HRchat Podcast
Listen to the HRchat Podcast by HR Gazette to get insights and tips from HR leaders, influencers and tech experts. Topics covered include HR Tech, HR, AI, Leadership, Talent, Recruitment, Employee Engagement, Recognition, Wellness, DEI, and Company Culture.
Hosted by Bill Banham, Bob Goodwin, Pauline James, and other HR enthusiasts, the HRchat show publishes interviews with influencers, leaders, analysts, and those in the HR trenches 2-4 times each week.
The show is approaching 1000 episodes and past guests are from organizations including ADP, SAP, Ceridian, IBM, UPS, Deloitte Consulting LLP, Simon Sinek Inc, NASA, Gartner, SHRM, Government of Canada, Hacking HR, McLean & Company, UPS, Microsoft, Shopify, DisruptHR, McKinsey and Co, Virgin Pulse, Salesforce, Make-A-Wish Foundation, and Coca-Cola Beverages Company.
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Podcast Music Credit"Funky One"Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
HRchat Podcast
Recognition Revolution: The Hidden Data Gold Mine in Your Company with Jesse Harriott
What happens when artificial intelligence meets human connection in the workplace? Jesse Harriott, Executive Director of Workhuman iQ, reveals a groundbreaking approach to workplace analytics that's transforming how organizations understand their people and culture.
Dive into the Human Intelligence 2025 release from Workhuman, which leverages recognition data to uncover hidden insights about skills, leadership, and collaboration. While traditional HR technologies focus on operational metrics like headcount and turnover, this approach analyzes the human moments that drive performance – when employees recognize each other's contributions and strengths.
"Human intelligence is about unlocking the data that's been there all along," Harriot explains. "It's turning feelings into facts." By applying natural language processing to unstructured recognition moments, organizations gain visibility into their "culture graph" – how work actually gets done beyond the formal org chart. This creates powerful applications for leadership development, succession planning, and retention strategies.
The approach has particular value for identifying "hidden gems" – potential leaders whose contributions might be overlooked in traditional performance reviews. Rather than relying solely on self-reported skills or closed-door leadership discussions, Human Intelligence reveals patterns of exceptional performance based on peer recognition.
Ready to transform how you understand your organization's culture and talent? Discover why companies are turning to human intelligence to complement their talent strategies and build more inclusive, high-performing workplaces.
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Welcome to the HR Chat Show, one of the world's most downloaded and shared podcasts designed for HR pros, talent execs, tech enthusiasts and business leaders. For hundreds more episodes and what's new in the world of work, subscribe to the show, follow us on social media and visit hrgazettecom and visit hrgazettecom.
Speaker 2:Welcome to another episode of the HR Chat Show. Hello listeners, this is your host today, bill Bannum, and joining me on the show this time for the first time is Jesse Harriot, executive Director over at WorkHuman IQ. Jesse's role focuses on expanding the research efforts of WorkHuman IQ and building out WorkHuman's data science capabilities. An esteemed research and analytics professional with more than 20 years of experience, jesse has advised many private and public organizations on analytics and labor market issues, including the White House, the Federal Reserve and the US Department of Labor. Jesse, it's my pleasure to welcome you to the show today. How are you doing?
Speaker 3:I'm doing great, bill, thanks for having me. I'm looking forward to our chat today.
Speaker 2:Thanks for listening to this episode of the HR Chat Podcast. If you enjoy the audio content we produce, you'll love our articles on the HR Gazette. Learn more at hrgazettecom. And now back to the show. Beyond my wee introduction just now, why don't you take a minute or two and add anything that I've missed out?
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely Bill. My name's Jesse and I lead data science and AI for WorkHuman, and WorkHuman, as some of you may know, is a social recognition company, so we provide software that enables employees to thank and recognize one another for high performance. That's happening inside of the workplace, and my team really sits at the intersection of technology, culture and human behavior, and so we're focused on helping organizations leverage that recognition data in smarter, more meaningful ways and, as you mentioned, I've spent my career working in analytics and AI, but what really excites me and my team is really applying those techniques to the human side of work and helping leaders and people inside of corporate America clearly build more connective cultures and then really drive performance through the recognition and belonging. So it's a fun job.
Speaker 2:Wonderful. Thank you very much. So we are recording this episode in mid-April. Workhuman has its amazing US conference coming up next month, the middle of May. I'm pretty upset because I can't make it. Your team kindly invited me to come and cover the event on behalf of the HR Chat Pod and the HR Gazette, but I am already committed to a couple of other events. My amazing new colleague, jackie Clayton, will be there. Do you want to just take a minute or two and tell our listeners a bit about the conference and, for those who are thinking about maybe attending, why they should come along?
