ServiceNow has announced plans to acquire Hitch Works (Hitch), an AI-powered platform that helps companies close talent gaps by aligning existing employee skills with new roles and training opportunities across the workforce. company as a whole.

The announcement comes as companies across all industry sectors struggle with a growing skills gap and talent shortage, in part due to trends such as the so-called ‘Great Quit’.

With prebuilt integrations for applicant tracking systems, learning management systems, human capital management (HCM) systems, LinkedIn, online survey tools and more, Hitch offers mapping and analyzes for skills supply and demand, career planning and mentoring. Relying on machine learning, Hitch automatically interprets data from project work, job postings and people profiles, then makes recommendations – this could include matching an employee to new training courses, internal job offers, understaffed short-term projects, etc.

Over its five years in business, Hitch has amassed quite an impressive list of corporate clients, including Allianz, Bosch, and GE Digital.

It is time

Founded in 2003, ServiceNow has grown into a $100 billion enterprise powerhouse and is best known for its workflow automation platform spanning IT services, employee onboarding, management facilities and more. However, the company has bolstered its core Now platform, recently aligning itself with the burgeoning hybrid work movement with new indoor mapping features gained through its Mapwize acquisition.

When the acquisition of Hitch is finalized, which is expected later this quarter, ServiceNow will begin to integrate Hitch’s skills insights into the Now platform and seek to bridge skills and job management data silos. existing talent that often doesn’t go beyond their native HR software. systems. It’s ultimately about unlocking insights that could help retain talent – ​​recent Pew research indicated that up to 63% of American workers left their jobs in 2021 because there was no advancement opportunities.

“Skills are the new currency for businesses, but knowing those skills is critical to driving talent retention and adapting to changing business needs,” said Gretchen Alarcon, vice-president President and General Manager of HR Service Delivery at ServiceNow. “But talent management has always been siloed, with many point solutions and fragmented processes that don’t work together. With Hitch, ServiceNow will streamline skills intelligence into a single platform to help business leaders connect employees with meaningful work. »