Steve Goldberg - The State of HR Technology: Lessons from 2026 and Predictions from 2027

[00:00:03] Welcome to the HR Data Labs Podcast, now part of the WorkDefined Podcast Network. Join us as we explore the vital role of compensation, strategy, data, and people analytics in navigating today's complex business world. With the resources of WorkDefined, we're now bringing you deeper insights and actionable ideas from top experts. Now, here's your host, David Turetsky. David Turetsky

[00:00:33] I have with me one of my old, old friends. Well, not- The keyword is old. No, no, no, no, not old. Steve Goldberg. And by the way, if you don't know Steve Goldberg, what rock have you been hiding under? Steve is one of those guys you could talk to about pretty much anything, but from a compensation perspective, especially HR technology and compensation, Steve's the guy. And that's where I've kind of known Steve for a long time, because whatever circles we've been in, we've always talked about that. So first of all, how you doing?

[00:01:03] I'm doing well. Thank you. I take great pride in the fact that I'm one of the oldest indie influencer through, and my practice has never been more robust. I'm not trying to brag. I'm not trying to impress anybody, because I'll probably retire next year. But other than that, yeah. I mean, it just seems like a lot of emerging players are reaching out to me, and that's now what I'm known for, working with a emerging player.

[00:01:27] And if you see him on LinkedIn, and you will see him on LinkedIn a lot, and you'll see him on Work Carousel. So Steve's one of those guys you can always count on to have something brilliant to say about a lot of things, but mostly around coffee. Yeah, that's my middle name is Nuggets. Steve Nuggets Goldberg. It's not a bad thing. No. So, Steve, what's one fun thing no one knows about you?

[00:01:52] Wow. There's at least 10. So I will just give you the first thing that comes to mind. Hmm. I went for a master's in social work for an MBA in HR, and when you go for a master's in social work, that's not the fun thing I'm getting to. But when you go for a master's in social work, you're going to serve an internship, a non-paid internship. And the day that they were handing out the cards with where you're going to be serving the internship, I went to SUNY Buffalo, State University of Buffalo.

[00:02:22] I went there for the MBA in HR. But for the social work internship, I had a premonition that mine was going to be a little bit different, and it was just one of those premonitions. And I'm looking around me, and people are opening up their envelopes, and it's VA hospital and children's hospital, and this and that. And mine was adequate correctional. Wow.

[00:02:40] So, basically, it was not like walking around in general confirmation, because I care about self-preservation. But it was teaching a class called the transition class for inmates that are eligible for parole within a year. Right. Doesn't mean they're getting out, but they're eligible. And I put together a presentation called Getting Hired. You know me, I just like putting together presentations.

[00:03:01] Right. And so, the thing is, David, even if half of the 30 in the class were totally asleep, the ones that were paying attention, I could tell we were connecting. Right. And they were felt indebted to me that I cared that much. Wow. And this carried forward that we're talking about a long time ago. 40 years ago is when that happened. Wow.

[00:03:22] And when I moved to Florida, somehow the person that runs the transition class at Florida State Conventory, or Florida State Prisoners, called, reached out to me. And so, I've been doing it at Florida State Prison, too. That's great. Thank you. So, that's a fun, I don't know if that's a fun thing, but that's a fun thing. So, we believe in giving back no matter what we do as part of our religion. And that is definitely giving back. I appreciate it very much. We call that a mitzla.

[00:03:52] Yes. That's wonderful. Yes. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. No, seriously. So, what we're going to be talking about today is the state of HR technology in 2026, what we learned in 2026, and then what we think is going to happen if we put on our crystal ball, and we're looking to our crystal ball in 2027. But before we do, this podcast is brought to you by Work Carousel, our new social media platform.

[00:04:17] Work Carousel is where you can bring your authentic self to work and tell the truth about it and not hide your self. Authenticity is one of my themes. Yep. That's cool. Yep. So, go to workcarousel.com slash join. But let's get into the heart of the matter. What has shocked you? What has surprised you in the VATR technology? What has happened to you in the HR technology?

[00:04:39] Well, it's hard to zero in on one thing. Shocked me. A stat that surprised me a little bit. Even though if I would have thought about it more, I probably would have said that that makes, would have came to the conclusion that that makes sense. But that stat that I saw recently was almost 2,000 HR tech startups started this year. Almost 2,000. Well, I'm part of that. But yeah. Wow. So, it's kind of a serendipity at its best. Yeah.

[00:05:09] But, well, where I was going is, so I used to be much more associated with the major players and the enterprise space and the vendors, right? Right. I've had over 60 vendors as clients. I'm very fortunate in that respect. But the last few years, I've been known for guiding emerging players much more. Right. And literally every week, there's another emerging player. Now, there's pros and cons in everything. Yeah.

