You searched for digital staffing - Page 4 of 11

Revisiting the Blueprint for Direct Sourcing Success

Direct Sourcing by Christopher J. Dwyer on 01/04/2023

Over the past few years, direct sourcing has emerged as perhaps the hottest talent-led strategy in the world of both talent acquisition and contingent workforce management. In pre-pandemic times, businesses understood that expanding their talent engagement efforts on building internal talent communities (via enterprise-led “agencies” that eschewed middle entities like staffing suppliers) was a powerful way to infuse new skillsets into the greater organization. During the pandemic, direct sourcing served as a robust means of keeping candidates engaged during uncertain times and augmenting workforce scalability. Today, direct sourcing represents the very future of talent acquisition.

With an ever-increasing number of talent channels, including digital staffing marketplaces, traditional staffing vendors, professional services, talent networks, and social media platforms, the ability to match project requirements with available skillsets has never been easier. However, it has also never been more competitive or difficult. Businesses that harness the power of direct sourcing and talent pools have the ability to develop an agile workforce which can be the key differentiator needed to advance and grow in a marketplace that rewards dynamic, talent-led responses to new business pressures and challenges…especially what could be ahead as 2023 unfolds.

With so many organizations yet to undertake this journey, it is imperative to revisit these guidelines for direct sourcing success:

A deep understanding of total enterprise skillsets is required. No matter the industry, each organization is comprised of a collection of skillsets that, in aggregate, contribute to how work is done. Direct sourcing programs thrive on “skillset intelligence;” without it, initiatives lose their flair. If hiring managers understand which skillsets are in abundance or in high demand and which will be needed in the near future, building initial talent attraction strategies will be much more effective.
Integrated procurement, HR, and talent acquisition competencies are necessary for early-stage direct sourcing. The capabilities of these three units are required for a direct sourcing program to succeed: 1) procurement’s influence will drive hard cost savings through talent channel optimization, 2) HR’s impact will guide hiring managers and stakeholders to engage the strongest candidates, and 3) talent acquisition will drive the strategic vision for how to source talent based upon current and expected needs.
Focus on both brand and experience. The employer brand can be powerful in today’s labor market; many candidates want to ensure that they work for organizations that share their cultural and societal values. Also, the omnipresent notion of the “candidate experience” should guide direct sourcing processes such that job recruits experience a positive journey no matter if they are merely sitting in a talent pool or actively engaged for an open position or project.
Segmentation is more valuable than it initially seems. Segmenting talent pools may seem like a basic strategy; however, it can pay incredible dividends. Talent pool segmentation, be it via geography, compensation, skill, remote or in-person, certification, etc., allows hiring managers to quickly focus in on the talent required for a highly-complex project or initiative. Taking the time during the front-end of the direct sourcing process to segment talent pools can be hugely impactful to the overall program.
In direct sourcing, selecting and utilizing the right solutions is job one. The inherent power of today’s contingent workforce, human capital, and digital staffing solutions provides enterprises with the ability to automate crucial aspects of talent pool development and integrate these sources into the business’ broader talent acquisition processes. MSP solutions, VMS technology, and direct sourcing platforms all contribute to create a human- and technology-led direct sourcing program, helping to launch the initiative and ensure that all hiring managers have the ability to quickly access available talent pools.

BEST OF 2022: Flexibility Is a Catalyst for the Next Great Iteration of the Workplace

Business Leadership by Christopher J. Dwyer on 12/27/2022

[The Future of Work Exchange will be back next week with all-new content and insights to kick off the new year. Until then, enjoy our “Best Of” series that revisits some of our most-read articles from 2022.]

There’s enough discussion around the technological components of the Future of Work movement: artificial intelligence, machine learning, blockchain, digital staffing, etc. While “innovation” in and of itself is one of the three major foundational legs of the Future of Work (the other two being “the evolution of talent” and “the transformation of business thinking”), there’s so much more to the very notion of work optimization than just automation and new technology.

As we’ve learned over the past two-plus years, the workplace itself has become a living, breathing entity that has the power to determine the overall productivity of a business, and, more importantly, how emotionally tethered the workforce is to the greater organization. For the record, it’s not just a matter if or when a business offers remote or hybrid work options, but rather how deeply rooted flexibility truly is within all facets of how work is done and how the workforce is ultimately managed.

