General Insights Archives - Page 7 of 14 - The Future of Work Exchange

Talent Sustainability Through Direct Sourcing

Business Leadership Direct Sourcing General Insights Talent by John Yuva on 04/17/2023

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.

Direct Sourcing Evolves

Enterprises need sustainable talent most to remain competitive and enable future agility. Direct sourcing can help enterprises achieve talent sustainability through several means.

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The Impact of Contingent Workforce Management Analytics

Business Leadership Contingent Workforce General Insights Talent by John Yuva on 04/10/2023

Today’s total talent management strategies rely on analytics to execute workforce objectives. For extended workers who comprise nearly half of enterprises’ entire labor force (49%, according to our research), analytics are even more crucial to developing metrics and optimizing performance. Recent Ardent Partners and Future of Work Exchange research indicates that 81% of organizations cite the improvement of contingent workforce management (CWM) analytics as a priority, highlighting the importance of deeper, more insightful data and analysis.

CWM Analytics for Insights

According to Beeline, a leading contingent workforce solution provider, “For many organizations lacking formal analytics and reporting on their contingent workforce, identifying key metrics can even be challenging.” The focus on analytics goes well beyond hiring, scheduling, and payment data, to include deeper areas of concentration. The following are several analytic subsets imperative to contingent workforce management and performance.

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The Recession-Ready Enterprise

Business Leadership Contingent Workforce Direct Sourcing General Insights Talent Acquisition Technology and Innovation by Christopher J. Dwyer on 04/03/2023

There has been great debate in recent months about a recession. Are we already in a recession? If a recession occurs, will it be light or something more impactful? Or will the economy be resilient and avoid a recession entirely? Enterprises in technology and media industries are already reacting to recession fears by laying off tens of thousands of workers. As we move further into 2023, how could a recession impact the extended workforce?

Business As Usual

There’s no doubt we’re experiencing challenging economic times. However, businesses must continue with mission-critical projects and initiatives that often require specialized expertise. The skills gap remains inherent in many enterprises, leading to continued demand for contingent workers. And as the Future of Work Exchange research indicates, 47.5% of the enterprise workforce is comprised of extended workers. That figure cannot be ignored, especially during times of economic distress.

Digitization Evolution and Workforce Mercenaries

Despite the recessionary climate, there is an enterprise evolution occurring: digitization. Whether it’s talent acquisition platforms, accounts payable solutions, or larger enterprise resource planning systems, businesses are transforming from tactical (manual) to strategic (digital) strategies across the operational landscape. And with digitization comes the extended workforce.

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Optimize Your Staffing Suppliers

Business Leadership Contingent Workforce General Insights HR Solution Providers Talent Acquisition by John Yuva on 03/20/2023

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.

Submissions to Positions
Submissions to Interview
Submissions to Hire
Assignment Completion

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Avoid Passing on Passive Job Candidates

Business Leadership General Insights HR Talent Acquisition by John Yuva on 03/13/2023

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.

Passive but Silently Active

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.

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Sustain the Leadership Evolution

Business Leadership General Insights HR Uncategorized by John Yuva on 02/27/2023

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.

Workplace Humanization Arrives

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.

Bridging of Human and Skills-Based Objectives

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 progressive hiring approaches as part of the cultural fabric, leaders have integrated different strategies into hiring and operational objectives.

Business Leadership Evolves

The Future of Work Exchange and Ardent Partners have identified five ways business leadership is evolving.

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FOWX Notes, February 17 Edition

General Insights by Christopher J. Dwyer on 02/17/2023

Some picked-up pieces, news, and insights from across the evolving world of talent and work:

Integrated workforce management platform Magnit announced the appointment of Doug Barnett as the company’s new chief financial officer (CFO). Barnett, who has more than 20 years experience in the technology and software industry, was previously the EVP and CFO at the Sabre Corporation. Barnett also held roles at Informatica, TriZetto Corporation, and UGS.
Talent marketplace giant Upwork announced that its platform can now be utilized to hire full-time, traditional talent. The strategic expansion will allow users of the Upwork solution to harness its end-to-end technology to vet, engage, hire, onboard, and pay workers globally across 180 countries. The expanded offerings will also see the platform’s payroll, compliance, and contract management functionality available to more small and mid-sized businesses rather than to just the company’s Enterprise Suite users. Businesses can also leverage a contract-to-hire model before committing to a full-time position (stay tuned to the Future of Work Exchange for more coverage of this exciting and disruptive news). The company also announced that fourth-quarter revenue rose 18% year over year.
Staffing giant Kelly Services announced that revenue in the United States rose by 1.8%, fueled by better-than-expected economic conditions and increases in hiring across many verticals.
Adecco announced that Geno Cutolo will assume the position of head of Adecco North America. Cutolo previously served as CEO of Staffmark Group and is a 20-year veteran of the staffing industry.
Eightfold AI unveiled its new Intelligent Experience (IX) offering, which the solution anticipates will help talent acquisition and human capital teams not only optimize their core and operational processes, but also make it easier to integrate artificial intelligence into these critical functions. The new tool will provide users with more transparent talent intelligence and enable AI-fueled automation for talent management scalability.

Make sure to register for next week’s exciting, exclusive webcast, Omni-Channel Talent Acquisition: The Future of Hiring. Hope to see you there!

The Future of Work is Now: Top Trends for 2023 (New Research!)

Business Leadership Contingent Workforce General Insights Talent by Christopher J. Dwyer on 02/14/2023

2023 promises to be a year unlike any other. With rampant inflation, economic uncertainty, and a volatile labor market, enterprises must balance agility, flexibility, and dynamic strategies to thrive in these uncertain times. The year ahead will surely challenge enterprises, with the specter of an economic downturn lingering overhead as well as continued uncertainty regarding the volatility of the labor market. However, as businesses have done over the past three years, they will persevere, they will thrive, and, most critically, they will innovate.

