The Turn: Why an HCM Provider’s Finances Should Matter to HR Leaders
Money matters for how product and support shows up when you need it
Unlike some folks I’ve had the misfortune of listening to or reading, I don’t like saying that people chose HR because of an aversion to numbers.
That’s certainly not why I entered HR way back in the day. My math scores and aptitude were much higher in school than in any other subject, including writing.
But like my current world of research, media, and marketing, I found the work of HR to be much more interesting than the incredibly important work of finance and accounting. The applied math is still there and still challenging, but it’s not everything.
If you are a leader in HR, you can understand the basics of finances and while you may focus on your own org’s cash money, you might be ignoring something can really hurt your capabilities: the financial position of your HR tech vendor.
I know a lot of people read George LaRocque’s coverage of market movements and see it as inside baseball. I couldn’t disagree more strongly. And I think if HR leaders thought a little bit about how incentives, trust, and stability work at their vendors, they would understand the stakes better.
That was my argument in Reworked last week. That a company’s financial position should be a formal part of your purchase evaluation for a new (or renewed) piece of tech in your stack.
Why? Stick with me and you’ll see this is less about numbers and more about people.
Enterprise software as a whole is struggling. It now trades at a discount compared to the S&P 500. That never happens.
Multi-quarter stock declines are not great for investors but they are REALLY not good for a stock grants as a retention tool strategy. Worthless stocks make it easier for top talent to walk away, especially if they don’t see the stock rebounding anytime soon.
But it’s not just about retention. Companies with long-term stock dips do stupid things to try to reverse course. They may make a hasty layoff or acquisition, hoping to buoy earnings or Wall Street perceptions. A survey found that 78% of financial executives would sacrifice long-term value to smooth earnings and 55% would skip a positive, longer-term project instead of missing a quarter.
For customers, neither one of those outcomes points to a positive experience with critical software. While we can pretend like it shouldn’t matter, that willing a good product and customer experience can happen in spite of those pressures, it is harder when that hope meets the hard number reality.
While my article focused on stock performance, private, equity- or venture-backed organizations have similar risks. If a startup gets acquired by a larger company, will the product survive? If a company is struggling to attain series B financing, do people start jumping ship? If your favorite company goes private or gets rolled up into a private equity grouping, will you see service or product development decline?
While talking about RFPs and financials is a sure way to probably tank readership this week, I do think it is that important. And with all of the volatility in the market, it’s good to pay attention to it. Especially if you’re signing a contract that might outlive the team you’re working with today.
What else is happening this week?
Peak Workforce. The American labor force peaked in November 2025 and has been shrinking since, the first drop outside a recession in the modern record. John Sumser is one of the only people running the actual numbers instead of just reacting to headlines.
The Biggest Workforce Shortage in U.S. History Is Being Overshadowed by AI. Lightcast projects a six million worker shortage by 2032, and Jill Barth argues the AI panic is distracting HR from the bigger problem: there won’t be enough people left to hire.
The View from Inside the Room. Jess Von Bank asked senior HR leaders anonymously how ready they felt to lead AI transformation, and the average score came back 3.4 out of 5. That’s a more honest number than you’d ever get in a town hall, and it should worry you more than another adoption chart.
Quality of Hire vs Quality of Candidate. Most hiring technology, Steve Hunt argues, measures who is likely to get hired rather than who is likely to succeed once they do.
Daily Pay Can Make You Less Broke. Even salaried professionals deserve earned wage access, since the company already knows exactly when you clocked in, argues Laurie Ruettimann.
Research: AI Is Changing What Employers Want from New Hires. Jim Doucette and Vishal Gaur studied the sectors that hire the most MBAs and found employers want judgment, synthesis, and workflow redesign more than AI fluency.
Mediabistro Weekly Drop: The Out of Office Edition. The newsletter went quiet for two weeks because its writer took a real vacation, and the takeaway is simple: whatever an AI can cover while you’re gone was already the most replaceable part of your job, per Matt Charney.
Is HR the Most Influential Function in an Organization?. HR has the standing, Jennifer McClure argues, to influence every employee, leader, and business outcome in a company, a bigger claim than most HR departments actually back up.
2026 Top 100 HR Tech Influencers. HR Executive’s eighth annual list is out, with the usual familiar names and a genuinely good number of new ones this year.
Upwork’s Future Workforce Index 2026. Skilled freelancing jumped from 28% to 38% of US knowledge workers in a year, and the freelancers making more money with AI are the ones applying judgment on top of it, not just running prompts.
People & Progress: Changes. Kristy McCann takes on Zuck’s latest misstep and BlackRock’s big investment in the trades. Why aren’t you subscribed to this one yet?
Welcoming Danielle Moseley to ProvenBase. After 21 years running recruiting industry events at ERE Media, my former colleague Danielle Moseley is heading to ProvenBase as VP of Revenue and Business Development. That’s a hell of a run at one company.
Customers Don’t Separate Their Brand Experience. Kat Stupka makes the case that splitting direct mail and digital into separate campaigns and separate owners is how brands end up telling customers two different stories. I enjoyed this one, we ignore the media people can actually hold far too easily.
Have a great rest of your week!