Now would be the best time to bring up the annoying factor in every business-related conversation: “The Great Resignation” continues unabated, sparked by a veritable “Talent Revolution” that has restructured the way workers perceive their jobs, roles, and career paths. The very concept of flexibility is not just a “perk” for talent; it’s become a determining factor in whether or not a professional chooses to remain with an enterprise or search for greener pastures.

From here, flexibility is catalyst for the next great iteration of the workplace. There are undeniable roots from the larger idea of flexibility, including empathy-led leadership (more flexibility in how leaders lead), leveraging new models to get work done (distributed teams, new functional collaboration, etc.), more humanity within the fabric of the workplace, and, of course, more malleability in where workers work (remote work, hybrid workplace, etc.).

And, when we bring up this idea of “flexibility,” it doesn’t just translate into specific aspects of the workplace, but rather all of them. That’s right: the next iteration of the workplace centers on how work is done rather than on archaic principles of control and authority, including:

Promoting an inclusive workplace that welcomes and values all voices, no matter their differences, disabilities, etc.
Relying on empathy-led and conscious leadership that takes into account worker emotions and perceptions.
Offering various outlets of paid leave (maternity, paternity, wellness, etc.).
Embracing flexible work models, including fresh takes on shift-based work, four-day work-weeks, collaborative-led schedules, etc.
Supporting remote and hybrid work options (including offering proper hardware, software, leadership support, etc.).
Augmenting these remote and hybrid models with digital workspaces.
Measuring both employee engagement and productivity, and;
Detailing flexible work options within new job requisitions (to attract talent).

The Future is Now

Business Leadership General Insights by Christopher J. Dwyer on 12/21/2022

By now, you may have consumed many grand predictions for the year ahead as it pertains to the world of work and talent. If you haven’t, well, be sure to check out our exclusive series that featured insights from nearly 20 industry thought leaders and executives from across the solution provider landscape.

2022 was another watershed year for the business arena. We grappled with Year Three of a pandemic, dealt with the fallout and reshuffling from The Great Resignation, tapped into the power of new and exciting technology, learned the meaning of humanity in how we work, and continued to experience the growth and impact of the extended workforce.

And this is the just the beginning of what is up ahead. 2023 will surely challenge us, with the specter of an economic downturn lingering overhead as well as continued uncertainty regarding the volatility of the labor market. However, as we have done over the past three years, we will persevere, we will thrive, and, most critically, we will innovate.

Today, on the Future of Work Exchange, we unveil four laser-focused predictions for the year ahead:

Skills, skills, skills…talent acquisition and workforce management will revolve around skillsets and expertise. Globalization, digitization, flexibility, and agility, mixed with labor market volatility, equates to a brave new world of talent acquisition and talent engagement. Executives will seek cost-cutting measures to combat economic uncertainty, but in 2023, it won’t affect the overarching need for top-tier skillsets and expertise. Businesses have experienced a massive skills gap over the past several years and the only way to thrive (not just merely survive) in today’s business arena is to pump resources, innovation, focus, and technology into revamping talent engagement and talent acquisition strategies. Skills are the centerpiece of the Future of Work today.
Intelligence becomes the nexus of the Future of Work. Businesses were living in a Big Data world long before the term was applicable. As machine learning infiltrated analytics and artificial intelligence became a foundation for workforce data, business leaders were enabled with the power to infuse real-time, on-demand insights into their core talent-led decision-making processes. Today, and into 2023, that concept will evolve as enterprises develop “skills catalogs,” seek to shift expertise where it is needed given changes in the market, and infuse AI into talent acquisition and recruitment approaches to maximize skillsets and eschew archaic talent engagement methods.
Omni-channel talent acquisition is 2023’s gold standard for engagement. This is something that the Exchange discussed recently (especially during last week’s predictions-focused webcast). Direct sourcing, talent communities, talent marketplaces, digital staffing, and freelancer networks are all deep and viable outlets of candidates; thus, businesses can take an omni-channel approach and optimize their hiring by aligning their talent acquisition strategies with these sources of talent. And, the omni-channel approach traverses beyond this type of alignment: by maximizing various sources of talent (through VMS, ATS, direct sourcing, etc.), businesses are able to boost candidate engagement by providing a worker-specific experience to each prospect that is inclusive of assessment, opportunity, and clarity.
Humanity shines through in every facet of how and why we work. The pandemic didn’t just result in Future of Work accelerants like remote/hybrid work and the shift to flexibility; it truly humanized the way we, as both professionals and people, perceived the role of work in our daily lives. The Future of Work should be predicated on humanity in such a way that it cascades into how leaders manage their people via empathy, understanding, appreciation, and transparency. Workers today face a variety of issues: economic uncertainty, burnout, poor mental wellbeing, challenges with workplace culture, etc. Leaders have a new role in 2023: continue managing towards organizational goals and objectives whilst focusing on the human side of business. ensuring that workers and candidates are provided the flexibility and emotional wellness that they require to succeed.

