HR Archives • SAP.iO

Kelli Kohout In San Francisco, HR & People Engagement

The Bersin Company + Sounding Board Research Explores The Essential Need For Mentoring In Leadership Development

Sounding Board, the first cohesive Leader Development Platform created to address the leadership gap, has made its latest research, “Coaching for Success: A New Wave of Offerings for a New Breed of Leaders,” available. Coaching is a proven high-value investment leveraged by high-performing companies, according to Josh Bersin, global industry analyst, and Nehal Nangia, director of Research for The Josh Bersin Company.

According to Bersin’s research, coaching and mentoring are the most important developmental and talent management needs for HR professionals, accounting for 48%, followed by in-depth courses (42%), more responsibility (39%), rotational assignments (36%), and external networking/conferences (36%). (32 percent). Coaching is particularly unique in that it helps develop leaders through experiences, exposure, and constructive evaluation.

Sounding Board Co-founder, President and Chief Coaching Officer Lori Mazan said, “Not only is continuous leadership development foundational to business success, it’s also a desirable developmental growth opportunity for employees. This research validates how Sounding Board’s ability to integrate both personalized and group coaching into leadership development programs helps to drive significantly higher talent and innovation outcomes.”

Driving the Industry Shift to Quality of Hire, Crosschq Positions for Aggressive Growth in 2023

Labor Market Shift from Quantity to Quality Hiring Increasingly Escalates in Importance

Crosschq continues to drive the fundamental shift using outcomes to optimize talent acquisition. As market conditions fluctuate in response to global economic pressures, labor shortages and supply chain challenges, Crosschq is expanding and changing the paradigm for hiring.

Last fall, Crosschq published the industry’s first Quality of Hire research report, designed to help employers hire better. “More than 80 percent of talent leaders still believe they don’t have adequate data to optimize talent acquisition,” said Michael Fitzsimmons, CEO of Crosschq. “Talent acquisition leaders are shifting their mindsets from hiring quickly to hiring quality. That’s why whether during times of high-volume hiring or highly specialized hiring, organizations rely on Crosschq to save time and money while ensuring data-driven quality of hire.” To date, Crosschq has supported talent leaders in more than twenty-five million hiring decisions across its suite of applications.

During 2022, Crosschq’s revenue grew by 308 percent, and it welcomed its 400th customer, including market leaders Deloitte, WPP, Pinterest, Allegis, Saks Fifth Avenue and Roku. The company also forged new partnerships with Lattice, Sterling, Paradox, Teamable and Goodtime and expanded integrations with Workday, Greenhouse and SAP.

To further increase its analytics capabilities, Crosschq acquired TalentWall, the popular recruiting platform built by recruiters that enables them to collaborate productively through the use of data. TalentWall Co-founder, Jake Paul, joined Crosschq’s leadership team as Chief Product Officer. In his new role, Paul has been instrumental in driving deeper analytics capabilities to include more than seventy-five readily available Quality of Hire reports and added global capabilities in localizing infrastructure in the EU to support GDPR and support for Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin and other languages.

Offering Bespoke One-On-One Mentoring To Employees Helps Retain Workers

What keeps CEOs up at night is worrying about how to attract, recruit and retain workers. The job market is so challenging that Apple is awarding bonuses up to $180,000 to keep software engineers from being poached by rivals like Meta, Amazon and Google. Deskless people who work in warehouses, fulfillment centers, restaurants, bars and department stores are being offered sign-on bonuses, wage increases, flexible schedules and free college tuition.

Innovative startups are seeking out new creative ways to help businesses mentor, upskill, cross-train and help employees succeed, so that the odds will increase that people will stick around. GrowthSpace, an Israeli-based tech company, offers a clever way to help CEOs fight attrition by offering personalized learning and development programs (L&D), driven by an artificial intelligence data-driven platform.

The startup connects workers with an appropriate mentor. The employee will have one-on-one, personalized programs that match each employee’s challenge with the right expert, coach or mentor. In addition to specifically tailored advice and guidance, based on the employee’s needs, managers receive feedback simultaneously that measures progress to ensure the plan is efficient and effective.

Sacramento Region Innovation Awards: Humanly.io develops software to make the hiring process more efficient

Humanly.io is the winner in the Software and Hardware category of the Sacramento Region Innovation Awards. CREtelligent Inc. is the runner-up.

Humanly.io has developed artificial intelligence software that helps companies get beyond bias in screening job candidates.

The company’s software also helps automate screening and scheduling of hiring for companies and recruiters, but the special sauce is a suite of software that helps recruiters and hiring managers be more efficient during job candidate interviews and virtual interviews over teleconferencing. In essence, the software helps the interviewer get out of the way of the interviewee.

Humanly.io is headquartered in Seattle and Sacramento, and it raised a $4.2 million seed funding round in September from investors including Moneta Ventures of Folsom and Growth Factory Capital in Rocklin.

