00:00:01
[Music]
00:00:05
all right so we're gonna kick things off
00:00:07
this morning with a talk from Josh
00:00:09
Burson uh Josh is an industry analyst
00:00:11
and thought leader in the world of
00:00:13
corporate Talent learning in HR
00:00:15
technology he's the CEO of the Josh
00:00:17
Burson company which is team of analysts
00:00:19
and advisors who work to support and
00:00:21
guide HR organizations all around the
00:00:23
world and their research covers topics
00:00:25
such as hybrid and remote work HR
00:00:27
technology Market Trends employee
00:00:30
experience and diversity equity and
00:00:32
inclusion uh it's prior to that he
00:00:34
founded Burson and Associates which is a
00:00:36
research and advisory service focused on
00:00:38
corporate learning which he sold to
00:00:39
Deloitte he's written three books he has
00:00:42
a BS from Cornell and an MS from
00:00:43
Stanford engineering he's doing a book
00:00:45
signing also after this at 10 A.M
00:00:47
downstairs on level 1 at Julia's books
00:00:49
and Brew so if you enjoy the talk please
00:00:51
meet him down there for that that'll be
00:00:52
great
00:00:53
um and yeah we're thrilled to have him
00:00:55
here he's here to talk about the trends
00:00:56
in learning and HR Tech market so please
00:00:59
give it up for Josh Burson
00:01:01
[Music]
00:01:02
[Applause]
00:01:04
thank you Chris
00:01:05
[Music]
00:01:07
well Okay so we've got a pretty big
00:01:10
crowd and a good number of corporate
00:01:13
people here so I'm going to give you
00:01:16
a two-hour presentation in 20 minutes
00:01:19
on what's going on in corporate learning
00:01:23
HR technology Ai and the workforce and
00:01:27
hopefully what my goal here is not to
00:01:30
really give you the details but give you
00:01:32
for many of you who are not on the
00:01:34
corporate side to really understand what
00:01:37
is going on in the workforce and
00:01:40
um
00:01:41
so just to
00:01:43
shut the slides okay and if you really
00:01:46
want to dive into this stuff we do write
00:01:48
a lot of research reports on a lot of
00:01:50
things and many of them are available
00:01:51
for free so you can look for this one in
00:01:53
particular because this is a kind of a
00:01:56
synopsis of everything going on in
00:01:58
corporate HR and technology that came
00:02:00
out in January and February and I I
00:02:01
think you'll find it helpful okay so the
00:02:04
number one issue before I talk about
00:02:05
tech and Workforce let's talk about the
00:02:07
economy most companies and we do talk to
00:02:10
a lot of companies are struggling with a
00:02:14
paradox the economies slow down interest
00:02:18
rates are high
00:02:19
there's a lot of inflation as you know
00:02:21
and it's very hard to hire people and so
00:02:24
they have this issue of improving
00:02:26
productivity improving go to market at
00:02:30
the same time they're reducing their
00:02:32
Workforce in some area growing in
00:02:34
another area and finding it very hard to
00:02:37
hire people and in the middle of all
00:02:38
that of course there's a high turnover
00:02:40
rate and so the workforce from a
00:02:44
corporate standpoint is under enormous
00:02:46
amounts of stress I have never seen in
00:02:48
my career and you know I was born in the
00:02:51
50s a time when the unemployment rate
00:02:54
was this low
00:02:55
it was so hard to hire people and
00:02:58
roughly a third of the workers in the
00:03:00
United States changed jobs in one year
00:03:03
last year that is also unprecedented so
00:03:05
imagine you're a corporate CEO or Cho or
00:03:08
hiring manager trying to deal with that
00:03:10
and added to that of course is it the
00:03:13
number of workers is expected to shrink
00:03:16
in every developed economy I know a lot
00:03:19
of you look at these demographics uh the
00:03:21
Baby Boomers are retiring and the Biden
00:03:24
Administration has poured a trillion
00:03:26
dollars into the United States to do
00:03:28
infrastructure projects which is going
00:03:30
to create more jobs and make the
00:03:33
unemployment rate probably go lower so
00:03:36
uh so from a corporate standpoint even
00:03:38
though there's layoffs and you saw today
00:03:40
there were layoffs by meta and Disney's
