Is your trusted advisor to be trusted?

Two things occurred this week that have led me to focus the attention of my August Skills newsletter on the topic of ‘trusted advice’ and the importance of making sure the advice and information you are basing your decisions on are in fact real and to be trusted.

Firstly, Matthew J. Daniel and the team at RedThread Research released a wonderful podcast where they shared that the ‘half-life of skills’ theory is a bit of a fallacy and not actually founded in facts or evidence-based research. You can read a post of mine from last week on this revelation here.

This insight highlights the need to fact check or at least explore the source of research headlines and industry assumptions that have been compiled and socialised by vendors and consultants.  There are no shortages of studies and headlines in the skills space, for example this is an extract from one of my skills presentation packs we frequently share with people:

Whilst I cite the source of the research, I have no idea what type of organisation was surveyed by Deloitte (size, industry etc) nor where in the world they are located or if they are from one country. Similarly, with Gartner's data I am not sure of location, level or employment type of the N=3,370 employees.

However, the headline stats are what gets cut through and get consumed by the market, they influence the opinions of industry players and are used by HR practitioners to support or justify strategy and business cases. They are also loved by HR tech vendors who typically use them to create a sense of urgency or to support their marketing narratives.

So, thank you Matthew Daniel for shining a light on this issue and for making me more critical and wary of the studies and headlines I am bombarded with on a daily basis, particularly in the emergent skills arena.

The second thing to happen to me last week was that I like many other HR/Talent professionals received an invitation to explore the newly released HR Career Navigator tool that has been built in a collaboration between The Josh Bersin Company and Eightfold . In the communication I received the product has been positioned as follows:

“The first career planning tool designed for HR, brought to you by the world’s most trusted HR advisors and pioneers in enterprise-level talent intelligence.

After over a year of innovation and collaboration, we are thrilled to launch our cutting-edge, game-changing, completely free tool dedicated solely to helping professionals like you plan and achieve your goals: HR Career Navigator.

This incredible AI-powered tool combines findings from 25+ years of research, Bersin Academy learning recommendations, and Eightfold AI's market-leading Talent Intelligence platform to provide personalized, actionable guidance custom fit for your aspirations.”

My immediate reaction was wow, this is very cool, sounds great, so where do I sign up?

As I am a curious person who is very interested in all things skills and opportunity marketplaces, and because I respect and trust the Bersin and Eightfold brands I decided to dive right in and set up a profile in the platform. I can see many others have too, including several of my client contacts here in Australia.

However, it took a bike ride and some clear head space to consider this play just a little bit deeper and my inner sceptic started to seep into my thoughts, just like it did 10 months ago when I started my exploration into skills-based organisations.

For those that may not be aware, I must confess to having been a ‘skills-sceptic’ 12 months ago, not because I didn’t believe in the strategy and benefits of being skills-based, but because I hadn’t researched the topic myself and I therefore found myself relying on the thoughts and opinions of others such as the large tier one consulting firms and industry advisors and influencers like the Josh Bersin Company.

A walk on the beach last November got me thinking about the various vested interests existing in the HR/Talent industry. For instance the large consulting firms who advise their clients on strategy but then make significant amounts of money from SI engagements as the supporting tech is implemented (invariably Successfactors, Workday or Oracle depending on the consulting firm). Or perhaps the scaling HR tech firms which are mostly owned by VC companies and high net worth individuals looking for their next unicorn. Or the various influential industry advisors who operate with a ‘pay to play’ format promoting certain vendors over others because of commercial partnerships, financial kickbacks and incentives.

There is also the very likely possibility that several ‘independent’ advisors or industry influencers have directly invested in some of the latest HR tech and skills platforms so are financially self-interested to see them flourish.

With this challenge of ‘independence’ in mind, my research this year sought to question the strategy of skills itself – helping organisations understand whether the skills journey was relevant for them and if so (or not) what to do next. I also wanted to learn about the challenges, pitfalls and learnings of the early movers as well as some of the ingredients of success for those on the journey.

In short, I wanted to establish a well-researched, well thought out and independently formed point of view for myself and my team at TQSolutions rather than simply drinking the kool-aid served up by the usual suspects.

So, back to the HR Career Navigator tool.

Firstly, I think it’s great, the registration and profile build process were simple, the Ai did what it needed to do, and I now have connections saved, career paths to explore and even mentor/mentee opportunities to initiate. In short, very cool!

