As an HR professional in 2022, you might find yourself awash in a sea of newfangled acronyms, struggling to determine if your HRMS provides just a mere shadow of the technical wizardry offered by HRIS, ATS, or HCM software.

There’s a multitude of HR tech tools on the market, made possible in part by a surge in financing last year, when VCs poured $16.8 billion into HR tech firms globally, according to data previously shared with HR Brew. Now, HR professionals are having trouble figuring out which products best suit their teams’ needs.

“You have a lot of tools that are doing the same thing,” Jeffrey Fermin, digital marketing director at remote workplace consultancy WFHomie, told HR Brew. The redundancy can wind up costing companies time and money. “We’re seeing a lot of companies make the investment in…multiple systems just to take care of one thing…And they’ll have to end up paying for both systems.”

To avoid “analysis paralysis,” Tripp Mansfield, senior talent acquisition specialist at the business matchmaking platform Nift, explained, HR teams first need to take a high-altitude view to address their most pressing issues. Then, lower-hanging flaws can be snuffed out, hopefully leaving them with fewer expenses and headaches.

More products, more problems. Joey Price, CEO of small business consultancy Jumpstart:HR, attributed the tech glut to two causes: “The influx of money and the volatility of place of work.”

The remote-work boom prompted a need for tech to manage a new workplace paradigm, but the proliferation of services has left HR teams a little underwater, he explained.

Trust the process. When searching for the right tech, HR leaders might feel they’re rummaging through haystacks in search of a needle. But the experience of Mansfield might provide a glimmer of hope for those at their wit’s end. Keep reading here.—SB

Do you work in HR or have information about your HR department we should know? Email [email protected] or DM @SammBlum on Twitter. For completely confidential conversations, ask Sam for his number on Signal.

Members of employee resource groups are often lauded for their dedication to enacting change and creating more equitable workplace environments. But as various ERG leaders previously told HR Brew, such initiatives can require enormous effort that often goes uncompensated.

ERG leaders at companies including ADP and JustWorks are now signaling something of a shot across the bow to their respective employers, disclosing the details of their ERG compensation (or lack thereof) in an open-source spreadsheet. Released earlier this month by the nonprofit Parents in Tech Alliance (PTA), the goal of the spreadsheet is to spread awareness of the “invisible labor” performed by ERG members across the country and motivate companies to make good on their pledges to champion DE&I, Tet Salva, director of strategy and operations at the PTA, explained to HR Brew. “This sheet builds accountability.”

How does it work? The database is the first of its kind, according to Salva, and currently includes entries from ERG leaders at 20 companies, who describe their employer’s ERG pay policy, where it’s listed, and when it went into effect. Organizations’ Just Capital rankings are also included. Only ERG leaders who belong to the PTA can populate the list.

Eventually, Salva explained, the organization wants the list to be shared far and wide, much like the variety of pay transparency databases that have proliferated in recent years.

Zoom out. ERGs have made progress in their calls for compensation. Keep reading here.—SB

Do you work in HR or have information about your HR department we should know? Email [email protected] or DM @SammBlum on Twitter. For completely confidential conversations, ask Sam for his number on Signal.

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Tracey Arnish is VP and head of HR at Google Cloud. She became interested in HR after taking an organizational behavior class in college, and went on to work in sports and the public sector before joining Google Cloud. Arnish recently spoke to HR Brew about how the company scaled hiring during Covid-19.

How would you describe your specific job to someone who doesn’t work in HR? I’m responsible for developing and growing a vibrant culture that aligns our employees across Cloud to a core vision and purpose.

What’s the biggest misconception people might have about your job? Many people still may think of HR as “personnel,” where the job is to simply hire and pay people. However, when an organization truly understands the value of HR, they leverage their HR partners as strategic advisors to their business.

As strategic advisors, we have the benefit of seeing a business end-to-end. This positions us to have a unique perspective on everything from how the business is organized, the talent gaps that exist, and how the external environment should influence our business strategy.

What’s the most fulfilling aspect of your job? We’ve seen incredible employee growth at Google Cloud over the last three years—roughly half of our employees were hired during the pandemic! That means that most of our employees have never met each other or their manager in-person, had lunch with their team, or attended a live off-site—it’s all been virtual. In fact, we’ve onboarded tens of thousands of Cloud “Nooglers” through newly developed virtual onboarding experiences.

As an HR leader, this sets up a great challenge in uniting our entire organization behind our vision for Cloud.

How were you able to scale hiring in such a short amount of time? Keep reading here.

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Today’s top HR reads.

Stat: One-third of all UK office workers—and one-half of those who belong to Gen Z—said they’d quit their job if their employer didn’t reduce or eliminate their carbon footprint. (EuroNews)

Quote: “As graduates, you hold the cards. Your talent is in demand from multinational companies and big financial institutions…my message to you is simple. Don’t work for climate wreckers. Use your talents to drive us towards a renewable future.”—António Guterres, secretary general of the United Nations, speaking to graduates of Seton Hall University on the environmental responsibility of young workers (Grist)

Read: In 2021, Amazon made $33.36 billion in profits—but attrition cost it $8 billion. Here’s what happened. (Engadget)

Hybrid work revisited: More companies are offering hybrid options, even as the world returns to normal-ish. But are we doing it right? Microsoft’s new web series can show you the way. Join the conversation here.*

The engagement era: On Oct. 27, HR Brew is sitting down with some pros of industry to discuss how orgs can cultivate resilient leadership and workplace culture. Register for this virtual event here. Sponsored by Workday.*

^{*This is sponsored advertising content.}