Harbinger Hosts the Power Hour on Riding the Growth Wave in HRTech and WorkTech
Harbinger Group, a well-known provider of HR Technology services, hosted their Power Hour, this time on an interesting topic – ‘Riding the Growth Wave in HRTech and WorkTech’ on 22 October 2020. The Power Hour is a monthly roundtable discussion with entrepreneurs, investors, and industry leaders from Silicon Valley, other parts of the US and Europe, sharing their experiences and views on HRTech and WorkTech.
Session host Dr. Vikas Joshi, CEO of Harbinger Group, interacted with Erik Rind, CEO of Imagine BC, Ilonka Jankovich, Venture Capitalist, serial entrepreneur, and board member of several WorkTech companies, and Yael Gilboa Kaufmann, Co-founder and COO of Learn In. The panelists discussed emerging markets in WorkTech and HRTech, opportunities to build new features in an agile model, and ways to fast-track market entry into the WorkTech space.
Dr. Vikas Joshi defined WorkTech as a combination of HRTech, Collaboration technology, and Productivity software. “HRTech manages the workforce, Collaboration technology brings the workforce together in the workplace, and productivity software enables them to work and give output,” he said.
Erik Rind emphasized how the market is shrinking for full-time employees or in the USA known as employees on W2 payroll and how the gig economy will soon take over. He shared that advances in AI and robotics, among other technologies, will drive workspace and workforce 5-10 years from now, and it will reduce the number of people in traditional roles. “COVID-19 has had everybody re-examining what work is going to look like. You have to imagine that the conventional W2 payroll and benefit plan is going away. And you need to think of a solution that is going to integrate the gig economy with the same regulatory needs that the HR and W2 space had,” Rind said.
On the point about people shifting from permanent jobs to the gig economy and working independently, Ilonka Jankovich opined that the idea of “work” itself will broaden. She said, “Gig workers will need to find a project aligned to their skill, see how they can reskill themselves for the next gig or the direction they want to take, manage their personal finances, and find a way to stay healthy in a job. So, the responsibility of individuals becomes bigger on the one hand, but also does the responsibility of the employers increases.”
Yael Kaufmann added, “We talk about our degrees that we got many decades ago as if that is the most pertinent part of the education. But really, the decades of work experience are even more relevant in a world where the shelf-life of skills is decreasing.” “We as employers need to start taking responsibility for upskilling and reskilling our workforce, not just because it is the right thing to do but because it is a good thing to do for business,” she said on upskilling and reskilling.
Dr. Joshi proposed two ideas to fast-track market entry into WorkTech – build faster, and partner and integrate. Rind and Kaufmann shared about partnerships they are forging in the new normal as entrepreneurs. Jankovich echoed the importance of integration and being part of an ecosystem in her investment strategy.
An extended team of panelists comprised of Raj Kumar, President, COVID PreCheck, Seema Chaudhary, Chief Alliance Officer at Harbinger Group, Steve Glaiser, Founder and CTO at Jobsurv, and Ward Christman, Founder, HRTech Advisor and Chief Advisor/Co-Founder at HRTechAlliances. They joined the discussion to talk about other emerging issues that included employee screening, the impact on mental health, ways to address attrition and retention, and how the partner ecosystem is evolving the beyond traditional one. You can click here to watch the session recording.
About Harbinger Group
Harbinger Group is a global company providing software technology services for independent software vendors and enterprises, with a specialization in product engineering. Since 1990, Harbinger has developed a strong customer base worldwide. Harbinger’s customers are software product companies, including high-tech startups in Silicon Valley, leading product companies in the US and large in-house IT organizations.
Harbinger Group builds software solutions leveraging digital technologies for domains such as HRTech, HealthTech, and LearnTech.
