Never fear, this is not a political post. It is, however, a look into our future as employers and employees. I had the opportunity to spend time with GuideSpark last week at their analyst day, and their innovations around communications, and the implications for today’s organizations were intriguing.

If you’re not familiar, GuideSpark was founded in 2008 and primarily focused on creating engaging, customized videos to help organizations explain benefits choices to employees. The premise was that an educated employee as decision-maker would increase benefit adoption and satisfaction because employees knew what was available to them and how to use it. Over the past several years, GuideSpark has been working on building an innovative communications platform to support employee understanding of other complex processes from benefits to financial wellness, and now talent management as well.

Central to this platform are technology breakthroughs that allow for the creation of customized, flexible, and most importantly cost-effective video content. They have now surrounded this critical capability with a complete platform that will allow organizations to create, manage, distribute and measure employee communications content. Madeline and I have both spoken frequently on the need for better employee communications. And the fact that organizations to understand and segment their employees the same way they do their customers. The GuideSpark view of the communications platform is a key tool to helping organizations act upon this critical strategy.

I also had the chance to meet many key executives, and clearly video, design and measurement are in GuideSpark’s DNA. CEO and co-founder Keith Kitani comes from an eLearning and design background, having sold Presedia to Macromedia in 2003. Recently they also brought on Pritham Shetty, formerly of Adobe where he was responsible for big data, content, audiences for Adobe Digital Marketing Cloud and Adobe Primetime. At the same time, they were joined by Ammiel Kamon, formerly of Kontera where he was responsible for product development within their Brand Intelligence suite. Applying these perspectives to the world of HR and employee communications seems to be helping them rethink some fundamental challenges organizations face in connecting with employees to drive compliance, understanding and engagement.

The user conference that followed on the heels of the analyst event further highlighted these critical challenges, as mentioned in my previous blog. But it is exciting to see some critical innovation happening in this important area. Aptitude Research will be exploring this critical area of employee communications later this year, but GuideSpark is clearly one to watch in this growing space.