Key Providers for 2022: Opptly

Solution Providers Technology and Innovation by Christopher J. Dwyer on 11/15/2022

The Background:

Omni-channel talent acquisition has become a powerful way for enterprises to thrive in today’s evolving world of work. Businesses have realized, especially with a Great Resignation-fueled backdrop, that top-tier talent is not always available in a localized fashion or even through the traditional outlets that have carried the organization’s staffing requirements for years (or decades).

Talent communities, talent marketplaces, and talent pools, in addition to direct sourcing, have become critical elements of the new world of work and talent. Not only do businesses require the ability to directly-source talent by transforming their operations into internal recruiting agencies, but they also need to leverage its workplace culture, employer brand, and other organizational attributes to attract the best-fit talent and expertise. And, they require a true convergence of artificial intelligence, predictive analytics, next-level direct sourcing technology, and robust data science to get there.

Enter Opptly.

Why They Were Selected:

Talent decisions in 2022 are more important than they ever were before, as businesses continue to rely on their workforce as a key competitive differentiator in an increasingly-shifting and globalized corporate arena. Thus, it has become critical that enterprise hiring be founded on deep data and true talent intelligence in order to execute talent acquisition strategies that blend speed, quality, and alignment.

Opptly has become one of the industry’s leading direct sourcing and talent solutions due to its proprietary artificial intelligence-led offerings that catalyze next-generation hiring outcomes through its powerful AI-fueled fueled functionality, a frictionless user experience, and a candidate-centric nexus. With its foundation as a digital staffing solution (dating back to its days as Genesys Talent), Opptly’s wide range of differentiated direct sourcing offerings, particularly its unique blend of talent community development tech and its own expansive talent network, has enabled the company to become a Best-in-Class platform in the workforce solutions market.

In Their Own Words:

Opptly has modernized the way hiring companies and job seekers connect. When the workforce industry needed a solution that could accelerate and improve the talent acquisition process, Opptly built one. Our proprietary AI platform leverages best-in-class data science, skills focus, search and match, AI/machine learning, and neural network models to provide a direct sourcing solution that removes friction between talent and work and makes optimal hiring matches.

Opptly helps companies win in an intensely competitive market for talent by offering the broadest reach and seamless user experience along with advanced search capabilities. Going beyond simple semantics, our AI uses skills-based and success profile matching while filtering for workstyles such as contingent, permanent, remote, or in-office work. Together with our curation partners, we deliver optimally-matched talent within an AI platform that enriches the hiring experience.

With Opptly, clients can enhance and grow their private talent communities or engage Opptly’s talent communities for immediate access to millions of candidates. Clients that want to achieve the widest possible reach choose to access both. For today’s job seekers, there’s Opptly.Connect™, an intuitive app that delivers targeted work opportunities, all within a user experience that matches today’s direct-connect technologies.

Opptly was built by some of the sharpest minds in workforce solutions. Seeded by our ever-expanding talent communities, our proprietary AI enables innovative use cases, including career progression and data enrichment, military predictor and other specialty skills models, supply and demand analytics, and targeted sourcing initiatives. Visit Opptly.ai.

The Outlook:

Opptly represents the future of talent acquisition and recruitment technology. The company’s commitment to dynamic candidate data and intelligence is an indicator that Opptly’s next-generation technology will be incredibly crucial to businesses as they continue to traverse a volatile labor market and uncertain economic conditions. With seamless integrations into existing hiring strategies and technology, Opptly has the potential to permeate true total talent management into the spectrum of workforce initiatives.

The Opptly platform has been designed to represent the Future of Work movement; its leading-edge AI and candidate intelligence functionality position the solution to drive dynamic value to a market that requires real-time data, total talent acquisition capabilities, and a harmonious user experience to transform the way talent is engaged and hired.