[00:05:35] You cannot send invoices to an emerging player like you do with this big player. But you know what? I'm not in it. I'm really in it at my age to keep my brain soft. Yeah. And to let people benefit from the 40 years that I've been in this industry.

[00:05:51] For those who don't know, Steve was very generous with his time. But everything you learn from Steve really does segue apart. So, not advocating for Steve on any other reason that when you listen to this man talk, you literally learn something that will cost. Seriously. Very kind of you. No, it's true.

[00:06:08] Very kind of you. And certain things are well thought out and so they lead to positive outcomes. But speaking of positive outcomes, something that just kind of hit me one day is a way to differentiate myself from the other influencers out there. This is kind of a revelation that hit me five years ago was, and today it's more common to focus on strategic outcomes as opposed to the means to get there.

[00:06:34] Yeah. But five years ago, I said to myself, I'm not Gartner. I'm a one person shop. And so I want to be known. What do I want to be known for? What I want to be known for is a particular strategic outcome, elevating organizational agility. That's right. So I decided that five years ago, more than half the talks and blogs I've done in the last five years are on that topic. Wow.

[00:06:57] So companies like UKG and several others actually call me in social media. They refer to me as Mr. Org Agility. That's amazing. Thank you. So I developed, you need a framework. It just came to shoot in the breeze. Right, right. So I've developed several frameworks around it. And one of them is kind of the origins of why I still want to focus so much on elevating organizational agility. I don't do research anymore. I used to do more research myself.

[00:07:23] But when you start doing research on organizational agility, you see really compelling stats and findings, such as there's almost a 100% correlation between the most agile organizations and the organizations that are most financially successful.

[00:07:38] Now, what does an organizational agility really mean in basic terms? It's being out in front of both business risks and business opportunities, anticipating them, knowing the best options, pursue the best option, and execute well and connecting different parts of the business to execute well.

[00:07:58] But, you know, there's kind of parallel stats and findings that relate to, unfortunately, the high percentage of transformations that don't succeed. Absolutely. Right? Change management programs and exercises that don't succeed. Right. A lot of it has to do with organizational agility or the lack thereof. Right. So I came up with something called the ascension test. This is the origins of me focusing on organizational agility.

[00:08:25] What is my ascension test? What are the three most reliable ways, empirically and intuitively, for an organization to ascend the ranks within this industry sector? To me, they were elevating organizational agility, being an employer of choice, meaning you hire and retain top talent. Yeah. And the third was improving employee productivity. Why? Because even small upticks in a large firm, you're making an amount of dollars. Absolutely.

[00:08:50] So organizational agility is what I chose, and I love talking about it. I talked about it in Bangkok and Asia and Europe, and I love doing it. I'm a wind-up doll on that topic. Excellent. Well, we've seen you do a lot of presentations out in the Far East, and I'm sure it's to very receptive bodies as well. Thank you. I appreciate it. Very kind words. Well, I actually saw them say that in the thank yous that they give, because I read those posts about you. Thank you very much. I appreciate it.

[00:09:20] And they're actually very effusive in their praise of what's brought to them. That's so cute. Part of it is that I spend time outside the U.S. I think it's, if you want to, it's a cliche, but if you really want to evolve your career to a point where you're going to be more well-known and more successful, you can't be a one-country person. No. Or in one city. Or in one city.

[00:09:44] We've actually had colleagues who sat in New York, not in a castle, but they've sat in New York and they've dictated from New York. What you've done is you've used LaGuardia and JFK and others and other places to be able to enhance and elevate not only your sphere of influence, but also your understanding of the world of HR and business. Yes. Thank you.

[00:10:08] I was very lucky for those of you that are not that familiar with my background, but I saw it 15 years after getting the MBA in HR, I was head of HR tech, always reporting to a CHRO in investment banks. Right. Three on Wall Street and one in Zurich. Right. The last one was in Zurich, was our first foray into living in another country. Yeah. And so I was global head of HR tech for Swiss bank corporation before the merger with EBS. With Glenn Elliott? Glenn Elliott was there in HR then.

[00:10:37] And so I reported to the CHRO and he used to basically tell me, Steve, I'm going to be responsible, not just for the, I'm not a technologist in the classic sense. I'm more of a domain person. Right. That can figure out where, what technology is relevant. Right. To try to address whatever vision I come up with for the domain. And so my boss, who was the general manager on the Swiss army. Yeah. And I was one of only 20 Americans working. Glenn was there. Yeah. Only 20 of us among 22,000 Swiss.

