Research Library

Using the Research Library

The research below is drawn from more than five years of industry studies, practitioner interviews, and deep analysis of the most important topics facing talent leaders today.

Feel free to use the categories below to find what you are looking for, or you can search for content that matters most to you.

Insightful Highlights

Zapier's Head of Onboarding: "We automated hundreds of hours of manual tasks"

Research Reports and Graphics

Conversational Recruiting: Finding Value in Conversions, Consistency, and Cost Reduction

Chatbots, also known as conversational recruiting tools, have become an essential component for the hiring technology stack at many organization. Used for everything from capturing information and light prescreening of candidates to scheduling interviews and more, these tools have a variety of applications across the hiring process. But new research shows that usage and value…

New Research: Employees Score Companies with a Failing Grade on Mental Health Support

Employers are trying. They really are. In the new report published this week based on responses from 1,000 employers and 1,000 workers, we saw organizations clearly attempting to support the mental health of their people with tools, resources, training, and other approaches. But the workforce is saying it’s not enough. Those changes aren’t being implemented, felt,…

Data Preview: The Great Resignation? Nope, It’s The Great Reprioritization (New Research)

The Great Resignation Reprioritization The video overview below, hosted by Lighthouse Research & Advisory’s Chief Research Officer Ben Eubanks, dives into our brand new research, offering a peek at just how much is wrong about what we’re hearing in the news and why we need to be looking at this problem in a different way.…

HR technology mergers 2021

2021 Was the Biggest Year Yet for HR Tech: See 30+ of the Top M&A Activities

Last year one of our most popular posts on the blog was a recap of some of the 2020 M&A activities across the HR Tech landscape. When you juxtapose that with the fact that 2021 was the biggest year ever for the HR technology market in terms of investment, we just couldn’t go without sharing…

New Data Show the (Surprising) Buyer Priorities for Compensation Management Systems [New Research]

Companies often spend more time managing their petty cash drawer than they do thinking about the strategic importance of their compensation systems and structure.  That quote from a previous iteration of our research on compensation data, technology, and buyer behaviors was one of the big takeaways we had after interviewing dozens of HR and compensation…

lighthouse special report

The Candidate Experience: Perspectives on Video Interviews, Assessments, and Hiring

[Updated July 2021 with new insights] In some ways, hiring looks very similar to what it did twenty years ago. People search for positions, indicate interest, and are filtered down until the most promising candidate is offered a job. However, the technology we use has upgraded considerably over time. Today employers have tools to increase…

These are the Learning Technology and L&D Skill Gaps that Exist [New Research]

When situations change and people can’t change fast enough, everyone turns to the learning team for answers. But what if they have questions of their own? In the first of a series of reports from our newest research study, we found a number of surprising insights from the audience of 2,000+ learners and learning professionals/executive…

Report: We Asked 800+ Employers about Virtual Recruiting [New Research]

This year our team is going deep on research. In a world like we’ve seen in the last 12+ months, it’s easy for all of us to feel a little bit adrift and out of touch with reality. The best antidote is information, so we are committing to regular research into the market across all…

New Research: Virtual Hiring, Recruiter Skills, and Internal Mobility

This year our team is going deep on research. In a world like we’ve seen in the last 12+ months, it’s easy for all of us to feel a little bit adrift and out of touch with reality. The best antidote is information, so we are committing to regular research into the market across all…

20+ High Impact HR Technology Acquisitions, Mergers, and More from 2020

In 2020, in spite of the pandemic-related shutdowns and other business impacts, the HR technology industry was within a few M&A deals of the 2019 numbers we were tracking (approximately 50). This represents a vibrant industry full of continuous innovation and providers striving to serve the needs of the HR buyer. It also helps to…

Case Studies

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Eightfold.ai 2022 Awards Case Study

By Ben Eubanks

About the Company With a deep-learning AI platform and massive datasets (on more than a billion careers, representing much of the working world) companies can hire and manage a diverse, global workforce. This is especially important now, given the attention being paid to talent and how rapidly the skills needs of companies are changing; in…

