profile.

00:03:30: You already said what you have in mind with this.

00:03:34: What's the target group?

00:03:35: I guess it is not one target group, there are several target groups

00:03:38: right?".

00:03:39: Yeah!

00:03:39: There're several target Groups but they all having common interest and new technology for HR And that can mean... One of three things.

00:03:50: So i find a lot of HR tech founders fly under their radar simply because they don't have big marketing budgets.

00:04:03: And so I try to get the word out to people that when you are looking at new technology today, to support your HR and payroll teams You must include one or two young companies.

00:04:19: startups scale up Simply Because They Look At Things Differently.

00:04:25: The second group that I go after with this is, or actually don't go after them.

00:04:33: They usually approach me.

00:04:35: there are a lot of people interested in investing in these companies and so try to make the connections between companies that i think are worthy of having access to more money So they can grow faster under People That Provide That Money.

00:04:53: And then thirdly, like I mentioned.

00:04:55: I work with HR leaders who are rethinking their service delivery but not exactly sure what kind of technology or companies.

00:05:10: So it's all focused on new technologies from three different angles.

00:05:15: That's super interesting.

00:05:17: Let's stay a little bit with the HR leaders.

00:05:20: and do you sometimes think HR, leaders, HR professionals look at technology too much through an HR lens than not enough for business or technology lens?

00:05:30: What is your perspective on this and did these change over

00:05:33: time?".

00:05:36: I think it is slowly changing but more because they have to then be cause there are inclined.

00:05:46: And what I mean with that is that boards and their C-suite colleagues are starting to ask them, so What do you doing with AI?

00:05:57: And i think That's the wrong question because it leads With technology.

00:06:02: And...what It should lead with Is..What Are The Results You're Trying To Achieve With Work?

00:06:10: So What Is The Outcome Of Work?

00:06:13: Who Will Be Doing The Work?

00:06:15: How Were We Delivering?

00:06:17: And then what do we need to make all this happen?

00:06:22: That is the question that you should actually ask your HR leaders.

00:06:30: The risk as an HR leader, it's about technology.

00:06:45: For me, this is super interesting what you're just saying mainly because I think about it a lot.

00:06:50: Because of my own little hobby Zadkorn where always feel and i show these now a bit more open in detail than before there's technology for some people fascinating great that we have this technology but then again without the right mindset the right attitude to write culture you will never generate impact.

00:07:17: so i think it's always a mixture between technology and.

00:07:21: The right attitude towards it.

00:07:22: end from an age up point of view.

00:07:25: on age.

00:07:26: I so close two topics such as corporate culture and how people, work, but also to processes.

00:07:35: And this is all linked with each other in my point of view and therefore just technology alone or just technology at first I would agree.

00:07:44: that's probably not the right perspective.

00:07:48: So

00:07:48: yeah

00:07:50: Allright!

00:07:50: Probably you see it similar.

00:07:52: That's nice.

00:07:53: i like that.

00:07:55: You said something a few seconds ago regarding startups.

00:08:01: startups look differently at the challenges and HR leaders should talk to start-ups because they quite often have a different perspective.

00:08:11: Could you describe this in more detail?

00:08:14: Yeah, of course!

00:08:16: So when I say that startup looks at things differently what i mean by that is typically The founders worked in a company and they ran into some problems.

00:08:37: And, they were frustrated about that... ...and then decided to do something about it-to build Something To Solve the Problem.

00:08:48: My conversation with startups is often about this Is This problem now a nuisance?

00:08:56: So For an HR leader Yeah It's A Hiccup But It Happens thirty times in a year, and so work around will do just fine.

00:09:08: Or is this something fundamental?

00:09:11: In the way that we work-in the way employees work... And implementing these would remove a lot of friction for an HR leader or deliver really good outcome.

00:09:25: they cannot deliver it different ways Because of the fact that these startups start with a problem, they look at things differently.

00:09:42: They have seen this problem and looked at it from variety angles And really put all efforts into solving this.

00:09:54: I think a lot HR leaders Should talk to these startups just to understand what kind of problems are they solving?

