Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) is a foundational element of the Future of Work movement. Inclusive workplace cultures, diverse workforces, and equitable treatment of talent are all critical attributes of successful organizations. Today on the Future of Work Exchange, we present an exclusive infographic, The Top Four DE&I Strategies in 2023.
In 2023, direct sourcing is more than the sum of its parts; rather, it represents near alignment with the direction of business now and in the relative future. The labor market is still unsettled, while economic uncertainty (unfortunately) still rules the day. Businesses are in a continued war for talent, as unemployment sinks to historic lows and millions of job openings remain.
In addition, the Future of Work movement and resulting transformations actively dictate that businesses shift their hiring strategies. All of these facets together represent both a new challenge and a new opportunity for direct sourcing: helping enterprises cultivate a flexible and scalable workforce that drives true talent sustainability.
Enterprises need sustainable talent most to remain competitive and enable future agility. Direct sourcing can help enterprises achieve talent sustainability through several means.
First and foremost, it’s about building a talent pipeline of potential candidates, which can be tapped into immediately. By cultivating a talent pipeline, enterprises can proactively source and develop talent, avoiding circumstances where critical roles are vacant for long periods. Often, organizations struggle to implement adequate succession plans. Direct sourcing can help make succession planning a reality — a critical component of a sustainable talent strategy.
A flexible workforce is not just associated with work models but culture as well. Fostering a diverse and inclusive workforce through direct sourcing opens the door to varying perspectives on enterprise challenges. Contingent and permanent job candidates view flexibility as a means to encourage diversity, equity, and inclusion — a driver for talent retention and enterprise innovation. Diversity-focused organizations, networks, and forums are channels for direct sourcing engagement. And by sourcing talent from diverse channels, enterprises can build a more inclusive and diverse workforce that better reflects the communities in which they operate.
One of the biggest challenges with direct sourcing is building a pipeline of quality candidates. What is the solution? Organizations must transform their engagement efforts by leveraging the very strength of direct sourcing itself — building relationships through intentional and strategic talent outreach. Engaging with talent directly helps to build relationships with candidates and to foster a sense of connection with the organization. This can lead to higher retention rates and a more immersed and committed workforce.
In some cases, HR and business leaders must cultivate relationships over a longer period. This is where talent communities can benefit. A talent community is a group of individuals who have expressed interest in working for a particular company or in a particular industry. Talent communities can take many forms, from LinkedIn groups to online forums. At their core, talent communities provide a platform for organizations to connect with candidates and nurture relationships over time. They are also ideal for expanding the employer brand to a wider audience and communicating the organizational culture — both leading to attracting top talent and creating a competitive differentiator for the enterprise.
Direct sourcing is not simply a portal for attracting potential job candidates. Instead, it’s a strategic imperative that is paramount to enterprise talent sustainability. And with sustainability comes organizational agility, flexibility, and resiliency — all of which enable an enterprise to thrive in a volatile marketplace.
Diversity programs continue to evolve, and enterprises must ensure their efforts span the total talent spectrum. Often, diversity initiatives are primarily focused on full-time, permanent employees. However, with contingent talent now comprising more than half of organizations’ entire workforce, diversity should permeate contingent workforce management (CWM) strategies.
In fact, recent Ardent Partners and Future of Work Exchange research indicates 62% of enterprises plan to infuse diversity initiatives into their CWM efforts as part of their workplace goals.
CWM and the Future of Work movement are aligned in their workforce direction. Extended workers represent a global talent pool where flexibility and a skills-based portfolio are at their core. Equally important, however, are the unique perspectives and outside viewpoints of contingent workers that cater to diverse thinking and enterprise representation.
Studies show that a diverse (permanent and contingent) workforce contributes to increased productivity and higher innovative output. InStride, a provider of workforce education programs, provides several insightful statistics on diversity’s impact on employees and their enterprises.
When it comes to diversity and the contingent workforce specifically, the numbers are just as impressive and impactful. In a Forbes article, Ashish Kaushal, founder of Consciously Unbiased, shared statistics from his report, “The Future of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) in the Contingent Workforce 2022.”
