0:00:05 Welcome to the HR Tech Spotlight podcast. I'm Deanna Shimota, CEO of GrowthMode Marketing. The HR technology market is crowded and we know it can be hard to find the best software solutions for your business in the sea of sameness. On this podcast, we shine a spotlight on some of the best up and coming technology options out there. Check it out if you are interested in learning about new innovative solutions available in the market, and if you are with an HR tech company and interested in being considered for a guest spot, stay tuned for details at the end of the show.
0:00:45 Hello. Hello. Today's episode of the HR Tech Spotlight features Click Boarding, an employee experience platform providing modern, compliant HR solutions that impact new hire growth and retention. My guest is Mike Ehrle, CEO of the company. Mike, it is great to have you on the show.
0:01:03 Great to be here. Thanks for having me. Yeah.
0:01:07 So tell us about your background in the HR Tech.
0:01:10 Oh, well, let's see. I started in finance and somehow I found my way to sales and client management and everything else and was really on the employee benefit side of things. Worked at UnitedHealth Group, then Highmark Health, and eventually made my way to Ben Admin Technology, which converted into several different things in HR Tech, but worked at Hodges Mace, which was ultimately acquired by a Light, which if anybody knows a light, used to be known as Hewitt.
0:01:40 So Alight is a multibillion dollar big organization out there in the Fortune 500 space, had this vision that Alight could be just great in the onboarding space and wanted to get into onboarding pre boarding a lot of different things in that space, and tried to buy Click Boarding at a light. And when that didn't happen, I decided to leave a light and join Click Boarding and help them go to the next stage. So it's either too little or too much, depending on how you view things.
0:02:12 So let's talk about Click Boarding and what the product actually does.
0:02:17 So Click Boarding is a mobile first SaaS solution in the enterprise space predominantly, although it really works in any size. Employer. We're an international technology that is really designed to say employer. You can deliver a different experience for your employees, your future employees, from the day the offer letter goes out to the day you show up on day one. And that's often a gap that many employers find frustrating. And the big HCM systems, which everybody depends on and loves, well, the reality is they're great at lots of stuff, but they're not great at any one little thing.
0:02:59 And so where we have found our niche is really driving compliance and the engagement of that new individual into the organization. And I hate the word engagement, but this is driving an entire experience for that individual who's about to jump into a very large organization or a medium sized organization and letting them know what it's going to be like at the same time allowing all the compliance things I nine background check, drug screening, tax dynamics to occur.
0:03:30 So we offer that unique to every single employer in a way that can deliver a pretty exceptional experience. Sounds like a bad commercial, but that's what we do.
0:03:41 So you said you hate the word engagement. Rumor has it you're not a fan of the word onboarding either. What do you have against those words?
0:03:50 Well, I think they're overly used. I think they're confusing. When I hear the word engagement, I feel unengaged. So I don't even know what that word means anymore. Years ago, because I shared, I was in the employee benefits space. Years ago, wellness was the word. Everybody was talking about wellness 1520 years ago or whatever it was. And it's relevant and it's important, but it's overused and too just vague. So the same with engagement. What does that mean? Engagement means well, obviously I'm engaged in what I'm looking at, but there's too many ways to apply that.
0:04:27 Engagement and onboarding are just too broad in their definitions. So in our business, as an example, onboarding really means pre boarding. So we're doing everything, as I said earlier, from offer letter to day one. That's before you're even a formal employee. So you're not onboarding, you're pre boarding. And then day one is a totally different dynamic in our solution or whomever the other technology solution may be. And I think that same indictment is fair to put on the word engagement. Am I engaging?
0:05:03 What does that mean? And if you go to all these websites, engagement and retention are two things that are used all the time right now by everybody. But how can you really measure that and how can you really make an impact?
0:05:16 I'm going to think of you every time I hear someone use both those words.
0:05:20 Now, my apologies in advance.
0:05:25 So, Mike, what do you think is the big challenge or problem that you see facing HR departments?
0:05:32 Just if I were in an HR department, could I answer it from that standpoint?
