Anthill AI announced a $1.24 million Seed round of VC for its talent management software that leverages machine learning to empower internal mobility, reskilling & development, and employee engagement.
When Amazon announced its upskilling initiative in July of 2019, it cemented internal mobility and career pathing as a trend to be reckoned with for talent-focused HR leaders. While the trend wasn’t new in 2019, Amazon committing $700 million for the reskilling of 100,000 workers, which represent about a third of its US workforce – caught the eye of CEOs everywhere and created a question that the CHRO and CLO needed to have an answer for: ” What’s our plan for reskilling?”
Retaining, motivating, and engaging employees by aligning their needs and skills with the current and future path of the business is a very good thing. But, it’s never been easy. There are owners for recruiting, learning, and leadership development, but you’ll meet a rare few owners of the overall talent management process. The lack of a clear owner is a gaping hole in the market.
The solutions we’ve reviewed, and there have been numerous, address the challenge in one two ways: as an internal job board/marketplace/portal putting the onus on the employee to find their next role and seek out the path, or passively or actively assessing the skills of the workforce and then matching them to a career path. In either case, this path requires integration to learning and development at a level where most solutions fall short. It also requires engagement and support from the manager, and ideally an employee-centric culture. Supportive managers and cultures may be the biggest challenge. The investment required to support these initiatives goes beyond dollars. But, even the Amazon announcement we all took note of only reflects a financial commitment of $7,000 per employee for an initiative spanning until 2025.
It’s a good thing to see new solutions focused on talent management entering the market and leveraging approaches like machine learning. The adoption and success of solutions like Anthill AI are dependent on more than the tech, though. Nevertheless, they’re one to keep an eye on.
In 2020 $1.4 billion was invested globally in HR technology focused on talent management. Get the full report on 2020 global HR technology VC, here.