Episode 285 · 19 March 2026 · 46:28
"I built OfficeVibe & here's why most HR Tech doesn't work," with Jeffrey Fermin
Featuring Jeffrey Fermin
"I built OfficeVibe & here's why most HR Tech doesn't work," with Jeffrey Fermin
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Leanne publicly calls out OfficeVibe on LinkedIn
interview#linkedin#officevibe#hr-tech
Meeting Jeffrey 2011 — why he built OfficeVibe
interview#officevibe#startup#founder-story
Why HR tech hasn't changed in 15 years
interview#hr-tech#innovation#technology
The subscription economy trap in HR tech
interview#subscription#hr-tech#pricing
Jeffrey's biggest regret — claiming scientific backing
interview#hr-tech#psychology#ethics
Engagement vs. relations — two separate problems
AI as an amplifier, not a replacement
interview#ai#amplifier#technology
What are we actually measuring in 2026?
interview#metrics#measurement#hr
Job hugging — and why it's the best time to invest in culture
interview#job-hugging#culture#investment
Show notes
Why Most HR Tech Doesn't Work — with Jeffrey Fermin
Guest: Jeffrey Fermin — co-founder of OfficeVibe (one of the world's first employee pulse survey platforms) and Head of Demand Generation at AllVoices.
Fifteen years ago, Jeffrey Fermin helped create an entire industry. OfficeVibe was one of the first employee pulse survey platforms — and since then, over 200 similar tools have flooded the market. Yet global employee disengagement remains stubbornly high.
So what went wrong?
Jeffrey joins Al and Leanne for a brutally honest conversation about the industry he helped build. They dig into the "vitamin vs. painkiller" problem plaguing engagement tools, why your fancy dashboard might be making things worse, and the rise of "job hugging" — where employees cling to roles out of fear, not loyalty. Plus, Jeffrey shares his biggest regret from his startup days and why AI should be an "amplifier, not a replacement" for human relations.
Top 3 Takeaways
- Most engagement tools are vitamins, not painkillers. They show you the problem — declining scores, disengaged teams — but offer no actual help in fixing it. Insight without action is just expensive awareness.
- The best time to invest in culture is when it's an employer's market. During "job hugging," when employees stay out of fear, employers have a golden window to build genuine loyalty before the market shifts.
- Stop building for the dashboard. Whether you're designing HR tech or running a team, if the employee experience isn't improving, the metrics are meaningless. Build for people, not for pretty charts.
Connect With Us
Get in touch, book a call, or find Al and Leanne on LinkedIn — all in one place: truthliesandwork.com/connect
Mental health support: findahelpline.com — UK: Samaritans 116 123 · Mind 0300 123 3393 — US: 988 — Australia: Lifeline 13 11 14
Truth, Lies & Work is part of the HubSpot Podcast Network.
Full transcript
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Leanne ElliottA few months ago, I posted on LinkedIn. I was venting a bit, you know how it is, and I listed 50 things I wanted to throw in the bin. I think I actually said I wanted to banish them in 2026. It was things like Myers-Briggs, uh, Gen Z bashing January, and also a little piece of software called OfficeVibe. And then something pretty mortifying happened. One of the comments came back and it said, hi, I'm the co-founder of OfficeVibe.
Jeffrey FerminAwkward.
Leanne ElliottBut he did say as well, I 100% agree with you. So, immediately DM'd him. It turns out he's not only one of the most refreshingly honest people in HR tech, he's also spent 15 years watching the industry he helped to create fail to actually solve the problem it promised to fix.
Al ElliottYeah, Jeffrey Fermin. I hope I'm saying that right. Spanish pronunciation. Jeffrey built one of the first employee pulse survey platforms back in 2011. There's now almost 200 of them, I think, and yet employee disengagement seems basically unchanged. So today he's going to tell us exactly why and what he thinks it's going to take to actually fix it.
Leanne ElliottThis one is going to be uncomfortable, but in a really good way. Hello and welcome to Truth, Lies and Work, the award-winning podcast where behavioural science meets workplace culture, brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. My name is Leanne, I'm a chartered occupational psychologist.
Al ElliottMy name is Al, I'm a business owner.
Leanne ElliottAnd we are here to help you simplify the science of work.
Al ElliottNow, Jeffrey co-founded Officevibe back in 2011. And as I said, it was one of the very first employee pulse survey platforms before it was acquired and became what's now known as Workleader. He's now head of demand generation at Allvoices, an employee relations platform, and he also hosts the People First podcast. Basically, if there's a problem in the HR tech world, Jeffrey has either tried to solve it or is currently building the thing that might actually solve it.
Leanne ElliottAnd he is here because I publicly called out his software on LinkedIn and he replied to say he agreed.
Al ElliottSo after this quick break, we'll find out what Jeffrey hoped to fix when he did start OfficeVibe, and why 15 years later the problem may still very much be alive. The dirty little secret is that most businesses think they know their customers. They have the data, the records, the history, but it's scattered across 3 teams and 4 systems. And in our case, it's about 216,000 spreadsheets, which means nobody can actually use it.
