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Across HR, there is a growing consensus that the future of the industry depends on a skills-first approach. The bigger question, however, is how to turn that vision into reality. Bryan Bostic, president and CEO of Visual Workforce, has often grappled with this challenge throughout his career. His solution is Visual Workforce, an AI-powered skills intelligence platform that transforms static job descriptions into standardized, role-specific skill frameworks. The platform tracks employee proficiency, identifies gaps, and connects those insights to workforce decisions that reduce external hiring, accelerate internal mobility, and strengthen retention. Visual Workforce delivers a clear ledger of organizational capabilities for leaders and a transparent roadmap for career growth for employees. At a time when skills evolve faster than traditional HR models can adapt, the platform provides a pragmatic, leadership-ready blueprint for operationalizing a skills-first strategy. “In the end, we care about personal outcomes,” Bostic says. “When employees can clearly see and actively shape their future, they gain confidence that their ambition and the company’s goals align.” A Dashboard That Drives Mobility and Retention The platform comes to life through the Visual Workforce dashboard, a landing page that employees fully own. It consolidates current role data, proficiency levels, and each individual’s career paths. The dashboard flags expiring certifications, highlights skills that require reassessment, and links directly to curated learning resources, making development goals actionable and attainable. It is more than a dashboard. It is a growth engine. For younger cohorts, especially, the lack of clear advancement is the top reason they leave a company. Visual Workforce changes that by making career pathways explicit and requirements transparent. Employees set targets, managers align support around focused development, and HR gains visibility into progression at scale. The outcome is higher retention and a culture that rewards accountability and growth. The economics are just as strong. Internal mobility, powered by verifiable skills data, fills roles faster and with far less risk. Employees who move internally already understand the culture and systems, compressing time-to-productivity from months to weeks or even days. This accelerates transformation initiatives while reducing the high costs of external talent acquisition.
Modern recruitment has come a long way beyond gut instinct or a polished resume. Now, the competitive edge lies at the intersection of smart technology and human intelligence. But striking that balance is no easy feat. Companies often lack the tech fluency, internal bandwidth, or strategic lens to truly nail the right hire. Though outsourcing sounds like a solution, many vendors fall short on AI and machine learning capabilities, leading to inefficiencies and missed opportunities. That’s where Heyer Expectations excels, a one-stop powerhouse that blends human connection with machine precision. At the helm is Peter Heyer, the visionary founder and CEO, whose career has been defined by breaking the silos between HR’s human touch and AI’s raw capability. More than just leveraging technology, his focus is to integrate it seamlessly into every stage of the talent acquisition journey. The result is a recruitment model that adapts as fast as the market does. Whether it’s sourcing specialized talent, creating future-proof pipelines or optimizing for cultural fit, Heyer Expectations goes beyond delivering resumes to build a lasting impact. The hiring process begins with the understanding of a client’s specific needs from hard skills and leadership traits to culture fit and team chemistry. At the same time, the company leverages carefully selected AI tools, with Heyer personally evaluating and choosing the right ones. He remains mindful that every AI system is developed by humans and with that comes both conscious and unconscious bias. This awareness underscores how the code is written, making tool selection a decision never taken lightly. “While technology gathers the data, we interpret the story behind it by asking targeted, insightful questions to uncover what truly matters,” says Heyer. “The goal is to understand what makes a role urgent, a team unique and a hire truly successful.” More than just finding the right pool of candidates, Heyer helps organizations avoid the common misconceptions that derail hiring. Too often, companies chase roles like data scientist or latch onto trending skills without first considering whether they truly align with business needs. Language presents another challenge: flashy job titles such as ‘tech ninja’ or ‘data guru’ might sound innovative, but they obscure what the role actually requires. Since candidates don’t use such jargon on resumes or LinkedIn, organizations risk overlooking qualified talent altogether.