Key Providers for 2022: GreenLight.ai

Solution Providers Technology and Innovation by Christopher J. Dwyer on 11/09/2022

The Background:

Ardent Partners and Future of Work Exchange research has found that the utilization of digital staffing, talent marketplaces, and alternative talent channels has increased by nearly 800% over the past five years, a surefire representation of how the “omni-channel talent experience” has revolutionized the way businesses find, engage, and source their external talent.

While the overall penetration of talent acquisition via these channels has experienced a stratospheric rise, the flip side to this level of innovation is that businesses still require robust onboarding, payroll, and compliance automation to ensure that the extended workforce delivers on its true value without the threat of labor risks.

Enter GreenLight.ai.

Why They Were Selected:

Payrolling, compliance and risk mitigation, and onboarding technology is not a new concept within the world of contingent workforce management. However, as businesses began to scale their extended talent programs in the wake of a pandemic, disruption via market events, and other activity that has been transforming the modern enterprise over the past few years, there has been an enhanced need for innovative platforms that technologically “align” with the digital staffing, direct sourcing, and talent marketplace solutions for maximum compliance and visibility.

GreenLight.ai has revolutionized the ways that VMS, direct sourcing, ATS, and digital staffing platforms deliver a real omni-channel experience while also providing a central “system of truth” that can be relied upon as the utilization of freelance talent continues to grow in the wake of a looming economic recession and continued ramifications from both the COVID-19 pandemic and unrest across the globe.

In Their Own Words:

GreenLight.ai is the first contractor payroll and compliance provider designed for the Future of Work, used by some of the world’s leading enterprises and most disruptive talent technologies to easily onboard and pay their extended workforce. With an API-first strategy, GreenLight seamlessly integrates with VMS, ATS, and Direct Sourcing programs, while providing embedded connections for benefits, insurance, and background checks.

GreenLight focuses on a positive user experience, speed, visibility, and ease of integration that provides protection and indemnification options while removing the complexity of determining worker classification. Designed in conjunction with leading labor lawyers and tax experts, GreenLight’s platform has been dubbed ‘the world’s most intelligent classification engine’ and has compliance in its DNA. GreenLight also serves as the Employer or Agent of Record in over 120 countries, with intuitive and AI-driven processes that have workers onboarded in minutes.

Uniquely, GreenLight’s platform highlights the importance of focusing on the needs of the contractors, providing tools and benefits that enable them to thrive as independent workers – while ensuring our clients attract and retain the best freelance talent. It’s why the best digital staffing platforms private label our technology, and the reason GreenLight is the partner of choice for socially-conscious, forward-thinking contingent workforce programs.

The Outlook:

The adoption of digital staffing platforms and related solutions (particularly direct sourcing and talent marketplaces) has created a vacuum in which business leaders must delicately balance the need for top-tier talent with the necessary rigor to maintain compliance and mitigate misclassification risks. GreenLight.ai has been, for years, known as the one of the most powerful and intuitive solutions for offering just that…with an added “Future of Work touch” that separates its technology from the rest of the pack.

GreenLight.ai’s innovative range of offerings has proven to transform the way both businesses themselves and their core omni-channel talent platforms optimize the hiring, usage, and candidate experience of freelance talent. As Future of Work-era accelerants continue to shift the dynamics in the world of extended workforce management, GreenLight.ai will continue its long track record of providing Best-in-Class automation, integration, speed, visibility, and end-to-end protection against misclassification risks.

The Third Thing You Must Know About The Future of Work

Business Leadership Direct Sourcing General Insights Talent Talent Acquisition by John Yuva on 11/01/2022

Over the next five weeks, we’ll be recapping each of the five things discussed during the event.

In our third installment this week, we’ll be exploring the evolution of talent as a Future of Work centerpiece.

Talent and Talent Acquisition Transformed

To begin, the number three must-know about the Future of Work is the evolution of talent as a Future of Work centerpiece. When talking about the evolution of talent as part of the greater definition of the Future of Work, it goes back to how talent and talent acquisition are changing for the better. Major transformations are occurring, but talent helps make the world go round and helps businesses run. It provides a competitive advantage. Talent is the number one competitive differentiator from one organization to another. With the right talent in place, enterprises can do remarkable things.