0:05:37 Absolutely.
0:05:38 If I were in an HR department, I would feel completely overwhelmed. You have to be good at all the stuff and you're wondering, how in the world are you going to get that done when your budget is smaller? I don't think the employers have gone back to their pre 708 HR budgets. I think they got used to their seven and eight budget cuts and they stayed pretty flat ever since then. And the housing crisis invited lots of employers to make some cuts, and I think HR was one of the first areas they made those cuts. So Fortune 500 companies that used to have many resources behind HR are now half or a third of the size of what they used to be. And I'm pulling that number out of thin air, but they're a fraction of the size of what they used to be, but yet they're asked to do more.
0:06:30 So if I were in an HR team, which I greatly empathize with those individuals, very difficult to focus and solve the problems and the challenges that they're asked to solve. And so I would feel quite overwhelmed. And I see that a lot because when we meet with prospects or current accounts or whomever, and you're talking to those individuals, they'll look at you and they'll say, oh my gosh, absolutely, we need this. We absolutely need help on this topic.
0:07:00 Yet they also need help on 30 other topics. So how do they get it all done? That's the challenge.
0:07:07 Yeah, I see that too. I mean, no doubt it's a tough job and there's a lot to figure out and manage on a day to day basis. And that's where companies like Click Boarding come in, obviously to help ease the burden for the HR professionals. But as you and I both know, the HR technology market is very crowded with options, and it's overwhelming at times for HR tech buyers to choose the best solutions. When you think about Click Boarding, what would you say is your company's unique point of view in the market?
0:07:42 I think it's differentiation in a different way. So we found a sliver of the marketplace that just about any employer we speak to acknowledges immediately with a big head nod like this, oh my gosh, we have that issue. So what appealed to me about Click Boarding, which is an eight year old firm with some very large enterprise logos, mainly in the United States, but also in Europe, India, and other areas of the world, what appealed to me so much about this space is it's an unsolved dynamic for most firms.
0:08:15 So the big HCM players pretend as if they have this robust onboarding again, I hate that word, but onboarding solution in the space, yet they don't have really pre boarding. They don't have everything that's ahead of that. So if I think about your question the right way, I am very drawn to this, and where I find Click Boarding to be unique in the marketplace is that we're solving something that most employers themselves, as individual employees, were disappointed in. So it's not difficult to find somebody and say to them, how was your experience when you started at that firm? And oh my gosh, they'll stop and say, it sucked.
0:08:59 And that seems to be the common response. And so if it sucked, if that's the case, how can we solve that? How can we make it exceptional? How can we make it exceptional from not just a compliant layer for HR, for the individual managers within that firm, but make it totally exceptional for individual about to join that company so that they go through this and they feel as if they're joining a culture that they can connect to, that they want to stay with.
0:09:31 And at the same time, it meets all the legal and compliant dynamics that they need to go through at the HR and manager team. So, I don't know, I think that's where we fit in the marketplace and it's a lot of fun to be there because it's a big unmet need.
0:09:50 How would you say Click Boarding helps make an exceptional experience for employees as they're coming on to a company or pre boarding?
0:09:59 You did not prep me with these questions. So I love that. And so what I like about that is here's my unparnished, unprepared answer. My unprepared answer is we make that unique in that even though we're a SaaS based solution. So you can listen to a million podcasts about SaaS, which simply means repeatable technology that can scale, scale, scale. We are the same. But doing that in the enterprise space means you better be able to configure uniquely for that employer experience.
0:10:33 So I think what makes this so great and exceptional for that employee, your question is, we are designing this for this employer this time and that employer that time, and we're doing that all over the world. We have some very large employers that say it's great. Our employees in the United States need X, but our employees in India need Y, and our employees in Brazil need Z. And so it's designed to configure and allow for that malleability.