[00:11:07] Wow. And the GM used to send me, Steve, get an around the world ticket, which I don't know if that still exists anymore. You got to be going in the same direction and stop in four countries. Wow. So I used to get, I used to go to Hong Kong, Tokyo and Singapore and give talks and really immerse myself in the culture. Yeah. Because if you're going to have an influence over optimizing process and bringing a new technology, you got to understand the context. Right.

[00:11:37] And that's largely about culture. And by the way, this was at a time when the investment banking world was growing and shrinking and growing and it was getting into new things. Like this was before the world of derivatives and, you know, there were so many players. I was working at Morgan Stanley at the time. Nathan Hirsch, who you may remember. He worked at Salomon Brothers. Salomon Brothers, right. I was at Salomon also. Right. Exactly. And so then Salomon Brothers, Smith Barney and Citibank. Yeah.

[00:12:04] And, you know, then I went to Bankers Trust and was with Deutsche Bank. So it was a very, very weird world where we all knew each other. But that's how I came across the world of compensation. Right. I wasn't by design. They just said, the CHROs that I reported to said, if I'm responsible for bringing in tech for different parts of HR, I got to have to immerse myself in the operation of that. So running the year-end bonus process in an investment bank, that's a tour of duty.

[00:12:34] You keep your head down on the elevators because everybody knows you know the bonus numbers. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And when I worked for Bankers, I worked with Dick Daniel, who was the CFO. Yeah. And we created models for him of the entire bank. Yeah. How much was total comp and how much would... What was the delta and how did that delta flow or grow and shrink over the years? And, you know, remember the old world where you had to do the accruals and we had to meet with finance on a quarterly basis to go, what's the accrual now?

[00:13:04] Yes. How's it looking? Yes. So it wasn't just around, as you know, David, it's not just about target bonus, but it's about commitments. Yeah. And so many executives... Yeah. And also currency exchange risk. Oh, of course. Because we also were paying out on a global basis, so we also had to worry about the currency exchange. But this all goes full circle because now we come back to the world of now where it is now so complex. The world of pay is so complex.

[00:13:32] We're paying out in most countries in the world, especially if they work for an investment bank. Actually, most organizations who work globally. And so we're dealing with lots of maturity or immaturity, still based on countries. And the global scope of everything is just crazy. Where is the world of HR technology going in the woods? Yeah. So where's it going? I mean, it's, as we know, a year ago, nobody was told to very few people, it's only about agentic.

[00:14:01] Now, unless you have agentic in every sentence. But you know what? It's logical and it makes sense that the routine, repetitive parts of jobs where you don't need ingenuity, where you don't need human judgment, where you don't need necessarily compassion. Right. It makes sense. Unfortunately, the industry, a lot of good people in the industry have been displaced with agentic. Right.

[00:14:26] But I think if they are resilient, which is part of organizational agility, individual agility, they will find. They got the talent and the skills they'll find at home. Right. So one of the phrases I use that I think encapsulates where it's going, and I use this nugget, if you will, a talking point, it's make the invisible visible. And making the invisible visible branches into so many use cases.

[00:14:52] You think about every area of human capital management, which I define as really leveraging the workforce as a primary source of competitive advantage. Right. So many aspects of making the invisible visible, which of course AI is going to facilitate. Right. But whether it be skills, like what skills, what skills are becoming more or less important based on business price and priorities changing. We talked compensation just now. When is it a good idea to pay above market, right? Because it's worth paying above market.

[00:15:22] The AI is not going to tell you to pay above market. Right. Exactly. So there's so many use cases that come under making the invisible visible. Ramp up time. You don't hear a lot of even the major plays in learning development. They're not leveraging AI to its fullest yet. It's so nascent in terms of use case sophistication. I'm waiting to see things like... Here's an adjacent skill that I need to learn. How long is it going to take me to become at this level of proficient? Right.

[00:15:52] I want to see AI there. Where do I want to see one other? One other is you have a need to resource a project. You basically have five options. Regular employee, contractor, training incumbent, internal transfer, or outsource. Yeah. I haven't seen any AI capabilities that'll tell you in this situation, in this context, you should outsource that. Right. So that is a big runway still ahead of us in terms of AI and HCM. I think, Steve, what you need to do is have a larger conversation on this.

[00:16:21] And I know you got to run. Thank you so much. Thanks for everything you've done for the industry. My pleasure. My pleasure. Take care. All right, everybody. Thank you. Stay safe, everybody. Thank you for listening to the HR Data Labs Podcast. Don't forget to hit subscribe and share it with your network. You can also check out the recordings on Spotify or the HR channel, now on Roku and Fire TV. Thank you. Take care and stay safe. Take care. Bye. Bye.