Bersin Academy learning courses and resources are accessible in the platform which the Ai recommends based on my profile. It is a fully functioning and very valuable ‘opportunity marketplace’ for HR / Talent professionals and the Eightfold platform delivers a great user experience.

However, something has been bugging me and I have realised it’s these words in the initial communication I received:

“…completely free tool….”

Apparently, it was Richard Serra, who in 1973 was quoted as saying “if something is for free, you’re the product.” and herein lies the reason for my discomfort. 

I stress again, I think the initiative is great, Bersin and Eightfold have done a fantastic job, but this is on my mind:

what is the purpose behind the initiative?

what is their end game?

what is the commercial relationship or framework between Bersin and Eightfold?

what does the money trail look like?

what happens to all the data on the global HR/Talent folk that register, who owns it and how will it be used and by whom?

If you are playing on the platform it’s worth reading the Eightfold Privacy Policy to better understand how your data is going to be used: https://eightfold.ai/privacy-policy/

Also, how is this platform going to evolve?

Is it perhaps their intent to build an alternative ‘LinkedIn’ for HR/Talent people globally, think:

• Third party adverts including job ads
• Recruiters and TA professional pay to access the platform or profiles
• Sponsored ‘opportunities’ in the marketplace
• Costed premium profiles for greater visibility or additional features
• Costed community insights and data

Whilst I think it’s great that something could challenge the dominance of LinkedIn, it does trouble me that a significant amount of the HR/Talent industry rely on the Bersin brand for insights and advice, but with this move I think the Bersin business has become more of a vendor than an advisor. In essence, I think HR/Talent professionals have become the product here.

I must state I have no issue with Bersin or Eightfold doing this, in fact I congratulate them, particularly Eightfold who will now receive significant profile and attention from their target economic buyers. However, I think there is a line between ‘Trusted Advisor’ and ‘Vendor’, and I think the Bersin brand may have just crossed over it. 

I feel this move may reduce the value and credibility of Bersin’s research, particularly for the HR tech and skills technology segments. The partnership with Eightfold is likely to have a significant impact on the perception of Bersin’s independence and the organisations commentary on platforms in the CRM and Skills category. 

I think competitors of Eightfold will be very concerned and less likely to let Bersin ‘get under the hood’ of their products and roadmaps too. How can they share their competitive positioning and ambitions with an advisor so deeply in bed with Eightfold?

For me and TQSolutions , we will continue to go to the source for research insights and inputs, that is focusing on speaking with practitioners and companies actually doing the work themselves, or perhaps trusted researchers who have genuine studies of relevance free from the murky waters of ‘pay to play’, commercial kickbacks and incentives. However, these are very few and far between, especially in the skills arena.

So please do not take everything at face value, look deeper into the headlines and 'facts' being presented by the market, sometimes they may well be poorly informed, misleading, and sometimes they may be 'fake news'.

Well now that’s off my chest, I am going to back to being the product again and play on the Career navigator tool and connect with a few people on the platform, please hit me up for a connection!

Before you go: A quick note about TQ’s impartiality and independence.

In its 16 years of business TQ has never entered into a commercial ‘channel partner’ agreement with any vendor and it has no commercial kickbacks or incentives in play with vendors it recommends or introduces to clients.

We work regularly with the likes of Phenom People, Gloat, Beamery, Eightfold, Reejig, Smartrecruiters, Page Up, Avature, Livehire, Hirevue, Enboarder, Sapia and several others.  It is our job to get to know these products well and understand their capabilities and shortcomings so we can make well informed judgements and recommendations to our clients. 

If a product or vendor doesn’t keep up with competitors or we start to hear negative feedback from their existing customers, we will share this ‘buyer beware’ issue with our clients and in some cases will cease including them in our recommendations.

We take pride in the quality of our relationships with these vendors and regularly speak at their events, but we do not receive any money or incentives to introduce them to clients or to advocate for them or promote them in the market. This cannot be said for a lot of advisors, consultants and influencers in the industry.

TQ is staunchly independent, and our clients really value and depend on it when we are working with them. It’s a fundamental element of our value proposition.

If you see me or TQ discussing vendors, sharing vendor information, or attending vendor events, you can be assured we are not being paid to do so, we are there to share our informed and independent point of view with the broader industry for the good of the industry, free from financial influence.