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Key Providers for 2021: RightSourcing

Contingent WorkforceGeneral InsightsSolution Providers by Christopher J. Dwyer on

The Background:

The healthcare industry often operates very differently from other key verticals, independent of major global trends and the challenges that plague the average business. The COVID-19 pandemic hit this sector the hardest in terms of staff shortages, worker burnout, safety and health concerns, etc. Future of Work Exchange research finds that while 90% of businesses believe that a semblance of “business normalcy” will be within reach sometime in early 2022, executives within the healthcare industry are not as convinced: 98% of healthcare businesses believe that normality is, at the earliest, two years away.

The extended workforce has long been a high-impact, high-value generator of true business agility. However, prior to 2020, the healthcare industry lagged behind their peers in regards to utilizing this type of labor to its maximum value, perhaps owed to insufficient supply channels, internal barriers due to archaic thinking, and the complexities in finding the right skillsets and expertise. The past eighteen months have brought about a change in thinking, largely due to the pressure put on healthcare facilities to shift talent to different locations, bring in on-demand talent when staffing shortages arise, and better plan for a quickly-evolving pandemic that continues to strain resources. FOWX research indicates that 98% of enterprises in this industry believe their non-employee workforce will be critical in the months and years ahead.

Enter RightSourcing.

Why They Were Selected:

RightSourcing, the healthcare-focused MSP arm of PRO Unlimited, has long been a dominant player in this industry due to its unique blend of managed services augmented with the power of the Wand VMS platform. RightSourcing may operate as a “specialty provider” in regard to its healthcare focus, however, the solution reflects the innovative approaches of its parent company in how it provides a wide range of services to its customers, including SOW management and services procurement, direct sourcing, DE&I support, and payrolling.

In addition to these offerings, RightSourcing also leverages a robust advantage through its data-driven analytics and market rate intelligence capabilities, two differentiators that are tailored for a complex and evolving healthcare workforce.

In Their Own Words:

RightSourcing provides a single, integrated platform of high-touch services and innovative technology solutions to help healthcare and higher education organizations increase cost savings, improve talent quality, mitigate risk and drive effectiveness within their contingent workforce program.

We are NOT a staffing company. We are not owned by, or affiliated with, a staffing company. We are PURELY vendor-neutral, which ensures true goal alignment with our clients. This vendor-neutral MSP approach leverages a nationwide network of clinical, IT, and business/professional staffing partners to provide the broadest access to talent at competitive market rates.

We provide clients with accurate, up-to-date labor market rate guidance. Historically, a lack of market labor rate intelligence has prevented healthcare organizations and higher ed from fully optimizing their hiring decisions. This results in significant unnecessary spend by paying higher market rates by role and/or location.

Bundling RightSourcing’s MSP experience with our industry-leading Wand VMS technology and actionable analytics makes RightSourcing fully accountable for the entire scope of an organization’s non-employee workforce. An integrated workforce management platform is more cost-effective, more agile, and maximizes efficiency to ensure the success of the program.

The Outlook:

The majority of healthcare staffing and healthcare HR/talent acquisition executives plan to invest more time, resources, and energy into optimizing the impact of the extended workforce, including tapping into direct sourcing (and talent pool), alternative talent channels, and talent marketplaces. With the continued weight of the pandemic forcing staffing shortages and worker burnout, healthcare enterprises must drive true workforce agility through today’s evolving contingent workforce.

RightSourcing is well-positioned as a powerful MSP that can blend progressive service offerings, a nimble VMS platform, and forward-looking, data-fueled solutions to transform the way the healthcare industry finds, engages, and manages its contingent workforce.

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FOWX Notes: September 10 Edition

Business LeadershipGeneral InsightsTalent by Christopher J. Dwyer on

Some picked-up pieces from across the industry, which we call “FOWX Notes,” for the week ending September 10:

