HR Overwhelm to Impact: Why Less Tech Actually Drives Better Results for SMBs with Simon De Baene

0:01Boom! Shake the room, Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire, the only daily show interviewing the world's top entrepreneurs, and we're talking seven days a week. Today, we'll be breaking down HR overwhelm to impact, why less tech actually drives better results for small to medium-sized businesses. And to drop these value bombs, I brought Simon DeBain into EO Fire Studios. Simon is the visionary co-founder and CEO of WorkLeap, a leading software company that makes work simpler for more than 20 ,000 companies in over 100 countries. And today, we'll talk about how most HR leaders are drowning in tools that promise efficiency but don't.

0:39We'll talk about organizational agility. We'll talk about consolidating and simplifying your business and oh, so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Simon and our sponsors. Franocity has helped hundreds of people leave unfulfilling jobs, invest in recession resilient businesses and create legacy income for their families through franchising. Visit franocity.com. That's F-R-A-N-O-C-I-T-Y.com to book a free consultation and start your franchising journey with expert guidance. These days, your business needs total visibility from global shipments to tariff impacts to real-time cashflow.

1:15That's NetSuite by Oracle, your AI-powered business management suite trusted by over 41 ,000 businesses. Download the free ebook, Navigating Global Trade, Three Insights for Leaders at netsuite.com slash fire. Simon, say what's up to Fire Nation and And share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. The success of your company is not an excuse to drift away from the details and start delegate. We're usually told to stop being in the details and to hire people that can take care of it. And I truly believe that you have to stay in the details and really care about every little thing.

2:00It doesn't mean you cannot surround yourself with amazing talent, but yeah, don't drift away from details. Devil in the details, Fire Nation. And today we're talking about HR overwhelm to impact. Why less tech is actually driving better results for small businesses, for medium-sized businesses. And Simon, let's just jump right into the fact that HR leaders, they're often just drowning in tools. I mean, man, tools stacked on top of tools that promise efficiency, but they actually add complexity doing the opposites. Tell us more about this. Yeah, I'll start by sharing my experience because it's been 19 years I'm running my business.

2:42And I would say that one of my biggest regrets is the lack of discipline around the tool and the tech that we're using. it's like we're uh you don't know like you're running your business and you have that new shiny amazing tools uh available and you start using it and then there's another one and then there's another one and there there's always that kind of FOMO where where it's easy to fall uh into that trap and you end up just piling piling and piling and and at some point you lose control the entire stack, the tools and the systems you have, you can't see clearly, you can't make decisions.

3:25And it's pretty much what happened. After 19 years, you accumulate a lot of legacy and you end up at the point where you really need to unpack and almost start from scratch. And I think it's the problem of many, many companies out there. I think we live in a narrow where there's a lot of, you know, these new shiny objects being released every week in the world. And yeah, and it's tempting to kind of fall into that trap. It is so tempting because I mean, if there's anything that we see, it's just SaaS companies being released after SaaS companies, these software as a service companies that are just coming out that are promising to be perfect at this, that are promising to make this easier, that easier, this less challenging, this more efficient.

4:14And before you kind of know you look up and you're like, wow, like I have like all of these things that are doing all of these things. And it's just, it's a little confusing. It's kind of like I'm managing all of these different items, all these different products and services and softwares, because these current HR tech stacks can create more problems that actually disrupt communication and workflow, which is of course the opposite of what we want to do. So tell us more about what you're seeing here? Let's get back to 2010 to 2020. There was like, before that, employees were just numbers and systems.

4:48And we came from a decade of just great innovation. There was so much money flowing to innovate around HR. And there was so many new tools. And, you know, we, in 2013, we launched a protocol Office Vibe. It was a way to measure engagement, completely replacing the annual surveys and we were surrounded by other kind of modern hr tools uh that that were launched uh every week there was always a new competitors uh chasing us and uh and you know like a lot of companies decided to buy these kind of tools and so we and then what happened there was the pandemic the pandemic um there was then like a kind of a economical crisis where where we all at the same time realize that okay we like there's there's there's there's a budget constraint and and we're coming out of a decade of just buying different tools so now we're we live in an era where there's more consolidation and companies are a bit more careful uh in terms of the tools uh they buy for running pretty much every department.

