Differentiating Performance: Individualizing the Employee Experience with TruBridge's Joe Pollard

The Next Practices Weekly call series has become a well-attended and wide-ranging discussion for HR leaders each Thursday at 11am ET / 8am PT. On this week's call, i4cp Membership Director Kirstin Queen and i4cp Senior Research Analyst Tom Stone were joined by special guest Joe Pollard, Head of Talent and Learning at TruBridge. Here are some highlights from the call:

• [Note: Due to a technical error, the recording available above is lacking the first few minutes of the conversation.]
• Pollard's career started quite differently than most leaders in HR, as he was a Nuclear Launch Control Officer in the Air Force from 2005-2009. He later had stints at Booz Allen Hamilton and ServiceNow, and between those spent 11 years in several roles at Accenture.
• TruBridge went through a re-branding in early 2024. Formerly named CPSI and composed of several sub-brands, they became TruBridge and are structured into two organizations: TruBridge Patient Care and TruBridge Financial Health.
• At TruBridge, they train both their employees and their customers on the software they use. Because of this, they have a combined L&D function that focuses on both internal and external audiences. Learnings from both workstreams inform each other.
• Like many organizations, TruBridge is taking a skills-based approach to their learning offerings. Each course or other offering has at least one skill tagged, and these flow into employee profiles as learning experiences are completed.
• TruBridge's L&D tech stack includes Docebo as their LMS/LXP, and it integrates with their HRIS, which is Workday. Skills data is shared between these two platforms.
• Pollard said they are very focused on improving the learning experience for their employees, and gave the analogy that if Netflix told you what you had to watch, few people would enjoy Netflix. The same is true for an organization's LMS/LXP platform: while there will always be some required (e.g., compliance) training, most of the experience should be very user friendly and encourage learners to select their own content and learning paths.
• Pollard shared his focus on the ROI of learning -- see the above recording for some of the details, starting at timestamp 16:10. See also his whitepaper on this subject in the resource links below.
• Pollard shared that at TruBridge they are transitioning to a new pay for performance system. Previously, the bonus system was based on a combination of company performance and a tenure-based approach per individual. They are switching to a more transparent, pay for performance, merit-based approach. To roll this out, they are communicating the change through both traditional means (e.g., email), but also at very well attended (90%+) quarterly people-leader calls (TruBridge has about 300 such leaders).
• Pollard and TruBridge (then CPSI) were featured in i4cp's 2023 report "Is HR Falling Behind in the AI Revolution?". He and his team used generative AI to turn a very daunting task into something  feasible: defining/describing the thousands of skills in their employee skill taxonomy. Interestingly, they used several generative AI engines, as some were better than others for specific skill areas.
• Pollard shared that they are also using AI to assist with tagging learning content with skills--again, a task that would be very daunting given the amount of content that flows in each month. The AI does the first pass, and then a human verifies and adjusts the tagging as needed.
• When asked what he looks for in HR talent to join his team, Pollard emphasized curiosity. Experience with HR and with best practices in the field is helpful, but he is more interested in people with fresh ideas, who will push back on the tried and true, etc.

Links to resources shared on the call:

• Upcoming i4cp virtual events
• Information on i4cp Membership
• Read Joe Pollard's whitepaper here