From all of us here at the Future of Work Exchange, we hope that you and your families have a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday! Enjoy the break…we’ll see you back here on Monday.
Uncategorized
Last week, Ardent Partners and the Future of Work Exchange hosted an exclusive webcast, Scale Your 2023 Hiring Initiatives With Direct Sourcing, that highlighted the impact of direct sourcing on talent acquisition in 2023 and beyond.
Over the past three years, there may be no hotter topic in the world of talent and work than direct sourcing, and rightfully so: it was a top overall priority for enterprises heading into the pandemic, and, during it, these businesses realized the workforce scalability and candidate experience enhancement inherent in direct sourcing programs. Last week’s event discussed:
- Why the volatility of 2023 will be an ideal setting for direct sourcing strategies and programs to shine.
- The functionality required to digitize recruitment and catalyze direct sourcing success.
- How “Direct Sourcing 2.0” represents the next generation of direct sourcing via mobility, AI, and an enhanced hiring manager experience, and;
- The specific ways direct sourcing can impact hiring strategies, talent acquisition initiatives, and extended workforce programs in 2023.
If you happened to miss the live event, don’t worry, we’ve got you covered. Check out the on-demand edition of Scale Your 2023 Hiring Initiatives With Direct Sourcing below, and stay tuned to the Future of Work Exchange for our next exclusive live event.
Happy Halloween from all of us at the Future of Work Exchange! Have a safe and fun evening! 🎃
The Future of Work Exchanges wishes all of our readers and community a safe, happy, and relaxing 4th of July holiday! We’ll be back tomorrow. 🎆
If we look back to those earliest days of the COVID-19 pandemic, we could almost feel the anxiety and dread dripping from those memories. From being cut off from family and friends and learning how to cope without school and daycare to understanding what it was like to live though a global health crisis, the first few months of the pandemic forever altered the way we think, live, laugh, and learn. Two-plus years later, we can confidently say that it may be the watershed moment for this era of human history.
Many of us grew a newfound appreciation for the nuances of live, while others had the opportunity to truly focus on how they should shape their futures based on the struggles of those early days. There was profound societal change in the air, as well, which shifted the way we as humans think about culture, race, gender, and other core aspects of what makes us, well, us.
The role of empathy was in front view, too, in the many ways the country showed appreciation and support for those on the frontlines of the pandemic. We grew more connected in an age when physical, in-person unions were paused for months on end.
We have fundamentally changed as people and it’s incredibly difficult to think of our pre-pandemic personas and wonder if we could ever go back and recapture those frameworks of thinking. Our lives were altered and nearly every facet of life was transformed…including the way we work.
There’s more to the changing world of work than the increase in remote work and a volatile labor market, however. The very concepts and ideas behind the Future of Work movement dictate that we continuously innovate not just within the realm of technology, but within the way we address work as the humans who power the enterprise. If we can take that same ideology behind mankind’s transformation over the past two years and apply it to the way we work, then professionals, people, and enterprises all win.
We need more of a focus on the fact that humanity and empathy are the foundation of the workforce, not just skillsets and expertise. We’ve altered the way we think about ourselves and each other, and maybe that’s what the world of work needs to evolve during these interesting times: a reimagined workplace that prioritizes its people and the flexibility they require to effectively get work done. It’s not a far-fetched theory by any measure: we’ve seen business leadership shift to an empathy-led structure, with more and more executives understanding that their staff needs the utmost support from both emotional and operational perspectives.
When we compare the 2022 editions of ourselves to the 2019 versions, there are many, many differences that have made us better people and better humans. We can certainly apply these progressions to the way we work, too. It may be the best way to thrive in the months and years ahead.
Remember long ago, when we all thought “The Great Resignation” would start to loosen up as we headed towards spring? And remember when a certain Future of Work site called it “The Greatest Resignation” because four-plus million professionals were quitting every month since October of last year? AND, remember when that same site spoke of a “Great Resettling” as these workers began to find a foundation that suited their personal and professional desires?
Of course, we remember. It was just two weeks ago.
The March numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics hit last week, and with them, something that collectively made us shake our heads. Over 4.5 million individuals voluntarily left their jobs in March, which is a record thus far since this data was first collected decades ago. (March 2022 to November 2021: “Hold my beer.”)
I said just a couple of weeks ago that there were two pathways for this “Big Quit”: either the numbers would reflect a settling of workers into roles that better suited their desires for flexibility, purpose, etc., or, we’d still be operating in “Great Resignation” mode, continuing to wonder when the tide would finally turn.