00:03:42
doing some layoffs that isn't really the
00:03:44
story the real story is we need more
00:03:47
people we need people with different
00:03:49
skills and we need to educate and train
00:03:51
them more quickly now why do they need
00:03:53
people with more skills the big story
00:03:56
that we have discovered by talking to
00:03:59
you know many many companies is really
00:04:02
about transformation of Industries so
00:04:05
let me give you one minute on this and
00:04:07
as I said there's lots of things to
00:04:08
think about here so in 20 minutes you're
00:04:09
going to get kind of a a whole
00:04:11
one-on-one course on on what's going on
00:04:13
in the workforce
00:04:15
um you know in the early 2000s most of
00:04:17
you know we had this idea of a digital
00:04:19
transformation we all tried to you know
00:04:21
build websites and mobile phones and
00:04:24
online uh you know shopping experiences
00:04:27
and so forth and what happened and I
00:04:30
happen to be at Deloitte in the middle
00:04:31
of all this what happened was most
00:04:33
companies found out that digital
00:04:35
transformation wasn't about technology
00:04:37
it was about how the company operates it
00:04:40
was about operating in a digital way and
00:04:43
managing uh this constant flow of
00:04:45
information we were getting from
00:04:47
customers and then developing software
00:04:50
and tools and experiences faster and
00:04:52
faster and faster and then we had the
00:04:54
pandemic and everybody who said we have
00:04:57
a three-year digital transformation said
00:04:59
no no we have a one-month digital
00:05:01
transformation we're going digital this
00:05:03
month you guys are all going home we're
00:05:06
not going to shut down the company and
00:05:07
you remember what happened for a first
00:05:09
month or two of the pandemic everybody
00:05:11
kind of shut down and then the economy
00:05:13
picked up really fast and we had these
00:05:16
digital Delivery Systems and you know
00:05:18
remote purchasing systems and and all of
00:05:20
that technology and companies realized
00:05:22
that they could transform a lot faster
00:05:25
than they thought and what then happened
00:05:27
is they realized that the industry that
00:05:30
they are in changed and so what's going
00:05:33
on now is virtually every industry is
00:05:37
colliding with another industry so
00:05:39
Walmart CVS most of the retailers are
00:05:42
getting into Health Care drugs uh not
00:05:46
just giving people shots but but buying
00:05:48
and delivering Health Care Services
00:05:50
health care companies are being impacted
00:05:52
by technology companies who are hiring
00:05:55
and getting into digital Health banks
00:05:57
are getting disrupted but you saw Apple
00:05:59
apples deal with Goldman that was
00:06:02
announced yesterday Banks consumer banks
00:06:04
are getting disrupted by tech companies
00:06:07
and even Walmart is getting into Banking
00:06:09
and so they're all struggling to find
00:06:12
people that understand this adjacent
00:06:15
industry that they kind of know they
00:06:17
have to deal with and by the way those
00:06:19
people are in demand by the people who
00:06:21
started in that industry and so you know
00:06:23
all the people that get laid off from
00:06:25
from say meta or or you know maybe you
00:06:28
know Amazon who might be tech people you
00:06:30
know they could get a job with a bank
00:06:32
they could get a job with a health care
00:06:34
company so the market has become very
00:06:36
very disruptive and I think you know
00:06:38
from my standpoint as an analyst there's
00:06:41
going to be different Industries you
00:06:43
know the automobile and the reason Ford
00:06:45
split into two companies was because
00:06:47
they realized that the EV industry is
00:06:50
not the same as building
00:06:52
gasoline-powered automobiles it's
00:06:54
completely different different Tech
00:06:55
technology different batteries different
00:06:58
instrumentation different software and
00:07:01
so uh the corporate you know people that
00:07:04
you're working with or those of you that
00:07:05
work in corporations are dealing with
00:07:07
this this massive change now in the
00:07:10
middle of that
00:07:11