In the report, executives who identified their contingent DE&I programs as leading-edge reported notable business advantages, “such as 29% reporting that their organization’s ability to attract talent is a source of competitive advantage, 16% receiving a high return on investment (ROI) for their contingent labor, and 27% considering their contingent workforce a high-performing addition to their total workforce.”
These outcomes are not coincidences but rather solid indications of the importance of diversity programs to extended workers. Despite the U.S. pushback on diversity and inclusion initiatives from local and state governments, many enterprises understand these facts and are expanding their global contingent talent pools as a result.
Vaishali Shah, vice president of diversity & inclusion for Randstad Sourceright, advises organizations in her article for DiversityInc, to ask themselves the following questions about their contingent workforce:
In today’s Future of Work paradigm, contingent workforce management strategies must have a diversity component to be successful. There are no more studies required to point out this fact. Diversity equals progress and competitiveness.
The contingent workforce is now an essential component of enterprise execution and competitiveness. For many organizations, direct sourcing or online marketplaces are a primary means of securing non-employee talent. However, enterprises continue to utilize traditional staffing suppliers as well. In some cases, these relationships are based on a long-standing foundation for sourcing contingent workers.
Staffing suppliers, however, come with their own risks and rewards. Ongoing oversight is necessary to ensure these relationships are optimized and the organization’s staffing and workforce goals are met. The following are several considerations when managing staffing suppliers for contingent workforce engagement.
Track supplier performance for greater optimization. There are metrics for a host of business processes; the same should be true of staffing suppliers and their impact on talent management goals. According to Prosperix, a provider of workforce innovation solutions, staffing suppliers are not just meeting a talent need but contributing to a total talent management ecosystem. As such, a service-level agreement (SLA) detailing specific performance metrics must be established with regular tracking to mitigate potential risks.
What performance metrics are critical and specific to staffing suppliers? Prosperix says four KPIs are the most important.
“These KPIs measure each staffing supplier’s responsiveness, whether they source an appropriate number of candidates, the quality of those candidates related to open positions, and whether they source reliable hires who successfully complete their assignments. Any staffing vendor that does those well is a worthy partner,” explains Prosperix.
Gain transparency and flexibility with contingent workers. Similar to enterprises being unaware of their supply chain’s second- and third-tier suppliers, many organizations lack adequate HR tracking of the identity and location of their contingent labor. This lack of transparency puts the organization at great risk for fraud, theft, etc. Awareness of potential risks and global compliance issues when engaging with contingent workers are paramount.
Equally important is having flexibility for how and where contingent labor works and resides. Globalization and the technologies to bridge teams from afar only broaden the talent pool — a good thing for organizations and their total talent management objectives. “Increasingly, workers choose how they want to work. Accommodating freelancers, independent contractors, alumni, interns, and project workers for difficult-to-fill positions and establishing a network of suppliers across a larger geography helps expand recruitment pipelines and improves access to qualified talent,” Prosperix says.
Communicate with your staffing suppliers. Signing the contract with a staffing supplier doesn’t mean the relationship goes on autopilot. Quite the opposite. A staffing supplier should receive the same level of due diligence and supplier management as any critical supplier. Often, it requires weeks or months to adequately track performance and determine supplier effectiveness. Thus, it’s imperative to have specific staffing targets identified and communicated.
Communication is a basic tenet of any business relationship. However, with talent management and matching contingent workers with specific positions, a lack of communication between HR and a staffing supplier could mean a significant loss in revenue and training costs. A supplier could lack a quality talent pool of contingent workers or an absence of diversity in its mix of candidates. Today’s skills-based hiring also presents additional challenges for staffing suppliers. Does the enterprise require a specialized niche of skilled labor? If so, can the staffing supplier tap into a large talent pool with those skills? Effective communication can help mitigate potential risks and ensure the organization attracts contingent workers that meet its talent requirements.
Staffing suppliers remain a value channel for sourcing contingent workers. Like any supplier relationship, however, performance and optimization are only achieved if HR and business managers have their staffing needs clearly defined and communicated.
When we talk about Future of Work job candidates, it’s often in the context of active recruiting through direct sourcing initiatives, talent marketplaces, or online recruiting platforms. With the transition to skills-based hiring, attracting and selecting the right candidate is even more critical in meeting enterprise goals. As such, it may be time to expand the talent pipeline and include passive job seekers. This candidate segment can lie under the recruitment radar among the hundreds of active job applicants vying for coveted organizational roles.