00:10:03: What do THEY think the problem in your organization is.

00:10:09: What technologies did they use to accomplish this and where does it see themselves into three years?

00:10:20: with that I'm not saying you should always choose a startup or scale up as your solution.

00:10:28: But I think the conversation about what you are trying to accomplish, as an HR leader when it comes to technology will be enriched by talking to these people because you learn some different perspectives and right now i think especially because work is changing we need this difference perspectives To ensure that our organizations change with What is going on in the outside world?

00:10:59: I will be completely agree.

00:11:01: On both things you say, just said.

00:11:03: last thing work is changing obviously and other think to really get a different set of perspectives on certain issue always make sense but given that fact also give some room for start-ups on your website.

00:11:23: Can anybody call you and say, hey I've got an HR startup?

00:11:28: And just said yeah fine.

00:11:29: I post the link there.

00:11:31: or is it some quality discussion before?

00:11:36: There's always a conversation Before in.

00:11:40: What i try to do In that conversation is figure out how mature this start-up Is because what i don't want to do is overwhelm my customers with hundreds of startups because the HR Tech world is very rich in start-ups right now.

00:11:58: And so I try to listen and understand what they are trying to build, with my background i can do like a light due diligence to understand if this really solves your problem or it's just me too solution?

00:12:17: What I find also important that already have some paying customers.

00:12:21: So, they are out of the pilot phase where they have put their solution in some pilots and customers providing feedback for using it.

00:12:32: They really need to have some paying customers so that I know there's at least an income guarantee that will exist for the foreseeable future, even though we never know what will happen.

00:12:47: I'm not guaranteeing that they would exist in two or three years.

00:12:51: some don't.

00:12:53: others have gone on to become amazing companies.

00:12:58: so it's always a little bit of gamble.

00:13:02: but still i think is important to support this ecosystem because it drives us forward.

00:13:11: Yes, I totally agree.

00:13:13: And i do this with my own platform for several years to really feature startups in interviews and podcasts and so on.

00:13:21: how international?

00:13:22: Do you look at me?

00:13:23: obviously we're talking now English.

00:13:25: use it in the Netherlands.

00:13:27: I'm Germany but how International is your business with HR Tech Radar?

00:13:32: are you all over the place?

00:13:34: or

00:13:34: Yes, I mean just this morning i was talking to a founder in Nairobi.

00:13:45: I often work with companies that are based in the United States or that are somewhere in Europe tomorrow and talk into company that works out of Dubai.

00:13:54: I did some stuff with people in India earlier this year.

00:14:00: So my focus is really on multi-country companies.

00:14:07: and even though, if you would ask me for instance what are the major payroll providers?

00:14:14: In The Netherlands it's probably hard time to give a list of top ten local providers but what's the top ten in Europe, I can give you all the names and details.

00:14:34: When i worked at NGA our focus was on multi-country companies from an HRN and payroll perspective because it adds additional dimension to the HR service delivery.

00:14:57: that can make it very complex.

00:14:59: And I like the complexity of it all, to figure out how this works not in one country but if you have to deliver this policy in five countries what does that mean?

00:15:08: Or do we need to deliver these payrolls in seventeen countries and so on... I enjoy that complexity!

00:15:17: Yeah, I can understand.

00:15:18: But then again talking about the startups there's a lot of startups that also focus in beginning on just one or two regions.

00:15:27: so probably it is part your quality talk.

00:15:31: how international are you already?

00:15:33: Yes and You're right some start-ups focused on Regions but most of the start ups did.

00:15:43: i talked to Start from A global base, or at least the design is potentially global.

00:15:53: That does not always work out but I think it's unless you're doing something very regulatory.

00:16:02: It's good to Think about this from a global perspective Because obviously it broadens your customer base.

00:16:15: But then Yeah, it makes it a lot more complex to deliver that.

00:16:21: You're absolutely right in that respect.

00:16:23: Of course there's always advantages and disadvantages on each perspective.

00:16:29: you've been observing the HR Tech market now for really a lot of years.

00:16:34: if you had to describe the current state of HR Tech at this time just three words what would they be?