The fact that talent engagement and talent acquisition have been evolving for some time, speaks volumes for how it has become the centerpiece for the Future of Work. Let’s look at digital staffing, which enables accelerated hiring. Enterprises can find the workers they need very quickly without making a phone call or sending an email to a staffing supplier.

The other link to this evolution is direct sourcing, which has come a long way over the past few years. Direct sourcing is a talent acquisition revolution, but is not a brand-new strategy (the idea of becoming one’s own recruitment agency was spearheaded 10 or 15 years ago). It’s certainly not a new concept, but according to the Future of Work Exchange and Ardent Partners research, it has become one of the number one priorities for businesses today.

Businesses have woken up to the value of direct sourcing. Business leaders enabled with a direct sourcing program and associated technologies have the ability to curate talent into a talent pool or talent community and then segment those workers into tiers by geography, skillset, and compensation, and quickly tap into that community when needed, resulting in true workforce scalability.

Grow the Candidate Experience

Thus, talent communities need to be fostered and nurtured. Businesses need to keep their talent engaged. So much is about the candidate experience, and enterprises should never get away from that. Always touch candidates with value, whether through emails or text messages. Use talent intelligence to know when the best time is to reach out to those in the talent community. This type of end-to-end program helps boost the quality of talent, speeds up talent acquisition and hiring, and improves the way talent is brought into the organization and redeployed in the future.

Again, regardless of the business function, the candidate experience is paramount when sourcing and hiring talent. There needs to be a level of culture-building that extends to clients and candidates and how they perceive the business. Consider how the brand is perceived, down to the colors of the company logo. Are those colors present on the career page and job portal? Do candidates know who the company is and what it stands for? Recognizing and knowing those things goes a long way in building rapport with candidates.

In addition, what is the overall talent experience when applying for a job? Is it easy to apply for a job and is there an assessment? What type of assessment is it? Can it be completed via a mobile app or laptop? Is the assessment aligned with the candidate’s skillsets and the job itself? Does a candidate know if the organization aligns with them from an individual perspective? All those aspects help build up an amazing candidate experience.

Purposeful Work Is Fundamental to the FOW

The other aspect pertaining to the evolution of talent is purposeful work, which will shape the future of the workforce. It is a non-technological component of the Future of Work.

For many, work is a paycheck that puts food on the table for their family, helps pay for their children’s college, and funds vacations and other extra expenses. The concept of purposeful work fits into the idea of what we are doing with our lives. Is there a purpose behind the work that we’re doing? If we’re spending 10 to 12 hours (including commuting) at our places of employment, are we doing something that satisfies us as humans?

Purposeful work has become a crucial way to think about talent and the workforce. People want their work to be purposeful, which causes many to reevaluate where they are in life. They question what they’re doing with their lives. How are they working? Whom are they working for? How do they fit into the Great Resignation, or more appropriately, the Great Resettling? Many workers were either displaced or left voluntarily but will eventually resettle in some way. They may be doing more purposeful work by starting their own business or becoming an entrepreneur. Some become freelancers or contractors to suit a more flexible lifestyle.

Whatever the reason, purposeful work is going to shape the future of the workforce. This is an area that the Future of Work Exchange will always remain incredibly bullish on because it is a fundamental piece as humans to want to have a purpose in how we work.

Key Providers for 2022: Worksome

Solution Providers Technology and Innovation by Christopher J. Dwyer on 10/28/2022

The Background:

The extended workforce, according to Ardent Partners and Future of Work Exchange research, comprises over 47% of the average organization’s total talent. This is a far cry from even the beginning the decade, when the contingent workforce was a smaller portion of enterprise talent.

One of the hallmarks of the modern extended workforce is the dynamic makeup of this type of labor, heralded by businesses being enabled with an omni-channel experience that traverses beyond staffing suppliers and agencies. Freelancers, independent contractors, and gig workers all encompass the powerful skills and expertise represented by non-employee talent, and, not all of these workers are managed correctly, accounted for, or engaged seamlessly in today’s volatile business climate.

Enter Worksome.

Why They Were Selected:

The Future of Work Exchange colloquially uses the phrase “digital staffing” to define a wide array of solutions that don’t fit neatly into traditional workforce technology (such as MSP or VMS). Digital staffing platforms typically offer VMS-like functionality with additional “flavors” that make them appealing for businesses that need specialty offerings for initiatives related to freelancer management, direct sourcing, digital recruitment, and more.