Leanne ElliottWhat you should be doing is using HubSpot, because why? HubSpot connects it all. Every interaction, every support ticket, every conversation into one platform every team can work from. So when sales talks to a customer, marketing already knows the full story. And when you know more, you grow more.
Al ElliottNice. Check out hopspot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses.
Jeffrey FerminMy name is Jeffrey Fermin. I always like to pronounce it the Spanish way, but everyone can call it the typical English way. With that said, Jeffrey Fermin, I am the head of demand generation at All Voices. I run an awesome podcast called People First, where I sit down with content creators in the HR tech industry, and we just talk about what's going on in the world of work, so to speak. What am I most famous for? I don't think fame is the right word, but I am best known for starting OfficeVibe, one of the first pulse survey platforms, people analytics tools back in 2011. It came from a great place. We wanted to solve the disengagement issue, And came up with a fun, unique poll survey system that encouraged people to really talk about some of the things going on in their office. I also want to highlight that, fast forward, you know, 13, 14 years, however long it's been since 2011, I don't know how to do math. I now serve as the advisor for a similar company called Hoogly.ai, and we are solving employee engagement by having, you know, contextual data or you know, just written responses, conversations had with AI, and turning them into actionable takeaways that could help improve culture issues. So yeah, working on a lot of cool stuff. All Voices is fantastic. We're an employee relations platform. I am the connector of dots between employee relations and employee engagement nowadays. So, want to solve all the big workplace issues.
Al ElliottTell us, 15 years ago, you started OfficeVibe. And now, what, 15 years later, you are now working on Hoogly or working with Hoogly. What did you hope to, what problem did you hope to fix when you started Officevibe? And is that different to Hoogly now?
Jeffrey FerminI wanna take a step back. I want, I want you to meet Jeffrey 2011. Uh, Jeffrey back in 2011, very ambitious. And I, I, I wanted to start something with my friend Daniel at the time. And we, we kept on finding all this research around work stress, uh, you know, job dissatisfaction, obviously the big phrase is employee disengagement. Back then, 11% of people were considered actively disengaged, meaning that they would go above and beyond to actually like ruin their workplace and say like, hey, I hate it so much here. I would like, you know, I don't know what extremes they would go to, but they just would purposely go against their workplace. With that said, it was a very near and dear problem to fix disengagement and just work stress in general, mostly because I saw my parents, what they had to go through working those long hours.
Al ElliottYeah.
Jeffrey FerminWorking in corporate settings, and they never really got a voice in their workplace. And I wanted to sit down with Daniel and our team and figure out how could we do this? How could we figure out, like, you know, what are the underlying issues within a workplace, whether they be cultural or larger, and how could we bring them to light to, you know, senior-level people in a way that, that wouldn't scare them around making decisions when it came to culture? So we came up with a poll survey system. We used animations.
Al ElliottYeah.
Jeffrey FerminAnd different ways of kind of displaying, you know, emotions in there, you know, happy faces, sad faces, somebody walking on a rainy, cloudy, messy day outside versus sunny days to answer how are they feeling about work, right? Small little things like that were able to really reflect how people were feeling and capture the vibe of an office. And on the backend, we would have a full-fledged people analytics dashboard where all this information would be shown and displayed in a way that an HR person that might not necessarily have a data background They could make actionable decisions that could literally help people's lives. So we started off with good intentions. We actually got Aqua hired in 2013-ish by GSoft Group out in Montreal. They now still run OfficeVibe. It's called WorkLeap, and they've done some pretty good things with it. They've added a lot more like functionalities around it. With that said, you know, what am I doing at Hoogly now? And why is this still a problem 15 years later? Well, You know, we've seen things kind of stay and remain flat. There's, if you search in G2 how many employee engagement solutions there are, I believe it, there's nearly 200 or so. And then it's this whole, you know, field of different types of platforms. You'll have Lattice kind of touching on some things related to employee engagement. You'll have HRIS tools that have some kind of employee engagement component.
Al ElliottMm-hmm.
Jeffrey FerminReality is there's not, in my opinion, not much has changed in terms of the tech being used. And a lot of the same issues are still kind of out there and prevalent where employees still feel actively disengaged or disengaged. Gartner studies have shown that, you know, it's been pretty stagnant. And what, so, so what can be done? Well, that's, that's where I started kind of learning about Hoogly and what they were doing. I met Mo, the founder, and he pitched me this idea where You know, can we get AI to actually have conversations with people? And with that, can we get large sets of contextual data to help understand what are some of the cultural issues that are happening within a workplace and how can we escalate them and obviously visualize them to an HR team and, or even just senior management teams? And that's where I've been kind of helping out. I've been bringing my perspective, bringing my ideas, my knowledge, my experience, and And just trying to say like, hey, you know, if we build a product to look and act a certain way, employees are going to love it. And more importantly, HRs are going to— HR teams and senior management, they're going to be able to make decisions that truly impact lives, similar to what we saw in the early days of OfficeVibe. So yeah, I serve as their advisor while still doing all my work at All Voices. And like I said, I always like to say I'm blessed to be able to solve the full spectrum of employee issues, whether it's culture issues or Uh, just things that kind of require a little bit more, you know, I guess you could say compliance or employee relations issues.
