Back in December, the Future of Work Exchange hosted an exclusive webcast focused on the trends and strategies that would shape the world of talent and work in 2024. Opptly’s Lori Hock (CEO), Beeline’s Teresa Creech (Chief Corporate Development Officer), and Talent Solutions TAPFIN’s Bill Peters (VP of Global Workforce Strategy) joined me to discuss the current and future impact of artificial intelligence, the continued evolution of direct sourcing, the reality of total talent management, the criticality of diversity, and much more. If you missed the webinar, check out an on-demand replay below:
2024 Predictions
The procurement function plays a critical role within the Future of Work movement. This business unit, in addition to their typical, operational prowess in optimizing spend management and supply management, also holds responsibility for influencing extended and contingent workforce management and its many links to the ways enterprises drive value from their non-employee talent. Ardent Partners and the Future of Work Exchange, in partnership with Beeline and iValua, are excited to host an exclusive webcast tomorrow focused on the big trends and predictions that will shape 2024 for this crucial enterprise function.
Andrew Bartolini (Ardent’s Chief Research Officer), Brian Hoffmeyer (SVP of Market Strategies at Beeline), and Vishal Patel (iValua’s VP of Marketing) will join me for a spirited discussion on hot-button topics such as inflation, economic conditions, the talent wars, extended workforce growth, direct sourcing, and the 2024 impact of artificial intelligence on business operations. Join us tomorrow (Thursday, February 1) at 10am ET. You won’t want to miss this event!
By now, we’ve all heard the many elucidations on the year ahead. From predictions and financial outlooks to economic forecasts and market guesses, there are so many thoughts on how the next twelve months will unfold from business, talent, technology, and leadership perspectives.
So, essentially, we’re in for another year in which the Future of Work movement will continue to reshape and transform the very ways we think about how (and why) we work.
2023 was a watershed year. Artificial intelligence fully sped its hype train in circles around both business and consumer personas, while dire-then-rosy-then-dire-again-then-optimistic economic outlooks pushed all of us onto a nonstop financial rollercoaster. The labor market remained (and remains) a tad volatile, even though it’s showing signs of slowing steadily based on jobs data heading into the final five or six weeks of 2023 (with an approximate 12%-to-14% drop in job adds in December from November).
And then there’s cooling inflation, as well, which will (hopefully) contribute to a strong economic year as a better balance between supply and demand converges with a full year of economic and labor market consistency.
The Future of Work Exchange believes there are dozens of factors that will shape the foundation of 2024. Here are, however, four of the most critical trends:
- The effects of artificial intelligence won’t be measured by its utilization, but rather its impact. Attempting to measure the adoption of AI-based technology is difficult (even though we’ve tried that here at the Exchange many times before) because artificial intelligence utilization isn’t always rooted in enterprise software nor is it fully-integrated into core operational systems. It will be critical for businesses to measure the true effects of AI via its impact rather than how many users or how broadly the technology is being leveraged, i.e., is AI contributing to better talent matches?, is AI augmenting core roles?, is AI enabling deeper and more educated talent decision-making?, etc.
- The “human factor” is beyond crucial…it’s essential. The term “empathy” became omnipresent in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic as more and more workers craved non-financial support from their leaders, mentors, and employers. The pandemic was more than a transformational event; it forced professionals to view their jobs and careers from a human perspective (“mortality” being a major factor in the face of death, loss, and disruption) and, consequently, resulted in a shift from leaders towards compassion and empathy. While some attributes of the human factor were lost when businesses declared “normalcy” back in fashion, the mantra still rings true: the Future of Work thrives on humanity. As talented workers have more choices than ever before, and as new jobs/roles are decided upon by candidates from more than just compensation (like charity, workplace culture, diversity, inclusion, etc.), the “human factor” is an essential piece of the Future of Work movement.
- The next 12 months will shape the very future of business leadership. Are leaders made, or, are leaders born? This was always a fundamental question that unfortunately paved the career roads for many a professional for the past few decades. “Leadership” in and of itself is a nebulous concept given that every enterprise executive shares varied responsibilities, each with a tinge towards “strategic” or “tactical” that dictates how, when, and why they lead. The stakes have changed, though, and so has the very definition of leadership; it’s not just “management,” it’s mentorship, coaching, and conscious thinking that drives productivity, humanity, culture, and inclusion. Leaders have the potential to impact not just the financial or economic successes of their respective organizations, but also how the organization is perceived to future talent and how candidates determine its overall workplace environment. In 2024, business leadership hits a tipping point.
