The HR Huddle

Payroll data isn't just a compliance checkbox — it's one of the most valuable, real-time data sets an organization has. This week, we talk about why payroll data (unlike predictive data) reflects what's actually happening in your organization, and why that makes it a goldmine for AI-powered payroll applications — a theme that came up again and again during a recent UKG customer meeting. We also di...

The Future of HR Tech: Trust, Transparency, and Responsible AI AI is changing how HR teams recruit, evaluate, and build trust with candidates — but is the technology keeping up with the ethics? In this episode, we sit down with Daniel Joplin, Chief AI Officer, to unpack what responsible AI actually looks like in practice. Daniel walks us through the real challenges organizations face when adopting...

In this episode of Spilling the Tea on HR Tech, Stacey Harris & Cliff Stevenson dig into the market shifts reshaping how organizations buy, build, and use HR technology. From AI-first HRMS platforms launched by former Workday leaders to global expansion plays from companies like PrismHR, the competitive landscape is moving fast — and the stakes for HR leaders have never been higher. We cover what'...

In this episode of The Pivot Effect, hosts Teri Zipper and Susan Richards welcome guest Amy Gerhartz, Founder & Lead Coach of A Higher Way Of Living, as they talk through what it actually looks like to leave a career you built from scratch - and why the hardest part of starting over is often convincing yourself you belong in the new space. Amy highlights the specific fears that came up when she tr...

In this episode of Spilling the Tea on HR Tech, Stacey Harris and Cliff Stevenson cover several notable moves in the HR tech market, including Betterworks acquiring Rypple and Rod Johnson joining UKG as Chief Revenue Officer, with broader observations about where the performance management and frontline worker markets are heading. The conversation turns to pricing pressure across the industry, wit...

In this episode of HR, We Have a Problem, Cliff Stenvenson and guest Sudeep Cherian, VP Product Marketing at Cornerstone dig into what it actually means to bring agentic AI into the workforce technology stack. Sudeep walks through how Cornerstone's updated platform architecture layers a context graph and pre-built agents on top of the learning, talent, and skills infrastructure customers already u...

In this episode of Spilling the Tea on HR Tech, Cliff Stevenson and Allison Williams, Director of Research Programs at Sapient Insights Group, Anthropic's acquisition of Stainless, the SDK and MCP server tooling company, and what that consolidation means for organizations building on agentic AI. They also dig into the growing tension around AI cost structures, particularly the unpredictability of...

In this episode of The Pivot Effect, hosts Teri Zipper and Susan Richards welcome guest Rajiv Chandrasekaran from Where You Work Matters, an independent data project that analyzed real outcomes for 12 million workers across 1,750 employers over five years. Unlike traditional best-places-to-work surveys, this project measures whether companies actually help people advance, earn more, and stay in th...

In this episode of Spilling the Tea on HR Tech, Stacey Harris and Cliff Stevenson pick up where they left off, working through a long list of market announcements that includes UKG's partnership with Google Gemini, Amazon's entry into agentic hiring with Connect Talent, and SAP's data acquisition strategy as a direct counter to Workday's consolidation play. They discuss leadership changes at isolv...

In this episode of Spilling the Tea on HR Tech, Stacey Harris and Cliff Stevenson work through everything they saw and heard across Infor Analyst Day, HR Tech Europe, Oracle, Workday Innovation Summit, ICIMS, ADP, Workhuman, and Canva. The 29th annual HR Systems Survey is now open, and the hosts share why companies with fewer than 10 employees are a specific target this year and what new finance a...

In this episode of Spilling the Tea on HR Tech, Cliff Stevenson and Tammy Smith, Sapient’s senior manager of data science, mark the public launch of the 29th Annual HR Systems Survey, the most expansive and longest-running survey of its kind. Almost 10,000 professionals representing 4,670 organizations worldwide participated in last year’s survey.  In response to participant feedback, this year’s...

In this episode of The Pivot Effect, Teri Zipper and Susan Richards are launching something new. The Pivot Effect is a podcast built around the individual, where you are in your career, where you want to go, and what it takes to get there in a world of work that keeps shifting underneath you. In this first episode, Teri and Susan introduce the show's focus: the skills, mindset, and self-direction...

