For the past several years, the simplest way I could define the Future of Work was the optimization of work via talent, technology, and transformative thinking. While the Future of Work has evolved mightily given specific accelerants and the advent of innovative new tools and strategies, the foundation is the same. This year’s Future of Work Exchange Report for 2021 (formerly titled The State of Contingent Workforce Management) found that:
- The pandemic’s main effects on enterprise talent were squarely focused on a series of interconnected attributes related to the workforce, especially in regard to the type of worker required to meet fast-changing needs and requirements of the business and the means in which to manage it effectively.
- Traditional workforce management required new approaches to assure ongoing operations, given the mighty (125%!) increase in the utilization of remote and hybrid work models.
- Going into 2020, 43.5% of the average organization’s total workforce was considered “contingent.” In 2021, that number sits at 47% and there are strong indications that this percentage will grow as the transformation of talent and work continues forward.
- 82% of businesses stated in our study that the agile workforce enabled flexibility and scalability at a time when it was most needed. As markets recovered, enterprises had the ability (via talent marketplaces, talent pools and communities, as well as traditional staffing suppliers, etc.) to ramp up hiring to meet growing demand.
- The impact of workplace culture evolution in 2021 means that more workers, having experienced more individual control and responsibility over their work days, would like to retain some level of control over when and how they get work done – from the hours that they work to how they physically address their workspaces. As businesses push deeper into the realm of digital transformation, the remote work-specific facets of worker and workplace flexibility are not only better-enabled (via enhanced collaboration tools and unified communications), but more realistic pieces of the Future of Work movement, and, most importantly, a central asset to overall work optimization, and;
- The enterprise’s renewed focus on its human capital and overall depth of skillsets across the greater organization (as 62% of organizations are prioritizing in 2021 and beyond, according to FOWX research) means that businesses require the necessary tools, solutions, and strategies for engaging, managing, and driving value from their extended workforce.
I’m excited to join Beeline’s Judy Bumgarner (their Director of Product Strategy) on an exclusive webcast TOMORROW at 11am ET to discuss the new research, the above bullets, and, of course, the Future of Work today and into 2022. Click here or on the below image to register.