- The blended workforce represents the future of talent acquisition. It’s no longer a question of how the extended workforce will impact the greater business arena…it’s how much value it will drive. Ardent Partners and Future of Work Exchange research pegs the contingent workforce at 49.5% of the average company’s total workforce, a figure that, ten years ago, Ardent predicted would become a reality given the trajectory of non-employee talent. It’s not just the overall size of the extended workforce, though, that makes it such a high-value Future of Work attribute, but rather the ecosystem around this workforce that represents so much innovation and evolution. AI-fueled talent acquisition, the continued growth of direct sourcing, the convergence of VMS and HR-led technology, massive shifts in how businesses find and engage talent, and the next great era of the Gig Economy all point to the extended workforce as a key Future of Work tenet in 2024 and beyond.
The Future of Work Exchange continues its series on 2024 Future of Work predictions, courtesy of the industry’s brightest thought leaders and executives. The below insights are peeks into what the year ahead may bring for organizations across the globe regarding talent, technology, and work optimization. (Read Part I and Part II of our predictions series.)
“Peak AI hype will fade. However, the most innovative and competitive companies will take on the true challenge of AI’s digital disruption – its people. The paramount skill sought by companies will be “good judgement,” elevating it from a soft skill to a crucial human-in-the-loop necessity. Companies will realize that their AI adoption challenge isn’t access to technology, it’s access to people with the skills and bandwidth to stand up the programs. – Tim Sanders, VP of Client Strategy, Upwork
“2024 will see increased dissolution of silos between extended and FTE workforce management, accelerated by integrative technologies and the demand for more flexible, high-impact talent strategies.” – Jeff Mike, Head of Insights and Impact at Flextrack
“Classifying independent contractors (and avoiding misclassification) will be even more crucial in 2024. Compliance risk is always a concern when engaging a large contingent workforce. Growing companies may mistakenly classify someone as an “independent contractor” when that person should technically receive the benefits of “employment.” U.S. labor laws are becoming more specific, with a new proposed Six-Factor “Economic Realities” Test to determine worker status on the horizon. Companies must be mindful of labor laws and IC classification, as each country (and even each U.S. state) has its own nuances. Misclassifying employees as independent contractors carries risks and penalties, including fines, jail time, or being banned from talent acquisition in that country. Cover your compliance bases in 2024!” – The Team at WorkSuite
“A lot of excitement around AI and the Future of Work is still about how it’s generating efficiencies and improvements. But, as companies go past that initial fervor and move towards a more strategic transformation there’s going to be even more demands on finding skills, upskilling and shaping a new look organization. Businesses will need to learn from digital transformation and recognizing that as work changes, an extended workforce is more able to have the skills to plan and deliver those changes.” – Sandeep Dhillon, CEO, Talmix
“The era of corporate monoculture is over. Gen Z is the most culturally aware, globally-connected generation we’ve seen, and they bring a variety of backgrounds, skills, and expectations to the workplace. For 2024, expect far less desire to conform and a greater emphasis on customizable benefits and perks, along with increased consideration of mental health and ethics. The one-size-fits-all, US-centric approach to culture building will be replaced by employee-driven, bottom-up programs that prioritize self-directed engagement and cross-cultural learning. As part of that, executives will need to be trained on cross-culture (and cross-generational) communication. This is a generation that has learned to set their own rules and build skills on the fly, evolving and learning alongside the technology they used to study and connect. Now that they’re in the workplace, Gen Z doesn’t want to be micromanaged; they crave trust, autonomy, and flexibility in their work. Given freedom to experiment, this generation will continue to reinvent the way we look at work, including working remotely, hybridly, and independently as preferred career choices.” – Jessica “JJ” Reeder, Director of Remote Organizational Effectiveness, Upwork
“The proliferation of artificial intelligence as viable and accretive to decision-making has been remarkable to witness this year. The toothpaste is fully out of the tube and there’s no turning back. What’s interesting to see, however, is how some of our predictions last year on the impact of AI on the workforce evolved with the benefit of hindsight. It was originally thought that AI would have an outsized impact on front-line work and those in traditionally blue-collar roles, perhaps as automation took hold in factory and warehouse settings, but as it turns out, many are predicting a greater degree of disruption on IT and marketing roles, which could have profound implications on we view job roles and structures, especially in tech. Conversely, I predict that AI will be beneficial to industrial staffing and the supply chain workforce ecosystem as we realize with increasing confidence how certain job functions aren’t easily performed by anyone other than highly-skilled human beings. There’s a combination of judgment, experience, intelligence, and physical dexterity that coexists seamlessly within the skilled trades, and that’s a confluence of assets that we haven’t yet seen AI capable of credibly pulling off, nor do I see that as likely in the near future.” – Vinda Souza, VP of Corporate Communications, Employbridge