In this episode of Spilling the Tea on HR Tech, Stacey Harris and Cliff Stevenson dig into a news week in which the same question keeps surfacing: how much should you trust the data in front of you? Oracle laid off 30,000 employees, and the financial story behind that decision is more complicated than the AI narrative being used to explain it. Meanwhile, a meta-analysis of six major consulting fir...

In this episode of HR, We Have a Problem, Cliff Stevenson debuts as host alongside guest Aly Baxter, Director of Product Management at Indeed, to dig into what's actually happening on both sides of the hiring process as AI use accelerates. They look at why more AI adoption hasn't translated into faster hiring, what recruiters really need from these tools, and how Indeed's Smart Screening is trying...

In this episode of Spilling the Tea on HR Tech, Stacey Harris and Cliff Stevenson recap two of the biggest HR tech events of the spring season and break down what they actually heard from participating CHROs, mid-market HR leaders, and vendors. The conversation moves through a packed week of news, covering acquisitions, funding rounds, platform expansions, and many rebrands. They dig into the grow...

In this fan-favorite episode of HR, We Have a Problem, Teri Zipper and guest Chris Taylor, Founder and CEO of Actionable.co, discuss why most training programs fail to drive lasting behavior change and what actually works. Drawing from data across 9,000 learning programs and over 100,000 participants, Chris shares the proven methodology behind turning workplace learning into measurable results.  T...

In this episode of Spilling the Tea on HR Tech, Stacey Harris and Cliff Stevenson discuss Perceptyx's acquisition of Lyceum AI; the general availability of Insperity HRScale; and the just-announced Sana from Workday. The wide-ranging conversation also gets into Canva’s new Magic Layers for managing the design and content of legacy learning; Grammarly’s controversial Expert Review; people news at E...

In this special episode* of HR, We Have a Problem, Teri Zipper and guest Zach Keep, Manager, Compliance Risk at Paychex, break down the compliance and regulatory shifts that HR professionals, finance teams, and business owners need to track in 2026. They dig into the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and what the "no tax on tips and overtime" provision actually means for employees. The conversation moves...

In this episode of Spilling the Tea on HR Tech, Stacey Harris and Cliff Stevenson cover a packed week of HR tech news ranging from SD Workx’s expanded European payroll reach to Canva’s acquisition of two AI companies that are quietly becoming relevant to HR practitioners. They dig into Workday’s Agent System of Record, now generally available; the DOL's new AI literacy framework; and Matt Shumer’s...

In this episode of HR, We Have a Problem, Teri Zipper and guest Kate O'Neill, Founder and CEO of KO Insights, examine what it actually takes to lead through a period of rapid technological change. The conversation moves beyond AI adoption tactics and into the harder questions around how people make decisions, resist change, and find meaning in their work when automation is reshaping the ground ben...

In this episode of Spilling the Tea on HR Tech, Stacey Harris and Cliff Stevenson break down Workday's announcement of Aneel Bhusri's return as CEO and what it signals about how HR tech companies are repositioning for AI-era challenges. New research reveals employee priorities have shifted more dramatically than at any point in the last 20 years, with organizational stability ranking above feeling...

In this episode of HR, We Have a Problem, Teri Zipper and guest Melissa Reeve, creator of the hyper-adaptive model and author of the forthcoming book "Hyper-Adaptive: Rewiring the Enterprise to Become AI Native," explains successful AI integration requires organizations to spend 70% of their effort on people changes rather than technology implementation. The conversation covers how jobs will be de...

In this episode of Spilling the Tea on HR Tech, Stacey Harris and Cliff Stevenson discuss the latest tech acquisitions while exploring how AI-powered solutions are reshaping employee experience. The hosts address the Eightfold lawsuit and its implications for data privacy, examine CEO perspectives on AI decisions and implementations, and discuss Greenhouse's mission to make hiring work for everyon...

In this episode of HR, We Have a Problem, Teri Zipper and guest Chris Taylor, Founder and CEO of Actionable.co, break down why most training programs fail to create lasting change and what actually works. The conversation explores the gap between understanding new concepts and caring enough to apply them, revealing that most organizations spend 80% of their time on content when they should be dedi...

In this episode of Spilling the Tea on HR Tech, Stacey Harris and Cliff Stevenson kick off the conversation with major acquisition news reshaping the HR tech market, including Coursera's plan to acquire Udemy for $2.5 billion and ServiceNow's $7.75 billion acquisition of ARMIS. They cover significant leadership changes across multiple companies, discuss the just-announced Department of Labor fundi...