In the spirit of looking ahead, Ardent Partners and the Future of Work Exchange developed a brand new research study: The Future of Work Is Now: Top Trends for 2023. Sponsored by Guidant Global, this exciting new research study highlights the key trends of today’s dynamic world of work and their implications on business operations in the year ahead. Click here to download the new report.

We identified seven key trends that will shape the way businesses find, engage, and source talent, manage their extended workforce, and optimize they ways they get work done. Download the new research study today!

Skills-Based Is the New Workforce Frontier

Business Leadership Direct Sourcing General Insights HR Talent Acquisition Technology and Innovation Uncategorized by John Yuva on 02/06/2023

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.

Purpose of Work Redefined

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.

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Artificial Intelligence Streamlines Contingent Workforce Management Decision-making

Business Leadership Contingent Workforce General Insights Technology and Innovation by John Yuva on 02/02/2023

In today’s labor and economic climate, enterprises cannot afford to make poor hiring decisions. And with 47.5% of an organization’s workforce comprised of contingent workers, per Ardent Partners and Future of Work Exchange research, an extended worker hire is just as critical operationally as a permanent employee. The ramifications of a hiring mistake — whether it’s an extended or permanent role — can cost businesses 30 percent of the employee’s first-year earnings, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. However, artificial intelligence is now shaping the future of contingent workforce management (CWM) to help avoid those employment missteps.

CWM Optimization Through Artificial Intelligence

Through artificial intelligence, enterprises can harness the value of structured and unstructured data to streamline contingent workforce management decision-making. AI also opens the door to new user experiences to better attract, acquire, and retain top-performing talent and improve operational execution — all leading to cost savings. Using prescriptive analytics for CWM optimization is an evolving but critical piece of AI strategy. While artificial intelligence has existed for a decade or more, the wider scope of its capabilities is only now being utilized.

Subsets of AI, such as machine learning (ML), predictive analytics, and natural language processing, coupled with complementary technologies like augmented reality and the metaverse are game changers for contingent workforce management optimization.

Putting Artificial Intelligence to Work

Enterprises and HR executives who are not at least exploring the possibilities of AI’s impact on CWM will find themselves at a competitive disadvantage when sourcing talent and executing extended workforce strategies. Ardent Partners and Future of Work Exchange research cites that 80% of businesses expect AI to transform CWM in the year ahead. These are several ways that AI and associated technologies are getting the job done.

Enhance the candidate matching process. Enterprises are under pressure to not only attract and acquire the right candidates but do so in a short time-to-hire time-frame. The talent need is often immediate, leading to more costs as the vacancy persists. Enter artificial intelligence that can streamline the candidate screening process by matching critical role-specific skills with existing candidates in enterprise talent pipelines (e.g., direct sourcing, talent marketplaces, etc.). AI can narrow the field even further through questionnaires and even simulated exercises to test candidate skill proficiency — all while increasing hiring speed and attaining higher-quality candidates. With 74% of businesses planning to leverage AI to enhance the candidate experience (per Ardent Partners and FOWX research), it’s clear that the potential of the technology is being recognized. This is critical because it means enterprises can use data to understand how and why candidates are choosing our business or leaving/jetting for other companies. It also exposes gaps in the hiring process that must be remedied to enable real-time hiring capabilities. The war for talent is raging…having a process that essentially finds those talent needles in the haystack is the competitive differentiator.
Expand overall total workforce visibility. Much of the value attained by artificial intelligence is more efficient identification, organization, and utilization of data. Prescriptive analytics, for example, provides the optimal use of collected data. When evaluating the total workforce holistically, enterprises need insights into their full-time and contingent employees. What are their skillsets? Which department do they work in? How long have they been contracted with the enterprise? What is their past project or team participation. Answering these questions creates a strategic profile for every full-time and contingent employee. Those total workforce profiles make real-time hiring and seamless succession planning a reality. Transparency into both operational challenges and available talent is a dual threat to lagging competitors.
Leverage predictive analytics and scenario planning. Ultimately, organizations want the ability to use data to predict future scenarios and potential outcomes. As a subset of artificial intelligence, predictive analytics is used in a variety of operational settings, particularly for supply chain planning. However, it is just as valuable for contingent workforce management as a predictor of future talent needs. Predictive analytics takes prescriptive analytics and workforce profiles a step further by combining operational and profile data to identify talent deficiencies and operational weaknesses, while also projecting how talent should be utilized to close those gaps. This is transformative for large-scale enterprises with tens of thousands of employees across the globe. It can also be talent-defining in scenarios where succession planning comes into play. So much of the hiring focus is on the “immediate need” rather than the gaps silently forming with aging workers eyeing their next opportunity post-retirement. Predictive analytics can address workforce scalability related to resignations, retirements, labor movements, etc., and how those will shape the workforce short and long term. In the case of a recession or other economic crisis where scalability becomes an essential strategy, enterprises can leverage internal talent data and combine it with market and labor insights to more effectively understand how operations will be affected. Which skills are required immediately versus long-term CWM planning? The ability to scale the workforce quickly and efficiently cannot be understated.

AI Becomes a Permanent Fixture for Talent Strategy

Artificial intelligence is becoming a permanent fixture as part of today’s enterprise operations and talent management strategies. For the contingent workforce, AI serves as an essential technology to streamline candidate pairings with operational needs, while increasing transparency of available skillsets and workforce contributions. Those insights prove valuable when talent gaps appear, or workforce scaling is necessary. Artificial intelligence will continue to evolve and with it, more CWM opportunities will emerge. Today, leverage the AI capabilities that exist to better plan for tomorrow.