Al ElliottWe're not short of data, are we, as business owners and HR teams? But I feel like, is there a gap for someone who's actually gonna be able to translate that data into what I should actually do tomorrow to make it better?
Jeffrey FerminI'm gonna get ahead of myself here. I wanna get to a solution already. This is the beauty of AI. This is the beauty of the AI era. And whether it's systems like Hoogly or any of these others, dare I say competitors, if they'd like to step up and really start finding ways to incorporate artificial intelligence, one, ethically, but two, make sure that they do it in a way that fits and suits and can actually get those bits of data and turn them into action. That's really the added benefit of of having a data analyst with AI, right? Like, you can see all these things that exist currently, and whether it's numeric or, you know, quantitative, qualitative, right? You could grab all these things and say, wow, we're having, you know, 1,000 people complain around these issues. How should we approach this? What's the internal comms strategy? What is going to be the rollout of this? What's the ROI? Are there any other companies that have some sort of benchmark information for us to, like, make a change, right? Like, I think, you know, going back to the original question is like, yeah, a lot has changed, right? Technological— technologically has changed. That said, like, how can we incorporate the current existing technology and build on top of it? Because the issue that you've described is one that's been far too long where, you know, we have all these data where, you know, back in 2011, we were a pioneer in the big data space. And that's what everyone knew us. We were competing back then with SurveyMonkey, Qualtrics, and then eventually Coltramp, 15Five. We also started kind of like, you know, coming up in the same exact way. We addressed issues, but we never really were there with the follow-through, and we never were able to kind of figure out how can we get, you know, companies to actually make changes. Funny enough, a lot of the times, you know, companies would come back to us and say, hey, we see that we get a lot of negative answers around this part of our culture, what should we do? And then it becomes us as a software provider to almost be an advisor of sorts. And that was very strange early on. Not saying that's the case now. I'm sure there's like, you know, recommendations and things to do, but the actual rollout of a new initiative, I'm sure it's something that, you know, with the help of AI and with all the advancements in technology, it could be a little bit more strategic as opposed to just like, You know, hey, we have data, let's make some changes. No, we can have an actual internal comms strategy. We could do like strategy planning sessions with, you know, higher-ups in an organization. And it allows for organizations to make actionable changes with knowing what are the risks and also more importantly, how it could affect the overall organization.
Al ElliottI think you've touched on an issue there, which if you are a SaaS, then you are obsessed with MRR, so monthly recurring revenue, I believe it's called. So your incentive as a SaaS is to not solve the problem. How are we reconciling this, particularly in the modern apps where we want to have a problem, but then if we solve it, you don't get any money?
Jeffrey FerminFantastic question. I always feel like people say, you know, great question, good question as a buffer. I actually mean that. That is a fantastic question. It is an issue that I've personally, uh, you know, really don't like with the current state of SaaS, where just in general, as a whole, I want to take a quick step back and say, like, I don't like the subscription economy. As someone that has benefited from it, I truly don't like it. With that said, there are certain platforms that it makes sense. You're paying for, you know, upgrades, approvals. If you're going to get a video editing software, do you really need to be paying a monthly, you know, service? Uh, you know, can you just have the current iteration? And just pay lifetime membership for that. And then maybe have a SaaS component to it for upgrades, right? This, this is the main issue with HR tech. I think as a whole, not just, you know, pulse surveys, employee engagement software, and that we really have to determine like, and complete opinion. I don't mean to cause waves throughout the industry here, but we really need to find a way to benefit organizations that isn't going to affect.
Leanne ElliottMm-hmm.
Jeffrey FerminYou know, the bottom line so much. A lot of organizations are investing tens of thousands of dollars, you know, either a year or a month if they're a larger enterprise, just to maybe solve a problem. I don't necessarily like that economy. And I think we, you know, there should be some kind of smarter rollout for, for what's it called, like working with these customers and almost acting as a partner, whether you want to maybe backload some of those contracts and say, hey, let's work on the rollout initially.
Al ElliottYeah.
Jeffrey FerminAnd then you can do like maybe 25% upfront. Let's get you activated and 75% on the latter half, you know, something like that. I do, I'm very pro-consumer in that standpoint. I do feel like we do get a little, especially in the culture space, we do get disincentivized for just kind of like saying like, oh, we got this contract. There's nothing more to it. You know, they're going to collect all the information. We're going to fit, you know, we're going to have all this stuff. We're going to house their data. We're going to collect their information and You know, keep all things safe. We're essentially paying for security at that standpoint because a lot of the information is anonymized or, you know, it's very sensitive to the culture. But like, we're not really acting, right? That goes to the previous answer, right? We're not acting on that data. We're encouraging you all to have it, but how do you all keep on like going next? And for a long time, I think 14 years since I've been in the employee engagement space, there really hasn't been that Where it's like, okay, well, you're paying us monthly. We're going to help you solve the issues. No, you're the engagement space. You're paying us monthly. We're going to let you know the issues and we'll just keep it in this dashboard. And I feel like that's very unfair to the consumer. I have to pitch Hoogly again, because I do think this is a major differentiator, but there's a mentorship and continuous, uh, like continuous coaching component to it where if you continue talking to Ven, the AI employee engagement app that exists in In Hoogly, you, you get more information on the culture. You're able to reveal different things. And then on the other end of the spectrum, for HR people, you continuously work with all that information in order to address those issues. See, to the points that have been going on, or to the point that we all were getting at earlier, it's always been a, you know, just like, here's the data, work with it. Okay. Nothing else. You're going to pay us monthly and we're going to just keep throwing more shit your way and you have to figure it out. So too damn bad. Like, That is not how HR works. They don't want more issues. They want to be aware of it and they want to be able to follow through. In charging this monthly subscription, you're only making problems kind of pile on and you're not really able to act on it. So yeah, all that to say is I don't agree with the monthly, the month-to-month, uh, month-to-month subscription just to have more shit thrown your way.