The Future of Work Exchange will always remain bullish about “The Great Resettling,” as it reflects exactly how voluntarily-displaced workers will find their calling when the dust figuratively settles…the monkey wrench in that concept, however, is just when the record page of resignations will end. The common refrain, that workers still crave more flexibility, empathy, and purpose, will not change. It doesn’t matter if we’re in the throes of a disruptive COVID surge or in a very awkward period (like we are right now): the collective trauma, experiences, and perspectives going into Year Three of the pandemic will continually translate into workers wanting more and wanting better.
Does that mean a bulk of these workers will join the extended workforce ranks? Absolutely. Does this mean that more and more professionals will become entrepreneurs in a market that, for many tech industries, has become incredibly hot? Yes, of course. Does this mean that those businesses on the backside of those resignations should execute on some self-reflection? 100%, yes.
There’s no one-shot answer to why “The Great Resignation” has become “The Greatest Resignation.” And there’s no firm, calculated timeframe on when we’ll see labor market completely enter a “Great Resettling” phase. All of this means one thing: the changes to 1) the way we work and 2) the workforce itself have become permanent. We’re not going to continue experiencing millions and millions of resignations every month. There’ll be a point in time, which I’m imagining is “soon,” in which those resignations begin to slow…and with it, a newly-resettled workforce that may have finally grasped the flexibility, empathy, purpose, compensation, etc. that they’ve been looking for for so very long.
The professional services market is estimated to encompass upwards of $5 trillion annually and only shows signs of increasing as global enterprises continue to integrate project-based work into their overall scope of operations.
External services are often considered a linchpin to organizational success. Businesses frequently require specialized and unique support that necessitates the sourcing of a wide range of professionally delivered services and SOW-based labor, the vast majority of which are often purchased and managed situationally. Ardent Partners and Future of Work Exchange (FOWX) estimates that as little as 30% or less of business services spend is actually and actively accounted for in foundational enterprise planning, budgeting, and forecasting, which elicits two critical questions: 1) how can organizations possibly be confident that they are achieving the best value on this expenditure? and 2) why has it been so hard for MSP programs to gain traction in facilitating SOW-based services/labor when their infrastructure would seem to be so ideally adaptable to the underlying problem statement?
Those services procurement programs which are anchored in a bolder vision from the outset (beyond cost savings) are much more likely to be sustainably successful because they are designed from the point of view of the business and not through the narrower prism of a buy-to-pay lens. The services procurement paradigm of a decade ago, when MSPs started to see the revenue potential in this area, is long gone. Today’s services procurement paradigm needs to follow a much more progressive pattern, one that is founded on “how work gets done” rather than “how we can structure the sourcing activity to reduce the prices paid?”
I’m incredibly excited to join Sarah-Jayne (SJ) Aldridge (
Click here or on the image below to save your spot for next week’s event. Hope to see you there!
The direct sourcing arena is a frequent topic here on the Future of Work Exchange and rightfully so: direct sourcing represents a critical avenue from which businesses can enhance their talent engagement and talent acquisition strategies, especially given the unique circumstances surrounding 2022.
Ardent Partners and Future of Work Exchange research has frequently pointed to direct sourcing as a major catalyst of the Future of Work movement, owed to its ability to bring together (“curated”) known and vetted workers (as well as those opting in via job portals), who are then “nurtured” and engaged in a manner that promotes a positive candidate experience. While some businesses (25%-to-27%) have had a direct sourcing program in place for more than two years, for the most part, the majority of business leaders are just beginning to tap into the relative power of such a strategy (over half of all enterprises plan to implement such a program by the end of 2023).
And this, right here, is where there needs to be a reimagining of how direct sourcing fits into the next great era of work and talent…and that’s by implementing “Direct Sourcing 2.0” capabilities and strategies. The upcoming Ardent/FOWX research study, Direct Sourcing 2.0, points to two attributes that are representative of the next “wave” of direct sourcing: (1) going “beyond the brand” regarding talent attraction and retention, and, (2) mapping candidate “personas” for better project-to-talent fit.
It is no longer enough for a business to simply lead with a prominent brand as it had done in the past. An employer’s brand is important to most talent, but businesses must continually and comprehensively assess their processes, culture, and workplace to define the characteristics of the candidates who will be the best-fit from both a cultural and skills perspective. Which behaviors are the strongest match for the business at-large? Which skillsets will thrive in a specific environment? How will talent pool candidates react to a change in a team or department’s work location strategy (fully-remote, hybrid, or in-office operations)?
