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If I ever want to show my age, all I need to say is this:
I’ve been in the contingent workforce and HR tech space for nearly 20 years.
Now, like most of the folks in our amazing industry, I got here by accident. While I love the CWM space and the many, many friends I’ve made along the way, I didn’t set out to be an in analyst in this arena when I was college. (No, I aspired to be a journalist, a conversation for another day…)
So, I say this seeing so many market-shifting events, including the “perfect storm” of the contingent workforce’s growth spike in 2008-2009, a “reawakening” during the pandemic, and today’s AI-driven, skills-based hiring arena:
The CW programs of today aren’t built for tomorrow.
I’ve spent the bulk of my career researching, analyzing, and evaluating nearly all facets of the extended workforce spectrum: the processes that businesses leverage, the capabilities of both laggard and Best-in-Class programs, the ways business leaders integrate their CW into larger talent acquisition strategies, the solution providers augmenting extended workforce excellence, etc.
There is so, so much amazing work put it into so many programs and I actively see how hard so many CW leaders work to drive adoption of their initiatives, continue to generate cost savings, and continue to engage, find, and source top-tier, high-quality talent.
These thoughts are not a slight to any CW, HR, TA, or procurement executive pouring their blood, sweat, and tears into their programs. This is a call for action, knowing and understanding that the market is changing too quickly for comfort, changing too quickly given the rapid acceleration of artificial intelligence, some crazy economic swings (tariffs, anyone?), battles over DE&I, etc.
Do what can today to ensure your program succeeds tomorrow.
Easier said than done, I know. (I can hear those of you say the same thing you said when I wrote a manifesto on direct sourcing, like “Yeah, okay, Chris…you know how hard that is, right?”).
I do. I do know how hard it is. And it’s never easy for me to sit here and suggest that every one of you work some unrealistic magic. What I am saying is that there is implausible change ahead, given the direction of a new presidential administration and its wide-reaching implications on the greater labor market.
Just a couple of weeks ago, I joined Atrium’s Brad Martin for a fun discussion on the 2025 trends that would shape the contingent workforce space; one of them was “the strategic revolution of contingent workforce management,” with nearly 70% of businesses stating that transforming their CW programs in 2025 to be more strategic was a major corporate imperative.
The concept of strategic extended workforce management traverses beyond the “getting a seat at the table” conversation and into more advanced territory:
- The labor market is candidate-centric, so, become candidate-centric. Create compelling experiences for everyone who “touches” the contingent hiring lifecycle and spark a new way of thinking about the perceptions of external talent. Top-tier, high-quality talent is out there and approached from so many different organizations; to stand out, it is critical to attempt a “reworking” of aspects that are typically taken for granted, like job descriptions (probably the prime area for AI-led augmentation), ongoing and nurture-tinged engagement, and injecting more “purpose” into not only the work that extended workers support, but also the relationships between talent and the larger enterprise. Companies like Allegis Global Solutions (AGS) offer capabilities that traverse traditional CW offerings, particularly its Universal Workforce Model, an embedded solution that deconstructs “work” and realigns open talent channels based on next-level skills and requirements…a pure example of transforming CWM into a more candidate-centric program.
- Recruitment principles hedge deeper than traditional contingent workforce engagement; borrow some of these ideas. There is a stark difference between recruitment and contingent workforce management, yes, however…”blending” the two together is the solution needed to effectively manage the contemporary talent landscape. More sophisticated candidate personas, nurture-focused candidate communications, and, of course, direct sourcing, are all recruitment-oriented approaches that can help CW programs deepen talent pools, maintain flexibility, drive workforce scalability, and converge the “long-term outlook” of recruitment strategies with the agile nature of extended workforce management. Solutions like AMS represent the elegance of recruitment and its union with next-generation extended workforce management; the AMS One digital platform is actively pushing CWM/recruitment innovation through its digital recruiting offerings, progressive candidate engagement tools, and Best-in-Class workforce planning.
- Revolutionize the art of workforce analytics. Last week, I discussed how “total talent intelligence” was the gateway to any discussion around total talent management; this arena is indicative of the data-driven business world in which we live and suggests that even the most successful contingent workforce programs benefit from embedding talent intelligence into their core decision-making. Today’s CW programs should begin to build and develop more sophisticated frameworks that encompass skills intelligence, real-time market dynamics, and predictive modeling for talent availability. By placing skills-based hiring at the core of their data strategy, organizations can better map evolving workforce capabilities against business needs, enabling more precise matching of contingent talent while building a deeper understanding of their total talent ecosystem. Magnit’s artificial intelligence-fueled and GenAI-augmented Magnit Platform represents the future of talent and workforce analytics, offering an array of analytics-based tools that hyperscale total talent intelligence and provide modern CW programs with cutting-edge alignment between talent, skillsets, jobs, and critical projects.
The imperative to reimagine contingent workforce management has never been more urgent. Geographical trade wars, shifts in how businesses approach DE&I, a rollercoaster economy, and unprecedented technological disruption are reshaping the fundamental nature of how work gets done. These converging forces demand a more adaptive and strategic approach to contingent workforce management – one that can anticipate and respond to rapid market shifts while building resilient talent communities.
The Future of Work waits for no one. Thus, the time is now for contingent workforce programs to reimagine their approaches to how they address how work is done by reevaluating existing initiatives and strategically catalyzing attributes such as total talent intelligence, adoption of next-generation technology, and weaving robust recruitment methods within extended workforce management.
