Some picked-up pieces from around the world of talent and work:
- Big news out of the workforce management solutions arena yesterday afternoon, as Workday announced that it had agreed to acquire VMS provider VNDLY for $510 million. There are several implications of this deal (which is expected to close in early 2022), including the “total talent management” factor (HRIS functionality plus VMS technology), VNDLY adding an HR edge to its core range of contingent workforce-led offerings, and how it enhances VNDLY’s integration- and API-friendly platform. (Additional coverage of this deal will be featured on the Future of Work Exchange next week.)
- Elevated Resources’ flagship VMS product, ELEVATE, recently announced its Customer and Supplier Automation Platform, a staffing platform as a service (SPaaS) that is aimed to enhance candidate sourcing and engagement management for the staffing supplier industry. “Customers are demanding more intuitive automation as they look towards the Future of Work and how they interact with staffing firms. ELEVATE is providing its staffing suppliers with a delivery platform for their customers that do not already have a VMS in place. With this enhanced platform, staffing providers can manage the entire fulfillment lifecycle,” said Rob Morris, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder at ELEVATE.
- Twenty months into the pandemic and there are still major discussions of in-person vs. remote work. However, now that (most of) the dust has settled on what works and what doesn’t work in the hybrid work environment, there’s an overlooked discussion at hand that could play a significant role in the continue volatility: geo-differentiated vs geo-neutral compensation. In short, companies that allow their staff to work remotely could alter salaries based on where their talent lives (Facebook was one of the first major enterprises to float this idea back in 2020). A London-based tech startup may not want to pay London-based rates for a worker that lives across the world in Iowa, however, what some executives fail to realize is that this mode of thinking is a literal backpedal to the candidate experience. Companies that are feeling the burn of the so-called “Great Resignation” need to eliminate this idea…immediately.
- The four-week rolling average of unemployment claims has been hovering around 272,000, which would be a pandemic-era low. This is yet another encouraging sign that the labor market, in theory, has technically “recovered.” However, with millions more job openings and hundreds of thousands of workers quitting/resigning monthly, the ground gained just doesn’t feel as welcoming as it should.
- Dr. Ashish Jha, Dean of Brown University’s School of Public Health, writes in The Atlantic about why vaccine boosters will be required for all adults moving forward. “[Boosting adults] in the United States makes sense as a matter of both minimizing risks to individuals and protecting the health of the population as a whole,” he writes. This also makes sense from the business standpoint, as well; last winter’s COVID surge was horrific, with nearly 250,000 daily cases, thousands of death each day, and unimaginable disruption. If businesses want to keep whatever momentum they have right now flowing into the colder, darker months of winter, it would behoove them to encourage fully-vaccinated workers to consider a booster dose. The one tool that we did not have last winter that we do now will be the strongest weapon to ensure businesses weather the next coronavirus surge.