“I expect to see increasing collaboration and maybe even consolidation of traditional parts of the ecosystem with some of the newer entrants. The recently-announced Upwork partnerships with VMS providers have beaten the New Year’s Eve chimes, and I’m sure we’ll see more marketplaces embedded with MSP partnerships and VMS integrations, as the enterprise puts more emphasis on the extended workforce, and wants to bring all the components together. We’re describing 2024 as the year of the grown-up talent marketplace, and instead of competing against centralized programs, they’ll be a part of it.” – Dorothy Mead, VP of Marketing and Brand, Talmix
“Distributed work is going to continue to grow and become “smarter” as we all learn how to work differently. Technology is only getting better at connecting us and removing friction that remote work used to have e.g. dropped calls, lack of knowledge-sharing tools, etc. In fact, according to our recent research, days in the office do not directly correlate to higher performance because trust and flexibility are at the core of fostering distributed teams. As people analytics continues to mature as a discipline, thanks in large part to AI, we’ll be able to better customize work arrangements based on data, allowing for greater individualization of work.– Dr. Kelly Monahan, Managing Director, Upwork Research Institute
“Recruitment technology companies have been trying to solve the problem of shift scheduling for years, with varying degrees of success. Now that we’ve reached a tipping point, I predict that AI will help effectively connect candidates with gig work opportunities that not only match their skill sets, but also accommodate their scheduling preferences – and it will be quick and seamless. All of this ties into a broader theme of mobile platforms and artificial intelligence making life easier for workers – to find, apply for, and manage multiple gig jobs, but most importantly, to offer greater flexibility and control over their work lives and futures. Over the past several years we’ve seen increasing consolidation across the staffing ecosystem and the infusion of private equity into staffing, although that cooled somewhat in 2023. For next year, I anticipate that AI-driven efficiencies and advancements in experience design will lead to further market consolidation, with larger staffing firms acquiring and/or integrating with smaller, specialized firms that shore up gaps in segmentation or technical capability. This consolidation, in turn, will ideally lead to a more unified jobseeker experiences, giving candidates broader access to varied job opportunities through the availability of fewer, but more feature-rich and extensible, platforms.” – Colin Mooney, Chief Transformation Officer, Employbridge
The Future of Work Exchange continues its series on 2024 Future of Work predictions, courtesy of the industry’s brightest thought leaders and executives. The below insights are peeks into what the year ahead may bring for organizations across the globe regarding talent, technology, and work optimization. (Check out Part I of our series here.)
“The workforce solutions landscape is evolving rapidly, driven by the impact of AI and its present and future influence on comprehensive total talent solutions. In this dynamic environment, the industry is positioned to break existing boundaries, harnessing technology in new and innovative ways. Emerging are more robust ecosystems that will provide integrated, transformative solutions. The widespread adoption of AI is set to reshape the course of the industry, empowering companies to excel in a fiercely competitive, skills-based talent market. The compelling combination of AI and human expertise is positioned to further reduce friction between talent and work, advancing the industry and effecting positive change.”– Lori Hock, CEO, Opptly
“The healthcare landscape is evolving rapidly. Forget cookie-cutter approaches to recruiting and retaining top-tier clinicians in 2024. Expect facilities to embrace personalized staffing solutions – flexible schedules, internal gig options, and tailored international recruitment. It’s a dynamic ecosystem, and specialized support companies, with their diverse technology and services, will be vital partners for healthcare organizations navigating this terrain.” – Matt Jensen, SVP Client Services, RightSourcing by Magnit
“2024 is the year we’re going to see practical potential unleashed with artificial intelligence on HCM processes, including enabling more sophisticated job-candidate matching beyond the algorithmic matching of today. We’ll also start to see deep learning being leveraged to analyze a candidate’s skills, experiences, and preferences, to not only materially generate better job matches but also potentially improve on-the-job performance. Meanwhile, I expect that predictive analytics will help on the client side by better forecasting labor market trends, allowing staffing firms to not only proactively align candidates with appropriate future opportunities, but also identify new talent pools and segments with increasing demand.” – Colin Mooney, Chief Transformation Officer, Employbridge
