Contingent Workforce Archives - The Future of Work Exchange

Future of Work 2025: Predictions for the Year Ahead (Part I)

Business Leadership Contingent Workforce Solution Providers Talent Acquisition Technology and Innovation by Christopher J. Dwyer on 12/17/2024

2024 was another watershed year for the world of work and talent…and 2025 promises to be another transformational period in business history. Ardent Partners and the Future of Work Exchange are excited to unveil a series of predictions over the next few weeks from industry thought leaders.

“The workplace and talent landscape are rapidly evolving, driven by relentless innovation, particularly through advancements in artificial intelligence within the talent technology ecosystem. Enterprises are increasingly integrating AI-powered capabilities into their talent engagement and acquisition processes, enabling skills-based hiring, and transforming recruitment and workforce management. This evolution not only streamlines operations but also empowers individuals by creating more dynamic and engaging opportunities, aligning roles with skills, and enabling personalized career pathways. In 2025, AI is set to become the pervasive force propelling the Future of Work.”

– Lori Hock, CEO, Opptly

“After a couple of years of uncertainty and, as a result, declines in contingent labor spend at many companies; 2025 will be a year of growth. This will be driven by new features and services, including AI that is practical, ethical, and compelling.”

– Brian Hoffmeyer, SVP of Market Strategies, Beeline

“Companies that have upgraded their tech stack in the last 3-to-5 years will surge ahead in 2025, leaving behind those that haven’t.”

– Brad Talwar, CEO, TalentBurst

“As a parent to a college sophomore, I’m excited about how the workforce is evolving to offer GenZ a different lifestyle. Gone are the days of staying with one company for PTO accruals (me and my love of travel), employers will continue to be challenged to find creative ways to retain talent and remember to focus on the new generation’s passion, not ours.”

– Tracey Klein, Fractional Leader, Advisor, and Collaborator, Klein Consulting

“Individual contributors that are fatigued by all the artificial intelligence changes will resist the demands from company ownership to become more comfortable using these ever-growing set of tools. This will lead to a reduced overall corporate employee base and an increase in entrepreneurship.

Value in the physical world will take more center stage. Clinical and light industrial optimization will take more focus. These areas that have historically lagged the traditional commercial side in terms of data-driven decisions will enjoy a renaissance when it comes to data optimization.”

– Chris Radvansky, Owner, Rad Consultants

Enterprise Agility Through Tribal Teams

Business Leadership Contingent Workforce General Insights by John Yuva on 12/05/2024

Most of us worked remotely during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. We adapted quickly to new ways of working and communicating. Often, we had to collaborate differently to gain transparency and complete projects. That usually meant pulling employees from other departments into team meetings or creating more diversified, cross-functional virtual teams —with enterprise agility as the objective. The need for agility since the pandemic began is now embedded within leading enterprises. So, too, is the agile concept of workplace tribes to innovate and solve business challenges.

What Is a Tribe?

Workplace tribes are comprised of 100 or fewer employees who bring interdisciplinary backgrounds to their groups. Rather than focusing on one large business objective, tribes are assigned specific aspects of a project or initiative. For example, an enterprise may be looking for new customer markets. A tribe could have members from procurement, logistics, marketing, finance, and others who are assigned a precise country to explore its viability.

The rest of this article is available by subscription only.

Introducing a New Subscription Model

To continue providing valuable insights and resources on the future of work and extended workforce management, we’re transitioning our site to a paid subscription model. While some posts will remain free, subscribing will grant you exclusive access to in-depth analysis, market research, expert interviews, and actionable strategies that will help improve your business. Solution providers and practitioners are invited to join today and gain a competitive edge by tracking the industry’s important innovations, emerging trends, and best practices.

Click here to learn more.

Employee Engagement Still Lacks Execution

Business Leadership Contingent Workforce General Insights HR Technology and Innovation by Christopher J. Dwyer on 11/20/2024

Today’s enterprises can be characterized as fast-paced, ever-evolving to effectively respond to a more dynamic marketplace. Within the hustle and bustle lies a critical workforce need that is often overlooked: employee engagement. The concept can be confused with simply offering employees certain monthly perks identified from a quick survey. However, it goes much deeper than that and reaches beyond permanent, full-time employees to those in the extended workforce, as well.