  • The Biden Administration yesterday announced its most sweeping vaccine mandate measures thus far in the pandemic, requiring all all federal workers and contractors to be vaccinated (with limited exceptions in specific cases). Furthermore, all private businesses with 100 or more employees must require vaccinations or weekly tests for its workforce. These measures will affect nearly 100 million Americans and is seemingly a result of a rightfully frustrated government that wants to control the wild and raging Delta variant. Expect lawsuits galore over the coming weeks, as well as push-backs from unions and similar labor groups.
  • The truth is that the Biden Administration was left with no choice; while the Delta variant has caused some vaccinated people to spread the virus, this is still a pandemic driven by the unvaccinated. For a vaccine campaign that is considered the most important and biggest in world history, only 54% of the American population is fully-inoculated. A mandate such as the one announced yesterday will hopefully get the United States to a safer place going into 2022.
  • According to Future of Work Exchange research, 64% of businesses plan to leverage workforce management technology to augment their diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) initiatives, a sure sign that enterprises across the world are now considering this pivotal Future of Work attribute as a key focal area for workforce planning the months ahead. Many professionals are committed to being more diverse and more inclusive in how they think about and structure
  • There needs to be more discussion and focus on non-medical leave for working parents, especially “bonding leave.” Child bonding leave is a separate entity from maternity or paternity leave; for example, in Massachusetts (where FOWX headquarters is located), parents may “take up to 12 weeks of family leave to bond with a child,” which must be taken within the first year of a child’s birth. Currently, only eleven states in America currently offer this type of leave.
  • “Massachusetts’ paid bonding leave is late to the dinner party but a welcome guest. As an HR professional, I have seen too many low- and middle-income employees struggle and in despair to learn they didn’t have disability pay benefits at all, or only had enough for a maternity leave of six weeks postpartum. This was even more heartbreaking of a reality to me when I took my own maternity leave and couldn’t imagine having to bring my new baby to daycare at 6 or 7 weeks old,” says Caitlin Klezmer, Senior HR Business Partner at JLL. “I was fortunate enough to have paid leave far in excess of those previously mentioned. As a working mother who recently returned to work from her bonding leave, I encourage anyone who may think they are eligible to look into these benefits – birthing and non-birthing parents alike. I reserved my bonding leave for the end of my child’s first year, taking it for the last two months before he turned one. The opportunity to temporarily pause my focus on my career unburdened some of my mental load that was becoming overwhelming. This leave allowed me the guilt-free space to focus on my family, including my relationship with myself, my spouse, and my children, while also allowing me to recharge for my return to work.”
  • U.S. jobless claims hit an 18-month low, according to Reuters; this is the lowest weekly figure since March 14, 2020, which, for those keeping track, is the lowest during the pandemic. This may signal optimism that the labor market will continue to grow even in light of a summer surge of coronavirus infections. There are some expectations that the conclusion of federally-expanded unemployment benefits, plus a 2021-2022 school year that is focused on in-person learning, could spark additional growth in the immediate weeks ahead. All of this, however, underscores the fact that the “Great Resignation” is still very much a stark reality that hangs over any labor market news. There are still millions of unfilled jobs/roles, with a standoff between employers and potential candidates (many of which are demanding more flexibility and better benefits). Engagement is going to continue being a critical issue in the months ahead as both businesses and workers haggle over aspects like remote work, work/life balance, and other non-compensatory aspects. (The Future of Work Exchange will feature an exclusive piece on labor market disengagement in the coming weeks, so stay tuned!)
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Key Providers for 2021: The Mom Project

Diversity and InclusionSolution ProvidersTalentTechnology and Innovation by Christopher J. Dwyer on

[Editor’s Note: Over the next several weeks, the Future of Work Exchange will unveil its “21 for 2021” list of key solution providers that are shaping the Future of Work through innovative technology, progressive functionality, and overall impact on the evolving world of talent and work. On deck for today: The Mom Project.]

The Background:

In the world of “digital staffing,” which is a wide-encompassing industry that includes talent marketplaces, talent clouds, talent communities, on-demand staffing outlets, freelancer management systems (even though “FMS” as an acronym is seemingly defunct), as well as direct sourcing technology, it’s not often that businesses have access to an end-to-end workforce management platform that also prioritizes talent engagement with a deep community of gender- and ethnically-diverse professionals.

Future of Work Exchange research finds that 62% of businesses expect more focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) initiatives over the next year, proving that the technology spectrum within workforce management needs to evolve to meet this expected shift moving forward.

Enter The Mom Project.

Why They Were Selected:

The world for working parents has dynamically shifted…again. The Mom Project’s Greg Robinson (COO and co-founder), who appeared on the Contingent Workforce Weekly podcast earlier this year, said that he and his team fear that we will see another mass exodus of women from the workforce due to the pandemic and its wide-sweeping ramifications. The Mom Project is looking to change that through its unique ability to connect enterprises with qualified and diverse candidates in a nimble, agile, and on-demand manner. That alone warrants selection as a solution that is shaping the Future of Work, but there’s more to the story.