Who are passive job candidates? These mostly employed individuals are not currently looking for employment opportunities. Many are happy in their place of work, but should the right career opportunity present itself, they could be persuaded to leave. According to Zippia, an online job recruiting firm, 73% of potential candidates are passive job seekers. And a considerable 87% of these candidates are open to the new job opportunities provided by active recruitment.
Attracting passive job candidates relies on initiatives that are already cornerstones of the Future of Work paradigm. Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) programs are attractive to this recruitment segment because they want to work for employers that are progressive and supportive of various causes and lifestyles. Thus, it is imperative that organizations promote their DE&I efforts and results on social media and corporate communications for wide exposure. LinkedIn shared that a total of 134.5 million users regularly uses the platform every day. In addition, more than 48% of LinkedIn users are active each month. Enterprises should be using the platform to expand their reach in the marketplace, promote programs that capture company culture, and solicit users who are interested in employment or organizational programs.
With more enterprises restricting remote work, it is job flexibility and remote/hybrid models that continue to resonate with employees and many job seekers. Now is the time to capitalize on that fact and emphasize that the enterprise fully supports work/life balance and remote/flexible scheduling. Employees who previously enjoyed those benefits but are facing restrictions or revised policies may be more open to recruitment inquiries. At the very least, now is the time to communicate with current and potential employees about the intent to remain a remote/hybrid workplace.
Shifting now from attracting passive candidates to actively recruiting them, there are several strategies identified by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) to accomplish that objective.
Whether it’s LinkedIn, Facebook, or association online job boards, social media’s reach is unparalleled. LinkedIn for example, offers recruiter subscriptions to best leverage the platform’s community. According to SHRM, “Another way to find passive job seekers on LinkedIn is to use the ‘advanced people search’ tool and enter your criteria for the ideal candidate for a job that is or will be available at your organization.”
Establish a company blog to share industry trends and information that business professionals in the field can turn to. It positions the enterprise as thought-leading and engaged with the sector, which can attract passive job candidates looking for best-in-class employers.
When passive job candidates are identified, the enterprise can target specific materials to them that speak to programs or benefits candidates would find attractive. Market those DE&I initiatives or hybrid work models as a reason to consider working for the enterprise.
Employees can serve as a critical extension of an organization’s recruitment strategy. With an employee referral program, outreach can occur via social media channels or through personal communication. Often, there are perks, such as a bonus for referrals that result in a hire. More importantly, an employee referral program promotes employee engagement and can lead to recruitment cost and time savings.
Passive does not mean uninterested. It is the responsibility of HR and business leaders to seek out recruitment opportunities and cultivate relationships with job candidates who possess skills and capabilities that could be a competitive differentiator for the organization. In my own professional life, I was a passive job candidate who received a LinkedIn invitation from Ardent Partners’ founder and chief research officer Andrew Bartolini to explore a potential job opportunity with his firm. I was not actively applying or networking for new employment opportunities. However, after two months of casual conversations with Andrew and his team, the position we discussed was an ideal fit with my background and professional passions. And here we are. Passive candidates need a reason to walk through the door. Show them the reasons why.
What the previous three years have shown is that enterprises are resilient. The ability to turn on a dime operationally and transform from an in-person to a nearly fully remote workforce is a stunning achievement. It is the ultimate in change management execution, forever altering the Future of Work paradigm and business leadership as we know it. In defining the Future of Work movement, the Future of Work Exchange identified the transformation of business leadership as one of its three critical pillars.
How has business leadership transformed? Quite simply, leaders today have a newfound focus on “humanity,” and the need to be more talent-oriented to thrive during uncertain times. During the height of the pandemic, there was no separation between how leadership and employees experienced this global event. Everyone went through it together and had similar fears, anxiety, and concern for others. Many leaders recognized this fact and rebooted their workplaces by retaining employee flexibility and remote/hybrid models once the world started to normalize.
