Acquisition Solves Complex Enterprise Data Challenges, Empowering All Organizations to Advance Workforce Planning

Phenom, the leader in applied AI that helps organizations hire faster, develop better, and retain longer, today announced it acquired Included, an AI-native agentic people analytics platform that surfaces actionable insights for faster, smarter workforce decision-making. Further strengthening Phenom’s application of AI for workforce intelligence, all human resources professionals and executives will be empowered to not only access deeper data insights, but take action that drives workforce planning and growth.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260114152050/en/

Phenom, the leader in applied AI that helps organizations hire faster, develop better, and retain longer, today announced it acquired Included, an AI-native agentic people analytics platform that surfaces actionable insights for faster, smarter workforce decision-making. Further strengthening Phenom’s application of AI for workforce intelligence, all human resources professionals and executives will be empowered to not only access deeper data insights, but take action that drives workforce planning and growth.

Phenom’s acquisition of Included expands the value of applying intelligence, automation and experience to people analytics, continuing its commitment to delivering outcome-based AI solutions that address HR’s biggest challenges. As organizations strive to make their talent operations more data-driven, many struggle with consolidating data from disparate systems and quickly drawing relevant insights. Enterprises depend on business analysts to connect the dots within and across tech stacks, while other companies have to extract information without dedicated resources. To remain competitive in today’s volatile talent market, companies of all sizes require immediate access to deep insights that enable workforce planning and hiring precision.

Enhancing Workforce Decisions with Intelligent, Actionable People Analytics

Included is widely recognized for its development of proprietary algorithms that address inconsistencies and gaps in people data to allow better analysis and AI efficiency. Coupled with an extensible canonical model and ontology, this foundation can flex to consume information from additional sources and adapt it to organizational needs. This data powers an AI insights framework that provides automated narratives on organizational health, hiring bottlenecks, workforce trends, and concerning outliers — all using natural language.

Natively integrated into Phenom’s applied AI platform, companies will get access to a more extensive, connected set of data. Included’s agentic AI complements Phenom’s Workforce Intelligence solution, providing the conversational ability to dive deep into critical growth areas and potential business risks. By engaging with the agent through simple prompts and natural language queries, users receive recommendations and plans to take action. The user experience is further personalized with the most relevant information based on role and behaviors.

Now every HR professional and business leader will have a people analytics agent that enables them to quickly view data, analyze it, and take action, supported by:

• Integrated, standardized data from core HR, talent acquisition, employee engagement, and performance management systems that powers unified people analytics for organization-wide insights and enhanced workforce planning
• Predictive intelligence backed by Phenom’s extended ontology to mitigate risks, driving proactive intervention before issues escalate
• Cross-functional dashboards and real-time visualizations that provide transparency and compliance-ready insights to leaders
• AI-generated narratives and reporting to diagnose process bottlenecks, improve hiring velocity, optimize productivity, prevent employee burnout and identify team skills gaps

“Many companies still struggle to get vital workforce insights to their leaders for efficient and effective talent planning,” said Zachary Chertok, Senior Research Manager for HCM Applications and Agents at IDC. “People analytics provide critical support to identify these insights and integrate them into business performance management toward optimizing operational health. Phenom’s acquisition of Included offers contextualized, automated people analytics available across the organization, deepening capabilities to personalize experiences with AI for all users from executives down to line managers.”

“Every acquisition we make is intentional and highly selective, pursuing only those that complement our innovation roadmap and strengthen our ability to solve our customers’ biggest hiring and retention challenges,” said Mahe Bayireddi, CEO and co-founder of Phenom. “Deeper people analytics and workforce planning insights are no longer optional; they’re the foundation for building agile, future-ready teams. The acquisition of Included expands our ability to deliver contextualized Applied AI capabilities for every persona and organization.”

Raghu Gollamudi, Chandan Golla and Laura Close co-founded Included in 2021. “We created Included to build the ultimate people experience solution,” said Raghu Gollamudi, CEO and co-founder of Included. “By becoming part of Phenom, we’re excited to bring agentic analytics to more HR professionals and executives.”

With Phenom, candidates find and choose the right job faster, employees develop their skills and evolve, recruiters become wildly productive, talent marketers engage with extreme efficiency, talent leaders optimize hiring processes, managers build stronger-performing teams, HR aligns onboarding and employee development with company goals, and HRIT easily integrates existing HR tech to create a holistic infrastructure.

To learn more about Phenom’s acquisition of Included, visit our blog.

Book a demo to see Phenom Applied AI in action.

To dive deeper into how Phenom is helping organizations hire faster, develop better and retain longer, attend IAMPHENOM at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia March 10-12. Register before January 31 and save 40% with early bird pricing. Learn more here.

About Phenom

Phenom is an applied AI company with the only AI infrastructure built specifically for HR. Powered by Engines that harmonize data, Ontologies that guide every decision, X AI that hyper-personalizes experiences, Agents that work alongside teams, Phenom's platform uses industry and business context to automate workflows, eliminate busywork, and enhance every experience while remaining compliant. Driven by a purpose to help a billion people find the right work, no other company is as dedicated to helping organizations hire faster, develop better and retain longer.

Phenom has earned accolades including: Inc. 5000’s fastest-growing companies (6 consecutive years), Deloitte Technology's Fast 500 (5 years), 11 Brandon Hall ‘Excellence in Technology’ awards including Gold for ‘Best Advance in Generative AI for Business Impact,’ Business Intelligence Group’s Artificial Intelligence Excellence Awards (3 consecutive years), The Cloud Awards 2025/2024, The A.I. Awards 2024, and a regional Timmy Award for launching and optimizing HelpOneBillion.com (2020).

Headquartered in Greater Philadelphia, Phenom also has offices in India, Israel, the Netherlands, Germany and the United Kingdom.

For more information, please visit www.phenom.com. Connect with Phenom on LinkedIn, X, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and TikTok.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260114152050/en/

“Many companies still struggle to get vital workforce insights to their leaders…,” said Zachary Chertok, IDC. “Phenom’s acquisition of Included offers contextualized, automated people analytics…for all users from executives down to line managers.”