something else has happened and that is
00:07:14
workers have become more mobile last
00:07:17
year as I said about a third of the U.S
00:07:20
Workforce changed jobs
00:07:22
45 percent of them changed industries
00:07:25
that was also unprecedented because we
00:07:29
have much more power as employees than
00:07:32
we've ever had before and the reason for
00:07:34
that is we can work remotely but also
00:07:36
more and more of the value add in or in
00:07:40
corporate and you know in companies is
00:07:42
delivered by individual employees you
00:07:45
know it used to be if I go back you know
00:07:47
in this 1800s employees were considered
00:07:50
labor they were replaceable parts we if
00:07:52
we lost this guy we could get this guy
00:07:54
to take his place and after a couple of
00:07:56
days of training he could do the same
00:07:57
work that's not true anymore if you look
00:08:00
at Starbucks and the experience they've
00:08:01
had with unions if you look at uh you
00:08:04
know the people that drive for Amazon
00:08:06
the people that drive for UPS these are
00:08:08
not routine jobs anymore these are these
00:08:11
are human-centered jobs where each
00:08:13
individual is adding value in their own
00:08:16
unique way based on what that company is
00:08:19
trying to do
00:08:20
now we've also had the growth of
00:08:22
LinkedIn monster.com and the uh you know
00:08:26
the openness of the job market I
00:08:28
remember when I got out of college in
00:08:30
1978 the only way you could find a job
00:08:33
was to type a letter on paper and put it
00:08:36
in the mail and wait and I'm not kidding
00:08:40
you just waited because there was no way
00:08:42
to know if anybody ever read it now of
00:08:45
course you can sit on LinkedIn and you
00:08:46
can apply to 20 jobs in about five
00:08:48
minutes and on the other side you can
00:08:50
look at candidates in a continuous basis
00:08:53
so we have this very very fluid market
00:08:55
and what companies have realized is that
00:08:58
in the middle of all of this mobility
00:09:00
and all this data that we can capture
00:09:02
about candidates and employees maybe we
00:09:05
don't need to look at their pedigree
00:09:07
maybe we don't need to look at their job
00:09:09
history quite so much maybe we should
00:09:11
hire them based on their skills because
00:09:13
if they have the right skills we can
00:09:15
teach them about our company we can
00:09:17
teach them a little bit about our
00:09:18
industry and so we're moving into this
00:09:20
world where every individual every
00:09:23
employee and this is going to happen at
00:09:25
the front line in the blue collar work
00:09:26
as well is going to be
00:09:29
evaluated and to some degree paid by
00:09:33
their skills now
00:09:35
on the corporate side there has been
00:09:38
this crazy concept of building what is
00:09:41
called a skills-based organization
00:09:44
and honestly it means nothing I mean
00:09:47
it's just a bunch of talk uh by
00:09:49
consulting firms
00:09:51
to try to get companies to hire them
00:09:54
but what really is happening is
00:09:56
everybody now is freaked out about what
00:09:59
are the skills we have what are the
00:10:01
skills we need what are the skills that
00:10:04
are growing what are the skills that are
00:10:05
shrinking and how do we move our
00:10:07
Workforce in that direction based on
00:10:10
that industry that we're either in or
00:10:12
trying to get into faster and faster and
00:10:15
faster and so technology AI new HR
00:10:21
technology is very very focused on this
00:10:23
idea of skills and I'm going to talk
00:10:25
about that in a minute and try to sort
00:10:27
of Define what a skill is for you
00:10:29
the trading industry of course
00:10:33
I was touching the like the uh antenna
00:10:36
the training industry behind this is a
00:10:40
massive industry
00:10:41
I was just talking to Rob Lowe outside
00:10:43
uh who's the xclo of McDonald's it's a
00:10:46
very large industry it's you know my
00:10:48
estimates it's over 300 billion dollars
00:10:50
around the world I actually think it
00:10:52
might shrink I think if you look at the
00:10:55
impact of Chachi BT and and and uh
00:10:58
generational Ai and some of the tools
00:11:00
are coming we might not need so much of
