Today, digital innovation influences every aspect of our workplace, and more recently, many tech startups are setting their sights on the advancement of human resources.
“Ask any industry veteran and they’ll tell you that human resources is notoriously slow,” says Vip Sandhir, CEO of one such company, Highground. “It’s almost synonymous with red tape, approvals, and the like. It’s quite the juxtaposition with the tech world, that moves at a near mach-5 speed.
“The relationship with HR and tech is important because they’re helping each other reach a middle-ground of proactivity and reactivity,” he continues. “HR tech start-ups are the ones pushing us all forward to help solve organizational challenges, better engage their employees, and improve business outcomes.”
Finding The Next Great HR Tech Company
Over the last few months, Human Resource Executive Magazine held a competition aimed at identifying the next great HR tech company. Of over 150 original applicants, eight companies stood apart as innovators in the space, each having a chance to pitch their solutions at the annual HR Tech Conference in Chicago on October 4th.
The nominees for this year’s competition represented solutions aimed at addressing many of the biggest frustrations and challenges in HR today. After working with expert coaches, each nominee showcased their solutions for an audience comprised of practitioners, vendors, and thought leaders in the HR tech space. Using a format similar to the popular talent contest The Voice, the audience was given the opportunity to vote for the winner of their choice.
This Year’s Nominees Included:
Click Boarding: Click Boarding’s onboarding solution streamlines the onboarding process and makes onboarding an easy, enjoyable experience. The platform allows HR to manage checklists, share tasks with others, and manage all the required federal, state, and company forms. Everyone involved has visibility into what they need to know—no more, no less—and all can take action on what really needs attention.
Clinch: Clinch connects a company’s careers site, content, recruiter, and candidate in a tightly integrated software solution that’s unlike anything else on the market. The platform combines recruitment marketing, employer branding, and sourcing tools in one end-to-end solution. Features include a career site and landing page builder, social and email integration, robust analytics and more.
Highground: Highground offers a cloud-based employee engagement platform to help companies build highly engaged and high-performing cultures through continuous feedback, ongoing employee development and real-time recognition. Companies can more effectively capture the voice of the employee and turn annual performance reviews into meaningful, ongoing coaching conversations.
InvestiPro: Investipro offers a fully-automated workplace investigation solution designed to simplify the way employers conduct internal investigations. The InvestiPro online process walks you through every step, from reference documentation about current employment laws, to plan, to final assessment.
Lifeworks: LifeWorks is a global engagement and wellbeing company serving over 15 million users worldwide. Their employee engagement platform provides a comprehensive employee assistance program, wellbeing, social communications, and recognition and perks solution.
Qwalify: Qwalify reintroduces conversation into the recruitment process, giving a voice to applicants and helping companies uncover people who are passionate about their brand. Qwalify strives to redefine the relationship between employee and employer because conversation is key to companies growing their pool of applicants.
Rolepoint: Rolepoint aims to revolutionize how talent is identified, acquired and retained. Their multi-faceted solution offers employee referral and retention platforms, mobile-friendly candidate applications, and integration with many leading HR systems.
The Chemistry Group: The Chemistry Group is an HR consultancy that helps businesses tackle complex challenges by quantifying what it takes to perform well in their organizations. Their proprietary solutions help organizations hire more qualified candidates and conduct cloud-based performance reviews.
And The Winner Is…
This year, LifeWorks took home the award as 2016’s Next Great HR Tech Company. CEO and Founder Jamie True was honored. “We are immensely proud of winning this accolade as it validates our strategy in delivering wellbeing and engagement by putting employees at the heart of their organization.”
“The world of work is changing faster than ever before,” added True. “Creating an environment where employees are happy and healthy is essential to the success of any modern day business. For business leaders, ensuring their staff feels valued and are therefore more productive and less stressed should be at the top of their priority list.”
As for the other nominees?
“Frankly, it’s an honor to be nominated,” says Vip Sandhir. “HR Tech is a marquee industry event each year and competition is truly fierce. It’s a pervading mentality throughout HighGround and our culture that the employee should always come first. Being nominated among such strong contenders is really a validation of that mindset.”
The world of work continues to evolve, and the speed of this change continues to accelerate as technological capabilities advance. Entrepreneurs in this space continue to find innovative ways to help business leaders drive performance. There’s little doubt that HR technology will continue to open up new horizons and force us to question the way talent management has historically operated.
Chris Cancialosi, Ph.D., is a Partner and Founder at gothamCulture. This article originally appeared on Forbes.