“High5 anticipates a rising trend in organizations embracing direct sourcing platforms to engage talent directly, bypassing conventional recruitment methods and facilitating agile hiring processes. The emphasis will also shift more towards conversational vetting, which goes beyond conventional skills challenges. Moreover, in today’s landscape, connecting with passive candidates will have a heightened significance in 2024. We see technology, such as High5, playing a pivotal role in this scenario, enabling organizations to leverage digital tools for targeted outreach, personalized communication, and efficient talent relationship management.” – Kara Kaplan, CEO, High5
“In 2023 we saw the first few raindrops of AI but I think that as we step into 2024, we should prepare for the downpour of impact, as AI, Machine Learning and Automation continue to transform our industry. These advances in technology mean that people will become increasingly free of admin burden, allowing us to focus on more of the strategic and relationship-based elements of our work.” – Andrew Erlichman, VP, Sales/Channel Partner Strategy, Guidant Global
“In 2024, a significant shift, perhaps a ‘Great Rebalancing’, seems imminent within the contingent workforce sector. Large corporations will grapple with challenges in attracting top-tier talent due to the lingering impact from layoffs, return-to-office mandates, and weakened diversity initiatives. Astute companies will take note of the cost of reputational damage and rather than solely focusing on imposed resource constraints and rate reductions, forward-thinking companies will redirect their emphasis towards evaluating savings by prioritizing risk mitigation. Their focus will shift towards avoiding legal disputes or negative publicity, acknowledging the preservation of reputation holds substantial value in cost-saving measures. Meanwhile small and mid-sized firms, leveraging their nimbleness, will swiftly attract superior talent, driving business growth and opening the door for greater investment in innovation. These entities will excel in integrating AI into workforce strategies, navigating M&A activities, and fostering inclusivity among the contingent workforce. Service providers mirroring this agility are poised to revolutionize how buyers source and manage contingent workers, heralding a more balanced standard for human-centricity within workforce decisions. This evolution entails greater integration between all workers regardless of their classification and will drive a focus on discussing ‘total talent’ as a practical solution.” – Cara Kresge, Chief Revenue Officer,
“While we are confident that AI will become more embedded in the recruiting process, we believe there will be more emphasis on how to do so in order to ensure there are fair, equitable and ethical outcomes. When it comes to recruiting, there is unconscious bias in how people make their hiring decisions. AI models can reinforce this bias, leaving candidates, like moms and women of color, at a disadvantage. It is important to design models to avoid assumptions and biases by excluding data such as historic hiring outcomes or gaps and potential exclusionary characteristics. Companies that take a more human-modeled approach whereby modeling is designed by what we learn from recruiters, for example, can reinforce tactics that produce more ethical results and decrease tactics that do not. We will continue to see a significant uptick in AI experimentation in the coming year, so the challenge for companies is to not only help minimize bias as we learn, but avoid excluding or overlooking qualified candidates, potentially missing out on highly qualified people who can provide great value to your company.” – Jess Dominiczak, Chief Product Officer, The Mom Project
“2024 will be the year that talent professionals fully adopt and incorporate automation and artificial intelligence into their recruitment strategies. In 2023, we saw many staffing and recruiting professionals explore and discover how generative artificial intelligence such as ChatGPT can boost efficiency. However, to keep pace with the industry in 2024, firms will need automation and artificial intelligence to power their entire recruitment processes, from front end to back end. As a result, staffing and recruiting teams will be able to quickly hire top candidates, build strong talent pipelines, engage candidates more effectively, and generate more actionable data about their talent-acquisition and job-fulfillment efforts. Automation and artificial intelligence will no longer be nice-to-haves; they’ll be must-haves, especially as firms continue to navigate a fluid economy and an ongoing talent shortage.”– Sameer Penakalapati, Founder and CEO, Ceipal
It’s that time of year again when we leverage our insights and experiences from the year that was to effectively look forward to the months ahead. The Future of Work Exchange is excited to share a variety of commentary from thought leaders and executives from across the industry. Today is the first in a multi-part series that will run through the end of next week.