In a very, very short amount of time, Worksome has grown from a Freelancer Management System (FMS) with a talent marketplace foundation to an agile workforce management platform that offers end-to-end functionality for HR, extended workforce management, compliance and risk mitigation (particularly worker classification), workforce intelligence, etc.

In Their Own Words:

Worksome is the new standard in external workforce management, providing a faster, more agile way for companies to work with freelancers and contractors–with less admin, less risk, and a better experience for everyone–trusted by 1,500+ companies worldwide. Worksome offers streamlined administrative operations so businesses can find, contract and pay external workers in one click, while giving the insights needed to continuously optimize external workforce operations. With Worksome’s award-winning compliance solution, customers benefit from built-in background checks, instant worker classification, and automated contracts – as well as automated payments and integrated billing to ensure efficiency. Visit www.worksome.com for more information.

The Outlook:

This summer, Worksome reported 3x year-over-year growth, proving that the solution has become a true player in the extended workforce management technology market. And, with the recent news that the platform has expanded into seven new markets, including Germany, France, Australia, Singapore, Canada, Ireland, and the United Arab Emirates, Worksome is positioned for even bigger things in the months and years ahead.

The utilization of freelancers and independent contractors has grown considerably, especially in a business arena that demands workforce agility, top-tier skillsets, and on-demand access to Best-in-Class talent. Worksome’s powerful functionality enables progressive, end-to-end automation for all facets of freelancer and contractor management while improving the overall candidate experience for these types of non-employee workers. As an “all-in-one FMS” solution, Worksome is built for the Future of Work era. As more and more enterprises require real-time visibility into the deeper elements of their workforce, aim to engage and source external workers much more quickly, and crave the necessary automation to handle both tactical and strategic workforce management processes, Worksome will continue to shine as a robust platform that provides dynamic value.

Key Providers for 2022: Prosperix

Solution Providers Technology and Innovation by Christopher J. Dwyer on 10/18/2022

The Background:

The world of talent and work is on an upward trajectory, with a vast majority of businesses actively anticipating the adoption of revolutionary strategies, platforms, and solutions to truly optimize the way they get work done. According to Ardent Partners and Future of Work Exchange research, not only do 72% of enterprises expect to implement a “total talent acquisition” strategy before 2024, but 76% of businesses also anticipate extending HR- and talent-acquisition-like competencies and experiences into their extended workforce management programs within the next 18 months.

What does this mean? Enterprises across the globe crave innovation from their workforce management technology and services, essentially requiring an extra edge of progressive functionality that can transform contingent workforce programs into initiatives that resemble the Future of Work in terms of candidate experience, hiring manager experience, direct sourcing, talent intelligence, etc. In essence, what the business arena needs now is automation that enables agility, scalability, and flexibility.

Enter Prosperix.

Why They Were Selected:

During its near-decade run as Crowdstaffing, the solution now known as Prosperix revolutionized the technological concepts behind digital staffing, direct sourcing, and workforce management. Under the Prosperix brand, the company is doing the same with the Future of Work. Prosperix is known for its innovative VMS Network approach to Vendor Management System (VMS) technology and dedication to enhancing both the candidate and hiring manager experiences.

Prosperix’s unique approach to the talent acquisition and workforce management technology market is further enhanced by the arrival of its new, bundled service offering, Prosperix Xponential. The idyllic blend of tactical and strategic elements of Xponential provide businesses with the necessary power to manage all facets of today’s dynamic workforce, from talent engagement and the candidate experience to managed services, payrolling, and access to the solution’s deep network of candidates and suppliers.

In Their Own Words:

Prosperix is accelerating innovation in hiring and workforce management, enabling every business to build an extraordinary workforce. Our end-to-end software incorporates network effects, automates processes, and simplifies human interactions, while delivering actionable insights and improved outcomes. With our best-in-class solutions, we fuel our client’s biggest dreams by elevating human, workforce, and business prosperity.

Prosperix’s innovations, including the industry’s first (and patent-pending) VMS network and the newest addition, Prosperix Xponential, are garnering attention and giving clients the ability to achieve exponential scalability, agility, resilience, and business outcomes. We serve clients from a wide range of industries such as financial services, insurance, technology, entertainment, and utilities. They engage tens of thousands of contingent workers in professional and non-professional roles including IT, marketing, sales, finance, HR, customer support, manufacturing, and healthcare technology.

