Christopher J. Dwyer, Author at The Future of Work Exchange

The Workforce Trends that Will Shape 2021: Part Two

Talent by Christopher J. Dwyer on 04/12/2021

Over the past several weeks, I’ve written about the various contingent workforce, staffing, and Future of Work attributes that could contribute to the way businesses will operate a year from now. Taking into account the very strange days of 2020, combined with the anticipated growth in the utilization of non-employee talent, businesses now understand that there are many dynamic forces at play that will shape their outlook and success in 2021 (and beyond).

I once again had the opportunity chat with various contingent workforce, staffing, and HR technology leaders about the key trends that will shape the year ahead:

Kathy Hardy, Vice President, Kelly Discover (KellyOCG)

“Over the past several years, D&I has been talked about as an HR goal, or project and the initiatives surrounding it have been largely internally focused. Since COVID-19 and the social unrest, D&I ideation has become more of a company-wide conversation than an HR objective alone, and the general level of empathy has seemed to increase as well. It is easy to engage any number of c-suite and leadership members in a conversation regarding their thoughts on what their organization needs to do in regard to change in this area. Their answers are thoughtful, empathetic, and full of reflection. Organizations seem to be interested in making incremental changes in their hiring practices as well as discussing long term holistic changes to their systems. They are coupling current business challenges with potential diversity hiring practices rather than looking at them separately, and that change may make the real difference in 2021. When we incorporate the unique skills and availability of all the under-utilized talent with our current business challenges, we are not only moving forward, but we are also jumping ahead.”

Donna Wilczek, SVP of Product Strategy and Innovation, Coupa Software

“A key part of our customers’ strategic goals for 2021 is the ability to flex their workforce based on continually changing supply chain demand signals. We will ensure their success through best-of-breed contingent workforce capabilities wrapped around AI-supported decision modeling using trillions of dollars in community data to help our customers be smarter together.”

Kevin Poll, Global Head of Strategic Partnerships, D&I Champion, WillHire

“We have been working with procurement and HR leaders in organizations of all sizes as they are beginning to recognize the importance of having a diverse workforce and inclusive culture, not just because it’s good for business, it’s good for their workforce. Overwhelmingly, they are realizing that they need to broaden their focus on DE&I; beyond just supplier diversity for procurement and employee diversity and inclusion for HR. By looking at D&I of just their full-time employees, they are missing a very large segment of their workforce, thus not recognizing as much impact as possible. As they consider the importance of total talent diversity to their business, they must set a clear direction starting at the executive level and carrying that throughout the organization to every level and category of worker for it to be the culture of the company. They then must put action into place to attract, engage, and retain diverse talent in all categories and continually measure and monitor the impacts of their diversity and inclusion strategies. By building bridges throughout the organization and understanding this is a journey, companies have the opportunity to truly make an impact on their business, their workforce, and their community.”

Rich Oakes, President, GigSmart

“The current labor market is showing that alignment is increasing between companies and workers. Last year, over 50 million Americans completed a “gig” or a “side-hustle.” More and more workers are seeking flexibility and control in their work. Companies are also looking for more flex labor solutions. These two wants/needs between workers and companies is the very reason the gig economy is one of the fastest growing segments of the labor market.”

“The days of only embracing the W2 hiring model are over. To remain fully staffed, companies need to embrace multiple types of labor: W2 employees, 1099 contractors, as well as third-party outsourced solutions to assist in their labor strategy. Missing deadlines and falling short of customer expectations are consistent results of companies not implementing a comprehensive talent strategy. Companies with a total talent staffing strategy will save money, fill positions faster, experience less turnover, and out produce their competitors who haven’t adjusted to the current times.”

Marlon Rosenzweig, CEO and Co-Founder, WorkGenius

“Companies became comfortable with remote work during the pandemic and they became uncomfortable with fix-costs, such as payroll. Now companies consider freelancers for more roles than before. This trend existed pre-pandemic but was significantly accelerated and will drive demand for technology solutions to source and manage this part of a modern agile workforce.”

“Remote workforces in combination with merit based performance data, allow for more diversity in the remote workforce as talent from other parts of the country can be considered, without the previous regional bias which often correlates with other biases due to homogenous neighborhoods.”

Diana Doro, VP of Sales, Workspend

“It’s always been the case that companies with diversity and inclusion strategies are more admired and have better culture, but now that may also include being more successful, especially as it relates to talent – a diverse pool of talent is the widest pool, and in the changing landscape of hiring we’re seeing today, this strategy could be the “win or lose” for businesses to get through and beyond COVID. This is especially true as it relates to contingent work, which is the most flexible but also becoming the most competitive workforce available – without including the contingent workforce in these diversity strategies, companies could make a huge miss. Creating a contingent workforce strategy that has those risks in mind will set companies up for success in reaching the best talent and avoid the pitfalls of only thinking about diversity once it’s too late.

