HR Tech 2024 left us with a slew of new innovations, exciting product announcements and overall excitement about the HR tech market. With so much buzz, so many exhibitors, all the new products on display and even new terms to reckon with, you might be slightly overwhelmed by HR tech news at the moment.

But as 2024 winds down and you begin to formalize your HR technology strategies for next year, I want to call out a few of the more interesting and potentially important HR tech industry announcements made before and during the event—as all of these have potential to make a big impact heading into 2025.

AI agents, coming to an HR tech near you

The next generation of AI technology and capabilities, known as “agents,” were highlighted at HR Tech. Oracle announced a new group of functions called Oracle AI Agents, the next generation and evolution of AI in its application suite. These “agents” take generative AI capabilities and extend them into more fully realized and automated processes designed to help employees and managers complete their work more efficiently. Workday also shared news of its AI agents, with new solutions like the Recruiter Agent designed to help companies find and hire the best talent faster, and the Succession Planning Agent, designed to find and grow future leaders.

As I mentioned in last month’s Inside HR Tech piece covering the recent Oracle HCM Cloud news, AI agents represent the next phase of advanced HR tech capability. Generative AI took over HR tech conversations in 2023—largely focused on text creation, content summary generation, simple chatbots for things like interview scheduling and HR help desk functions. The new “agentic” capabilities are designed to support much more complex processes and automate more HR transactions, and these will continue to develop into 2025 with the next phase of AI advancements in HR technology. Expect more HR tech providers to tout how their generative AI tools are morphing into AI agents next year and in the years to come.

ADP relaunches its next-generation HCM product

Another important announcement during the conference was ADP’s relaunch and rebranding of its next-generation HCM platform: from “Next-Gen HCM” to “Lyric HCM.” Lyric represents the newest generation of enterprise-grade HCM application suites and marks a notable step in the evolution of HCM technology. Designed for the modern world of work, Lyric HCM is built upon four key design principles: flexibility, intelligence, personalization and global nature.

One of the key elements built into Lyric is the enhanced ability for companies to design their organizations, workflows and reporting relationships as they see fit, and have these structures supported by their HCM system—rather than having to adapt the way work is organized to “fit” the constraints of the HCM system. This sounds like a small matter, but typically having to map organizational structures, management principles and even approval rules and hierarchies to sometimes rigid HR technology often presents significant implementation challenges for organizations. Truly new and modern enterprise HCM platforms don’t come to market very often, as they can take several years to develop. It will be interesting to watch the impact in the large enterprise space particularly, as many of these customers are still working with 10-year-old-plus HCM systems and could be open to migrating to an HCM platform more aligned with the modern world of work.

Cornerstone Galaxy

Cornerstone has long been an industry leader in the learning management systems and broader talent management market. At HR Tech, the company announced the launch of Cornerstone Galaxy, which it is calling a complete platform to support workforce agility. Galaxy is an integrated suite of learning and talent management experiences enabled by AI that aims to help people develop and learn new skills and align organizations’ talent strategies to business objectives.

The platform connects several Cornerstone products—like learning management; its extensive learning content library; recruiting, succession and performance management tools; and more—to offer enterprises a coherent platform to manage, develop and react to changing environments and emerging skills requirements. Central to the Galaxy platform is Cornerstone’s Workforce Agility Engine—a library of over 45,000 skills that leverages AI technology to understand employee skills, developmental opportunities and pathways to learning and growth.

The HR technology market for skills tools and employee development has grown more complex with the introduction of new talent intelligence solutions, the emergence of skills-centered approaches to talent management and the evolution of AI technology. With the Galaxy platform, Cornerstone is attempting to help organizations better manage, align, develop and engage employees in their learning and growth while enabling companies to meet the need for agility in a rapidly evolving environment. This was an important announcement from one of HR tech’s most enduring and influential providers.

Paychex Flex Perks

One last announcement of note coming out of HR Tech was Paychex’s launch of its Paychex Flex Perks solution, which brings a suite of voluntary benefits offerings like earned wage access, pet insurance, financial wellness and more to its hundreds of thousands of customers, and the millions of U.S. workers on the platform. With Paychex Flex Perks, businesses of all sizes can offer enterprise-level benefits that either augment what they already provide to employees or enable customers to offer employee benefits for the first time.

This is important for small and mid-sized businesses as they often do not have the internal resources or expertise to scour the voluntary benefits marketplace and reach agreements with individual benefits providers. Being able to offer a wide range of voluntary benefits can be an important tool for retention and recruitment for these businesses, which may be at a competitive disadvantage for talent compared to larger, better-funded and more sophisticated enterprises. Providing true enterprise-grade products and services has been the hallmark of Paychex over the last several years, and with Flex Perks, the company continues its tradition of innovation and customer focus.

Innovation in focus at HR Tech

For years, many of the most interesting innovations for HR have debuted at HR Tech—and HR Tech in 2024 did not disappoint. At the conference, we saw hundreds of new solutions on display, covering every aspect and functional domain of HR. While I selected a handful of these innovations to call out, no doubt there were dozens more worthy of your time and attention. If you were on hand in person at HR Tech, you would have been able to meet with and see demonstrations from every imaginable provider covering everything HR tech. If you weren’t with us, make sure you plan now to join us next year: Sept. 15-18 in Las Vegas!