Along with the humanization of the workplace, the need for skills-based talent became apparent as well. The criticality of enterprise agility, flexibility, and business continuity is now a central part of talent acquisition strategies. It is no longer about filling a job role, but rather hiring candidates that bring specific skills and competencies while also being a good cultural match. Business leaders today actively bridge the human aspect with skills-based execution. Understanding, for example, the importance of diversity, equity, and inclusion as part of the cultural fabric, leaders have integrated DE&I into hiring and operational objectives.
The Future of Work Exchange and Ardent Partners have identified five ways business leadership is evolving.
93% of business leaders state that they are focusing leadership efforts on developing and cultivating a more inclusive workplace culture. Not only does this invoke a sense of belonging within the workforce, but it can enhance brand reputation when promoted on recruitment portals and in the media. More job candidates are seeking employment with enterprises that place a premium on inclusivity.
Over the next 12 months, nearly 70% of business leaders plan to develop a vision and plan for making work more purposeful across the organization for its total workforce. In his Fast Company article, Raj Indupuri, CEO of digital clinical software and service provider eClinical Solutions, said it’s critical to have leadership goals that all employees can align with. “In my experience, it’s more enjoyable to come to work when surrounded by others who are equally passionate about your purpose.”
Throughout 2023, nearly 75% of executive leaders anticipate enhancing the ways the business improves worker well-being and mental health. While the impacts of the pandemic have subsided, the emotional effects continue to linger. Monitor employee well-being and mental health through surveys and regular one-on-one check-ins with team members. Such feedback is crucial to identifying employees who may require specific mental health services or programs.
Today, 65% of executives include empathy in their management styles, which reflects a flexibility-driven approach to leveraging more humanity in how they lead. This can lead to more open communication between employees and leadership, as well as a greater comfort level in presenting ideas that could result in untapped innovation.
Over the past year, 73% of executives have moved towards more of a “conscious leadership” approach, which centers around the understanding of worker perspectives, emotions, and concerns. Conscious leadership brings the human aspect of leadership management full circle.
Is the current business leadership transformation sustainable? The outlook is hopeful. By modeling and promoting such behaviors as empathy, conscious leadership, and a focus on DE&I principles, it unifies the workforce to not only adopt those approaches but also hold business leaders accountable. That accountability will help sustain the Future of Work ideals and continue the evolution of an employee-centric workplace.
Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) is widely regarded as a critical component of a Future of Work vision. It is an important initiative for enterprise and employee unification, engagement, and inclusion for workers of all backgrounds and demographics. Despite those positive intents, DE&I is under greater scrutiny from local and state governments that view such programs as part of a “woke” agenda. However, understanding its value and reward, enterprises across the U.S. continue to foster DE&I principles and integrate them into their recruitment and workforce engagement strategies.
With the current political and social polarization that exists, HR and managers must maintain the momentum of DE&I and further drive its criticality within the organization. Two areas that are extremely relevant today are unconscious bias and employee resource groups. The intent of addressing these two areas is to bring greater awareness to our own biases while recognizing the needs underserved employees in the enterprise who may be impacted by unconscious bias themselves.
The University of California San Francisco (UCSF) defines this concept as “Unconscious biases are social stereotypes about certain groups of people that individuals form outside their own conscious awareness. Everyone holds unconscious beliefs about various social and identity groups, and these biases stem from one’s tendency to organize social worlds by categorizing.”
One interesting aspect of unconscious bias that UCSF points out is that it’s “…far more prevalent than conscious prejudice and often incompatible with one’s conscious values.” This is an important statement for HR and managers because it means with engagement, employees can better recognize and quell unconscious bias in their own interactions.
Examples of different types of unconscious bias include affinity bias, confirmation bias, conformity bias, and gender bias. Lattice, a people management platform, says a few key approaches can help reduce the effects of unconscious bias.
The first employee resource group (ESG) was established by black employees at Xerox in the 1960s in response to high racial tensions in the workplace. An ESG is a voluntary, employee-led group with members who share similar interests or demographic characteristics.
According to an article from Great Place to Work, ESGs “… exist to provide support and help in personal or career development and to create a safe space where employees can bring their whole selves to the table. Allies may also be invited to join the ERG to support their colleagues.”
Great Place to Work says ESGs are effective in the workplace for several reasons.