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Lever 2022 Awards Case Study

By Ben Eubanks

About the Company For a long time, hiring was a transactional process: moving from resume to interview, interview to offer, offer to first day in the office. In this world, applicant tracking systems supported traditional, inbound hiring needs. But today’s talent acquisition isn’t a transaction. It’s a dialog. A network of relationships among people —…

hr tech awards

BrightHire 2022 Awards Case Study

By Ben Eubanks

About the Company BrightHire is the world’s leading Interview Intelligence platform. We transform the quality of hiring for high-growth companies like Canva, Carta, Attentive, and Salesloft by helping individuals run better interviews and helping teams hire faster with less bias. Our technology rides along on Zoom, Google Meet and phone interviews, automatically records and transcribes…

hr tech awards

Seekout 2022 Awards Case Study

By Ben Eubanks

About the Company SeekOut is an AI-powered Talent 360 platform for Enterprise Talent Optimization that enables companies to quickly hire, grow, and retain talent while focusing on diversity, technical expertise, and other hard-to-find skillsets. SeekOut lets great companies and great people to grow together. Six out of 10 of the highest valued companies in the…

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Sparrow 2022 Awards Case Study

By Ben Eubanks

About the Company Sparrow makes it simple for employers to care for their people with the first true end-to-end leave management solution where innovative technology is coupled with a world-class leave specialist team. This enables mid-market employers to reduce compliance risks, enhance the employee experience, operate better, and contain costs. The technology integrates with HRIS…

hr tech awards

Enboarder 2022 Awards Case Study

By Ben Eubanks

About the Company Enboarder, the world’s only People Activation Platform specifically designed to inspire action and truly engage employees, was founded on the belief that people are a company’s greatest asset, and that businesses should put their employees above all else –– even investors, customers and other stakeholders. Founder and CEO Brent Pearson discovered that…

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HireEZ 2022 Awards Case Study

By Ben Eubanks

About the Company HireEZ’s mission is to make outbound recruiting easy. We’re dedicated to helping recruiters proactively bring jobs to people and give them the recruiter-centric tools they need. That’s why we developed hireEZ (formerly Hiretual), an AI-powered outbound recruitment platform. With hireEZ, companies can execute a strategically scalable approach to build their workforce of…

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Socrates 2022 Awards Case Study

By Ben Eubanks

About the Company Socrates.ai is a leading employee experience platform that builds on humanity in the best way possible – via real conversations in real-time – to deliver consumer experiences in the workplace. Socrates.ai leverages artificial intelligence to construct the conversational answers and information employees need. The omnichannel virtual assistant can be used on SMS,…

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Reejig 2022 Awards Case Study

By Ben Eubanks

About the Company Reejig is a leading workforce intelligence platform that enables large-scale organizations to find, retain, and upskill talent at scale. Powered by the world’s first independently audited ethical AI, Reejig acts as your central nervous system for all talent decisions, helping you create a world with zero wasted potential. Reejig provides global executives…

hr tech awards

Guild Education 2022 Awards Case Study

By Ben Eubanks

About the Company Guild Education is a social impact company that empowers American workers to unlock life-changing opportunities for personal and professional advancement through education, skill-building, and coaching. As a certified B-Corp founded to bridge the gap between education and employment for working adults in the U.S. in need of upskilling for the future of…

Videos, Interviews, and Podcasts

Lighthouse Listens: 6 Innovative Talent Acquisition Technologies

As part of our ongoing research efforts, our team meets with technology providers across the HR, talent, and learning space on a regular basis. Last month we held a special set of briefings as part of a talent acquisition deep dive we called Lighthouse Listens. In it, we met with six different providers touching on…

Predicting Pay and Skills From Job Market Intelligence Data on #HRTechTalks

In today’s world, things change and evolve so quickly. Take pay for instance. It’s changing faster than the surveys and other data sources can keep up. So what do we do? One area of emerging data comes from labor market intelligence tools. In this episode of #hrtechtalks, we chat with Cary Sparrow, CEO of Greenwich.HR,…