00:16:41: And why?

00:16:43: Three

00:16:44: words!

00:16:45: Just give.

00:16:47: Okay, first of all I would say movement.

00:16:56: There's a lot of movements going on because On the one hand side you have this new technology called AI and also You have The changing world or work how we define jobs and tasks and skills And so the incumbent companies and a traditional HR companies are figuring out how to support this for their customers.

00:17:23: And then you have the young companies that come into play as well, so there's a lot of movement.

00:17:33: Secondly I would say or let me put it differently The second word is trust.

00:17:55: If we are not thinking about this from the perspective of trust, We run the risk that this will end up in a nightmare situation or that we as companies will end Up In A Nightmare Situation.

00:18:12: So I know That Sometimes The Complaint From Other Business Functions Is That HR Moves Very Slowly And They're Right.

00:18:23: But You also want to think about HR as the keepers of trust, making sure that what you do around your workforce with your employees not only establishes trust but maintains that trust so that you are a good employer and people actually want to come work for you.

00:18:45: Then I would say the third word right now is transparency which has everything going into effect and it has hiccups, but ultimately I think that through this transparency around pay we will establish a more equal relationship between employers and employees.

00:19:18: And for the first time, employees would be able to actually look at a job And look at the salary, or know the salary through an email before they engage with an employer.

00:19:35: I think this phase of transparency will mature this relationship between employers and employees because it's not only when you come to work but also about How can I earn more?

00:19:54: And when can i earn more and how does that work in this company.

00:19:59: This whole topic is very interesting, and again I have to agree.

00:20:04: Also i like the other two...I like all three words.

00:20:07: actually you just chose.

00:20:10: it's not such an easy question.

00:20:11: honestly

00:20:13: No!

00:20:13: You did not tell me that your going ask this question.

00:20:16: so no time to prepare.

00:20:19: It was really great And this whole transparency topic & trust for me are important And sometimes it's obviously also related to market developments.

00:20:30: I mean, there is a lot of markets that are really in trouble at this point-in time economies such as the German economy for instance and if you think about the power that employees had like three or four years back when everybody was looking for talent Now it's vice versa.

00:20:48: It is again the old market, but due to the whole paradigm of changing demographics I suppose that we will come out depends on time frame in a situation where employers really are looking for talent and this whole trust transparency discussion opinion will become the really big topic for the next years.

00:21:14: How do you think about that?

00:21:17: In my keynotes, I talk a lot about this demographics issue because i think not enough people in companies... Not enough of our leadership and I mean broad leadership, not HR.

00:21:30: leadership only has enough awareness And we just talked about that.

00:21:44: We have been in a tight labor market since before the pandemic, and so it is little bit less tight now.

00:21:54: but for awhile...we had one hundred forty vacancies for every hundred unemployed!

00:22:03: You know there's no match between those two.

00:22:06: I think a lot of companies, or a lot people in European countries have no understanding what is ahead.

00:22:18: And when i show them the data and how many people retire every single day in Europe they are very often amazed about their discrepancies.

00:22:35: But that's only one part of the equation, right?

00:22:38: The second part obviously is skills.

00:22:40: Is it a skill you need in your company and then the skills people bring or that employees bring?

00:22:46: And there are often mismatches between those two as well.

00:22:50: Now an interesting thing here if we look at whole Europe That skills matching problem falls away.

00:22:59: but

00:23:00: first of all People don't move easily.

00:23:03: If I live in Greece, probably am not looking for jobs in Germany or Belgium.

00:23:12: And there's a language barrier.

00:23:14: every country has different languages and so if you speak Polish then that is also the problem.

00:23:32: I'm not at all pessimistic about all of this, but i do think that companies really need to put workforce strategies into place so they know first and foremost what is happening with the workforce within the next five years.

00:23:49: Who's leaving because they retire?

00:23:52: Who?

00:23:53: who is leaving voluntarily?

00:23:54: typically companies have you know data for them look forward and figure it out.

00:24:00: But then secondly, for our business strategy in the next three to five years we need these skills.