Humanly.io was the first funding announced from Rocklin entrepreneur and investor Mark Haney’s Growth Factory Capital fund. Humanly.io is also in the first cohort of companies in the 16-week Growth Factory accelerator program that started in September.

The September funding was led by Zeal Capital Partners in Washington, D.C., and also included Spark Growth Ventures, Basecamp Fund and Y Combinator. According to venture capital tracking website Crunchbase, Humanly.io has raised a total of $5.3 million since its launch in 2019.

SAP.iO Foundry Singapore Kicks-Off “Future of Work” Startup Program

September 14, 2021 — SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) launched a virtual startup program focusing on human resources (HR) technology and the future of work solutions at SAP.iO Foundry Singapore in collaboration with SAP SuccessFactors. The six international startups have been selected by a jury of SAP experts and partners to join the program.

Over the next 13 weeks, SAP will accelerate these early-stage startups that are focused on recruiting, talent and team management, and wellbeing solutions. The startups will have access to curated mentorship from SAP executives, exposure to SAP® technology and application programming interfaces (APIs), and opportunities to collaborate with SAP customers around the world. The program will conclude with the SAP.iO Cohort Demo Day in December 2021.

“We are operating at a time where every industry has been disrupted, and almost every organization is undergoing some kind of transformation. People are at the core of this transformation and the heartbeat of business. We see a continuing trend of leaders looking for innovative ways to empower people with the information and capabilities they need to succeed in a digitized world,” said Aaron Green, Head of SuccessFactors, SAP Asia Pacific & Japan. “By partnering with SAP, these startups are joining an innovative ecosystem, and we look forward to working together to accelerate digital transformation for our customers in the world of Human Experience Management.”

The following startups are participating in the SAP.iO Foundry Singapore program:

Accredify empowers organizations to create, issue, and verify digital credentials like educational certificates and employee records. Employers and third-party verifiers can check if credentials are certified true copies without time consuming manual cross-referencing.
Boldly’s platform enables both coaching and mentoring in one place. With the largest global database of professional coaches, Boldly ensures both coaching and mentoring culture can scale with exceptional operations, coaching and mentoring resources.
Tagvance’s personnel and asset tracking solution provides real time and high precision location tracking of people and assets in industrial spaces for improved safety and productivity.
Talent Games helps companies find and assess top millennial talent using recruitment games. Talent Games’ gamified candidate assessments are scientifically proven to accurately evaluate each candidate’s personality, cognitive ability, aptitude and behavior, all while they play the game.
Wagely empowers companies to provide employees with affordable and sustainable financial services, including access to earned wage access (EWA). This allows employees to access already earned but unpaid wages to reduce financial stress and boost their productivity, motivation and retention.
Springday is a B2B software-as-a-service platform with wellness programs, assessment tools and content to enable employees to be happier and healthier.

About SAP.iO
SAP.iO delivers new partnerships and products for SAP by accelerating and scaling startup innovation as well as incubating employee ventures. SAP.iO brings together innovators from every region, industry, and line of business to transform how businesses run. Since 2017, SAP.iO has helped 300+ external startups and internal ventures accelerate their growth while enabling thousands of SAP customers to access innovation. For more information, visit https://sap.io/.

Kelli Kohout In San Francisco, HR & People Engagement

SAP Startup Spotlight: The Mom Project

SAP invests in a lot of promising startups, and it’s sometimes hard to keep track of all of them. E-3 Magazine has selected the most interesting companies to showcase in our SAP Startup Spotlight Series. In this article, we will take a look at The Mom Project.

The Mom Project is the leader in helping businesses attract and retain female talent. With a community of more than 500,000 talented professionals connecting to over 2,000 companies, the company is committed to building a better workplace by harnessing the oft-overlooked intellectual workplace power of moms. In this interview with founder and CEO Allison Robinson, we will explore what makes The Mom Project unique and what’s next for the startup.

E-3 Magazine: How does The Mom Project work?

Allison Robinson: On top of offering $500,000 in grants as part of the Stronger Together Fund, The Mom Project created programs to support community members during their time of need as we all continue to navigate the coronavirus pandemic that sent ripple effects through every aspect of life beginning in March 2020. RALLY, for example, is a peer-to-peer mentorship program giving community members the space to solicit and offer advice. Resume Rev, a no-cost program that helps moms put their best foot forward, saw more than 15,000 resumes created and downloaded within the first 90 days. RISE, the inaugural initiative from our not-for-profit MomProject.org, launched in September 2020 to elevate 10,000 women of color over the next three years through a new upskilling model that puts moms first with scholarships to highly sought-after technology certificate programs including Google and Salesforce.