A well-rounded definition of employee engagement comes from Engage For Success: “Employee engagement is a workplace approach resulting in the right conditions for all members of an organization to give of their best each day, committed to their organization’s goals and values, motivated to contribute to organizational success, with an enhanced sense of their own well-being.”

Powerful, Yet Underutilized

It is that commitment toward oneself and the enterprise that makes employee engagement such a powerful workforce approach. Yet, as a Gallup survey indicates, only 36% of U.S. employees are engaged in their work and workplace. The number is even lower on a global scale, with only 20% of employees engaged at work.

The rest of this article is available by subscription only.

Introducing a New Subscription Model

Click here to learn more.

Digital Credentials Provide Talent Visibility, Skill Recognition

Business Leadership Contingent Workforce Direct Sourcing General Insights HR Talent Acquisition Technology and Innovation by John Yuva on 11/14/2024

As people’s careers progress, they establish a professional profile comprised of a resume, portfolio, performance reviews, letters of recommendation, degrees, certifications, memberships, and other career achievements. Often, these paper-based items are dispersed and sometimes forgotten over time. However, they are all critical pieces of employees’ professional identities that make them unique in the workforce. Even more important, they represent their skills and competencies to potential or current employers.

What is the answer? Enter the world of digital credentials.

A Digitized, Verifiable Professional Profile

At the foundational level, candidates convert their professional profiles into digitized and verifiable credentials that enterprises access quickly and securely when recruiting or promoting staff. In today’s aggressive labor market, having digital credentials is a competitive differentiator in the workforce. It separates a candidate’s application from random submissions, thus streamlining the selection process and generating cost savings for the hiring enterprise through greater efficiencies.

The rest of this article is available by subscription only.

Introducing a New Subscription Model

Click here to learn more.

Direct Sourcing Gains an Assist with Chatbots

Business Leadership Contingent Workforce Direct Sourcing General Insights HR Talent Acquisition Technology and Innovation by John Yuva on 10/24/2024

The dial on artificial intelligence (AI) has been turned up to such a degree that anyone can now experiment with the technology. AI tools from ChatGTP to Lensa are putting the power of AI into the hands of everyday folks — with stunning results. While the consumer side of AI continues to gain attention, it’s important not to overlook the applicability and possibility of the technology for direct sourcing and extended workforce needs.

Today, there are several providers of AI-based tools for optimizing the direct sourcing of extended workers. One of the most recognizable and popular tools is chatbots. This technology has evolved significantly over the years from a more scripted application to one of conversational AI realization. Through developments in natural language processing, users have a difficult time recognizing whether it’s a human or a bot they’re interacting with.

How are chatbots contributing to efficiencies in direct sourcing efforts? It’s occurring in several ways, allowing HR, business managers, and recruiters to focus on more strategic aspects of total talent management initiatives.

The rest of this article is available by subscription only.

Introducing a New Subscription Model

Click here to learn more.

Value of Artificial Intelligence Delivers for Human Resources

Contingent Workforce Direct Sourcing Diversity and Inclusion General Insights HR Talent Talent Acquisition Technology and Innovation Uncategorized by John Yuva on 10/17/2024

Artificial intelligence (AI) has fully broken through the parameter of the Future of Work — where HR can effectively engage with AI technologies to deliver automation and sustainable talent outcomes. The complex decision-making of today’s HR professionals makes AI a near necessity to achieve recruitment and total talent management objectives in the current enterprise. By leveraging AI, machine learning, and data analytics, HR professionals can automate many manual tasks while enhancing the employee lifecycle experience.

The embrace and utilization of AI technologies is proving transformational for HR professionals and their industry. According to Sameer Maskey, founder and CEO for Fusemachines, and adjunct associate professor at Columbia University, in a Forbes article, “Clearly, AI is primed to disrupt the HR industry as we know it. In fact, with AI, HR teams are poised to serve as a critical and strategic ‘talent insights engine’ of an organization,” he says.