Al ElliottIf I wanted to start some kind of HR tech, how much of this should I be bringing in psychologists to help? And how much do I just need to bring in nerds to write the code.
Jeffrey FerminI think my biggest regret when starting OfficeVibe is claiming that we had like all this like scientific backing. And the reality is we were just getting questions that existed from some research and then saying like science-backed questions. Uh, granted, things have changed now. I'm sure, you know, they decided to tighten things up, but you're working with assumptions from day one for a lot of these platforms. Uh, especially like in the startup realm, you're saying that like, hey, we found some research on this and we're going to tailor to— I do believe that especially in this realm, uh, you know, industrial, industrial, organizational psychologists, they are, they are needed to kind of help understand what could be, you know, very useful for larger scale organizations. A lot of the times companies are working off of assumptions and what they've gathered from a study or one little headline that they got and they were able to reverse engineer a solution for said headline. Once you start getting a little bit more scientific and start adding research to it and bringing some more folks or cooks and chefs in the kitchen to help kind of dissect what's going on, you could actually make some better breakthroughs instead of just assuming that things are going to work because you have a nifty product. So I just want to say that's one of my regrets. I actually, you know, love the fact that Whether it's All Voices Hoopla or any of the newer HR tech companies out there, they are working with researchers and organizational psychologists to kind of understand what goes into collecting all this information and the potential long-term effects of having something like a question being asked or a platform being introduced and decisions off of these platforms, what it could eventually lead to. So, Yeah, I'd say it would be impactful. And I think we need to find ways to make it a little bit more widespread, not just in HR tech, but across, you know, every type of, every type of technology or every type of SaaS. Like, you know, we, the same way I think we need designers on project management tools to help you kind of understand how to lay out information. I mean, there's, there's so much benefits from having people that are knowledgeable around the subject matter. Um, it could pay dividends when, when you actually get pen to paper and start bringing those developers and the big brains in to start coming up with cool things. So.
Al ElliottYeah, totally agree with that. And I think there's, there's some apps out there. Let's, I'm not picking on OfficeVibe. I'm saying there's lots of them out there, but they, they may show you've got an 80%, um, sort of 80% engagement rate, but you've got a 40% turnover, which you and I know that something's not Right there. So are these apps just trying to show us what we want to see?
Jeffrey FerminSo if we go back to that prior question, like, yeah, we, not only do we shovel more shit your way, but then we kind of tell you, uh, as, uh, you know, engagement platforms, we tell you like, look at this score that I did, my proprietary score, this system, it shows that you have a 94%, you know, survey response rate because you're sending out questions, you know, once a week or once every 2 weeks. And then you feel empowered where like you're getting all this information. Maybe you're not acting through it, some of the negative feedback, but then you sit back that year and you notice that you had probably one of the worst like years when it came to retention or turnover that year, right? Like that, that is just showing that you are a vitamin and not a painkiller. And, and that's really where like some of these tools have historically failed. And, you know, you said it best. It's not nitpicking at OfficeVibe. It's— goodness, I don't want to like lay out all the logos, but, you know, you have 220 solutions out in the market right now, but yet you still have, you know, disengagement out there. You still have high turnover rates and, you know, cultural issues that are going beyond like what's being shown on these systems and their proprietary scores. So, You know, what are we doing to address that? Is it useful at all? And where can you get to the nitty-gritty things? Like, one of the big complaints that I had working with my OfficeVibe team is like, why did back then— granted, they're a more evolved system back then— like, why was it only 10 drivers when there's so many different things that go into an office? It's not just like, you know, manager-to-manager relationship, employee-to-employee relationships, corporate wellness. Like, no, how are How are people just overall, like, feeling about going— about the future of the company, about the future of, like, innovation at the company? Uh, you know, I know Glassdoor has their, like, CEO approval thing, but how can we never, like, bake that into Culture Amp or OfficeVibe or even manager approval ratings? Like, there's so many different ideas that, that were never really, you know, brought to light. And to this day, there's a lot of engagement platforms that aren't, you know, bringing real true blue issues up to light. So yeah, that's, that's my 2 cents on it. I think a lot of these systems could be done better. And I hope that my advisor role at Hoobly, we were able to like really kind of, uh, you know, keep on adding some features that are innovative like that, that actually address issues. So yeah, we'll see. I mean, I'm, I'm still excited. I'm still very much one of the people that want to drive change forward in the sector, but Uh, only time will tell how things will go.