Founded in 2012 in Silicon Valley by CEO Sunil Bagai, our company has evolved into one of the industry’s leading technology providers, but with a significant difference – we focus on the combination of technology and people to build a prosperous ecosystem. By balancing the needs of businesses, suppliers, and workers, we help every client establish and maintain a high-quality workforce that meets current and future hiring needs. Visit www.prosperix.com for more information.

The Outlook:

When the company announced its rebrand last year, the main focus was on the “prosperity” of workers and the businesses that employed them. The innovative approach was certainly a progressive marker of where the world of work was heading, as two-plus years removed from the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, enterprises find themselves requiring fresh ways of attracting, engaging, and managing talent from various sources, whilst realizing that a talent acquisition and HR focus was the ideal means in leveraging today’s evolving workforce to truly thrive during challenging times.

Prosperix’s VMS Network is a Best-in-Class platform that effectively serves as an agile convergence of digital staffing technology and next-generation VMS functionality. The amalgamation of direct sourcing, candidate experience management, end-to-end contingent workforce management, and digital staffing, combined with the newly-bundled Xponential offering, position Prosperix as a powerful platform that represents the very best of Future of Work-era technology.

The First Thing You Must Know About the Future of Work

Business Leadership Contingent Workforce Direct Sourcing Events General Insights Talent Talent Acquisition Technology and Innovation by John Yuva on 10/17/2022

The Future of Work Exchange (FOWX) and Ardent Partners recently hosted their complimentary webinar, The Five Things You MUST KNOW About the Future of Work, which discussed the critical capabilities that enterprises can unlock to truly optimize the way they address talent acquisition, extended workforce management, and, most importantly, work optimization. Over the next five weeks, we’ll be recapping each of the five things discussed during the event. In our first installment this week, we’ll be diving into the evolution of talent and the ever-present phrase, “The Future of Work.”

The Evolution of Talent and Talent Acquisition

When it comes to the Future of Work, one of the first things to know is the evolution of talent and talent acquisition. And this idea of the “evolution of talent” can be ambiguous. Talent is always evolving and has been for a long time. The way that businesses perceive their talent is also evolving. And, the way that those businesses get connected to talent, and vice versa, continues to evolve. It’s also being innovated through technology and new strategies and new programs.

The fact is nearly half of our workforce today is comprised of extended workers or contingent workers. We have aspects like direct sourcing and digital staffing that are making it much easier for businesses to find the talent they need to get work done to address those mission-critical projects and fill the appropriate roles. FOWX and Ardent research has been focused historically on the extended workforce and contingent workforce, but we’re talking about all types of talent.

Thus, talent acquisition as a function and as a series of processes has also progressed. We need to consider aspects like the candidate experience, and the way that our culture and our brand attract new talent into our organization. Many business leaders think of the Future of Work as being centered around technology, revolving around the idea that technology drives the Future of Work. And we wouldn’t necessarily disagree with that; technology is a critical piece. And for some aspects and attributes of the Future of Work, technology and innovation are the nexus of those areas.

Technology is a Future of Work Centerpiece

Talent and the growth of the extended workforce represent the first leg of the stool with such things as diversity and candidate experience, but also digital staffing, direct sourcing, online talent marketplaces, and core workforce management solutions (such as MSPs and VMS platforms) These technologies are helping us to redefine the way we think about work. We’re living in a world where even though we don’t want to hear the word “pandemic” anymore, the pandemic really did shape what we think about the Future of Work.

It’s really critical to think about aspects like remote work and the technologies that support a hybrid workplace and how we leverage digital workspaces, digitization, and the idea of the digital enterprise, all rolling up into this notion of digital transformation. New technology and innovation are not the totality of the Future of Work, but certainly a centerpiece of it. And when we look at the transformation of business leadership, we often juxtapose this with business transformation or business leadership transformation, as well. It is leadership that dictates strategy, it dictates vision, and it dictates culture. And by proxy, we transform the way business leadership manages itself, manages its workforce, and how it expands its power and control over the organization.