“However, this advancement requires HR professionals to do more than just embrace the technology to unlock automation-powered efficiencies and data-driven decisions. It requires them to identify novel applications of AI, such as a virtual recruiter, or employ simulated AI-augmented work settings for recruitment that will increase the efficiency of the HR team even further. Doing this will take candidate and employee engagement to a whole new level,” Maskey adds.

While HR is reaping the benefits of AI for such automated tasks such as payroll and benefits administration — essential responsibilities of HR — there are even greater strategic opportunities to truly revolutionize core talent acquisition and talent management areas.

AI Elevates Direct Sourcing Strategies and Employee Retention Execution

AI tools and machine learning algorithms are aiding HR professionals in streamlining workforce processes across the enterprise. The following are several areas where AI can bring immediate value to human resources and provide valuable insights into workplace strategy and dynamics.

The rest of this article is available by subscription only.

Introducing a New Subscription Model from the Future of Work Exchange.

Click here to learn more.

The FOWX Fifteen: Beeline

Contingent Workforce Solution Providers Technology and Innovation by Christopher J. Dwyer on 10/02/2024

The FOWX Fifteen is an exclusive series at the Future of Work Exchange that highlights the industry’s innovative and disruptive platforms, solutions, and offerings that are driving the Future of Work movement. These providers are actively pushing talent technology innovation and ushering in a new, digital era of workforce management, staffing, and talent acquisition.

The Background

During The Great Recession of 2007-2008, an era that Ardent Partners and the Future of Work Exchange pegged as “The Perfect Storm” event which triggered the first big spike in utilization of contingent labor, businesses experienced first-hand the ultimate value and impact of non-employee talent. In the span of less than 18 months, the average contingent workforce penetration rate exploded from 10%-to-12% to upwards of 18%.

In the years since, what we now call “the extended workforce” represents not only the future of talent, but, truly, the Future of Work. With nearly half (49.8%) of the typical organization’s total talent comprised of contingent workers at this point in 2024, the very realm of contingent workforce management has traversed beyond a tactical, manual-laden series of tasks into a truly strategic force that sits in the center of a new world of work and talent.

From skills-based hiring and direct sourcing to diverse staffing and forward-thinking, Future of Work-oriented functionality, the contemporary extended workforce necessitates next-generation automation that can fuel total talent intelligence and help realize the definitive value of non-employee talent.

Enter Beeline.

Why They Were Selected

Beeline represents the veritable evolution of extended workforce solutions through its powerful array of artificial intelligence-led functionality, robust services procurement offerings, agile analytics and reporting, and longtime commitment to talent technology innovation.

Beeline has not just revolutionized the facets of contingent workforce technology, though. Beeline Acuity is one of the industry’s most groundbreaking talent intelligence tools: it is an innovative workforce analytics and compliance engine that integrates disparate data from multiple sources into a cohesive view to provide a complete picture of an organization’s workforce.

Acuity’s place alongside the solution’s extended workforce platform (itself a giant leap from traditional VMS automation), its Best-in-Class services procurement/SOW module, and other key offerings (such as the mid-market-focused Beeline Professional and its digital staffing powerhouse, JoinedUp), is a welcome addition to a Future of Work-era provider that continues to be talent-centric, humanity-led, and innovation-driven.

In Their Own Words

“At Beeline, we are honored to be recognized by Ardent Partners and the Future of Work Exchange as a leader in shaping the Future of Work. This accolade reflects our commitment to innovation and our dedication to driving meaningful transformation. As the workforce evolves, so must our approach—moving away from the traditional ‘command and control’ model toward one focused on enablement and oversight. AI plays a crucial role in this shift, empowering organizations to make smarter, faster decisions while amplifying the unique human qualities of judgment, creativity, and empathy. At Beeline, we see AI as the catalyst for unlocking the true potential of the external workforce.” – Colleen Tiner, Chief Product Officer at Beeline

The Outlook

True AI integrated into end-to-end automation? Check. Firm commitment to extended workforce innovation? Check. Candidate- and human-centric solution design that is aligned with the new, progressive era of work and talent? Check. Beeline’s VMS and extended workforce functionality is, and will continue to be, synonymous with the Future of Work movement.