Al ElliottSo what do you do differently? You said that people raise issues. You want to just not put that as a, oh, here's an issue on a dashboard. You want to deal with that issue. So how are you dealing with it?
Jeffrey FerminGoing back to that example, because I know it's my third time, employee engagement, employee relations, 2 separate kind of deals. I would say more culture and, uh, you know, dare I say serious shit on the employee relations side. That's when things need to be addressed. It's way different than— they're 2 different products addressing 2 different issues, but both are very relevant to each other. So I want to talk about All Voices a little bit. Whenever there is something that could put your business or your employee safety at risk, that's when it needs to go into All Voices. So we provide an encrypted, 2-way anonymous way of having employees report things that are going on. And it could be a wide range of topics. I always joke around and say, You know, sexual harassment, discrimination, all the way to an oil spill. Not, not really, not definitely not a joking matter, but we cover that, that wide range of topics in there. Whenever an employee feels in danger, that's kind of what they need All Voices for, to help kind of, you know, have documentation on everything, to bring in certain stakeholders and really protect the employee as well as the business from, you know, something escalating. So, All Voices does their best to be a good preventative way of keeping businesses and employees safe. And yeah, you know, we want to ensure business continuity, employee safety, and Claire has done a fantastic job from day one building this product up. And I really enjoy being the, like, you know, one of the marketers on this team and really like getting that message out there that we exist just to like protect employees. You go on to the Hootly end, that's where we get more into the culture side. And I don't want to promise any features, but we might even find a way to like kind of say, hey, if you need to escalate, go to, you know, from Hoogly, go to All Voices. But I'll let all the tech teams and business people get involved with that. I just do a good job of working with both companies. But Hoogly is definitely more, you know, ground level, grassroots, understanding what's going on in your workplace. You know, all those whispers of Why I might not want to be here beyond a couple of months. You know, why are employees disengaged? Is it a leadership issue? Is it a, you know, I don't like the way that I'm being treated. I don't like my compensation. I don't like this, that, the third. So, finding all the things that are day-to-day issues that really help us understand what's going on within a workplace. That a lot of managers might not normally— I won't say care about, but a lot of managers might not necessarily be aware of. And these aren't things that are gonna put, you know, a business in danger or an employee in danger, but it's gonna put that turnover or retention, uh, percentage in danger where, yeah, some folks might not like the workplace and they'll be able to write out why and really have a voice within their organizations to like You know, really put all those issues to light.
Al ElliottI'm trying to think that if I was a CEO of a company and I had a platform, something like you were talking about there with All Voices, then if it's anonymous, anonymous sort of like tip-off or whistle-blow, if that's the singular of it, I might go, oh, maybe it's just someone who's a little bit annoyed with me. They've had a shit day at work and they're just stirring the pot. I mean, how are we dealing with that?
Jeffrey FerminI'm trying to put myself in the shoes of a person that would say that. Or would address a situation like that. I do feel like when you go into the investigation within All Voices, you do need to provide evidence and you could upload files and, you know, you could eventually de-anonymize yourself and say like, hey, I'm this person and like, this has actually been happening to me and I do want to escalate it and take it further and I want to bring in stakeholders. So, so yeah, there is the component too of like, you know, adding And uploading evidence and files and emails and all that, all the things that could help make that case. And from there, it's really up to HR compliance or employee relations specialists to then address and escalate that issue and figure out what's the best course of action, whether it's something as small as a performance improvement plan or maybe having to fire that person. You know, if there's enough information for that, that does require termination, and it is something that is putting either the business or an employee in danger, you know, we take all those complaints very seriously, and we make sure to house it and facilitate it and give HR and compliance officers everything they need to make the right decision. And granted, we do have AI recommendations, obviously not for, you know, how to approach the actual, like, final part of it, but We're going to have, you know, help guide you every sense of the way. And I know AI becomes scary in this HR space because it feels— in HR space in general, because it feels like it is taking away from jobs and all these things. But the reality is we're not removing the human in the loop, right? We just have things as suggestions and how to like best go about an investigation. And we're going to assist every step of the way to ensure that, you know, at the end of the day, 2 most important things are still okay, which are the business and the employee. And we're removing all the things that could put those in danger.
Al ElliottI'm sure you said this, maybe I dreamt it, but you said something about AI being an amplifier, not a replacer. So is that what you're talking about there?