0:11:06 And when an employee who is not quite the employee, so still technically candidate a pre hire is going through the experience, they're starting to build a digital relationship with their new employer. They're starting to understand and learn more about the culture of what it's going to be like in that employer. And it's not just a matter of saying this is where you need to be on day one and this is what you need to think about. And here's the acceptable attire, which we all handle in the platform, but we're also learning about the employee throughout that, why did that person want to join that company?
0:11:42 And we're learning, and it's what we call click retain it's touch points throughout this process. We're learning on the prem. We're getting data in a good way, data on the individual as to why they join. They join because of the manager, the culture, the company, and then we check back with them in day 714, 30, 60, 90, all the way up to a year. And we can compare those data points and show that by demographic group and show this is what's occurring for the HR team, but that's creating a unique experience for that individual.
0:12:15 And we can learn how to make it even better for them and to give them the resources that they may need and connect to all the other HR platforms that might exist at that employer. They might have learning management tools, they may have other things that can coach them. They obviously have a payroll platform and some other things that they can connect to so they can become familiar with all of those pieces before they even start and they can get to another team.
0:12:44 Okay, what type of companies would you say are the perfect fit for your solution?
0:12:50 It seems oddly, it seems because we can appeal to any size employer, but it seems the more complex, the uglier, big, nasty ones seem to be the ones that are most interested in what we do. It seems the more complex, unfortunately, or fortunately the situation, those employers have a dramatic and immediate need to have a conversation. And we're having conversations actually right now with, gosh, 40 or 50 of some of the biggest employers in the United States at least, and some across the world that are really saying, we're tired of this issue and we need to solve it. I think, oddly, COVID helped us in that respect because it made folks aware that, of course, being on site was not as possible in those moments. So a remote, mobile friendly solution designed for them was very important.
0:13:49 So I'd say the right type of employer is an employer that has complex needs. They typically are an HCM model. Not to pick on any of these companies, but it seems to be an Oracle and SAP workday type client is really excited to have us because a lot of those employers say, yeah, great, those big HCMS have a solution. Maybe for a pre hire prior to day one, but they don't want that non employee to be in a workday, an SAP, or an Oracle until they're a full employee.
0:14:27 Because that same system also has a lot of other data. And I'm not implying that there would be a security issue, but a lot of those employers, when we talk to them, their It teams say to us, we want something separated, we want the firewall. Even though we're connecting with APIs and we feed all that data right on in, they want the firewall. So we seem to be a good solution for that. So the right employer is a large employer, normally a multinational who has different needs by country.
0:14:58 Is that too long of an answer? That seemed like a long answer.
0:15:01 Not at all. So you've touched on the different aspects of what Click Boarding solves for organizations. What impact have you seen with the companies that work with Click Boarding?
0:15:15 So I love that reduced ghosting quantify that one. So that one's a big deal. So reduced ghosting, reduced HR time, cost, reduced managers time and cost, very different situations. So an HR individual only has so much to do with the onboarding. The pre boarding the new hiring manager has a whole bunch to do with it. So saving them time allows them to put their efforts towards other more meaningful things that are revenue generating for the company.
0:15:49 So reduced time on the HR department, reduced time on the hiring managing teams, increased oh, here I go, increased engagement. So I'm a hypocrite now. Increased engagement on the employee front where they're starting to understand their employer. All of this, of course, means higher ROI for the employer increased compliance. We've had a lot of employers who've had significant compliant issues, whether it's I Nine issues, and they have not been very compliant with their I Nine processing or background checks or whatever it might be. But lack of I Nine compliance is not a small deal. It's not too hard to work up a $2,100 penalty per person in the I Nine arena, and we can make that almost go to zero.
0:16:39 So we've seen impacts with greatly reduced ghosting because we have what's, almost a Domino's Pizza tracker in the background so while the pre hire is going through this experience on their phone, a linear step by step experience, which you can't progress to the next step until you finish the one that's right before you. Well, the employer behind the scenes by location can see exactly where that pre hired is.