Businesses that traditionally defined the skill and experience requirements for a new role or project should expand their definitions to include soft skills, emotional intelligence, empathetic fit, and other modern worker attributes as a way to develop stronger placements and greater success of newly on-boarded candidates, as well as combat the growing risk of talent fraud. The platforms today that can leverage artificial intelligence, machine learning, and other forms of emerging innovation are well-positioned to assist businesses in enabling the most critical pieces of Direct Sourcing 2.0 approaches.
These teams should also analyze how current hiring processes, such as onboarding and training, impact the overall candidate experience, and make any necessary adjustments. A successful Direct Sourcing 2.0 program builds upon its experience and prioritizes the factors that resonate well with current and prospective employees.
It’s impossible to capture every single possibility for the Future of Work in a single article. What we can do, however, is pinpoint five of the biggest possibilities for work optimization in the year ahead.
Before the path to predictions start, I think it’s important to chat about some caveats here. We are in a much different place than we were a year ago at this time. So, in talking about the future of remote work, the year ahead isn’t going to revolve around whether or not it’s beneficial and viable (which, yes, IT IS!), but rather transforming non-traditional workplace environments into more effective and productive settings.
Without further ado:
- Since we teased it above: the digital workplace and the digital workspace will converge. There’s a stark difference between the “digital workplace” and a “digital workspace.” Digitization, as part of broader digital transformation initiatives, has long entailed replacing core pieces of enterprise operations and processes with repeatable, scalable, and interconnected automation. The digital workspace, on the other hand, involves the enablement of truly digital, virtual, and automated access to productivity and collaborative tools for workers no matter where they are located (in the office, on the road, in their home offices, or at their kitchen tables).
- The solution to the “Great Staffing Shortage” and “The Great Resignation” revolves around worker prosperity. The one thing that is maddening around the so-called “Big Quit” is that there are so many leaders around the world that cannot grasp the reality of why workers are leaving; on the surface, there are a variety of reasons that include equitable treatment, better compensation, better working conditions, more flexibility, etc. However, dig deeper and “worker enlightenment” shines: the workforce wants to prosper.
- Data remains important, but intelligence becomes the gamechanger. In today’s talent tech ecosystems, there are several key platforms from which data flows freely: VMS, HRIS, extended workforce systems, direct sourcing platforms, and proprietary tech offered by MSP solutions. The candidate, FTE, non-employee, freelancer, and professional services data that can be extracted from these solutions presents businesses with an opportunity to derive true total intelligence and allow hiring managers to execute real-time decisions based on the depth of skillsets and expertise within the company’s total talent network. In an age when staffing shortages are the norm, a difference of just a day or two can have major ramifications on the success of a new project or initiative.
- Culture becomes the most critical non-technological Future of Work attribute in the year ahead. Businesses have long been successful despite their culture; in 2022, the average enterprise will thrive because of their culture, not in spite of it. Empathetic leadership that converges with an inclusive workplace, environments that promote the power of the worker, and an overall positive, engaging candidate and worker experience are factors that will enable businesses to retain talent, drive talent attraction, and, most importantly, attain true talent sustainability.
- The extended workforce continues to grow. This is a prediction that I’ve been making every year for the last dozen or so years, and, I don’t see it changing in 2022. The extended workforce is founded on agility and flexibility, consequently the two biggest areas of need for businesses as they traverse yet another pandemic-led year in which work and talent evolution is the norm. Closing in on half of the globe’s entire workforce, the extended workforce will become even more of a competitive differentiator in addition to the business continuity and “elasticity” that it drove over the past two years.
- “Adaptation” molds the way businesses adopt, leverage, and scale innovation. I remember becoming a bit bored of the “digital transformation” discussions of a few years ago, with too many conversations around automating pieces of the business that should have been automated years and years ago. When the pandemic hit, enterprise technology took on a whole new meaning, one that unified the way businesses interacted with customers, suppliers, and their remote workforce, while also developing a culture of real business agility that could help the greater organization better adapt to changing times. Whether it’s core workforce management technology, blockchain-enabled operations, AI-fueled analytics and data analytics, or digital staffing, businesses in 2022 will find that the way they adapt to evolving times will dictate and shape the very ways the harness the power of innovation.
The Future of Work Exchange would like to wish all of our readers a very happy and safe New Year’s weekend. Thank you to each and every one of you for taking the time to make this site what it is today and for all of the time you’ve spent reading our coverage of the evolving world of work and talent.
Extra special thanks to PRO Unlimited, Utmost, Prosperix, and Beeline for supporting the Future of Work Exchange these past several months.
We have some VERY special things on tap for 2022. The Future of Work starts here!