Jeffrey FerminYes, I very much view AI as an amplifier, not a replacement. That is a quote that I use often, mostly because there is a lot of negative hoopla blah, and sometimes rightfully so when it comes to artificial intelligence and what it can and can't do. And obviously, ethically, what are some of the just overall pros and cons of using it? But I do think that All Voices and Hoogly for that matter, we're using AI ethically in a way where it's really there to be there with you every step of the way and help you address issues and tackle them on. Uh, you know, we're, we're not wasting anyone's time. We're not, uh, you know, we're not giving anyone any false information or any false hopes here. We're here to show you that like a lot of the manual tasks associated when it comes to an employee relations, uh, employee relations problem, uh, specific to All Voices, we can be with you every step of the way and tell you what's the best, best way to handle this. What are the potential outcomes? And at the end of the day, What is going to be the best decision for you and your organization to make. That said, like, hey, like, you know, the human component still needs to be there when it comes to interviewing people. If you need to like have an interrogation or, you know, a conversation with an employee to get more information out of it and then write those notes, like AI is not going to be there to read a human and say like, oh, this person.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Jeffrey FerminThey're probably stretching the truth a little bit here, or this person's being extremely honest and they saw a lot more than the evidence that we had. So let's document that. We just had a webinar actually around where AI, when it comes to AI and employee relations, where those 2 things sort of meet and where can it help and where it shouldn't be. And we do our best to always make sure that employee relations still will always, I could only foresee within this next 5-year period, but at least for the time being, as far as I know, it's going to always require a human in the loop. And I don't see that ever changing because it's really around, funny enough, relations between humans and making sure that we're okay. So yeah, all that to say is use AI as much as you can, as long as it's ethical, as long as it's taking away from small manual tasks that you probably are You know, wasting time on and, you know, organizing files and, and gathering information and helping you with outputs.
Leanne ElliottDid you know that the UK's number 1 management podcast— that's us, by the way— and the UK's number 1 marketing podcast are both on the same podcast network?
Al ElliottWe actually have a lot in common. We both use behavioral science to help people do better at work.
Leanne ElliottAnd we both had to wrangle Rory Sutherland on an episode.
Jeffrey FerminAnd 2 2 out of 3 of us are devilishly good-looking.
Al ElliottAnd you're not gonna say which. Phil, host of Nudge, UK's number 1 marketing podcast. It's brought to you— we need to do this in 3s—
Leanne Elliottthe HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals.
Jeffrey FerminSeamless, seamless.
Al ElliottTell us about your latest episode, Phil.
Jeffrey FerminUh, we've just done an episode on fake fandom and how New York indie bands are paying agents to create fake TikTok videos about how much they like their work. And we talk about the behavioural science behind fandom and how that encourages people to enjoy the music and all of that good stuff, and do some big things about how this affects the world of politics, business, and brands as well.
Leanne ElliottIt is, it's such, it's such a good show. Of course, you'll hear all the stuff you want to hear about how to grow your business by using behavioural science in your marketing. But there's also just some really interesting episodes that'll be right up your street. Personally, I enjoyed. Can balsamic vinegar make beer taste better?
Jeffrey FerminIt can.
Leanne ElliottAnd are we all just status-seeking monkeys?
Jeffrey FerminI am.
Al ElliottGo and listen to Nudge wherever you get your podcasts.
Leanne ElliottBut come back.
Al ElliottYeah, come back.
Jeffrey FerminDefinitely come back because Nudge isn't as good as this. So come back.
Al ElliottI'll cut that out. Keep that in. So pulse surveys now, what are we actually measuring these days? What's important in 2026?
Jeffrey FerminOkay. So my last bit of research, uh, which, you know, full-fledged competitor research came 2018 and I found like not much changed from 2011 to 2018. Uh, and I, I say that because it's all Likert surveys or the same kind of survey structures, right? And it's all like, how do you feel today? What don't you— do you like this workplace? Yes. Not at all. Uh, or what is it? Highly dissatisfied. Highly satisfied. Like we've seen the same survey patterns exist for, for almost a dozen years now. I think there's, uh, this is just a hypothesis. There's probably a little bit of survey fatigue cuz we've, employers have probably seen the same thing and they've expected some type of outcome. And more times than not, they have not seen any actions take place. Uh, so I wanna preface my answer with saying that.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Jeffrey FerminWhere are we in 2026? And let's talk about the overall lay of the land. At least here in the States, we have a job ecosystem or an economy that is definitely more towards the employers right now. Employees are probably— we're doing what's called job hugging, right? Where we're hugging onto our jobs and we're making sure that we can pay our mortgages and have a roof over our head and have a meal on our plate. So there's probably a little bit of, I won't say dishonesty, but there's a little bit of a fear about opening up around culture issues at the moment because of mass layoffs, because of all the advancements of AI. And you don't know if it's gonna be able to replace you as an employee in a couple years. So some folks are maybe feeling a little bit of hesitancy to, uh, you know, they may be hesitant to answer some of these surveys and really give like honest answers. So that's just my assumption. That said, like what's needed for 2026? I think conversational AI, whether it's Hoogly or if anyone else wants to kind of make something else, and I hope they don't because we really want to hit the market. But I do think it's going to be a little bit more open-ended instead of the traditional, you know, Likert or radio button style surveys or animated one, like similar to OfficeVibe, like we are, we really need to start hearing people out and seeing what changes can be made. And that's going to come with having unique individual perspectives of what's going on culturally and what, what can be fixed. Uh, you know, largest, largest organization in the world probably has what, uh, you know, 500,000, 800,000 employees. I, I don't know the number, but let's say it's 800,000. That's 800,000 different perspectives on how they can make the culture better. Well, if we can use AI, right, to amplify all those voices and say like, hey, here's what— here are the common themes, here are the common patterns in this region. They really don't like this over here in this region. We've gathered that some folks might not like this department and their healthcare isn't as good as the others. So maybe we should invest more in order to see better outputs and better retention here. I think if we can have that mentality instead of just expecting a survey with 5 outputs and getting some kind of number around it, If we start like talking and making it more conversational and open, and then using AI in that way to really understand what's going on culturally within a large organization of 800,000 or a small one of 8, we could really start, you know, figuring out problems that exist from an employee engagement culture perspective. So, I would say that's what needs to happen in 2026. Not really a direct answer, and I have to apologize for not being direct, but I do feel it's a new type of innovation that requires a different way of thinking. And, um, yeah, we'll see if we can accomplish it.