Artificial Intelligence, Contingent Workforce Management, and the Future of Work (On-Demand Webinar)

Contingent Workforce Direct Sourcing Talent Acquisition Technology and Innovation Video by Christopher J. Dwyer on 08/30/2024

Earlier this week, Ardent Partners and the Future of Work Exchange hosted an exclusive webcast focused on AI-powered contingent workforce management and its impact within the Future of Work movement. I was joined by Opptly’s Lori Hock (CEO), Beeline’s Colleen Tiner (Chief Product Officer), and NLP Logix’s Matt Berseth (CIO, co-founder) to discuss a wide range of hot topics under the artificial intelligence umbrella, including:

The true adoption and utilization of artificial intelligence within today’s extended workforce programs, hiring strategies, and talent acquisition initiatives.
The link between AI and skills-based hiring.
How businesses can move from an “education phase” to “adoption phase” for their AI initiatives.
How AI can supercharge and optimize direct sourcing strategies.
Why AI-fueled skills taxonomies are the foundation of a skills-based hiring approach.

Check out an on-demand replay of the webinar below.

The Technology Revolution and its Impact on Talent Acquisition and Workforce Management

Contingent Workforce Direct Sourcing Solution Providers Talent Acquisition Technology and Innovation by Christopher J. Dwyer on 08/19/2024

It almost seems like we are floating in a constant vacuum of evolution. The economy continues to spin, technology progresses at an unprecedented clip, businesses continue to optimize their operations in such a way that they no longer resemble the past, and, most critically, the talent arena remains in a state of perpetual growth and revolution.

No other industry is as impacted by the developments in the technology space as much as talent acquisition and workforce management. The advent and rapid deployment of artificial intelligence has absolutely transformed so many facets of both ordinary life and the business spectrum, however, its impact is ever-present in a world in which its many automated arms have the ability to revolutionize so many organizational attributes.

The rest of this article is available by subscription only.

Introducing a New Subscription Model

Click here to learn more.

Digital Staffing’s Impact on the Future of Work

Contingent Workforce Direct Sourcing Talent Technology and Innovation by Christopher J. Dwyer on 08/12/2024

In the ever-evolving landscape of talent and work, the phrase “digital staffing” has emerged as a pervasive buzzword, encompassing a wide array of solutions designed to streamline the process of finding, engaging, and sourcing workers. This term has transcended its origins and evolved into a transformative force that is reshaping the way businesses access and manage their talent pools. Ardent Partners and the Future of Work Exchange (FOWX) have often discussed digital staffing technology as a game-changer in the greater world of work.

At its core, digital staffing technology represents solutions that empower enterprises to hire freelance, independent, and contingent talent without the need for intermediary systems or suppliers. These solutions traverse beyond just the recruitment process; they encompass end-to-end workforce management, encompassing vital components such as project management, worker tracking, worker classification, compliance, and risk mitigation.

The rest of this article is available by subscription only.

Introducing a New Subscription Model

Click here to learn more.

One of the most significant drivers behind the rapid adoption of digital staffing technology is the pressing need for organizations to be more agile and adaptive in an ever-changing business landscape. The Gig Economy, remote work trends, and the desire for flexible talent solutions have all converged to make digital staffing technology a paramount consideration for forward-thinking enterprises.

These platforms provide companies with the agility to scale their workforce up or down as needed, ensuring they can swiftly adapt to market shifts or unforeseen challenges. Moreover, they grant organizations the power to tap into a global talent pool, unlocking an unprecedented level of diversity and expertise. In an era where talent is a critical competitive advantage (and often an enterprise’s top differentiator), these solutions empower businesses to secure the best-fit talent, regardless of geographical constraints.