6:03But in this case, we're talking about HR. And it's more like the realization that there was a lot of new modern tools available. But usually what happens is you end up using maybe 10 % of what they offer. There's a lot of promise of every single SaaS out there. They're promising a lot of value in their products. And I think we all kind of experienced it where you end up buying the product and you get attached to a few features and you don't even spend the time to use the other features. The problem then is that you end up paying for a lot of stuff and then that's one product. And then you have a second product where you're only using 10%.

6:46And then there's another product where you only use 10%. And the other problem on top of that is that once you have so many different tools, you end up having a lot of data that is spread across different systems. And it becomes extremely difficult as a business leader, as an HR leader, as a business owner to make decision when the data is so spread across different systems in different formats and like different shape. And you end up not being able to make good decision in your day-to-day. So I think there's now like, first, there's a realization that the budget are no longer unlimited. There's less money in the system.

7:33We have to be smarter in making those decisions. We have to be honest in terms of what are we actually using in terms of value in the products we have. We also need to be extremely honest in terms of adoption. Am I using products that people actually care because people are actually using it? Am I getting value out of that product? And, you know, when you make the list, the inventory, and you start looking at each product that you're using, you usually end up realizing that, oh, okay, maybe, maybe, yeah, there's not much value there. And maybe we're not using them as much, but we're still paying for them.

8:11Fire Nation, this is why you need to be willing and consistently doing audits on yourself, on your business, on the people that are, you know, your, that are, that are your employees that are working for you, that are working with you. Like, what are they doing? What is their workflow? Does it make sense? Like really getting in there and saying, Hey, this is the most efficient system that I want to see within my business. Like this makes sense. Cause sometimes there's a lot of things that just don't make sense. And if you let them go over a significant amount of time without doing an audit, without really getting in there and figuring things out, things can get out of control quick.

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11:33And with AI tools, you can automate everyday tasks, allowing your teams to stay strategic. If our business needed this type of software, I'd use NetSuite in a heartbeat. It's one system, full control, tame the chaos with NetSuite. If your revenues are at least in the seven figures, download the free ebook, Navigating Global Trade, Three Insights for Leaders at netsuite.com slash fire. That's netsuite.com slash fire. Simon, we're back and I want to talk about two words, organizational agility. What does that mean to you? Well, like the ability for a business to move fast, make decisions fast, being able to adapt, because right now we live in a very special market where technology is really evolving fast.

12:17It's disrupting all the industries. So we're all kind of facing that. And the way we've built our companies for so many years and so many decades, uh, it's, I think there's a lot of question to ask ourselves in terms of, is it, is it really the right way to build our business? Because it's really hard to adapt as fast as we need in the current era. So I would say that like business agility has never, even if it's a buzzword, I think it's never been as important, right now because you have to be honest, like right now we can be disrupted as a business. Like for us, we're like 450 employees. It's possible that a startup of 10 people can disrupt us.

13:05And it's the same for pretty much every single business out there. And, and, and yeah, so, so we need to be better at making decisions fast, move fast. and it needs to be part of the day-to-day, not just that once in a while, like once a year, okay, we have a rush. It's really important. It's like a do-or-die, to be honest. Now, you believe that the key to driving impact isn't adding more tools. I mean, we've made that very clear. It's not about continuing to stack tool upon tool upon tool, but it's consolidating and simplifying. So we get that, but one thing we don't get is where do we start?

13:47There's a lot of temptation to try different tools. I think it needs to start from a discipline. Like it cannot become like an open buffet in terms of what we can try and what software should we purchase. And like, we need to build that discipline and that as leaders, we need to be extremely clear about like, okay, the temptation is there, But the danger of that is too important that we need as a business to focus on, to commit to something. That's what I would say. There's amazing tools out there, technologies. It's pretty much like it is a really fun time to be alive. But as a business, I would say you have to commit to a kind of a foundation, a foundation where you're willing to stick with and a foundation that will enable flexibility to build on top and really build what makes you unique as a business.

