The Josh Bersin Company Future of HR Tech: Is The Front-End Eating The Back End, or Vice Versa?
15 snips
Mar 16, 2026 A tour of HR tech tensions as legacy ERPs collide with AI tools and modern productivity apps. Traces the evolution from mainframes to employee portals and why front-end UX fights back-end data. Discusses intelligent orchestrators, agent demos for scheduling and pay, and who might control the future employee experience.
AI Snips
Chapters
Transcript
Episode notes
Early HR Systems Were Hidden From Employees
- Josh Bersin recalls early mainframe HR systems that employees never saw and found creepy.
- He describes getting a performance appraisal from a manager who pulled up hidden computer records and handed him a paper rating he had never seen.
ERP Mindset Made HR Backend-Centric
- ERP-era HCM treated people like other assets and centralized payroll, talent, and record-keeping into integrated back-office systems like PeopleSoft.
- This produced complex middleware and later spawned separate talent management products for recruiting, learning, and performance because ERPs lacked people-centric design.
Companies Built Costly Custom Employee Portals
- Companies frustrated by clumsy ERP front ends built their own employee portals and spent heavily on them.
- Josh cites a pharmaceutical company spending about $100 million a year just to manage its employee portal.