The non-employee workforce was always growing, but the exponential growth we’ve seen in such a short time is really telling in the way employees want to engage employers, and the employer response to that change. This shift tells a story of workers wanting more flexibility in how they use their skills, and the dramatic shift to work-from-home brought on by stay-in-place orders simply accelerated that shift. It will be interesting to see if that shifts back post-COVID, but it’s likely here to stay for a few reasons: First, a contingent workforce can quickly flex up or down, and companies, once they realize they have this new-found agility, likely will not let it go. Second, employees are now growing accustomed to the convenience of being able to do their jobs from anywhere, which is in part why there have been so many articles on the evacuation of cities in recent months, and many of those workers likely won’t return if they don’t have to, so companies that are prepared to work with employees who prefer remote are going to win that talent.”

Nina Vaca, CEO and Founder, Pinnacle Group

“As we began to realize in March/April, the quarantines and social distancing represented the first stage of a significant realignment of the global workforce. Today, many sectors continue to struggle, while others prosper. Automation and data analytics have become even more critical; and virtualization combined with cyber security has become table stakes.”

“Demand for IT professionals continues to be relatively strong. While labor demand overall declined from its pre-pandemic peak, the declines have been less significant within the IT sector, particularly for those with skills in virtualization, cyber security, and anything cloud-related. Any roles that can be performed remotely have been largely unaffected.”

“The third quarter represented a significant recovery for many after the historically low second quarter results. Major events always carry with them both risk and opportunities. It is the job of every business leader to find and invest in those opportunities. For CEOs and other industry leaders, now is the time to demonstrate confidence, embrace new ways of working together, and continue to make critical foundational investments in what appears to be yet another “new normal.””

Sandeep Dhillon, CEO, Talmix

“We’re probably not alone amongst platforms for non-employee talent in seeing growth during recent months as companies needed to keep the wheels turning, while being nervous about committing to full-time hiring. This has really been another flavor of talent on demand, as a fast way to solve a problem for a hiring manager. What we’re now seeing is that companies want to move away from ad hoc usage, and into a more structured plan to get the best talent mix, particularly as transformation initiatives are accelerated. Within the Talmix customer base, we’re seeing the first stage of this planning, as companies centrally build talent pools for the profiles that will be required across their business. The pressing focus is still speed, needing to rapidly build and deploy this talent into more flexible teams. A secondary trend is the desire to upskill/reskill, again heavily influenced by the transformation agenda, but as one client put it, reskilling/upskilling the existing workforce frequently needs leadership from outside the organization to drive these programs through at scale. Overall as we move into 2021, we’re seeing plenty of examples that the non-employee workforce is going to be more embedded, shifting from talent on demand, to adoption of the extended workforce.”

The Workforce Trends that Will Shape 2021: Part One

Talent by Christopher J. Dwyer on 04/09/2021

I had the opportunity chat with various contingent workforce, staffing, and HR technology leaders about the key trends that will shape the year ahead:

Brian Hoffmeyer, SVP of Market Strategies, Beeline

“After the crazy year that was 2020, it’s hard to predict what 2021 will hold, and, if I could do so accurately, I’d likely be a talking head on a network news show! Anyway, that said, I do think that we will continue to see growth in the contingent workforce, that’s already happening now and there’s no reason for that not to continue; companies realize that they can get the talent that they need faster and in a less-risky way; that’s incredibly important right now. The other trend that we’re seeing – and one that is imperative – is the need to create a contingent diversity, equity, and inclusion initiative. D, E, and I matter – and drives better business performance – so you need to set goals for your contingent labor program (including workers on your statements of work!) and measure your performance against them.”

Neha Goel, VP of Marketing, Utmost

“I think most people in HR, Procurement, and IT realize that COVID has been a disruptive force that has accelerated workforce trends that were already in play: greater digitization and automation, more demand for external workers, a growing prioritization of diversity, and an increased reliance on remote work. These themes, combined with (likely) continued market uncertainty, mean that organizations need a more holistic view of their workforce options, i.e. their entire talent base (skills, capabilities, locations, costs, availability) so they can make informed decisions about the best resources to get work done. I think in 2021, enterprises will make investments in these areas to drive, in the short-term, agility, resilience, operational efficiency, and cost savings. In the long-term, these investments will have the potential to deliver better experiences for the workers themselves and increased productivity for the business.”

Allison Robinson, CEO and Founder, The Mom Project

“Obviously the ongoing coronavirus pandemic has changed the landscape of the modern workplace indefinitely. Employees have more flexibility than ever before, and it’s the responsibility of the employer to continue to support and facilitate productivity and communication across all facets of the organization in this new remote workforce.”