“In 2024, we will see real examples of total talent management (or total workforce optimization) where organizations use newly available tools to get visibility into their entire workforces and use that to drive both better decision-making and to ensure compliance with an increasingly complex regulatory environment.” – Brian Hoffmeyer, SVP of Market Strategies, Beeline
“The Future of Work demands a cognitive contingent workforce management platform, a central nervous system for talent that orchestrates every channel. This platform won’t just hire; it will predict, adapt, and learn — anticipating your needs and delivering the right talent, right when you need it. Human expertise augmented by AI will create a workforce that’s nimble, responsive, and thrives in a constantly evolving landscape.” – Vidhya Srinivasan, Chief Product and Marketing Officer, Magnit
“2024 will be the year that differentiated talent sources start to become more accessible through a single point of entry. VMS platforms, Direct Sourcing platforms, and Marketplace aggregators will become better integrated, allowing organizations to have more coordinated access to all types of contingent labor (contract, consultant, gig, freelance, SOW).” – Kevin Leete, Senior Director of Sales, WorkLLama
“The contingent labor market presents the greatest opportunity for disruption. Over the past decade, we have seen only incremental changes as the value of this workforce segment is increasingly recognized. The need for agility will only continue to grow and when paired with increasing talent shortages, organizations need to broaden their view and approach to ensure their workforce strategies will be both competitive and sustainable.” – Amy Doyle, Global Leader, SVP, Talent Solutions TAPFIN
“AI will benefit the workforce by creating more jobs, improving efficiencies, and powering our imagination to rethink how we work.” – Sunil Bagai, CEO, Prosperix
“In 2024, we expect to see RPO making a comeback and more organizations will leverage their employer brand to attract and engage contingent labor through technology-enabled talent communities and direct sourcing. Unsurprisingly, services procurement is also high on the agenda, given it represents a largely untapped opportunity for procurement to drive huge strategic and efficiency gains as well as cost savings. All of this will pave the way for a more integrated approach to workforce solutions and dare I say it, possibly even total workforce solutions.” – Sara Gordon, SVP Client Relationships, Guidant Global
“Everyone loves a good headline and nowhere more so than tech, where we were inundated in 2021-22 by stories of ‘Quiet Quitting’ and the ‘Great Resignation,’ and of course, the ubiquity of remote work in a COVID-informed knowledge work ecosystem. First, let’s not forget that from the vantage point of the supply chain, most of the talent that support this incredibly robust ecosystem have been working onsite without interruption before, during, and after the pandemic. But for traditionally office-based professionals, a lot has changed in 2023. The pendulum has swung away from white-collar talent and if not directly toward employers, then to somewhere abstract that seems relatively inaccessible to either party. The ‘Great Resignation’ has been replaced by the ‘Great Reckoning’ – a realization that forcing computer-reliant workers back to the office, when they’ve proven historically that they can be effective working remotely – will result in neither increased satisfaction nor increased productivity.
Also, all these RTO mandates conflate work volume with visibility and suggest a level of short-term memory recall. Back before the pandemic, in tech at least, we spent most of our time in an office, but we weren’t particularly heads-down. There were a lot of lunches out, a lot of chit chat in meeting spaces, and a lot of running out midday to go to the gym, meaning that productivity can be higher when those things aren’t a convenient option. That being said, the concept of culture in a world of remote knowledge work is tricky, for precisely that reason. People are working incredibly hard remotely, grinding as it were, without being able to interface with people face-to-face or separate their home and work worlds. That leaves us collectively on the precipice of burnout and contributes to an already epidemic amount of loneliness. For 2024 I predict a radical refocusing on creating cultural connection, leveraging technology and the platform ecosystem to generate and cultivate stronger bonds between people, greater alignment and efficiency, and an increasing level of honesty and authenticity around the concept of identity and fulfillment within a professional context.” – Vinda Souza, VP of Corporate Communications, Employbridge
It’s that time of year when we begin to reflect on the year that was and look ahead. For the Future of Work movement, that means we have the opportunity to chat about some of the hard-hitting concepts that have revolutionized the ways we think about work…while anticipating the transformative trends that will shape 2024.
The Future of Work Exchange is incredibly excited to host our final webcast of the year, The Future of Work 2024: Transformative Trends That Will Shape The Year Ahead, featuring an all-star lineup of panelists. I’ll be joined by Lori Hock (CEO of Opptly), Teresa Creech (Chief Corporate Development Officer at Beeline), and Amy Doyle (Global Leader, SVP at Talent Solutions TAPFIN) for a fun and engaging discussion on the technologies, solutions, strategies, and innovations that impacted 2023 and how concepts such as direct sourcing, DE&I, artificial intelligence, digital recruitment, and extended workforce management will impact how businesses optimize talent and work in 2024 (and beyond).
Register for the December 12 webinar below; we look forward to seeing you there!
