The HR Tech Conference 2024 unveiled shifts shaping the future of the industry. From AI-driven innovation and skills-based workforce strategies to renewed investor engagement and operational efficiencies, these trends highlight the evolving role of HR tech in driving business success. Explore our key takeaways redefining how organisations manage talent, optimise operations, and embrace digital transformation.
5 key takeaways from the HR Tech conference 2024:
1. Renewed engagement from strategic and growth investors
- After a period of pain… Private companies endured the whiplash of a rapid capital influx and growth from 2019 to early 2022, to significantly reduced hiring and budgetary constraints starting in 2022.
- A gradual return to capital efficient growth… 2024 marked a reset and normalisation year. Vendors are emerging from impaired or negative growth with significantly more capital-efficient cost structures and go-to-market strategies, and investors are selectively pursuing opportunistic acquisitions and financings.
- And optimism for 2025… Both strategics and private investors are cautiously optimistic for a healthier M&A and capital raise environment, with a focus on businesses with solid technology and a capital-efficient growth strategy.
2. It’s not the AI that counts, but what you do with it
AI within HR technology is mainstream, with major vendors successively releasing competing platforms. Joule (SAP), Illuminate (Workday), Xanadu (ServiceNow), Bryte AI (UKG), Einstein (Salesforce), and Copilot (Microsoft) have made it clear that “Agentic AI” is mainstream, with seemingly every major vendor at HR Tech marketing AI capabilities.
- What’s clear: The eventual impact to underlying tech will be more fundamental than ancillary.
- What’s unclear in the early innings: The eventual performance winner and impact to the competitive landscape.
Mindset shift: How do we start to envision the potential disruption to traditional ERPs/SORs? As an example of near-term disruption from Agentic AI, consider an HR AI agent scanning through financial statements and personnel data to identify the cause of budget variances, then making recommendations to employee time allocations, hiring plans, or cost reduction strategies at the manager or employee level — giving true operational guidance.
This is not only possible with AI deployments today, but thematically points to overarching trends within the ecosystem:
- An increasingly operational role for HR Tech.
- Prevalence of open APIs to systems outside of traditional core HR Tech.
- Potential for greater disruption within core ERPs as AI agents capture workflow responsibilities.
And in later innings of AI adoption, we’ll find employee-trained AI agents performing proactive services, ranging from the teaching, training, and mentoring of employees to recruiting.
The marketing of AI features, alone, will not yield multiple-expansion value. HR technology vendors must play offense with AI and generate a strategy in response to potential disruption. With the dollars investors and strategics are throwing into these initiatives (and thus accelerating public acceptance and adoption), software vendors must be wary of underestimating the rate of evolution.
3. HR tech is increasingly operations-centric in AI capabilities
The lines between traditional HR technology, finance, and experience suites are increasingly intermingled. COVID positioned HR technology for greater operational significance. The ability to support, connect, and collaborate with a remote workforce and employee retention became strategic priorities, fueling a larger operational role for HR software.
- Demand for open APIs with core accounting systems traditionally thought to reside within the office of the CFO.
- Integrated collaboration capabilities across hiring (ensuring communication across functional interviewing teams), onboarding (process and workflow), training, daily workstreams, and mentoring — the full employee lifecycle.
- AI technologies previously used for customer experience (CX) are being repurposed to drive employee experience (EX), while AI is more broadly accelerating the thematic convergence.
4. Switching stratification from “jobs” to “skills”
The narrative around “skills-based organisations” remained at the forefront. Workforce HR technology is shifting to serve a generationally different workforce that is less focused on job or position titles, and more on capabilities, competencies, and mobility. The technical impact? The basic taxonomy of jobs and hiring is shifting from titular to skill-based, impacting both external recruiting software and applications for internal retention, training, and promotion. HR software vendors are reimaging platforms to support skills-based organisations along the employee lifecycle:
- Pre-hiring sourcing/recruiting and applicant tracking systems focused on skills and holistic organisational and cultural fit.
- Mentoring and coaching software shifting performance assessment from a bi-annual “check-the-box” to an ongoing, fluid perspective (through multi-lens assessments and multi-modal data inputs), empowering improved development and retention.
- Reducing barriers to information that exists within the ecosystem (e.g., benefits information) and external to the core HCM platform (e.g., MDM policies, travel policies) via API to improve employee retention and HR efficiency.
5. Areas of complexity remain elusive and unsolved by larger vendors
While the core HCM systems embark on the AI arms race, areas of complexity that are a thorn in the side of employee experience remain high-growth opportunities.
- The “Last Domino” in Digital Transformation: Following widespread adoption of payroll software and then core HRIS / HCM platforms – there is greater opportunity for growth among more complex operational solutions that organisations are tracking with Excel or pen and paper today.
- Core areas of focus: Complex compensation arrangements, relocation logistics and compliance workflows, and payroll migration are select focus areas.
The HR Tech Conference 2024 highlighted a shift towards capital-efficient growth, AI’s transformative potential, and the increasing convergence of HR, finance, and employee experience. As businesses move from job-based to skills-based frameworks and tackle unsolved complexities, the focus is on operational disruption and innovation. Ready to navigate these changes? Get in touch with our technology team to explore how we can help your organisation stay ahead.
