General Insights Archives - The Future of Work Exchange

The Role of Blockchain in Candidates’ Digital Identities

Business Leadership General Insights HR Technology and Innovation by John Yuva on 12/12/2024

A more digital Future of Work environment also means an increase in data volume. Information about potential job candidates collected through direct sourcing efforts, as well as more process digitization puts an abundance of sensitive data at HR’s and business leaders’ fingertips. Concurrently, cybersecurity risks continue to grow as threat actors attempt to thwart individuals’ and corporate efforts to defend against them. Enter blockchain, a technology that holds the potential for capturing and securing sensitive personal and workforce data.

What Is Blockchain?

At its core, Synopsis defines blockchain as “a decentralized, distributed, and public digital ledger that is used to record transactions across many computers so that the record cannot be altered retroactively without the alteration of all subsequent blocks and the consensus of the network.” For each ordered record (i.e., transaction) a block with a timestamp and transaction data is created and linked to subsequent blocks forming a blockchain. Whether it’s financial records, supply chain transactions, or personal information, blockchain guarantees a record of integrity and trust for all parties — without requiring a third party for verification.

Blockchain is most associated with cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin to secure a record of transactions. However, it is gaining more attention in industries outside of banking, including pharmaceuticals, aerospace and defense, and food and beverage, with several companies piloting blockchain technology for track-and-trace initiatives. For example, in the food supply chain, a supplier is unable to alter transaction data such as batch numbers, ensuring the ability to appropriately track and trace specific food shipments in the event of a recall.

The technology is now making its way into the HR function. This week, we’ll look at blockchain from the individual level (digital identity), followed by part two, exploring areas where HR can leverage blockchain to benefit the enterprise.

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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.

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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.

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Spin for the Win with Gamification

Business Leadership General Insights HR Technology and Innovation by John Yuva on 11/21/2024

In an article on the Future of Work Exchange last week, we discussed digital credentials and badges as a means to recruit, verify, and retain talent. This week we’re exploring those concepts further through gamification in the workplace and how the Future of Work can be transformed by its utilization.

Gamification Defined

Gamification is defined by Investopedia as, “the incentivization of people’s engagement in non-game contexts and activities by using game-style mechanics.” First coined in 2002 by game designer Nick Pelling while incorporating game elements into ATM and vending machines, gamification became mainstream by 2009 and has only grown as a strategic approach in HR and business.

With employee engagement and productivity a high priority for enterprises, gamification bridges the employee experience with enterprise needs. It can turn mundane tasks and processes, such as training and upskilling, reviewing corporate and HR policies, rolling out new products and services, and even applying for a job within the organization into engaging activities.

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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.

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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.

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RTO Mandates Lead to Hushed Hybrid Trend

Business Leadership Diversity and Inclusion General Insights HR by John Yuva on 11/07/2024

Now in year three of our post-COVID-19 world, enterprises that once embraced and supported remote and hybrid workforce models are beginning to pull back — in some cases substantially — from their earlier commitments. Over the last year, corporations such as Disney, JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, and most recently Amazon are instituting strict return-to-office (RTO) policies where employees are now required to be in the office five days per week. What are the motivations behind such policies and are they warranted? Even more striking is the resistance of many employees to RTO mandates — and how that is likely to play out in the year ahead.

RTO Motivations Warranted?

The U.S. Career Institute reports that by 2025, up to 36.2 million Americans will be working remotely. Currently, 54% of workers want to work fully remotely, with 41% preferring a hybrid schedule, followed by 5% who would choose to work in the office full time. Despite the statistics, enterprises instituting RTO policies (e.g., a return to office in some capacity, three times per week, or permanently) argue their necessity to improve productivity, strengthen collaboration efforts, and drive deeper innovation.

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Artificial Intelligence Mitigates Unconscious Bias in Hiring

Business Leadership Diversity and Inclusion General Insights HR Talent Talent Acquisition Technology and Innovation by John Yuva on 10/31/2024

Today’s remote and hybid workplaces means access to a diverse and globally connected talent pool — one where the importance of equity and inclusion is stronger than ever. Standing in the way, however, are traditional hiring processes, coupled with ongoing controversies surrounding diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives that can enable rather than reduce the influence of unconscious biases in talent decision-making. The answer to overcoming these challenges and improving equity in hiring may lie in artificial intelligence (AI). AI tools can introduce impartiality into talent decisions and processes, mitigating the effects of unconscious bias.

Unconscious Bias Lives in Us All

To quell unconscious bias, one must understand it first to later recognize its presence. The University of California San Francisco (UCSF) defines unconscious biases as “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.” Unconscious biases include affinity bias, confirmation bias, conformity bias, and gender bias.

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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.

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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.

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

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A New Era for the Future of Work Exchange

General Insights by Christopher J. Dwyer on 09/23/2024

Over the past three-plus years, the Future of Work Exchange has delivered on its original vision to become the preeminent think tank, multimedia center, and destination site for professionals and executives across the world to learn more about the changing world of work and talent.

From the evolution of the extended workforce and the continued rise of direct sourcing to the transformation of the workplace and rapid ascension of artificial intelligence, the Future of Work Exchange (FOWX) has provided tens of thousands of business leaders with the research, analysis, and “futurist” insights needed to power the next generation of work optimization.

Today, FOWX is announcing an exciting shift in its publishing model to one that models a more traditional analyst firm – one that relies on subscriptions/memberships to access this great content.

Our Mission: Capture the Essence of the Future of Work Movement

The Future of Work Exchange mission has not changed and will not change: business leaders, solution providers, and every professional that wants on-demand access to the myriad array of forward-thinking workforce management, technology, business leadership, and innovation-led insights will continue to receive these valuable thought leadership content pieces…albeit in a membership fashion. But first…

What Stays the Same?

The Future of Work Exchange has long been lauded since its inception for its deep, empirical analysis of the technology provider marketplace. Given the evolution in “work and talent,” and especially given the Future of Work accelerants that have forever transformed the dynamics of workforce management and business leadership, FOWX will continue to dedicate and even expand its coverage of the AI, direct sourcing, MSP, VMS, RPO, digital staffing, and talent acquisition platforms and solutions that are driving indelible change in the market.

FOWX will also continue to write about and publish articles on the topics that have been considered the fabric of our site, including direct sourcing, next-generation technology, AI, extended workforce management, conscious leadership, DE&I, omni-channel talent acquisition, skills-based hiring, total talent management, etc. (We wouldn’t be who we are without continuing our dedication to these critical topics.)

Access to the Future of Work Exchange Podcast will not change…so keep tuning in!

What’s New? (Membership Has Its Privileges!)

For solution providers and technology platforms that desire access to the Future of Work Exchange and its powerful content, a paid subscription will be required to read the majority of the site’s content – contact us here for pricing and more details. For procurement, HR, talent acquisition, and other business practitioners, a complimentary subscription with a business email will provide this same access FOWX content, articles, etc.

My team and I are very excited to enter this new era at the Future of Work Exchange. Feel free to reach out with any questions, concerns, comments, or feedback.