New Findings on Worker Preferences, HR Jobs, and More #HRTechTalks

Frictionless Recruiting with MapRecruit on #HRTechTalks

Getting Comfortable with Data: featuring Salary.com on #HRTechTalks

we're only human podcast tile

Personalization and Wellness: How AI Supports Wellbeing at Scale

“You need to have a competitive pay and benefits offering. When you go to do that, the employer ends up paying for a lot of things that go unused just because there’s too much to communicate. What’s just amazing about the time and space we’re in now is you can really use personalization to surface…

Compliance Challenges? You’re Not Alone: Featuring ThinkHR/MammothHR on HR Tech Talks

Since the start of this year, multiple new laws have passed that change responsibilities for employers, and that’s just a small sample of the overall changes in the workplace over the last few years. Even when you’re focusing on those evolving requirements, it can be overwhelming to decipher what applies to your company and how to adopt the new regulations.

In this discussion on HR Tech Talks, I am going to chat with Nathan Christensen, CEO of Mammoth/ThinkHR about why navigating compliance is a critical skill set for HR leaders and how his team supports this need for the business (without breaking the bank).

#HRTechTalks

Solving Pay Equity and Comp Challenges: Featuring Curo Compensation on HR Tech Talks

More and more companies across the globe are attempting to tackle the pay equity issue, but it’s not always easy if you don’t have the right tools to support the process. In some brand new research at Lighthouse Research & Advisory, we found that compensation technology is not only becoming more powerful, but it’s becoming a staple of the HR leader’s toolbox for navigating pay decisions across the board.

In this episode, I’m talking with Ruth Thomas of Curo Compensation about how this company has exploded into the scene of compensation management tools. We’ll also cover the firm’s priority focus on pay equity and how it is helping employers to create a fair and equitable playing field when it comes to pay.

#HRTechTalks

hr tech awards

Embracing Flexibility in Your Talent System: PeopleFluent on HR Tech Talks

When HR technology first became a “thing,” tools were rigid and structured. Today, some tools are still that way, but others have taken the opposite approach: they allow employers to customize and tailor the settings and capabilities around their unique and specific needs.

In our 2020 research, we found that 97% of firms that say they are adaptable also say that their HR technology plays a key part in that flexibility.

In this episode of HR Tech Talks, I’m going to talk with Stephen Bruce of PeopleFluent about how his firm has adopted this approach and how it results in better customer relationships, stronger capabilities that fit each client’s needs, and deep expertise in talent. We’ll touch on talent mobility, talent analytics, and the need for a flexible system to meet the needs of an agile organization.

#hrtechtalks

Health Intelligence: Going Beyond Health Analytics with Springbuk on HR Tech Talks

Employers often put little thought into the data wrapped around their health benefits. But what if leaders could use health analytics to connect business metrics with the health of your workforce? In this episode of HR Tech Talks, I’m talking with Amy Brown from Springbuk (a 2020 HR Tech Awards winner!) about how their company helps employers to see trends and insights in the data. Join us to learn how we can get better at using this data for supporting our people.

#HRTechTalks

Technology Reviews

6 Technology Providers Supporting Culture, Engagement, and Employee Experience: Lighthouse Listens 2023

By George Rogers

As part of our ongoing research efforts, our team meets with technology providers across the HR, talent, and learning space on a regular basis. Last month we held a special set of briefings as part of a culture, performance, engagement, and employee experience deep dive we called Lighthouse Listens. In it, we met with six…

Lighthouse Listens: 6 Innovative Talent Acquisition Technologies

By Ben Eubanks

As part of our ongoing research efforts, our team meets with technology providers across the HR, talent, and learning space on a regular basis. Last month we held a special set of briefings as part of a talent acquisition deep dive we called Lighthouse Listens. In it, we met with six different providers touching on…

hr tech awards

Eightfold.ai 2022 Awards Case Study

By Ben Eubanks

About the Company With a deep-learning AI platform and massive datasets (on more than a billion careers, representing much of the working world) companies can hire and manage a diverse, global workforce. This is especially important now, given the attention being paid to talent and how rapidly the skills needs of companies are changing; in…