A key factor in the success of an ESG is having an executive sponsor. Ceridian, a human capital management software company, says, “An executive and/or leadership sponsor can not only help to increase visibility, innovation, and awareness, but can also help align ERG activities with business goals. Additionally, commitments from senior leaders signal a wider, organizational commitment to improving diversity, equity, and inclusion practices.”
We live in a polarized world that has led to significant divides. The workplace is a melting pot of employees with many outside societal and political viewpoints that share a common goal: the success of the enterprise. DEI must remain a strategic priority for organizations to ensure that despite the societal divide, its inner walls are a place of cohesiveness, diversity, inclusion, and equality.
Amish Mehta, managing director and CEO for CRISIL, a global analytical company, summed up the importance of DE&I in his firm, “As a people-first organization, we are committed to equal treatment of, and opportunity for, all employees, irrespective of their background, orientation, and preferences. Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion are at the core of CRISIL’s value system,” Mehta says.
“We welcome skills and perspectives that help us serve our clients and communities better and enable us to create a sustainable, and diverse culture where everyone can be their best.”
We have recently talked about gamification and digital credentials as strategies for greater employee engagement, collaboration, and skills development. As enterprises re-engineer their workforce architectures toward a skills-based organization, these strategies will play a critical role in that initiative.
Why is skills-based the next workforce frontier? Simply put, traditional, antiquated job description-defined roles are ineffective in today’s volatile business landscape. Enterprises require agility and flexibility to respond appropriately to operational and market changes. A skills-based workforce architecture supports that requirement by aligning employee skills with project-focused initiatives. Deploying employees with specific skill sets to solve problems and ensure business continuity is a Future of Work vision.
With a nimble and responsive workforce, enterprises can leverage their talent using a more holistic approach while generating a greater sense of work purpose for employees. According to an article in Training magazine, “Skills-based organizations have a more agile and employee-centric approach to work where employees are valued for their skills rather than their job title, level, or educational qualifications.”
“It is a new operating model of work where employees are matched to tasks and projects based on skills, capabilities, and interests. Focusing on skill sets instead of job experience can help organizations optimize their talent pool.”
However, the success of this workforce model depends heavily on the ability to define work within the enterprise. What is the work that can ultimately provide a competitive advantage in the marketplace? Where in the organization does the most critical work reside? What skillsets and capabilities are most valued to accomplish the work required? How does the enterprise capture, structure, and utilize skillset data?
The critical answers to these questions are all part of the foundation of a skills-based structure.
The foundational elements of the skills-based organization revolve around the concepts of rethinking the parallels between talent and work; thus, the very future of the skills-based organization depends on forward-thinking strategies, ideas, and, of course, technology, according to Chris Dwyer, senior vice president of research at Ardent Partners and the managing director of the Future of Work Exchange.
Consider the Future of Work Exchange’s six key elements of skills-based organizations and how they impact the greater business (and its staffing, recruitment, and hiring efforts).
A candidate-centric talent strategy ensures that businesses place the utmost emphasis on the candidate experience and the candidate journey, thus positioning them to attract and engage top-tier skillsets and expertise. Employee development opportunities are essential in retainment and career progression initiatives.
Job-based hiring has long been the foundation of talent acquisition. However, for skills-based organizations, prioritizing expertise as the core of hiring enables a deeper range of total talent. An important part of this strategy is diversity, equity, and inclusion in the hiring process as well. DE&I should be communicated by leadership as an enterprise priority.
Deeper, AI-furled technology allows businesses to execute more effective candidate matching, identify critical skills gaps, and provide leaders with predictive insights into the organization’s future talent. Rather than reactively responding to operational and market changes, AI and data enable a proactive approach to talent identification and deployment.
Expansion of Skills
Hard skills are crucial, but “soft” skills are critical for productive and engaged workers. SBOs expand their candidate searches to prioritize behavioral skills just as much as traditional expertise. The need for strategic problem-solving and collaboration across business units is an inherent characteristic of a skills-based enterprise.
Skills-based organizations not only prioritize the candidate journey but also the hiring manager experience to ensure that consistent, scalable methods are leveraged to catalyze a frictionless talent acquisition experience.