“The increase in remote work has been a welcome shift for many, but has also added burdens to some, especially for those juggling a myriad of responsibilities ranging from childcare to virtual schooling. Organizations must remain empathetic and supportive of this ‘new normal’ by creating clear and effective means of communication, so all employees are encouraged to speak up and feel supported having their voice heard.”

“The ongoing coronavirus pandemic is something no one predicted, and no one has experience trying to navigate, so it’s more important now than ever that organizations and business leaders lead with empathy first and foremost. Employees are balancing an endless list of responsibilities all within their homes, so organizations and managers need to remain flexible in order to allow employees to meet all of the demands amidst this ‘new normal.’”

Fang Chang, SVP of Product, Coupa Software

“Procurement organizations around the world are working with their valued service providers and contingent labor pools to prepare for 2021. We are seeing elevated levels of empathy for factors such as increasing spend to diverse service providers and the need to work from anywhere. While empathetic, customers also recognize the importance of being diligent throughout 2021 and beyond in the continual assessment of risk factors that may negatively impact their business brand or bottom line.”

Kevin Akeroyd, CEO, PRO Unlimited

“There will be a continued preference of knowledge, specialized-skilled, white-collared workers to work on a contingent basis and not FTE. In most industries, this is already at 40% of the total workforce, and most Fortune 1000 companies have strategies to get that to 50%-to-60% in the next several years. This will be a career choice for millions of high-end members of the workforce, which will radically accelerate the complexities and importance of this segment. Companies will need to not only navigate these evolving areas at a rapid pace, but to also expertly address localization, globalization, changing regulatory and labor laws, remote work, and D&I, among others.

The notion of things like the “Gig Economy” are going to dramatically expand across virtually all categories of the skilled workforce, and in many industries, those leaders will have more contingent workers than FTEs. In addition, as the spend under management continues to expand, representing hundreds of billions of dollars per year with double-digit inefficiencies/over-payment, it will be mission critical for the C-suite to be more involved. This literally already is, and will become more so, a massive Earnings Per Share driver. Historically, the selection and management of outsourcing a company’s contingent workforce management program has been relegated as “tactical” and pushed fairly far down the organization’s org chart. This is radically and rapidly changing as the CHRO, CFO, CPO, and CIO are now playing a much greater role in the decision to not only outsource the non-employee management function, but also to deploy a technological ecosystem to harness software, machine-based learning, data, and intelligence to drive their businesses forward as part of their overall Future of the Workforce and Human Capital strategies.”

Catherine Candland, President, nextSource

“Since COVID, we have seen approximately 30-to-40% freelancer population increase in our client accounts. While our clients tell us that they originally engaged these individuals to achieve more flexibility and reduce costs in a period of uncertainty, they also cite a higher level of up-to-date skills and ready availability as reasons for continuing to drive towards a higher mix of freelancers in their overall workforce composition.”

“The notion that individuals accept temporary work as a means to get their foot in the door has been proven to no longer apply. In this unsettled environment, non-employee professionals, such as IT workers, are frequently engaged on multi-year assignments. Recent research indicates that a quarter of traditional employees remain with the same firm for less than that. Surveys of our EOR Associate employees indicate that many choose to work as non-employees for higher pay while their spouse works for healthcare benefits and lower pay.”

Jody Greenstone Miller, Founder and CEO, Business Talent Group

“Workforce agility and a holistic approach to talent management are more important than ever before, as companies pivot from ad-hoc solutions put in place at the start of the pandemic toward long-term recovery and growth. Establishing and easily accessible and reliable pool of skilled talent at the ready—like BTG’s marketplace of on-demand management consultants, subject matter experts, and project managers—positions companies to take advantage of fleeting opportunities and tackle urgent short-term needs while staying focused on the bigger picture.”

“The combination of project-based work, remote work, and on-demand talent provides a faster way to impact diversity within your organization. We are seeing that a remote work environment allows companies to access a wider candidate pool while reducing location bias. Project-based engagements focus heavily on the specific skills needed for success and provide a lower-risk way to bring talent on board, and, thus, can be an effective part of a diversity and inclusion initiative.”