hr tech awards

Talroo 2022 Awards Case Study

By Ben Eubanks

About the Company Talroo is helping organizations like Uber, McDonald’s, UPS, The Home Depot, Target and more, find and hire their essential workforces. Our data-driven job and hiring event recruiting platform turns the Internet into a help wanted sign. With a pay-for-performance model, we enable customers to maximize efficiency and their budget to hire employees…

hr tech awards

Lever 2022 Awards Case Study

By Ben Eubanks

About the Company For a long time, hiring was a transactional process: moving from resume to interview, interview to offer, offer to first day in the office. In this world, applicant tracking systems supported traditional, inbound hiring needs. But today’s talent acquisition isn’t a transaction. It’s a dialog. A network of relationships among people —…

The State of Voice of the Employee and Enterprise Employee Feedback Survey Platforms

By Ben Eubanks

In the last few years, the workplace has transitioned from a focus just on employee surveys to a more continuous listening approach. This transition has also been branded in some cases as “voice of the employee,” since it opens a direct channel from the workforce to company leadership, giving workers a voice like never before.…

hr tech awards

BrightHire 2022 Awards Case Study

By Ben Eubanks

About the Company BrightHire is the world’s leading Interview Intelligence platform. We transform the quality of hiring for high-growth companies like Canva, Carta, Attentive, and Salesloft by helping individuals run better interviews and helping teams hire faster with less bias. Our technology rides along on Zoom, Google Meet and phone interviews, automatically records and transcribes…

hr tech awards

Seekout 2022 Awards Case Study

By Ben Eubanks

About the Company SeekOut is an AI-powered Talent 360 platform for Enterprise Talent Optimization that enables companies to quickly hire, grow, and retain talent while focusing on diversity, technical expertise, and other hard-to-find skillsets. SeekOut lets great companies and great people to grow together. Six out of 10 of the highest valued companies in the…

hr tech awards

Sparrow 2022 Awards Case Study

By Ben Eubanks

About the Company Sparrow makes it simple for employers to care for their people with the first true end-to-end leave management solution where innovative technology is coupled with a world-class leave specialist team. This enables mid-market employers to reduce compliance risks, enhance the employee experience, operate better, and contain costs. The technology integrates with HRIS…

isolved Connect 2022: A Case Study in Customer Engagement

By Ben Eubanks

Nearly 40% bigger than last year, the isolved Connect 2022 user conference was held in Nashville and demonstrated that in many ways, client events are back from the COVID-required limitations put on many events. For those not familiar, isolved offers an HCM platform that supports employers from SMBs through enterprise, though their core market success…

See the Latest from Lighthouse Research & Advisory

chart of compensation actions for high-performing companies

7 Compensation Practices of High-Performing Organizations [New Research]

By Ben Eubanks

Over the last few months we’ve been working on our 2023 Compensation Data and Technology Trends research that we update every two years. In this year’s findings, we uncovered some new areas of interest, from how and why companies adopt these technologies to how they are changing their use of data to support comp practices.…

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The State of Hiring in Financial Services: What’s Now and What’s Next [Report]

By Ben Eubanks

Within the context of this new report, we look at some of the specific data that apply to the financial services sector based on responses from talent leaders at those firms in our 2023 Talent Acquisition Trends study. Not only that—we’ll also pull in some candidate data points to highlight what candidates are looking for…

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The State of Hiring: How the Manufacturing Industry is Responding [Report]

By Ben Eubanks

“It’s the strangest thing I’ve ever seen in more than 25 years of recruiting.” This comment is probably one you have either heard or spoken yourself in the last year. From the shortage of qualified talent to historically low unemployment levels to layoffs at some companies, the hiring market seems to be sending mixed messages…

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Key Takeaways from the 2023 Performance, Engagement, and Culture Enablement Livestream

By Ben Eubanks

Recently we posted about our PEACE livestream session that we were hosting in conjunction with Quantum Workplace, HiBob, and Confirm. This session attracted more than a thousand HR and talent leaders and was an incredible success. Below we have drawn key insights from each speaker to share, including our research preview with me and our…