Al ElliottYou just mentioned there that it was job hugging. Now, we had 3 years ago the Great Resignation. People were just jumping around in jobs. Now it's the opposite. Everyone's hanging on to their jobs for dear life. A bad business owner might go, well, there's no need to do a survey anymore because they have to stay. They ain't going anywhere. What would you say to those people?
Jeffrey FerminI've been in this space for 15 years, and I will say the best time to invest in culture is when it is an employer market. I think if you want an employee to be there for 5, 10, 15 years, you invest when the times are rough. And I say that as a former business owner, small business owner, or you want to go back to OfficeVibe, Pre-acquisition, you know, or post, even post-acquisition where I might have not had that many decisions. No matter what, if you invest in people when, when the times are rough and you, you open up the floodgates of feedback and you, you really just, you make it a two-way street, you know, when times are rough, people will take note of that and want to execute and be at your side.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Jeffrey FerminYou know, at rock bottom and even when you start hitting these new heights. So I would say, yeah, double down investing even more and start getting more information on how to make things better. If you want an employee to stay with you 5, 10 years into the future, especially when it comes to like high performers and A-listers and even, even the quote unquote low performers, right? Like that person that might feel a little disengaged if you're showing and you're making strides to Want to improve the culture while things are chaotic on the outside and society saying like, oh, we're having layoffs and it's an employee market. If you're an employer or you're a manager and you're saying, hey, I'm going to do what's best. I know I'm going to curse again. That's why I was laughing. I know shit's crazy outside, but at least once you, when you enter these 4 walls, or if you're in a virtual office, your own 4 walls, we're going to make things comfortable for you in order for you to succeed. do better, grow, and make sure that you're like, you know, affecting the organization in a positive way, uh, they're gonna take note of that. And maybe that person that might've felt kind of teetering on that disengagement line, they'll be like, oh, maybe this job isn't that bad. And they'll start making changes and actually like buying in. And that's the difference between a, you know, good and great culture, right? Like when times— when shit's hitting the fan, if you double down on feedback, you start hearing your employees out and you really start Investing in like maybe making some of those changes that they're bringing to light, they'll take note of that when things are back to being an employer great resignation type of market. So.
Al ElliottYou mentioned something there about radio buttons and Likert slides, and you said it in a way that suggested there was survey fatigue as a real thing. How do we stop us from getting into sort of culture fatigue?
Jeffrey FerminUh, I don't want to sit here and pretend like it's going to be peachy all the time. And, you know, I can never see— I can never ever promise that there's going to be 100% engagement rate in the world or within one workplace, big or small. I do think if you have a manager with a growth mindset or HR team with a growth mindset, they're going to want to always be optimizing or always be tinkering and teetering around to figure out what can be done better. And now HR departments are getting more sophisticated to tying in like what some of these, you know, HR initiatives, you know, tying it back to like business ROI. Like if we invest X amount of dollars on, I don't know, an engagement initiative, healthcare, how does this affect the bottom line? And how are, you know, are we going to see a jump in sales or a jump in productivity? I can honestly say, you know, there's going to be employees that just, they, they aren't going to care after a while. They might just have survey fatigue. Or they might have hit their, their ceiling at a company. And it, and it does happen. And, you know, you can have an A-performer that is on their way to be the next VP, and they're just, they want to see something new, or they want to maybe start a business on their own. Shit's gonna happen, dude. Like, it's that simple. People are changing. Their goals are always changing. Within an organization, there are so many variables to maintain everyone's happiness. But you can never control a human's just desire to want to try new things and want to go out there. And after a while, they might just like get sick of some of these like culture things saying like, no, I want to eventually build my own things. And I don't necessarily agree with my culture, my company's culture 100%. Maybe I'm just going to go to another one that's a little bit more aligned. And then we can get into the whole nerdiness of organizational alignment and Maybe even having psychometric evaluations. You know, if you really are keen on making sure that you want to avoid turnover and retention, you can go that extra layer to prevent that from happening. But the reality is there's no foolproof plan of saying like, hey, my employees are gonna be happy 100% of the time and they're never gonna experience culture fatigue. It'll happen. It'll just happen naturally. But when you're taking actions like hire— getting an employee engagement software, getting an employee relations software, you know, investing in, you know, different benefits and perks, you're ensuring the likelihood of someone exiting. Uh, you know, it's, it's, it's kind of just, you're lowering that. And that's what, if you have a group of high performers, you wanna do whatever you can to keep things rolling over here. So, yeah.
Al ElliottYou seem to be involved in building the entire next generation of HR tech. Looking back on what you did Back with OfficeVibe. Are there any mistakes that you would absolutely refuse to allow to be repeated?