Thus, the transparent transformation of business leadership is really critical, and honestly has nothing to do with technology. It all revolves around aspects like conscious leadership, empathetic leadership, empathy at work, and flexibility — thinking about how we lead in very new and different ways. It’s turning on its head the idea that “the boss” is always this very strict person who’s known for rigidity in how he or she perceives and manages the workforce. Business leaders are transitioning to be more flexible in their thinking. When you combine all these aspects together, that’s the future of work and the view of the Future of Work Exchange and Ardent Partners as well.

Ever-Present Future of Work

Thus, the “Future of Work” phrase is ever-present. It’s everywhere. Back when our FOWX architect, Christopher J. Dwyer, started using this phrase in 2013/2014, there weren’t many others using it. Today, we see so many conferences named “The Future of Work” as well as many websites and research studies. But unlike a lot of phrases that are hot today, it’s anything but hype. It really is this idea of permanence. Much of the change that we’ve gone through as people, as leaders, as workers, and as businesses, it’s not hype…nor is it a fad. The Future of Work is permanence. It’s not going to fade from view.

Future of Work “accelerants” that were once seedlings to the world of work and talent are now table stakes. Remote work, for example, is not new. Many of us have been working in a remote or hybrid workplace for most of our careers. And there are many others who have done so, as well. But for some business leaders and workers, it’s a very new aspect of their daily work lives.

The “Future of Work” phrase is ubiquitous. It’s an omnipresent way of looking at the current and future state of work. We are now focused on how we can improve the way we get work done, the way we manage talent, the way we engage talent, and the way that we treat our workforce. But we’re also thinking about tomorrow and the ways we’re going to get work done depending on several factors, including the economy, politics, global markets, and other aspects that could change the business arena.

Key Providers for 2022: Toptal

Solution Providers Technology and Innovation by Christopher J. Dwyer on 10/07/2022

The Background:

One of the key attributes of the Future of Work movement revolves around the concept of “talent evolution.” Businesses across the globe have realized that, in a world that requires agility to be truly competitive, they require real-time access to top-tier talent and skillsets. Ardent Partners and Future of Work Exchange research has routinely discovered that the utilization of alternative talent channels, particularly digital staffing and talent marketplaces, have experienced upwards of 10x adoption over the past several years.

Why such an extreme uptick in utilization? The answer is quite simple: in order for enterprises to tap into a global market of Best-in-Class talent without the restrictions of archaic talent acquisition capabilities, they need to tap into solutions that offer on-demand talent that reinforces the Future of Work-led world we live in…especially attributes such as remote work.

Enter Toptal.

Why They Were Selected:

Ardent Partners and Future of Work Exchange research has found that nearly 70% of executives leaders anticipated increasing their reliance on talent marketplaces and digital staffing platforms over the next two years, an astounding fact that reflects the dynamic benefits of such models. For over 12 years, Toptal has been a market leader in the digital staffing space, owed to its top-tier network of skillsets and expertise, as well as an on-demand foundation that allows business users to scale their workforce remotely in near-real-time fashion.

Toptal’s Enterprise offering is a services-oriented solution that enables a wide range of agile talent acquisition models. Toptal is well-known for leveraging its deep talent marketplace, talent community, and expanded freelancer network to enable true workforce agility and flexibility in its client base. And, what sets this solution apart from others in the industry is its ability to offer its clients the ability to build a fully-scalable team of distributed talent.

In Their Own Words:

Toptal is an international network of highly skilled freelancers in technology, design, and business that enables companies to innovate, meet business challenges and scale their teams, on demand. The company serves thousands of clients from hyper-growth start-ups to the Fortune 500, connecting them with top software engineers, product and project managers, designers, and finance experts from more than 100 countries. Founded in 2010 by CEO Taso Du Val, Toptal has the world’s largest fully remote workforce. Toptal is also regularly recognized as one of the world’s top companies hiring for work-from-anywhere jobs.

The Outlook:

Toptal continues to be a pioneer in the talent marketplace industry; as such, their years-long commitment to remote work was an idyllic means of combating the many challenges during the earliest days of the COVID-19 pandemic. As a trailblazer in assisting business leaders and hiring managers across the world with building and developing fully-scalable teams of top-tier, remote talent, Toptal has positioned itself as a continued market leader in the digital and on-demand staffing realm.

Toptal’s long track record of success in delivering on-demand, top-shelf talent and expertise to clients across the world position the solution as an ideal platform in a world driven by Future of Work accelerants.

search for: digital staffing