00:11:03
this stuff I'll talk about that in a
00:11:04
couple of minutes but it's very robust
00:11:06
uh every company invests in training in
00:11:09
fact one of the problems companies have
00:11:11
is sometimes they think every problem is
00:11:14
a training problem which is not true but
00:11:17
this is a massive industry and it has
00:11:20
come a long way if you look back 10 or
00:11:23
15 years when I first started on this
00:11:25
training was courseware it was a page
00:11:29
clicking you know sort of instructor-led
00:11:31
course put on the web we had YouTube and
00:11:36
video and then the iPhone which turned
00:11:38
it into video learning then we realized
00:11:40
well maybe we don't need four hour
00:11:42
courses maybe we can have five minute
00:11:44
courses maybe we can make 10 minute
00:11:45
courses we have this proliferation of
00:11:48
content that gave birth to The Learning
00:11:50
Experience platform by the way I'm going
00:11:52
to be having a talk a little bit later
00:11:53
today with David Blake who's the Pioneer
00:11:55
and the founder of degreed which was
00:11:57
really the leading learning experience
00:12:00
platform at the time and then we had all
00:12:02
this content floating around inside
00:12:03
companies nobody could find any of it
00:12:05
and we realized well maybe we should tag
00:12:08
it based on skills by the way what is a
00:12:10
skill I'll talk about that in a minute
00:12:12
and finally we're in a new world which
00:12:15
is as I'll show you in a minute it's all
00:12:17
about growth it isn't just about
00:12:20
Skilling people it's about figuring out
00:12:23
if the skills that we are helping this
00:12:25
person acquire will it help them Advance
00:12:28
into the role the job the industry uh
00:12:33
the needs in the future of our company
00:12:35
and of course we're going to add AI to
00:12:37
that and that's going to just Turbo
00:12:39
Charge this whole process now the
00:12:42
complexity of the word skill
00:12:44
it's a very confusing term for the HR
00:12:47
folks and let me just give you you know
00:12:49
very short uh discussion many people
00:12:52
think skill is a new word for what we
00:12:56
used to call a competency
00:12:58
competencies are a 30 or 40 year old
00:13:01
idea where you used to literally sit
00:13:04
down as an HR person and you would
00:13:06
Define a job you'd say Okay sales and
00:13:09
let's write down what this person's
00:13:11
going to do and let's look through the
00:13:12
book of competencies there was a book of
00:13:14
competencies it's now owned by corn
00:13:16
fairy it was called FYI it had about 500
00:13:19
companies in it and you'd go through it
00:13:21
and you'd say ah that one that one that
00:13:23
one and that one and then he even did
00:13:25
something called competency card sorting
00:13:28
where you'd with all the competencies on
00:13:30
the table and all the HR people would
00:13:32
look at the companies and say let's pick
00:13:33
the ones that we think are the right
00:13:35
ones for this job and we'd write them
00:13:37
down we'd put them into the job
00:13:39
description and then we would use them
00:13:41
for hiring and for development and for
00:13:43
growth and that was it
00:13:44
and we thought it was great stuff and
00:13:47
you know most companies didn't use it
00:13:49
they used it for uh you know heavily
00:13:52
regulated jobs but they didn't use it
00:13:53
for most uh white-collar jobs because it
00:13:56
wasn't really that useful now we have
00:13:58
these AI systems these you know very
00:14:02
powerful indexing engines and I know a
00:14:04
lot of them you guys some of you are I
00:14:05
know providing this stuff and we can
00:14:08
actually read through somebody's bio we
00:14:10
can look at their history we can crawl
00:14:12
through their GitHub if they're a
00:14:13
software engineer we can look at their
00:14:15
certifications as their nurse and we can
00:14:17
figure out what their skills are and we
00:14:19
can do a pretty good job and then the
00:14:21
employee can go in and click on the
00:14:23
skills that they believe that they have
00:14:24
and their peers can do that and we're
00:14:27
starting to build these massively
00:14:29
interesting databases of skills in
