Beyond Employee Listening: How Perceptyx is Fixing Employee Engagement

In this episode of 600 Seconds in HR Tech, Dani Johnson sits down with Charles Newnam, Vice President and General Manager of Leadership and Learning Strategy at Perceptyx, to discuss the company's expansion beyond employee listening and into learning, leadership development, and AI-powered workforce improvement.Following Perceptyx's acquisition of Lyceum, the company launched Develop to bring together employee listening, personalized coaching, behavior-change nudges, and adaptive learning experiences into a single platform. The goal is to create a closed-loop system that identifies workforce challenges, recommends interventions, develops new skills, and then measures whether those interventions actually improve employee outcomes.As Charles explains, the vision is to create a system that can "automatically change behavior at scale" by combining employee feedback, organizational context, AI coaching, and learning experiences into a continuous improvement cycle.Questions AnsweredWhy is Perceptyx moving beyond employee listening?After more than two decades in employee listening, Perceptyx sees an opportunity to help organizations act on workforce insights rather than simply collect them. By combining listening data with learning, coaching, and behavior-change technologies, the company aims to help leaders close capability gaps and improve employee outcomes more effectively.What is the vision behind Develop?Develop serves as the foundation for Perceptyx's learning and development strategy. The platform connects employee feedback, AI-powered coaching, adaptive learning experiences, and behavioral nudges to create a continuous feedback loop that supports skill development and performance improvement.What makes Perceptyx's approach to AI different?Perceptyx emphasizes what Charles calls "contextually aware AI." Rather than providing generic guidance, the platform incorporates information about an employee, their team, organizational goals, engagement data, and business context to deliver more relevant recommendations and coaching.Who is the buyer for Develop and Perceptyx's learning solutions?While chief learning officers, learning leaders, and CHROs remain important stakeholders, Perceptyx is also seeing opportunities to work directly with business functions such as sales, operations, and IT. The company believes workforce development increasingly requires collaboration between HR and line-of-business leaders.How is Perceptyx differentiating itself in a crowded market?Perceptyx believes its long history in employee listening provides a unique advantage. The company combines decades of workforce data, evidence-based behavioral science, AI-powered coaching, and adaptive learning experiences to create a more comprehensive workforce development solution.Timestamps00:00 – Introduction to Perceptyx00:48 – Why is Perceptyx branching out from employee listening?01:49 – The vision behind Develop04:13 – Where does Develop sit organizationally?05:15 – Who is the buyer for Develop?07:06 – How is Perceptyx differentiating itself?09:00 – How does data fit into broader systems?10:46 – Dani's reflection and analysisResources & LinksPerceptyx: https://www.perceptyx.com/Charles Newnam on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cgnewnam/Dani Johnson on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dani-johnson/RedThread Research Official Website: https://redthreadresearch.com/RedThread Research on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/redthread-research