Speaker 3:yeah, absolutely. I mean the work human lives is a unique event. Right, it's not a typical vendor conference. There's no exhibition floor. It's really an opportunity for people to come together, all grounded in the mission of driving culture for their organization right, and the importance of culture and then how that drives business outcomes. And so it's people coming together to take a moment of reflection to hear from industry leaders you know across the globe, on how others are doing that, how they're building a case of return on investment for those initiatives, what are some of the best practices that they're practicing, and then how they can apply that to their own organization. So it's really a timeout moment that really lets people step back and say why is culture important and how do we drive that? And obviously, this year there will be a lot of focus on human intelligence, the launch that we just announced, which is how to leverage that human-centered data combined with, you know, artificial intelligence and what that can tell you about your organization.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, on that note, jesse, let's talk a bit more about WorkHumans' Human Intelligence 2025 release. What does it mean for the HR industry?
Speaker 3:Well, you know, I mean, in the current environment, all organizations we know are being asked to do more with less right, and so there's pressure to kind of use all of the resources that we have available. And human intelligence is really about taking that recognition data that companies already have right and by recognition data, who is recognizing whom? What are some of the things that they're seeing in others' performance? And the human intelligence release is about how to find that information, scale it and make sure that it's uncovering insights in the skills and the human performance area. And it really the launch represents a turning point for HR and kind of the HR analytic space, where traditionally HR technologies focus more on operational efficiency Do we have the right headcount? Can we measure turnover, compensation data, things like that critically important things.
Speaker 3:But human intelligence is about kind of unlocking the data that's been there all along that recognition data, those human moments of connection. So there's a lot of natural language processing to pull all of that into insights and turn it into intelligence to help you understand you know how people are connecting from. You know in the workplace, how is work really getting done? We all know we have the org structure, but this is sort of the culture graph right of how people are collaborating with one another, who are the critical people in the organization and what's the important work that they're getting done.
Speaker 2:So you're a bit of an AI expert, jesse. How has AI helped to allow you guys to reach those new data points, to find data that perhaps wasn't available a few years ago, to?
Speaker 3:you guys out there and they're being scaled and made available to everybody. But the reality is, if it's sitting on top of bad data, it's not going to be that useful and it can give you kind of misguided insights. And what we're starting with is sort of that human data. So a person saying to another person I see you, you did an excellent job in that client meeting the other day. Without your contributions we wouldn't have gotten to where we needed to be, those level of details. And then we're taking the AI technology and putting it on top of that data to uncover things like skills.
Speaker 3:So somebody may mention things like leadership or negotiation skills, or even technical skills get mentioned in recognition moments all the time. So pulling apart that unstructured information to then put it, put some structure around it to create a essentially a knowledge graph of all of the work getting done and happening inside of the company and then being able to tie that to connection, and so it's really turning the feelings into facts, if you will. So turning those soft moments of human authentic connection into insights around how people are showing up at work and what they're being recognized for.
Speaker 4:Hi everybody. This is Bob Goodwin, president at Career Club. Imagine with me for a minute a workplace where leaders and employees are energized, engaged and operating at their very best. At Career Club, we work with both individuals and organizations to help combat stress and burnout that lead to attrition, disengagement and higher health care costs that lead to attrition, disengagement and higher healthcare costs. We can help your organization and your workforce thrive, boosting both productivity and morale across the board. To learn more about how we might help you and your company, visit us at careerclub.
Speaker 2:Okay, so you're collecting all of this wonderful data. It's giving the senior management a better idea of what their people are doing and how they're doing it and who's achieving what. What does that mean to the bottom line, Jesse? What does that mean to a company that's looking to, for example, build up leaders for tomorrow based on the data that they're collecting about their employees at the moment?
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's a great question. I mean you think about succession planning or you think about leadership development and all companies right, we're always on the lookout for who are those next generation leaders, and this kind of recognition data is a real and human intelligence is a real, unique complement to that. So many times we're relying on 360s, we're relying on, maybe, closed door sessions among a leadership team, we're relying on who's seen the most in meetings, but the reality is there are lots of different types of contributions and ways that people show up to add value, and that human intelligence can help you create a bench strength of hidden gems and hidden leaders that might not be as obviously visible, and do it in a way that's instantaneous, using AI on top of this data, and then help you create candidates for promotion, candidates for development. Also create self-awareness among those leaders of how are they showing up, how are they seen, what's their reputation inside the organization. So doing this at scale is a great complement to a traditional performance review process and we see clients using it that way all the time.
Speaker 2:OK, so it's a great tool for succession planning. It's a great tool for leadership development. I'm assuming also that HR leaders can use human intelligence to improve talent retention generally and, of course, reduce over throughout the workforce, whether or not that workforce are going to be leaders or not. Is that fair to say?
Speaker 3:fair to say yeah, absolutely, I mean certainly. We know that when people receive recognition they're much more likely to stay, they're much more likely to say I feel included or I belong. They're much more likely to increase their performance level or kind of increase that discretionary effort right in their job function. So you can use that human intelligence data to find the bright and dark spots of where that's happening and where it's not. So we have clients, for example, that will combine their performance ratings with the recognition data to see well, making sure all of those high performers are being recognized and maybe there's some gaps there that we need to close. Or make sure that you know we're creating state plans with some of those high performers as well, and so using it for retention. You know the multiple ways that clients are using that human intelligence for retention.