Skills-based organizations leverage “omni-channel talent acquisition,” in which hiring strategies revolve around a variety of talent sources, including direct sourcing, talent marketplaces, digital staffing, etc. Cultivating those pipelines with diverse candidates, while also using source prioritization for specific requirements will streamline the talent acquisition process.
A skills-based organization is a major transformation from the traditional approach of job-defined roles and responsibilities. Core to a successful skills-based workforce model is comprehensive talent assessments of existing skillsets, integration of workforce technologies, and structured processes for identifying projects and deploying needed skillsets. And of course, there’s change management that is necessary to make the transformation sustainable, a topic we’ll tackle in a later article.
There’s no question that the world of staffing has entered yet another period of uncertainty. Besieged by the chaos of the COVID-19 pandemic and then, thankfully, amped by a greater need for workforce flexibility and an increased utilization of contingent workers, the staffing arena faces a watershed year ahead.
Ardent Partners and Future of Work Exchange research has discovered that 82% of businesses leveraged more extended talent in 2022 than 2021, proving that:
Glider.ai is a Best-in-Class, next-generation artificial intelligence platform that has disrupted the staffing and recruitment technology markets. Glider AI’s unique talent intelligence platform provides its users with fully-automated tools to boost candidate assessment and allow hiring managers (and other talent management executives) to remotely execute deep, skill-based recruitment strategies with a robust layer of strength and rigor.
The solution recently polled over 130 staffing, recruiting, HR, and contingent workforce leaders on their intentions, challenges, and general perspectives on the talent arena.
Takeaway #1: Diversity Is, As It Should Be, A Critical Priority
Nearly 90% of executives in Glider’s research study state that initiatives related diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) are a “medium-to-high” priority entering the new year. Of that figure, over 50% deemed it a high priority, proving an old mantra of the Future of the Work Exchange: a diverse talent community is the deepest talent community, especially as it pertains to the extended workforce.
While established diversity programs previously existed in many enterprises, the events and civil unrest of the past three years have driven many businesses to develop and communicate more purpose-driven goals which are linked to societal, economic, technological, and sustainable shifts. To achieve these goals, a large number of businesses are trying to harness the power of a diverse workforce. Glider’s new research study is a pure reflection of the modern enterprise’s 2023 commitment to DE&I in its hiring efforts for both full-time and temporary staff.
Takeaway #2: High-Tech or Low-Tech, It Doesn’t Matter: The Skills-Based Organization is King
Nearly 70% of businesses in the Glider study stated that high-tech and technical skills are currently a high priority for hiring and recruitment. Even though some of the world’s most massive tech brands, such as Alphabet (Google), Microsoft, Meta (Facebook), Amazon, and Salesforce have executed mass layoffs in recent months (and in the case of Alphabet and Microsoft, literally just over the past two weeks), there is still a incredible need for professionals with high-tech skills.
Why? The answer is simple: we are living in a globalized and digitized world of work, in which digital transformation is an ongoing endeavor in nearly every enterprise, not to mention the overarching digital requirements in operating in a networked economy. Some of the highest-level talent in digital fields can only be found in the ranks of the extended workforce, which translates into the need for the average organization to devote more resources to enhancing contingent workforce management.
Too, the flip side of this equation isn’t even a counterbalance, as nearly 80% of organizations state that non-technical roles are a “medium-to-high” priority for businesses. Combined with the aforementioned high-tech stat and we can come to a direct conclusion: the skills-based organization is king.
In 2023, there will be many discussions around the concept of the skills-based organization. And this doesn’t just mean that businesses prioritize the skillsets they have within their ranks or within their talent pools or talent communities, but rather center the way they work around enterprises skillsets, expertise, and experience. By fractionalizing jobs/projects and segmenting the work from the workers, enterprises can more effectively align what needs to be done with the know-how required to address it.
Takeaway #3: Upskilling Remains a Key Focus for Businesses
The new Glider study found that 83% of enterprises placed a “medium-to-high” priority on upskilling as a means to engage top-tier candidates and retain top talent. This just reinforces the idea of the skills-based organization, as expertise has become the de-facto weapon in a skills-driven, digitized business arena. As enterprises to balance an ongoing pandemic, a looming recession, and an increasingly-globalized (and, of course, more competitive) market, skills become ever-so-critical.