00:24:08: Do we have them?

00:24:10: do We Have Them In Our Country?

00:24:12: If Not Where Are We Going To Get Them From?

00:24:14: Because one thing I know is that if you don't have this skills You are not going to execute your Business Strategy.

00:24:22: There's Just No Way.

00:24:25: And This Is i think The Fundamental Problem

00:24:30: Absolutely, but then obviously also AI and HR tech comes into place because a lot of the people I'm discussing this with are saying yeah you're right.

00:24:41: But here's a big AI debate now.

00:24:46: AI will make so many jobs going away in the next years that probably we don't have these issues that strong as you just described.

00:24:57: And by the way, we're talking about re and up... What do I say again?

00:25:03: Upskilling

00:25:04: obviously!

00:25:07: AI and startups will give us new possibilities to exactly this.

00:25:13: what's your thinking of this way of discussion?

00:25:18: Yeah so on one hand side i am positive The moment that AI is now coming into our lives, because I do think some of the challenges we will have in Europe can be remedied.

00:25:36: They won't disappear but they can be reneged somewhat with help from AI.

00:25:40: and my keynotes often say maybe AI has come at right moments.

00:25:48: We should also embrace it.

00:25:54: The fundamental problem though is that right now, AI seems to automate a lot of I would say traditionally white color work.

00:26:05: And even though we are starting to see some stuff like these robots and all of that in the next five or ten years i don't believe this technology will be mature enough.

00:26:23: as an example, I'm doing some stuff on my house to... well anyways.

00:26:31: And even though my house is in a street with several similar houses there's still a lot of things that i have changed over the years that the neighbors did not change and so if you would say We'll create this robot and it will paint your house.

00:26:57: Yeah, that's fine but then you have to reprogram it to paint the neighbor's house because originally it was the same But now it isn't anymore Same for plumbing.

00:27:07: My bathroom looks different from The neighbors' bathroom And all of those things are not so easy To overcome.

00:27:17: So as long as It is fairly similar You can automate it, but as soon as you start to have deviations.

00:27:25: It becomes very hard To create something automatic that will still work and that we'll deliver the result That I want And then also is As price efficient as a person Because sometimes i look at these robots is taking ten minutes and maybe in future it will also take two minutes.

00:27:57: But right now, AI automation robotics does not have the capability to replace good treatment of women

00:28:10: At this point in time, yeah.

00:28:14: I'm curious to see how the speed of technological development will be and if it goes on like was last few years probably faster than five or ten years?

00:28:25: It's just my five cents

00:28:28: here but...

00:28:30: Even a white color discussion!

00:28:32: How do you look at

00:28:33: that?!

00:28:34: in terms of demographics and do we still need a huge white collar workforce?

00:28:40: or do you have an issue here also for the next years to come?

00:28:46: When you say, A Huge White Collar Workforce I always throw the numbers at you.

00:28:51: So only twenty percent of our workforces is white-collar And everyone else Is what We call Frontline Worker.

00:28:58: so people that Have To Be Present In The Location To Do Their Work.

00:29:07: Too many white color people.

00:29:10: I don't know, i definitely think that in Some areas we might have too many and other areas We might not have enough?

00:29:20: I Really cannot answer That as a broad statement.

00:29:30: Can it be ten to ninety?

00:29:32: Maybe, I don't know.

00:29:33: I've never thought about that.

00:29:35: really i'm pretty sure.

00:29:37: when you ask people About government bureaucracy everyone will say well yes we need fewer of them But me and And We always meet fewer managers and stuff.

00:29:50: but I think That what is going on right now happening in companies where they use AI I would say a sweeping statement to de-layer the organization and remove managers.

00:30:10: There might be consequences of not thinking about layers, managers or stuff enough.

00:30:19: but there are also tasks that managers do very important for the future of an organization to think about.

00:30:31: The teams that they have, you think about like we mentioned upskilling and rescaling people.

00:30:37: who do we want to upscale?

00:30:39: Where do we wanna move people too?

00:30:41: Do We Have High Achievers That We Want To Promote?

00:30:46: Do we have low achievers that we need to work with?

