Microsoft Viva: What’s the Deal?
ICYMI last week — Microsoft just did a cannonball into the middle of Work Tech’s pool with the announcement of Viva, a new platform focused on the employee experience.
Join Ocho’s Book Club: Buy a Book. Help a Kid.
In this month of Thanksgiving, I believe that we all have learned a lesson this year in the importance of gratitude. I know I have. Let’s all be grateful for the blessings we have. We’re grateful to say that The Starr Conspiracy is surviving and thriving.
New CEO (and a bright future) at Cornerstone OnDemand
Cornerstone OnDemand announced Q1 earnings yesterday, a bit of a miss. The miss can largely be explained by March Covid-19 sales headwinds, but that wasn’t really the headline. The big news was CSOD founder and CEO Adam Miller moving to a co-chair role on the board and announcing that former Saba CEO Phil Saunders would […]
It’s not just you. Zoom Fatigue is a real thing.
The explosion of videoconference use in response to Covid-19 has launched an unofficial social experiment, showing at scale what’s always been true: virtual interactions can be extremely hard on the brain.
Employee Engagement and Market Share: The $74 Billion Question
After a couple of weeks in the wild, The Starr Conspiracy’s Employee Engagement Brandscape Report™ has prompted lots of questions. Probably the most frequently asked is this one: “Seventy-four billion dollars? Really? That number seems way too big and impossibly huge.”
5 Reasons Why Co-locating in the Bay Area Matters
These are dark days in Silicon Valley. A chill wind blows through the incubators of Palo Alto and in the canyons of SOMA in San Francisco. Just last Thursday, The Wall Street Journal told us that the sky is falling with startup investors hitting the brakes. This on the heels of the previous week’s CBInsights […]
7 HR Tech Trends to Watch for in 2016
Even though investment slowed down toward the end of the year, 2015 was a banner year for HR technology — the best since 2001 for U.S. startups and a year that included a billion-dollar quarter. Depending on whose numbers you look at, investment in HR and HCM startups was north of $2 billion for the […]
Three Quick Takeaways: Blackhawk Network Completes Achievers Acquisition
Blackhawk Network announced the completion of its acquisition of Achievers Corp. in a press release today. Blackhawk Network CFO Jerry Ulrich commented, “The purchase price of $110 million equates to approximately two times Achievers’ calendar 2014 adjusted operating revenues.”
Achievers Acquisition Analysis: What’s Ahead for Employee Engagement, Rewards, and Recognition?
In an early morning announcement today, Blackhawk Network, a prepaid and payments network, announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Achievers. Terms were not disclosed, but Blackhawk expects the deal to close by June 30. Because Blackhawk is a publicly traded company, SEC filings will be available at that time.
4 reasons for HR tech mega rounds and 5 categories to watch
There’s a ton of money flowing into HR technology companies this year. Of course, there was the half-billion that Zenefits picked up. But there was also $92 million for Virgin Pulse, $70 million for Glassdoor, $65 million for Udemy, and $45 million for HireVue. We hear talk of even more transactions on this scale in […]
2014 CEO Salaries in HCM Enterprise Technology: Extracting or Adding Value?
The New York Times published its 2014 CEO compensation report and continued its steady drumbeat against the whackadoodle nature of executive compensation at America’s publicly traded companies. In a world where S&P CEOs earned 373 times the salary of the average worker, according to The Wall Street Journal — up from 42 times in 1980 […]
5 Reasons Zenefits Will Be the Biggest Bust in SaaS History
Last week, the HR/HCM technology industry experienced a full-fledged unicorn sighting in the form of Zenefits announcing a $500 million round led by Fidelity and Fort Worth-based TPG Capital at a whopping $4.5 billion valuation.
Five Hot Corporate Learning Trends I Saw at ATD TechKnowledge
When it comes to HR technology, it’s always puzzled me why talent acquisition and corporate learning were always viewed as something apart from “talent management.” That separation has largely fallen away over the past few years — especially as much of the hottest innovation in the industry has emerged from these two categories. However, when […]
Wrapup: 3 things left unsaid at HR Tech 2014
[ Updated: Oct. 15, 2014 at 11:45 a.m. ] In the aftermath of the 2014 HR Technology® Conference & Exposition, the industry has a lot to be excited about. Enterprise technology developers seem to be catching up after years of being beat up as laggards behind innovators in consumer technology. User interfaces are getting better. […]
Inside the Globoforce IPO: The Impact on the Companies Focused on HR and HCM
In the enterprise technology industry, the most noteworthy IPO of the year so far is one that didn’t happen — Globoforce. As a category leader in rewards and recognition, its IPO was anticipated to be a landmark moment — the first major publicly traded company in the category. However, when the company abruptly postponed its […]
Inside the Globoforce IPO: An Overview of Rewards and Recognition Companies
In the enterprise technology industry, the most noteworthy IPO of the year so far is one that didn’t happen — Globoforce. As a category leader in rewards and recognition, its IPO was anticipated to be a landmark moment — the first major publicly traded company in the category. However, when the company abruptly postponed its […]
Inside the Globoforce IPO: Two Growth Models in Enterprise Software
In the enterprise technology industry, the most noteworthy IPO of the year so far is one that didn’t happen — Globoforce. As a category leader in rewards and recognition, its IPO was anticipated to be a landmark moment — the first major publicly traded company in the category. However, when the company abruptly postponed its […]
What Happened with the Globoforce IPO?
In the enterprise technology industry, the most noteworthy IPO of the year so far is one that didn’t happen — Globoforce. As a category leader in rewards and recognition, its IPO was anticipated to be a landmark moment — the first major publicly traded company in the category. However, when the company abruptly postponed its […]
This Week in the World: The #HR Blogger Network, Channel Marketing and the Addy Awards
Today, The Starr Conspiracy will be shutting its doors for half a day to prepare for the Fort Worth Addy Awards. Last year, our team took home an impressive ratio of awards to entries and this year, we went all in. I don’t know if we ever actually announced how kick-ass our creative team is […]
All I Ever Need to Know About Marketing I Learned From Patrick Swayze
Let’s begin with a sincere, heartfelt “thank you” to Kathryn Bigelow for some excellent films, but one especially. Before there was Zero Dark Thirty, before there was The Hurt Locker, there was Point Break. A movie about bank-robbing surfers? An FBI agent going undercover as a beach bum? Keanu Reeves? Gary Busey? Patrick Swayze? Yes, […]