Upcoming Future of Work Exchange research finds that nearly 70% of businesses are actively focused on engaging new and advanced skillsets in anticipation of digital transformation, further reinforcing the need to 1) upskill current workers (both FTEs and contingent) and 2) engage talented professionals that can make an immediate impact. The greater focus on upskilling (which is an entirely different entity than reskilling) is crucial for a variety of reasons, including:
Download Glider’s new research study and learn more about skills-based organizations and the state of staffing in 2023.
Welcome to an exclusive series here at the Future of Work Exchange that will feature predictions, insights, and trends for 2023 that will shape the Future of Work in the months ahead. We polled technology and solution provider executives and asked them how they believe the world of work and talent will continue to evolve in 2023 and beyond:
Christy Forest, CEO and Executive Director, LiveHire
“It’s the greatest talent reshuffle in recent history and it isn’t over yet. Companies will respond to the fierce competition for talent alongside their looming concerns of recession with one critical capability: agility. We will see a very welcome shift…from what was a lot of talk and not a lot of action, a lot of dabbling and not enough commitment to finally creating a truly agile approach to optimize the mix of permanent and contingent workers to meet fluid business needs. This requires internal collaboration and a mindset shift but it will happen because…
We will see more and more power in the hands of candidates and employees, a higher bar set by them for transparency, inclusion and experience, and only the best companies will earn their engagement and their time. So the most progressive companies will take more ownership of their brand, start their journeys in earnest to direct sourcing programs and total workforce management solutions that enable them to meet the market where it is and move ahead of the competition.”
Pam Cohen, Chief Research and Analytics Officer, Werklabs/The Mom Project
“The Future of Work is fluid; success will depend on an intricate alliance between employers and talent that embraces life outside of work and allows for the existence of both woven into each day. From this, employers will find enhanced loyalty and retention of all types of workers, and talent will find the opportunity to grow within their jobs without feeling the need to leave in order to experience other aspects of their life.”
“Lines will start to blur in types of work just like lines have blurred in categories of HR tech for temporary/independent talent markets. Workers want to do work that excites them and where they can add value…they want to leave a mark. Technologies should make it easy for those workers to find this work regardless of what labor category it “places” them in, i.e., temporary worker, contractor, independent contractor, full-time employee, flexible talent, etc. Another trend I predict is that talent acquisition platforms are expanding to be more versatile regarding the labor categories they cater to. In example, platforms originally built for direct hire/perm placements will continue to productize and launch modules for contract work. Vice versa – we are seeing many platforms built for contract hiring to now also offer direct hire recruiting solutions. HR tech as a whole will move toward omni-channel solutions to engage people through all channels.”
Morten Bruun, Managing Director, North America, Worksome
“The push for a more agile workforce will drastically expand in 2023. We’re coming on the back off a large number of layoffs in the tech industry. Any technology will say a) innovation is the key for their success, and b) people are what create innovation. This leaves you in a dilemma: How can I continue to innovate in an environment where we’re reducing headcount growth? You essentially want to make sure that you have an agile workforce that you quickly can scale up and down and move to the areas where you need innovation the most.
The Great Resignation, Great Reshuffling, quiet quitting, and some of the other 2022 trends we’ve been seeing—will those stick around? I actually don’t think it matters whether they will continue or not. The interesting aspect of the Great Resignation is not that a bunch of people quit their job; the interesting aspect is why they quit their job. People are sick and tired of a traditional working model with no flexibility, that’s why they quit. It’s not unlikely that we won’t see the same volume of people quitting their job during a recession, but it’s important to realize that the sentiment isn’t gone. The sickness is still there, even though the symptoms are gone.
It’s abundantly clear that legacy tech in the workplace/people space isn’t solving the problem for companies. This is particularly true in the contingent workforce space. Around 90% of large enterprises have a VMS in place, but more than 50% of them are citing the lack of efficiency in their contingent workforce program as their #1 challenge.”
Connor Heaney, Managing Director, CXC Global EMEA
My predictions for the Future of Work are:
Marlon Rosenzweig, CEO and Co-Founder, WorkGenius
“We expect 2023 to be a year of growth for freelance even if the economy shrinks. Demographic change and lack of immigration built up a talent shortage that will persist. “