Jeffrey FerminWell, I think we answered it earlier. I think we, I would bring some kind of organizational psychologist in the loop. Let's validate it. And let's, let's actually, instead of just, you know, copy pasting some questions, putting in an Excel sheet and having some kind of numbers and have our engineers say like, oh, let's, you know, if it hits this number, you know, let's, let's show this one over here on this dashboard. is essentially how all these systems work, right? Like, we're all built on Excel sheets, whether you want to believe it or not. You get one survey response and then you show it over here as a chart. You know, instead of thinking of it as a product, how can we think of it as a way of— any product, really? How can we think of this as affecting the end user? And the end user being the employees. I'm not even talking about HR. Like, HR is great. They're fantastic at what they do.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Jeffrey FerminBut like, at the end of the day, you know, my MO was really helping out individual employees and it still is. But like, we weren't addressing that early on. We were constantly focused on what enterprise wanted. We were building features for the dashboard for HR. And, and then we forgot that one vital component, which you really look at a lot of HR tech companies tend to do this based on like the overall design and aesthetic of and functionality of their products, they forget what it feels like for employees coming in. So I would say if I were restarting an HR tech brand from the start, go with focusing on the employee experience. And I don't mean that by the HR standard, the employee's experience within your platform. If you're an HRIS, what could you be doing to easily give people information? Like if you are payroll benefits platform, can you link in with financial institutions to see like your overall budgeting and what you could do there? Like, I don't know.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Jeffrey FerminI'm just throwing out random ideas right now, but making sure that we have everything needed for employees to gain trust and consistently provide the most honest and raw and open feedback that they could for the HR managers. And then obviously focus on their experience and make sure they can make decisions. So yeah, employee first. That's why I named my podcast People First. It needs to start with the people. And yes, power to the people, power to the employees from here on out, because we are the lifeblood that makes organizations run.
Al ElliottYou mentioned that earlier about your parents and you said that they grew up and I think you said that when they were working, they were in a corporate-ish environment. And I think the words you said were no voice. What are their thoughts on what you're doing now?
Jeffrey FerminThey didn't even, funny enough, they weren't aware of the startup ecosystem. Like I was, I did not know what VC funding was or what like startup festivals and pitch festivals were and all these things. Like, We were never exposed to that. You know, we are, you know, son of immigrant both ways, right? Like, there was never any exposure to this. So, just the fact that I have an interesting job that addresses issues and just the fact that I was able to start something and was kind of like helping, you know, nearly 2,000, 3,000 organizations out within a 4-year span, they were like, wow, that's possible here? Like, I was not even aware of that. And tech startups, what is this? So very early on, they were impressed and they're really, I think they're happy. I think they're okay. A lot of the issues that they had to face, they no longer had to do. And I hope it's in part to some of the influences from not just my work, but maybe the work of other organizations that have gone and really made changes to how corporations and And just, yeah, companies in general, how they treat their employees. So I think they're very satisfied and I'm just glad to see them happy and they're about to retire soon. So I'm excited for them.
Al ElliottIf people want to learn a bit more, where's the best place for them to go?
Jeffrey FerminSo if they want my most unhinged, you could find me on Threads. It's @FerminTalksWork. That's where I just like, if you want to get to know me as an individual and hear all my nonsense and takes around, I don't know, society and just culture in general, go there. If you want the, if you want the like kind of, you know, the more work version that's still a little zany, I would say go to LinkedIn and follow me, Jeffrey Fermin. And yes, of course, more importantly, even though we've taken a break this quarter so I could focus on some stuff, you know, back of the house stuff at All Voices, but check out People First. It's over on YouTube. Uh, we have 4 episodes that should be coming out fairly soon. Uh, yeah, maybe we could get you on there.
Al ElliottThat was Jeffrey Fermin, Head of Demand Generation at All Voices, and of course, the co-founder of OfficeVibe. And as you probably discovered, one of the most honest voices in a space that, let's be honest, doesn't always reward 100% honesty. So here are our 3 big takeaways, Leigh.
Leanne ElliottNumber 1, most employee experience platforms aren't a solution as such. They're an insight tool. They'll show you the problem and leave you to figure out the rest. So before you decide on one, ask, does this tool help us to act or just see?
Al ElliottNumber 2, the best time to invest in culture is when it's actually an employer's market, when people have to stay. At the time of recording, March 2026, it's very much an employer's market. People aren't moving. But While employee engagement might not be a problem right now, what you do in these moments will determine how people will view you in the future. You'll remember the Great Resignation, don't you? Because if people want to leave when they can, they will.
Leanne ElliottAnd number 3, stop building for the dashboard. Whether you're an HR tech or running a team, if employee experience or operational processes or culture is an afterthought, You're solving a tech problem, not a people problem.
Al ElliottYou can find Jeffrey on LinkedIn, just search for Jeffrey Fermin, F-E-R-M-I-N, or catch his unfiltered takes on Threads. You have been warned, @FerminTalksWork. His podcast People First is over on YouTube. All the links are in the show notes.
Leanne ElliottThis is Truth, Lies and Work. We will see you next week.