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Joey's HR Lounge

Joey's HR Lounge

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Joey’s HR Lounge is an HR podcast for HR leaders, CHROs, and HR tech decision-makers. Hosted by Joey Price, it delivers practical conversations on HR strategy, recruiting, employee engagement, compliance, analytics, and HR technology trends shaping the future of work.All rights reserved by WRKdefined Career Success Economics Management Management & Leadership Politics & Government
Episodes
  • People Analytics Is a Commodity. What Comes Next? Guest: Cole Napper

    People Analytics Is a Commodity. What Comes Next? Guest: Cole Napper
    26 Aug 2026
    People analytics spent a decade proving it belonged in the business. Cole Napper thinks that argument is over, and not in the way most practitioners expected. Cole is the author of People Analytics: Using Data-Driven HR and Gen AI as a Business Asset, host of the Directionally Correct podcast, founder of the Data Driven HR Academy, and Chief People Intelligence Officer at HRBench. In this episode of Joey's HR Lounge, he and Joey Price work through why people analytics has become a commodity, what replaces it, and what happens to the HR function when the talent you analyze is no longer entirely human. Cole walks through the Tree of Value model from his book, which maps people analytics, workforce planning, talent intelligence, and behavioral science as four branches feeding off the same root system of human capital data. His newer argument is that those branches are collapsing into a single intelligence layer he calls people intelligence. Joey pushes back with a question that reframes the discipline. What happens when the talent you are analyzing is not only human? If agents and autonomous software are doing meaningful work, the people function becomes a work function, and nobody has built the measurement system that would let a leader compare a human lever to a technology lever. Cole agrees the command center does not exist, then raises the harder problem underneath it. Getting equivalent measurement across humans and technology may require the kind of surveillance he wrote about in his short fiction piece, The Camera. They also get into why small and mid-sized organizations are the most underserved market in this shift. HR needs are roughly equivalent at every company size. Staffing behind those needs is not. In this episode: Why people analytics moved from a value-add function to a commodity, and what people intelligence means as its successor The Tree of Value model and why four disciplines with different origin stories struggle to collaborate Why SMBs and startups are the most important vertical in the next phase of HR technology The measurement gap between human work and technology work Whether indexing and quantifying skills is quietly making it easier to build the agents that replace them What The Camera reveals about the ethics of optimizing people the way we optimize machines What intelligence actually means when you borrow the term from the intelligence community instead of from business intelligence Chapters: 00:00 Welcome to the Lounge 02:31 Is people analytics a luxury we can't afford? 06:00 The SMB reality: a one-person analytics function 07:18 Three hundred person analytics teams and the reckoning 08:10 If AI delivers, every large company becomes a medium company 10:35 The Tree of Value 11:32 Why the branches are collapsing into people intelligence 13:00 What if the talent you analyze isn't only human? 14:28 The missing command center for humans and technology 17:12 Does quantifying skills make it easier to build agents? 19:36 The Camera: optimizing people like machines 21:55 What business intelligence gets wrong about intelligence 23:41 Why Cole is optimistic anyway 26:08 Where to find Cole and the Data Driven HR Academy Connect with Cole Napper: Website: https://www.colenapper.com Book, People Analytics: https://www.amazon.com/People-Analytics-Using-data-driven-business/dp/1398622168 Data Driven HR Academy: https://www.colenapper.com/online-learning-academy Directionally Correct podcast: https://directionallycorrect.podbean.com Directionally Correct newsletter: https://directionallycorrectnews.substack.com People Intelligence Manifesto: https://directionallycorrectnews.substack.com/p/people-intelligence-manifesto HRBench: https://www.hrbench.com From Joey Price and Jumpstart HR: Jumpstart HR, fractional HR outsourcing: https://jumpstart-hr.com/ Jumpstart HR Research: https://jumpstart-hr.com/research The Power of HR: How to Make an Organizational Impact as a People Professional: https://jumpstart-hr.com/the-power-of-hr/ Get the book: https://amzn.to/4zCTTXv More episodes: https://jumpstart-hr.com/joeys-hr-lounge/
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    28 min
  • 10 Million People Are About to Refinance. Is Your HR Team Ready?