Speaker 2:And, let's be real, I guess the flip side of this as well is that the data that's offered by a tool such as, or by reports by, you know, human intelligence, intelligence 2025 release, and and others. It can also provide the materials for an hr team if they're unsure about whether or not a particular employee is achieving within their role and and if they're not, I guess that gives them an opportunity to have that conversation to help them develop, but also, you know, if it then doesn't work out to part ways and and to switch focus. Is that fair to say?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean the human intelligence data really is used to amplify the positive. We would never advocate for kind of relying on recognition data to make separation decisions. This is about how people are showing up and representing their strengths at work, and so it can be a great tool for helping people understand. Well, if there are areas of performance expectation that aren't showing up in recognition, there's a conversation to be had about why that might be the case. But it also helps identify those real star performers and people who are really providing outside contributions, beyond beyond maybe even what's expected in their role. So having those developmental conversations that help you understand you know how you're showing up, that's the way that that the human intelligence data is is most powerful and in terms of your company's culture, the company culture at work human, uh, do you guys?
Speaker 2:do you guys live what you espouse? Uh, talk to us a bit the company culture at WorkHuman. Do you guys live what you espouse? Talk to us a bit about the company culture there, how it analyzes its existing employees, how it tries to encourage them to make new connections, try new things based on their skill sets. Talk to us a bit about your company culture and how you try to live that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely. I mean many companies when they set a recognition program, right, they have a budget. They might pick 1% of their payroll and say, okay, we're going to allocate this to social recognition. We've seen and we're studying the science of that, so we know it works and so we don't even cap our budget.
Speaker 3:We have basically an organic approach to when employees see something good happening, they're able to make that recognition moment and that creates a culture that's very dynamic, it's very supportive, it's very business and outcome focused, and so you know you'll see some employees receiving, you know, five, 10 recognition moments per month and that's.
Speaker 3:We encourage that. That's that's okay, because we know they're authentic, we know it's deepening the human connection at work and we know it's driving business performance. So we're kind of a laboratory in action for that, which is cool, and so a lot of people find that invigorating working in that kind of environment. And the reality is, is the data on top of that really helps you understand, as an employee, what does good look like in your team? What does good look like for you? Are you charting a career that's going to be where you? You know it's going to take you where you want to go, or, you know, shining a mirror up to that, to say, ok, maybe I need to lean in in this way, differently, or show up differently that way, and so creating that live, exciting, dynamic, positive culture is what WorkHuman is all about.
Speaker 2:Okay, wonderful. Thank you very much. We are already coming towards the end of this particular conversation, so I'll just have to get you on again pretty soon, Jesse. Just two more questions for you before we wrap up for today, though. I guess the next question is what else, and what I mean by that is how does the human intelligence 2025 release align with broader trends in the workplace culture and employee experience and anything else that maybe we've missed about the release so far?
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's a great question.
Speaker 3:I think we're entering an era where employee performance and culture inside of an organization they've often been separate conversations but the reality is they're blending right and they're becoming one conversation. So you can't extract culture from employee performance, employee experience, and so human intelligence as a kind of an additional lens onto what culture looks like for your organization, for your team, combined with you know how that data can be used to chart your own path and understand what your skills are inside an organization. That's, you know, certainly in line with a lot of those broader trends, and we know, you know every company saying they want to transform into a skills-based culture. But the reality is a lot of the skills measurement is sort of somebody raising their hand and saying I have this skill, you know, and or somebody giving them that label. But with that recognition data, with the human intelligence, it's performance in action. So it's creating a skills map, your personal skills profile using your actual work, happening in real time. So it's a unique compliment and fits well into a lot of those broader trends that we're seeing.
Speaker 2:Rock and roll. Thank you very much. And just finally for today, how can our listeners connect with you by the way, I've just sent you a LinkedIn connection request myself and, of course, how can they learn more about the Human Intelligence 2025 release?
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely, bill, and thanks for that. Anybody can go to WorkHuman and see all of the information about the Human Intelligence release. There's a short video on that with a few industry guest folks that you'll recognize and learn more about human intelligence, and I certainly would love to connect with any of our listeners on LinkedIn at any point. So, thank you.
Speaker 2:Excellent. Thank you, Jesse, and this is just as a reminder, if you have not got your tickets yet to work human live, be there or be a rectangle. It's looking like an amazing event. I'm very jealous. If you are going, please try to connect with my colleague, Jackie Clayton, who will be on the floor wandering around trying to do interviews and such. But for today, Jesse, thank you very much for being my guest. Thank you, Bill, had a great time and listeners as always. Until next time, happy working.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening to the HR Chat Show. If you enjoyed this episode, why not subscribe and listen to some of the hundreds of episodes published by HR Gazette and remember for what's new in the world of work? Subscribe to the show, follow us on social media and visit HRGazettecom.