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Performance, Culture, and Employee Retention [Infographic]

By Ben Eubanks

Making work meaningful isn’t a pipe dream. It isn’t something that can’t happen. But it also doesn’t happen without intention and effort. Our latest research on PEACE – Performance, Engagement, and Culture Enablement is focused on how to do this in the modern workplace. (Hint: some things have changed, and others haven’t changed a bit!)…

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What’s New in Employee Retention, Performance, and Culture? [Livestream]

By Ben Eubanks

On Thursday, August 10th, our team will be hosting a special livestream to look at our brand new data on Performance, Engagement, and Culture Enablement (PEACE). Based on 1,000 global workers, this study has some incredible insights on how employees feel about their experiences at work today, what employers need to do to support them,…

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Biased, Burdensome, and Burnt Out: The Unlimited PTO Story [New Research]

By Ben Eubanks

Not too far in the past, a company that offered its workers an unfettered amount of paid leave would have seemed illogical at best. After all, the typical method of accruing paid leave over time was commonplace and widely accepted by employers and employees alike. But then a small minority of companies began to offer…

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hr tech awards

HR Tech Awards 2023: Winners Announced

By Ben Eubanks

In our daily work with talent leaders and solution providers, we run into some incredible technology. Some of the tools available to organizations right now help them hire, develop, and retain their people, and the platforms and systems are amazing in their ability to support intelligent decisions, personalized actions, and more. According to some sources,…

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Newsflash: The Wellbeing of Your Workforce is Your Business [Infographic]

By George Rogers

The last month has held a lot of travel for the team here at Lighthouse. From Unleash in Las Vegas to the HR Technologies UK event in London to the Responsible HR Forum in New York City, it’s been a whirlwind. It’s easy in those times to try to focus on productivity at all costs,…

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Critical Success Factors For Attracting and Hiring in the Modern Environment [New Report]

By Ben Eubanks

Hiring moves quickly. That’s true in a practical/process sense, but it’s also true from a broader trends perspective. What works today is different in some ways from what worked two or five years ago. As we’ve been drawing insights from our new talent acquisition research (our first infographic on Pay Transparency, Ghosting, and Other TA…

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3 Learning Trends for 2023: Talent Shortage, Manager Enablement, and Mental Health [New Report]

By Ben Eubanks

At the Learning Technologies UK event last week, I found in many conversations with learning professionals that they can get bogged down and frustrated by the continuous treadmill. Identify a need, build/acquire training, develop skills, measure outcomes, and repeat. That’s a simplified version of what our friends in talent development do every day. It’s not…

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6 Technology Providers Supporting Culture, Engagement, and Employee Experience: Lighthouse Listens 2023

By George Rogers

As part of our ongoing research efforts, our team meets with technology providers across the HR, talent, and learning space on a regular basis. Last month we held a special set of briefings as part of a culture, performance, engagement, and employee experience deep dive we called Lighthouse Listens. In it, we met with six…

Read More

Lighthouse Listens: 6 Innovative Talent Acquisition Technologies

By Ben Eubanks

As part of our ongoing research efforts, our team meets with technology providers across the HR, talent, and learning space on a regular basis. Last month we held a special set of briefings as part of a talent acquisition deep dive we called Lighthouse Listens. In it, we met with six different providers touching on…

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Women are 50% Less Likely to Have Visibility into Internal Career Opportunities [New Research]

By Ben Eubanks

Recently, the Japanese multinational Fujitsu was commended by the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry for its efforts to encourage the success of women across its 100,000-plus workforce over the last year. This story is like many others, and employers around the globe are working to advance the number of opportunities for women in…

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First Look at 2023 Talent Acquisition Research: Pay Transparency, Ghosting, and More

By Ben Eubanks

Of all the aspects of human capital management, talent acquisition has seen a tremendous upheaval in the last three years. From a full stop in 2020 to full speed in 2021 and 2022, we’re now seeing some mixed signals about what the future holds. The essential piece is that small and midsize employers are hiring…

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