    10 Million People Are About to Refinance. Is Your HR Team Ready?
    14 Aug 2026
    Recorded live from the SHRM Conference 2026 in Orlando, FL, Joey sits down with Troy Hupp, Director of Product Management at Experian Employer Services, to unpack one of the most overlooked corners of the HR world: employment verifications. Get to know Jumpstart HR Research: https://www.jumpstart-hr.com/research While no one gets promoted for nailing a verification, a botched one can quietly damage HR's reputation — from the CMO trying to close on a house to the intern applying for government benefits. Troy and Joey explore why verifications matter at every level of the organization, common misconceptions HR leaders hold, and how outsourcing the process can simultaneously reduce fraud risk and improve the employee experience. What we cover: - Why verification matters — How a smooth (or botched) verification follows employees through the biggest moments of their lives: buying a home, securing a loan, accessing government benefits. - Common misconceptions — Why treating verification as a mere administrative task is a mistake, and the case for giving employees transparency and proactive access to their own data. - Experian's approach — How a "set it and forget it" model takes the workload off HR while giving employees self-service tools and accessibility. - Fraud & security — The rise of aggressive robo-calls and phishing attempts targeting employment data, and how a centralized verification partner acts as a critical security barrier. - AI in verification — How Experian is using AI behind the scenes for data quality checks, efficiency gains, and faster processing — all while keeping PII protected with strict guardrails. - Market trends & the "refi bubble" — Why 10+ million people are sitting on the sidelines waiting to refinance, and what HR teams should do now to prepare for the coming "avalanche of verifications." - Closing advice — Troy's practical takeaway: do an internal audit of your verification process across all locations before the surge hits. Guest: Troy Hupp, Director of Product Management, Experian Employer Services — https://www.linkedin.com/in/troyhupp/ *Like and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. To learn more about Experian Employer Services, visit their website or connect with Troy on LinkedIn.*
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    21 min
  • Why weighted RFPs and business problem clarity matter in HR tech buying

    Why weighted RFPs and business problem clarity matter in HR tech buying
    13 Aug 2026
    Joey Price speaks with Rick Torrence, Chief Sales Officer, at PrismHR about how small businesses evaluate PEOs, why so many HR tech and services purchases stall, and what buyers should do before they ever sign a contract. The conversation focuses on practical ways to separate tactical pain from real business problems, build a weighted selection process, and stress-test implementation readiness.In this episode, Joey and Rick also explore how PEOs have evolved with technology and AI, and why execution planning matters just as much as product fit. Learn more about Jumpstart HR Research: https://www.jumpstart-hr.com/research Key topics Rick Torrence shares his hot take that too many small businesses still do not understand what a PEO is or the burden it can remove from HR and compliance. The discussion defines PEO as a Professional Employer Organization and explains how co-employment lets small businesses access scale in benefits, retirement, insurance, and compliance support. Rick explains the biggest shift in the PEO market: technology is no longer treated as secondary to service, but as part of the value itself. Joey and Rick discuss how AI and self-service are accelerating expectations for HR buyers, employees, and service providers. Rick argues that every buying process should start with the business problem, not a tactical annoyance or a request to make one person’s job easier. The conversation stresses that the business problem must be felt by senior leadership, not only by HR, or change will not stick. Rick makes the case that an unweighted RFP is a waste of time because criteria without priority becomes a popularity contest. They discuss why buying decisions should not be driven by who responds fastest, who gives the best gift, or who is most pleasant in a demo. Rick explains that alignment across HR, finance, operations, and leadership is essential because HCM and HRIS decisions affect the whole organization. The episode closes with practical advice on implementation readiness, including resource planning, timelines, blockers, and using reference calls as a real stress test. Want to unlock your potential? Purchase Joey's latest book "The Power of HR": https://jumpstart-hr.com/the-power-of-hr/ Timestamps: 00:00 - Why unweighted RFPs waste time 00:39 - Introducing Rick Torrence and the PrismHR Live conversation 01:03 - Why small businesses need better PEO education 03:05 - What a PEO does and how co-employment works 04:04 - How PEOs reduce compliance burden and unlock scale 05:28 - What has stayed the same in PEOs over time 06:53 - How PEOs have changed through technology 08:20 - How AI is accelerating self-service and automation 09:00 - Defining the business problem before buying HR tech 10:49 - Why senior leadership must feel the pain 11:46 - HR buying is now a cross-functional decision 14:12 - Why weighted RFP criteria matter 15:55 - Using selection criteria instead of vague preferences 17:36 - Long-term customer success depends on a smart evaluation 18:33 - Why poor vendor fit shows up after the sale 20:05 - The stress of getting the decision right 21:31 - Why buying is a muscle and often needs expert help 22:54 - What to fix before implementation begins 24:27 - Mapping roles, timelines, and blockers before go-live 26:20 - Why teams should ask more questions about execution 27:54 - Stress-testing vendor fit with reference calls 29:01 - How to structure meaningful customer reference conversations
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    31 min
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