14:56but it cannot become like, okay, this year we're deploying that thing and we're all going to be focusing on that. And the next year is like, ah, that's an old system. Let's move to the other new shiny tool. So, yeah. So where do we start? I think it starts from the belief that a business will not succeed by just implementing technologies. Technologies are a mean to an end. At the end of the day, every business is serving customers. They're trying to solve our problems. And it's not about the number of tech you're implementing. It's about picking the right one. So as a business owner, I know a lot of business owners are really business-oriented.

15:41They're not tech-savvy. I think we need to educate ourselves. We need to be interested in what's the tech available out there and really being passionate about it. I know my background is like I studied engineering. So I, by nature, I'm very oriented, like to, to love technology and build technology. But I think what's amazing right now in this, this moment in time is that the, there's a democratization of technology, we can all learn to code, we can all learn to install systems, build technology. And I think it is the time for business owners to start learning how it works and being able to, you know, build technologies to support their business.

16:30But at the end of the day, it's about focusing on the customers, the problems to solve. and in terms of business philosophy, what, you know, I told my story before and the regret I had in terms of technology and that we pile up too much stuff. Right. What's weird is that we built tools that were focused on simplicity because we knew that customers did not need all the bells and whistles. We knew that they were trying to solve something very clear and precise And we decided to build tools that were almost too very uncomfortable because they had so not many features. They were just very lean, minimalistic, and focusing on solving the problems.

17:19And I think it really what made us successful as a business. But in terms of what you're implementing for yourself as a business, this is what we're doing right now for us. We're bringing back simplicity in the tools we have. we're reducing the number of tools we're using drastically. We're focusing on a few set of products that we want to build on for the next few years, instead of, of, of jumping to one another every year. And, and so, yeah, we're, we're, we're maybe not going to test that as many technologies that we used to, but at least we're going to be all focusing on, on a set of tools that, that we can build the next few years on.

18:02And I think as a business, it's like the feeling of, you know, when you're, you have like a heavy backpack. Oh, yeah. And when you remove all the weight, it is such a good feeling to feel like you can go fast in any direction you want because you made the effort to build a simple business with a simple set of tools and systems and technologies that enable you to run your business in the most efficient way. Fire Nation, we've talked about a lot of things today that sound pretty obvious. I mean, obviously, we want to not do things that disrupt our communication, that disrupt our workflow. We obviously don't want to drown in tools when we could just be much more simple and less complex.

18:53We obviously want to increase our efficiency, not decline when it comes to our efficiency day-to-day. Organizational agility. A lot of stuff, Simon, that we talked about here today. If you could just give Fire Nation the one key message, the one theme, the one takeaway from our conversation today, what would it be? I'll start by saying that simple is beautiful. And I truly believe it. I would say it's the moment in time where we're all becoming almost engineers. And maybe that's an exaggeration. But I think it's that moment in time where tech is democratized for all of us. And we can be business people, but we can also understand tech and build amazing tech for our own business.

19:42And I truly believe it's a gift that life is giving us right now. An absolute gift, Fire Nation. Now, Simon, if Fire Nation wants to learn more about you, wants to connect with your company, What is your call to action for our listeners today? Visit WorkLeap.com. We have amazing products, HR products. You can reach out to me on LinkedIn. I'm very active. I love to share a lot of insights and the last 19 years of experience we had at WorkLeap. And yeah, always my pleasure to bounce some ideas. Well, I love it because WorkLeap Fire Nation is making work simpler for more than 20 ,000 companies in over a hundred countries.

20:29Yours could be next. Check out workleap.com. And Fire Nation, you're the average. Of the five people you spend the most time with, you've been hanging out with S-D-B and J-L-D today. So keep up that heat. And for links to everything we talked about, visit eofire.com. Just type Simon in the search bar and the show notes page will pop right up. Simon, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation. For that, we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side. Thank you very much.

21:27A-N-O-C-I-T-Y.com to book a free consultation and start your franchising journey with expert guidance. These days, your business needs total visibility from global shipments to tariff impacts to real-time cashflow. That's NetSuite by Oracle, your AI-powered business management suite trusted by over 41 ,000 businesses. Download the free ebook, Navigating Global Trade, three insights for leaders at netsuite.com slash fire.

21:57Thank you.