0:17:08 More importantly, they can see where they are not. So if somebody is not progressing to the next stage, you know you have somebody that has become disengaged and most likely is not intending on showing up on day one. And so you can get ahead of it, either the hiring manager or the HR team call that new hire and say, why haven't you taken your I Nine? Why aren't you going through the background check process? Why haven't you taken your drug screening? You haven't filled out which zip code you're in, which we have our own dynamic tax forms and everything else by zip code.
0:17:42 Why haven't you done that? And they know those folks who are not going to show up by virtue of that alone. And we have dashboards that can show all this. So I'd say that's where we have shown very clear evidence and employee experience. We have one employer I would love to say their name on here, but I can't. They told me they have 177 HR Tech partners. 177 HR Tech Partners. We are number two as far as Employee net promoter score and experience, which we take great pride in. I'd really take greater pride if we were number one.
0:18:23 And for a podcast purposes, I should just say we are, but we're not. That'd be a fib. So we are number two. I don't know who number one. Is, but we're number two out of 177 though, where they had such horrible employee net Promoter scores. Before they had 19, and now they're 77. So in the employee net promoter score world where you can go from -100 to plus 100 to be a 77 on a 200 point scale is a very big deal.
0:18:50 Yeah, that's pretty good. I cannot imagine having to manage that many technologies.
0:18:56 I can't either. I can't imagine I know. How about the API connections there? You don't want to get anything wrong.
0:19:03 What a nightmare. So what is the future vision for your technology?
0:19:08 Well, we're doing a lot of things, the full lifecycle now of what we consider onboarding. Obviously you spend a lot of time in the pre boarding space. That seems to be the genesis, the foundation of solution that we offer to our client base. And quickly. What that client finds, or what we find is as we work with them, they're making a major acquisition. They have people that need to crossboard. Crossboard means you're moving from one department to the next.
0:19:41 They have offboarding needs, they have other retention concerns where our technology can help. So we are doing all those things today. So we start with pre boarding, then we move to onboarding. Day one needs Crossboarding M and a activity offboarding click retain, which is a freestanding product but also is built into our product. I think we're going to be doing a lot more there. We're looking at a couple of acquisitions where we say, that's really interesting in this space.
0:20:14 We could use that in our portfolio of solution set. I could see us doing a lot more on the full lifecycle to make that experience very unique and provide a different set of data for our employers to understand how their employees are doing in general. So employee health, and I don't mean wellness, I mean employee health as far as are they staying at your employer or not? And there are applications in our technology that can really help that employer understand that's weird, this demographic group over there is leaving us or is unhappy with us, which we can help them understand, and creating ways for them to retain those individuals instead of seeing those individuals go out the door.
0:21:03 And that has huge impacts for the employer. I think that's a big part of our future. We start here, but then we can expand across that board and really add in a lot of different solution sets.
0:21:16 Very cool. What do you think is the biggest hesitation that you see companies have when they're implementing a solution like yours?
0:21:23 Oh, that's easy. So how to combat the notion that the all in one can get it done? They already have the all in one. Well, workday has this thing. Why can't we just turn on the workday module? Yeah, I can't wait to get a phone call from workday tomorrow. But Workday and frankly, we connect to them all the time. We're dealing with tons of employers that have workday and they're a fine company. I'm not saying anything disparaging yet.
0:21:54 This is not their core set. This is not what they do. They are nowhere of all, but they don't have one thing. They're not masters of one little sector and that's where we are. So I see an employer struggling with understanding until they dig in the justification for why you need to buy this one unique thing. When doesn't that exist in our all in one platform? And that's difficult when you're talking to the CFO of a fortune 500 company that CFO is dealing with a million things in a day, and they're dealing with a multibillion dollar budget.
0:22:33 And they're paying their HCM, Oracle, SAP, Workday, whomever it might be, three, 4 million a year. I'm making up the number. And now they have this new budget item that they didn't have before. Why would they do that? So it takes that conversation, it takes digging in and showing the ROI and why this is so important to have, and how the experience for that new hire is going to be greatly improved.
0:23:01 Yeah, it's kind of like you have two extremes. You have the companies that think they can do it with one platform, and then you have the ones that have 177 platforms.