00:14:33
companies
00:14:34
by the way for those of you in the
00:14:37
education industry most companies
00:14:39
couldn't care less about validating
00:14:41
those skills about credentialing those
00:14:43
skills we just want to know if you have
00:14:45
them because we're going to butcher to
00:14:46
work in some role that we desperately
00:14:48
need and if you don't have the skills we
00:14:50
kind of want to understand what either
00:14:52
somebody else can take that job or what
00:14:54
can we do to help you develop those
00:14:56
skills and so that's really what's been
00:14:58
going on and as a result of that
00:15:01
companies have changed the way they do
00:15:03
corporate training I run into uh pemi
00:15:07
last night from Kraft Heinz we have
00:15:09
worked with many many companies to
00:15:11
redesign all of their corporate training
00:15:13
around these clusters of skills it used
00:15:17
to be 10 years ago that corporate
00:15:19
training was courses courses curriculum
00:15:21
and just tons and tons and tons of it
00:15:24
and you had to figure out based on the
00:15:25
job you're in what courses to take now
00:15:28
what companies are starting to do is
00:15:29
they're realizing you know we need a
00:15:31
risk management Academy we need an HR
00:15:33
Academy which is what we do by the way
00:15:35
or we need a digital we need an AI
00:15:37
Academy Intel built an AI Academy so
00:15:40
they could understand all the
00:15:42
disciplines of AI and code them into
00:15:43
their chips or we need a sales Academy
00:15:45
or we need a Leadership Academy and so
00:15:47
they're bringing these things together
00:15:48
in a much more integrated way and one of
00:15:51
the things that's coming out of that is
00:15:53
they're realizing that once we know what
00:15:56
capabilities we need maybe we should
00:15:59
figure out what people would be
00:16:01
interested in moving into these new
00:16:03
capabilities so because because the job
00:16:05
market is so competitive and because we
00:16:08
have such a low unemployment rate
00:16:09
companies are saying you know maybe we
00:16:12
can't hire this job maybe we better
00:16:14
build them and develop them internally
00:16:15
and so there's this whole new domain of
00:16:19
internal mobility in what is called a
00:16:20
talent Marketplace to help companies
00:16:23
move people from low value declining
00:16:27
skill jobs into higher powered badly
00:16:32
needed roles and so there's all this
00:16:34
infrastructure that's being built inside
00:16:36
of Corporations to facilitate this
00:16:38
mobility and development process and
00:16:40
it's a very very complex Market
00:16:43
you know for those of you that work in
00:16:45
corporate training or you sell the
00:16:46
corporate training unfortunately you're
00:16:48
going to go into a corporation and
00:16:50
you're going to find out they have 50
00:16:51
things they've got and they've got
00:16:54
multiple lms's they've got multiple
00:16:56
content systems they've got virtual
00:16:58
reality stuff they've got video
00:17:00
conferencing they've got some assessment
00:17:02
systems they've got a talent Marketplace
00:17:04
they're looking around at skills Tech
00:17:06
it's a very messy space and so uh you
00:17:10
know what I what I what we find and the
00:17:12
reason we kind of do what we do is a lot
00:17:15
of the challenge companies have is just
00:17:17
making sense of what they need because
00:17:20
eventually they end up with too much
00:17:22
stuff and they can't manage it all
00:17:25
so uh so anyway that's what's been going
00:17:27
on sort of in corporate learning and how
00:17:30
the corporations have uh really dealt
00:17:33
with with these massive changes going on
00:17:35
around them now we did a study uh late
00:17:38
last year on the space and this is what
00:17:40
we do for a living we do a lot of these
00:17:41
big studies to figure out you know
00:17:42
what's changing and what we found in the
00:17:45
corporate Education and Training
00:17:46
business is that the practices that are
00:17:49
adding the most value now are not about
00:17:52
High Fidelity learning they're about
00:17:54
learning to grow they're about
00:17:56
understanding the skills and
00:17:59