00:30:51: If You Have Good Managers They Bring Value the organization and from that perspective, I don't think right now that trend to remove all managers from your organization.

00:31:10: And you end up with sort of self-organizing teams will over time be beneficial.

00:31:18: two companies?

00:31:21: Yeah we'll see.

00:31:22: it's an interesting topic in terms off HR technology.

00:31:27: once again Which are the categories that are genuinely exciting to you right now?

00:31:32: There might be certain fields where they say this is really super interesting.

00:31:37: Yeah, To me Right Now Where I see a lot of movement Is in The whole area of Registering administering paying people.

00:31:50: and the reason why i say That?

00:31:52: because As if for almost twenty years I could give You A List of the main companies, and that list would not change.

00:32:01: It would be the same advice I gave everybody.

00:32:06: or a new company maybe one but with the latest developments in technologies there are some really interesting companies coming to market or they have come to market that are also paying attention not only to, I would say the HR side of things but to the employee's side of thing.

00:32:37: So if we do it this way what does that mean for the employee?

00:32:41: How do we make their life better?

00:32:44: because we can talk about grand thanks in a chart But as i always say If you don't pay your people on time and correctly they will start looking for other jobs.

00:33:00: And if you don't do this well, You can talk about performance management all you want.

00:33:05: but the answer that you'll get is fix my pay first and then we'll talk about Performance Management.

00:33:13: so making sure that these admin side or operational side of HR runs well has always interested me.

00:33:26: And now it has all these new companies and all this news technologies that allow these companies to come to market.

00:33:35: So suddenly the most boring part of HR is hot and happening, I like that!

00:33:43: It was long overdue... ...and now it's here.

00:33:48: so i find that exciting.

00:33:56: in a good way, and the future.

00:33:57: Let's finish this podcast.

00:34:00: given that timeframe I could go on with it for long time as super interesting.

00:34:06: talking to you was just few short answers from really not going into deep.

00:34:13: what is your point of view most overhyped HR Tech trend right now?

00:34:22: Interesting question!

00:34:27: Putting HR or a headless HR.

00:34:32: So putting HR solutions and teams are slack, whatever what?

00:34:37: Headless HR?

00:34:38: All

00:34:39: right!

00:34:42: The next question is there one HR tech problem nobody has solved properly yet.

00:34:48: I don't know the answer to that.

00:34:50: It's of course a dangerous question because at the end if you would know, probably should not tell me.

00:34:59: I'm going to build my company like my current roles.

00:35:04: yeah i wouldn't be good founder.

00:35:07: last question one thing CHOs need to understand about AI right now.

00:35:15: we are in very early stage and Well, we think we know what AI can do in HR.

00:35:27: We do not understand the full width of it and therefore I think that... ...we should pilot , we should experiment .We should do all that.

00:35:39: but no CHRO should feel they are behind just because their HR department does not yet fully run on an AI.

00:35:50: Okay And the very last question, all of this is a different one aside from HRTech.

00:35:57: Is there something that inspired you lately?

00:36:00: Perhaps book movie or discussion you might have had perhaps also with startup or customer.

00:36:08: it can but must not be work related.

00:36:11: Okay so I read really good book.

00:36:15: It's called We are Not Machines.

00:36:19: What I enjoyed about this book is that the author writes, about how technology has changed the life of workers.

00:36:33: How it has replaced workers but not in a pessimistic way and going forward will replace us all.

00:36:45: It's very realistic about how technology makes our work life better, how it sometimes completely erases jobs and livelihoods.

00:36:57: And then what comes after?

00:37:01: Sarah O'Connor is the

00:37:02: author.".

00:37:04: I'll put that in the show notes as well for anyone who's interested.

00:37:08: Anita!

00:37:09: It was a pleasure talking to you... ...it was really great that took some time for Zadkorn.

00:37:14: Thank You very much.

00:37:16: I hope that we might have a second edition.

00:37:18: Absolutely, i enjoyed being here so call me back whenever you have room for another conversation.

00:37:30: Thank You very much!

00:37:44: Bye.