0:23:12 And that one with 177 platforms has a very big HCM that we would all recognize. But they also have made so many acquisitions, and they are international. And I love to pick on India, if you will, not in a negative way. But India, when somebody resigns in India and joins a new company, your notice and your pre boarding is 60 days. It's not two weeks like it is here. It's 60 days. So how you handle that in India is completely different than how you handle that here. And so that one employer with 177 different HR platforms or solutions, because how you handle things in Mexico is different than how you handle things in the United States, India, Japan, et cetera.
0:24:07 So I think it's the multinational nature of that that leads to so many solutions.
0:24:13 Yeah, that totally makes sense. So what things should someone purchasing a technology like Click Boarding take into consideration as they evaluate the options?
0:24:25 Well, what are they ultimately solving for? Is the first thing shooting from the hip here? But why are they even looking at this? What is their burden? What is their problem? Start with the problem and work backwards from there. So if you are frustrated by lack of compliance or poor experience or something like that, that's where you start from. And then you start looking at different variables, like security.
0:24:55 Security is everything. So SoC, two, type two GDPR compliance, both of which, of course, we have. But it goes beyond that. Security is huge. Looking at how you can integrate that solution with the rest of your solution partners is very important. Looking at it from the consumer, and that's how I do view it. I view it as an employee, as a consumer. Look at it from the consumer's point of view. Are you making their lives easier or are you making it harder?
0:25:28 Those are pieces I would look at. Like, for instance, I came in here with, we're going to do this, this, and this. And one of the things I said was, we need to have an app. We have to have an app. How can we be in a technology company not have an app? And we don't have an app. And so I was we got to have an app like some nut job here. And our whole team sat and showed me the data that proved that there's I don't know a third of people that don't want to download an app or will not no matter what, they're not going to download that app.
0:26:03 Well, you can't afford for a third of folks to do that. So we have to create everything in very mobile, friendly experiences so that somebody in a text message or in an email can click on our link. And we are taking them right on through in a very simple way. And the system is memorizing where they left off if they choose to log out or stop. So if I'm looking at a technology right now at the employer level, I'm looking at security, I'm looking at what you're solving for.
0:26:35 I'm thinking about how that experience is really easy to use, that doesn't turn off the individual going through it.
0:26:48 What final thoughts do you want to leave our audience with?
0:26:53 There's a lot happening out there, and there's a lot to be overwhelmed by, but the whole market has shifted. It's not like it was 30 years ago where the war was on getting the job. Now it is on earning the right to keep your employee and earning the right to get the right talent. So the talent war is on, and it is deep into that. And so being in the talent wars, which is not going to stop anytime soon, because we have more open positions and we have people to take them, can't afford to lose folks. And you need technologies that help you get them into your organization the right way and then hold on to them.
0:27:36 And so my final thoughts would be that's exactly what we do. And I think that that's quite interesting and why we have such interesting runway ahead of us.
0:27:49 Mike, thank you for joining me on the HR Tech Spotlight to talk about Click Boarding. It was so great to have you.
0:27:55 Thank you. I appreciate you taking the time.
0:27:58 No problem. Where can our listeners go to learn more about your company?
0:28:03 One word Click Boarding.com. Even though it's two words in the official name Click Boarding, but WW dot Click Boarding.com. I feel some obligation of still saying www. I'm from that era.
0:28:15 I hear you. Me too. Excellent. Well, thank you so much again for joining us. And for those listening, I appreciate you tuning into this episode. Check back again for the next episode as we spotlight another HR technology out in the market. Thanks for listening to this episode of the HR Tech Spotlight podcast, where we showcase some of the best up and coming HR technology options in the market. If you are an HR tech company leader who would like to be considered for a guest spot on this program, please contact me via growthmodemarketing.com
0:28:55 or reach out to me. Deanna Shimota on LinkedIn and if you found this show informative, subscribe, connect with us on social media and leave a review. This is Deanna with GrowthMode Marketing signing off. Thanks for listening. We hope you'll tune in again next time.