capabilities that you as an individual
00:18:01
need to move to the next level the next
00:18:04
job the next role the next
00:18:06
responsibility in your company and you
00:18:07
can see this data here and when we
00:18:09
looked at this data across about a
00:18:11
thousand companies we found that only
00:18:14
about 11 percent of companies get this
00:18:16
many many Learning and Development
00:18:19
leaders are stuck in learning they're
00:18:21
stuck doing training and there's
00:18:23
somebody else or maybe nobody look
00:18:25
looking at careers in growth and
00:18:26
Mobility
00:18:27
and so one of the biggest changes that's
00:18:29
going on in HR is really reframing what
00:18:34
the corporate Learning and Development
00:18:35
Group does and I really think that great
00:18:38
learning leaders you could call them
00:18:40
Chief growth officers because they're
00:18:43
really there to grow the roles and
00:18:45
responsibilities and the skills of
00:18:48
everybody in the company and that means
00:18:49
they've got to understand this complex
00:18:52
you know multi-dimensional problem we
00:18:55
have in business skills I mean you can
00:18:58
get deeper and deeper and deeper and
00:19:00
deeper into the role you're in but as
00:19:02
you know and if you've read the book
00:19:03
range which is a wonderful book about
00:19:05
this the most successful people in
00:19:08
business have cross-domain skills and
00:19:11
this is going on in HR by the way one of
00:19:13
our big themes for HR over the last year
00:19:15
is is broadening the capabilities of HR
00:19:18
people this is true in sales and
00:19:19
marketing and engineering and Tech and
00:19:22
so we're trying to build inside of
00:19:24
companies these systems that can
00:19:27
integrate and understand these
00:19:29
cross-domain skills that people need and
00:19:32
companies are really struggling with
00:19:34
where to put this data and where to get
00:19:36
this information so this is just a you
00:19:38
know very very small picture of the
00:19:40
complexity that companies are dealing
00:19:42
with
00:19:43
I don't need to tell you how complicated
00:19:44
it is there's many many categories of
00:19:47
this Market there are many subcategories
00:19:50
of that market it all fits into this uh
00:19:54
Big World of HR technology HR technology
00:19:56
is roughly a something 20 25 billion
00:20:00
dollar market in and of itself Microsoft
00:20:02
has entered it Google is getting in into
00:20:05
it uh I even talked to some folks at
00:20:08
tick tock tick tock is building an HCM
00:20:11
system I have no idea why they want to
00:20:13
sell one of these things
00:20:15
um so uh you know in a parallel universe
00:20:18
to you guys there are conferences going
00:20:20
on to just help people understand that
00:20:23
final thing I'll just sort of leave you
00:20:25
with is AI it is very clear to me as an
00:20:30
analyst and a technology kind of guy
00:20:32
that AI is going to upset this apple
00:20:34
cart in a major way
00:20:36
many many of the things that we buy and
00:20:40
build and use in corporations are based
00:20:43
on traditional transaction models you
00:20:46
know Learning Management Systems which I
00:20:48
know most of you know what they are are
00:20:50
basically old-fashioned Mainframe
00:20:53
oriented transactional systems once we
00:20:56
have ai everything's going to change
00:20:58
we're going to develop content faster
00:21:00
people are going to be to look for
00:21:02
information and get training directly
00:21:04
from the chat bot we're going to have
00:21:06
you know new ways of training using chat
00:21:10
and prompt interfaces and we're going to
00:21:12
have richer and richer VR and other
00:21:14
forms of content as well so there's a
00:21:16
lot of exciting opportunities for all of
00:21:18
you anyway I just want to leave you with
00:21:20
this I hope you found this interesting
00:21:21
like I said it was a 20-minute overview
00:21:24
of a very complex topic and I look
00:21:27
forward to meeting you I'm going to be
00:21:28
in a couple of round tables later and
00:21:29
also be signing a book in a little bit
00:21:32
later but thank you for the opportunity
00:21:33
to speak
00:21:36
thank you
00:21:37
foreign
00:21:39
[Music]