Praneeth Patlola, Chief Product Officer, WillHire

“In recent years, the HR tech industry has gone through a huge transformation to adopt people analytics and bring a data-driven approach. The latest technologies of internal talent mobility have enabled organizations with better intelligence to increase retention and enabling the workforce to shift roles internally. While enterprises have invested in DE&I strategies, and also build metrics from sourcing to offboarding and re-engagements, most of it seems to have covered only for the full-time employee workforce and completely leaving out the contract workforce. Not surprisingly, many organizations still have challenges for accuracy around headcount and have never tracked talent diversity in the non-employee workforce. Even a bigger challenge is the non-employee workforce masked under SOW; there is less information on skill and other metrics. In 2020, we have seen enterprises recognizing the importance of total talent analytics, which includes the non-employee workforce to address this gap on metrics and centralized talent pools, while building the pathway for total talent intelligence. Given the pace at which the HR tech industry is moving, and the contingent labor space has picked the heat on direct sourcing, there is a definite possibility for seeing several uses cases in 2021 for total talent intelligence.”

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DE&I) Lessons That We Can Learn from Animal Crossing: New Horizons

Business Leadership Talent by Christopher J. Dwyer on 04/07/2021

In early December, my wife asked me what I wanted for Christmas. Being an avid gamer, I have had my share of the “typical” games on PlayStation or Xbox, like first-person shooters or open-world role-playing adventures, so I was looking for something different. Animal Crossing: New Horizons, I said, which elicited a “Isn’t that a kids game?” response from my wife.

It took a couple of months, but in due time, I was sucked into its laid back, island-living, sunny, and, most of all, relaxing, video game journeys. Animal Crossing: New Horizons is a different game than what most kids or adults would play: there’s no “end boss,” no quests to fulfill, no objects or treasures to hunt, no grinding for experience points, and no enemies to shoot. It’s a spirited adventure on a tropical island that puts you, as a getaway ambassador, in control of how your island looks and feels.

Naturally, with most things in life when you’re passionate about your career, the worlds of Animal Crossing and business collided. Tom Nook (your island’s head honcho), an anthropomorphic raccoon, meets the Future of Work. Sounds weird, right? Well, after months of obsessively playing this game and, during the day (and most nights!) research and analyzing the evolving world of talent and work, I’ve found that there are major lessons to learned from Animal Crossing regarding a key Future of Work tenet: diversity, equity, and inclusion:

Your main character (which is YOU) isn’t tied down by gender or appearance. In the game, your initial setup involves picking a gender, hairstyle, facial features, clothing, etc. In most games, these initial character settings set the stage for how you build experience points, which tools you have access to, and how the game ultimately is framed from a story perspective. In Animal Crossing, your appearance or gender has no ramifications on gameplay, story, or access to in-story objectives or items. As in the real world (aka business world), no talented individual should lose access or consideration to a job role due to anything besides their skillsets and expertise.
The game encourages equity-minded collaboration with all of the island’s residents. Part of the game’s achievement center, “Nook Miles” can be used to purchase new clothes, decorations, furniture, tools, etc. Players earn miles by completing tasks, much like other video games. However, one key component in earning Nook Miles is collaborating with all of the island’s residents, including anthropomorphic camels, monkeys, cows, chickens, lizards, and more. Animal Crossing wants its players to chat with other island residents and help everyone with their tasks, missing items, etc. It’s a perfect representation of how businesses should look at the composition of its workforce: equity abound that drives collaboration between diverse groups of talent to spark innovation, growth, and discovery.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons promotes empathy-led interactions that take into account each island resident’s emotions and character-specific traits. If a character is sad, frustrated, or confused, they are marked with a specific emoji-like icon. Your character can discuss what’s wrong, help with their issues, and, most importantly, show emotional reactions that can help other island residents feel like they are heard and seen.
The game’s island ambassadorship goals are centered on building an inclusive environment. Your character’s main objective is to invite other residents to the island. You have the option to travel to various other islands, meet diverse characters, and invite them to experience your locale. There are no limitations on the types of characters that can be invited, nor are there restrictions on the “character makeup” that leader Tom Nook wants your character to build and develop. The main focus is creating an inclusive environment in which all feel welcome and at home, and, new characters often unlock new ideas, new ways of building the island, and assist your character in many modes of play. This mirrors business thinking in that leaders that promote inclusivity are more likely to build deeper teams of top-tier talent that can showcase their specialized expertise and skillsets. Inclusivity benefits the business.
The game’s foundation was borne of diversity, as its predecessor entry, New Leaf, was designed by a diverse team. Animal Crossing: New Leaf, the prequel to New Horizons, was developed by a diverse team of video game engineers. At a video game conference in 2014, game producer Katsuya Eguchi stated that the diverse team behind the entry “had an effect…communication was smoother, and the team was more social, more collaborative, more creative, and less stressed out.” Eguchi also said that having younger designers, as well as more female voices, contributed to more innovation and helping the larger team learn and realize how to make a game that would appeal to more people. This is a pure representation of why DE&I need to be core Future of Work tenets: the end result, the end business outcome, and the ultimate products and results all benefit from having deeper and more expansive voices from different cultures, genders, and backgrounds.