As of July 2021, there are more than 500 women enrolled in RISE via one of six certification tracks including Salesforce Administration, Google IT Support, and Google IT Automation with Python, which can be completed in as little as six weeks. In Q2 of 2021, RISE also introduced additional certification tracks such as Project Management, Data Analysis, and UX Design to further accelerate the supply of qualified leaders of color to meet demand for diverse talent by committed employers and partners of The Mom Project.

Mentor Spaces Raises $2.5M to Bring More Diverse Talent Into the Workplace

Denver-based startup Mentor Spaces announced the closing of its $2.5 million seed funding round. The American Family Insurance Institute for Corporate and Social Impact led the round, with participation from several others.

Mentor Spaces launched in 2020 in order to bring more diversity into the workplace. Countless companies pledged to do better in their diversity, equity and inclusion efforts last year. But saying you’ll do something and actually doing it are two separate things. Underrepresented groups can be excluded from the workplace not because the intent to hire them isn’t there, but instead because of what Mentor Spaces calls the “network gap.”

As Mentor Spaces points out, research shows that location, education and prior employment can make a person 12x more likely to be given a certain opportunity. Because of this, marginalized groups must work much harder to secure the same opportunities as non-marginalized folks, or risk remaining on the margins.

CENSIA Raises $21m in Series A Funding to Bring Bias-free Intelligence to Human Capital Management

Censia, a leading provider of Talent Intelligence technology, today announced it has raised $21M in Series A funding in a round led by Marbruck Investments. Marbruck joins existing investors Streamlined Ventures, Merus Capital, The CXO Fund, and CerraCap bringing the company’s total funding to over $30 million.

With this funding, Censia will expand go-to-market efforts, scale their API-first offering, and continue product innovations for talent acquisition and workforce planning powering HR technologies of the future with AI.

Censia was built on the belief that unconscious bias in talent decisions is affecting billions of highly capable people around the world from getting opportunities they deserve, contributing to the talent shortage, and impacting organizations’ bottom line.

Knockri Named a Top Startup for Tackling Racial Bias & Discrimination

Startus Insights analyzed 326 startups & scaleups tackling racial bias and discrimination. Knockri, a member of SAP.iO Foundry San Francisco’s HR Tech Cohort was named one of their top 5 promising picks. Check out the full list here.

SAP.iO In Foundries, Article, HR & People Engagement

Keep Employees Connected, Productive, and Healthy with Innovative HR Apps

This is a year that will not soon be forgotten, where all aspects of life were turned upside down. In 2020, COVID-19 has caused the world to rethink human interaction and forced companies to shift how they do business.

Had the pandemic hit 10 or even five years ago, the response and recovery would look much different. Individuals and businesses have responded with remarkable resiliency providing hope for a better future.

Every organization, no matter its size or business model, has had to reexamine how it does business and keeps its workplaces safe. Ensuring hand sanitizer is readily available, surfaces are regularly disinfected, and layouts are configured so employees and customers can maintain proper social distancing are just the basics. Introducing touchless door systems for conference rooms, bathrooms, and even elevators; offering flexible work schedules; and making it possible for workers to pre-order meals from the cafeteria so they can really “grab and go” and not spend extra time waiting in lines are further examples of what companies are doing from an infrastructure point of view.

These changes impact the employee experience. Think of the experience of workers returning to their jobs on the factory floor or in the office. Will they be required to have their temperature checked daily? If so, how long will the wait be and will they end up lining up outside in unpleasant weather to do so? Or how are employees handling the added stress of so much change and uncertainty? They may be caring for a sick parent, trying to homeschool their children, or dealing with a partner whose income has been cut. On top of that, the interactions employees have with others that make work more enjoyable have changed or gone away. Lunch together at the cafeteria, an impromptu coffee meeting, or simple chitchat between office mates or workers on the production line are different post-pandemic.

For HR leaders, it is necessary to take all of these things into consideration to keep employees engaged and productive.

SAP.iO In Blog, Tel Aviv, Portfolio News

How GrowthSpace is Personalizing Professional Development

The world is moving faster, and technology is transforming how we do our jobs. It is clear that the way we work is changing rapidly. So… shouldn’t we also change how we train and develop our employees?

As large organizations continue to utilize outdated and generalized professional development methods in the effort to help their employees grow, studies have shown that 75% of HR staff find that their professional development programs are ineffective, and 60% of employees are dissatisfied with professional training they receive (Deloitte Workplace Survey 2018).

This is where GrowthSpace comes into the picture. GrowthSpace is an online one-on-one coaching platform that offers high-quality coaching for tech companies, at the cost of an average workshop. GrowthSpace’s tailor-made service pinpoints an employee’s greatest challenge, matches the employee with the perfect coach who has relevant, hands-on work experience from a similar organization, and creates a personalized 2-month coaching experience. Whether an employee is looking to become a first-time manager, achieve KPIs, or boost creativity, GrowthSpace has the right coach and the right program to meet his or her specific needs.