Pietential is a science-backed wellbeing intelligence platform that measures what truly matters and transforms how organizations understand and support their people. For employers aiming to boost engagement, retention, and performance, the company addresses a fundamental question: How are our people really doing? By combining scientific rigor with practical clarity, Pietential provides leaders with a continuous, data-driven view of holistic wellbeing across their workforce. Measuring What Drives the HR KPIs That Matter HR metrics such as engagement, performance, and retention are critical to organizational success—but they are lagging indicators. Pietential focuses instead on the foundation of these metrics: employee wellbeing. Its psychometrically validated, reliability-tested assessment is grounded in Maslow’s “Hierarchy” of Needs, re-engineered as a dynamic five-domain (and 20 subdomain) model that captures the whole person rather than a fleeting sentiment about the company. Pietential is the only fully objective, unconflicted (free of upsell bias), psychometrically validated employee wellbeing platform on the market. There are no hidden referrals to paid coaching or point solutions—every recommendation reflects employee needs alone. This objectivity is core to the platform’s credibility with HR leaders, CFOs, benefits consultants, and—most importantly—employees. From Insight to Action in Real Time Pietential’s Wellbeing Intelligence Platform (WIP) transforms a market of static surveys into live, actionable wellbeing intelligence. Companies can be up and running with Pietential in about 30 minutes, with no mandatory integrations. Employees take a brief (about five-minute) assessment and receive instant visualizations of their wellbeing, along with deep insights into their scores, an AI wellbeing companion (MyMazlow™), and guided self-development exercises in the Actualize It™ section. Organizations, in turn, gain a real-time picture of wellbeing via dashboards that reveal patterns across individuals, cohorts, departments, or entire populations. The platform’s monitoring capabilities—built for longitudinal studies and rapid gap analysis—allow HR teams to see changes as they occur. Whether used monthly, quarterly, or in response to key events, Pietential provides early warning of risk and evidence of program impact. Just as importantly, Pietential can show conclusively whether existing point solutions, EAPs, or wellbeing programs are improving wellbeing—and for whom—at a fraction of what companies already spend on their HR tech stack.
Dan Lovekamp, Director of Training, Auffenberg Dealer
Candace Villafanez-Dukes, Corporate Human Resources/Payroll & Benefits Manager, Long John Silver’s, LLC
Darrell Fincher-Crusan, Head of Human Resources, Octapharma Plasma
Sara Piper, Executive Director of People and Talent Acquisition, Fontainebleau Las Vegas
Bill Moran, Talent Acquisition Manager, Kitchell CEM
Advancing Workforce Performance and Talent Strategy
When it comes to sourcing, nurturing and retaining organizational talent, technology is playing an increasingly critical role. The HR technology landscape is evolving rapidly as organizations adapt to changing workforce expectations, talent shortages and rising competition for skills. Driven to strengthen teams and retain top performers, businesses are turning to trusted HR technology providers that improve hiring precision, support employee wellbeing and build long-term workforce capability. Some of the most sophisticated technology today is driving this evolution. AI-powered recruiting platforms are streamlining candidate evaluation with greater accuracy and fairness. Skill management platforms and intelligence tools are helping organizations map workforce capability gaps and build internal mobility strategies. At the same time, employee wellbeing platforms are advancing beyond traditional wellness approaches by analyzing behavioral data, engagement signals and team sentiment to strengthen retention and workplace culture. This edition of HR Tech Outlook highlights the leading employee wellbeing platforms, AI recruiting solutions and skill management technologies that are transforming talent strategy. It features thought leadership articles from Dan Lovekamp, director of training at Auffenberg Dealer, who emphasizes raising hiring standards through integrity, professionalism, communication and problem-solving to build stronger and more dependable teams. Rebecca Tooley, vice president, corporate learning & talent strategy at Swift Transportation, reinforces the need for strategic talent development by implementing advanced HR technology strategies that address immediate workforce learning and development needs while supporting long-term organizational goals. The edition also spotlights innovators shaping the future of workforce intelligence. It features Visual Workforce, a skills intelligence platform that helps organizations operate as true skills-based enterprises. By converting traditional job architectures into role-specific skills frameworks using AI and external labor market data, the platform gives leaders a clear view of workforce capabilities. We hope this edition offers valuable perspective, practical ideas and deeper insights into the HR technologies and workforce strategies shaping the future of talent.