On top of its 500,000+ (and growing) network of diverse candidates, The Mom Project also offers progressive workforce management technology such as true total talent management functionality, an AI neural network learning engine (that incorporates customer culture and DE&I attributes) that helps users identify key DE&I trends and patterns, and automation that assists enterprises in building ready-to-engage, pre-vetted talent from both non-employee/contingent and direct hire/FTE perspectives.

The Mom Project is one of the most progressive and innovative workforce/talent solutions in today’s evolving technology landscape.

In Their Own Words:

More than one million American women will become parents this year, joining the ranks of the working parenthood — a vital segment of the workforce. Simultaneously, businesses are challenged to retain talented employees as they navigate through this period of life, and struggle to find the experienced talent they need to grow.

The Mom Project is the expert partner helping companies create stronger, more diverse workforces that are well-prepared for the Future of Work. These are the big picture problems that C-suites, boards, investors and hiring managers across the country are focused on. We’re proud to be the consultative, action-oriented partner working hand-in-hand with our customers to drive lasting change.

  • Our platform drives community engagement and trust, driving a premium pipeline of over 500,000 members, growing by 20,000 members a month.
  • Our thought leadership and hands-on collaboration with hiring managers and recruiters ensures talent doesn’t get stuck mid-way, and that mom is primed to thrive in her new role.
  • Giving back to our 501.3(c) nonprofit, RISE, ensures that we’re continuously preparing the candidates of the future.
  • Co-branding drives talent perception and pipeline, and each hire becomes a story to further elevate partners as employers of choice for working families.

Women staying engaged in the workforce on their terms is good for families. It’s good for business. It’s good for everyone. .

The Outlook:

Over the next two years, 62% of businesses expect to address DE&I objectives and initiatives with workforce management technology and similar automation, according to Future of Work Exchange research. This statistic reflects just how critical diversity, equity, and inclusion truly is within the digital staffing solutions arena and its crucial place as part of greater talent management strategies.

The Mom Project is uniquely positioned to continue its rampant growth in the market from three perspectives: 1) it is one of the most visible workforce management platforms that is actively prioritizing and truly aligning DE&I within the very fabric of its functionality, 2) it offers one of the industry’s deepest communities of gender- and ethnically-diverse skillsets and talent, and, 3) its progressive technology platform enables a spectrum of innovative talent acquisition, talent engagement, and workforce management solutions that harness the incredible power of artificial intelligence and machine learning while forming a foundation of total talent management automation.

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Once More, With Feeling: Empathy Is the Only Way Forward

Business LeadershipDiversity and InclusionHRTalent by Christopher J. Dwyer on

“The great gift of human beings is that we have the power of empathy, we can all sense a mysterious connection to each other.” – Meryl Streep

Over the past several months, there’s one word that has popped up more than so many others in my conversations with hiring managers, business leaders, HR practitioners, and talent acquisition executives. It’s a word that hasn’t been used very often in the corporate world, but it’s a concept that we are learning has such a profound effect on how work gets done. It’s at the very heart of who we are as humans and it’s a reflection of the energy we put out into the world around us. And, as we are finding, it’s a foundational way for businesses and their leaders to build long-lasting relationships with their workforce.

Empathy.

Many of us knew exactly what it would be like when the biggest remote work experiment in history kicked off in the dark days of March 2020. However, many others struggled with newfound responsibilities within their home as kids shuffled no further than the kitchen table and a laptop instead of to the bus. Many of us waded in the collective, anxious waters of a global pandemic that forced us indoors and to shutter social interaction. And too many of us still bear the scars of the most dangerous public health crisis in our lifetimes.

All of this means one thing: empathy must be the root of how we move forward. It must be the foundational layer to how we approach how work gets done and how we structure a workplace environment that is both inclusive and safe. It also means that, in the face of the Delta variant’s rampage across the country (and world), we as business leaders and we as business workers must prioritize empathy in nearly every facet of how we address our roles, our jobs, and our communications with each other.

Ardent Partners and Future of Work Exchange research finds that 77% of businesses expect more empathy-driven leadership moving forward within their organizations, proving that “cold” and archaic modes of leadership, particularly instilling a culture of fear and rigidity, are detrimental to the overall enterprise. In order to retain talent and reengage key workers when needed, business leaders must create, foster, and deliver on the best possible workplace culture. By reinforcing expectations, practicing transparency, promoting positivity, and leveraging accountability (for both workers and managers), business leaders will ensure that empathetic efforts will help their organizations improve the talent experience for its total workforce.

Empathy within the workplace (and the workforce) has incredible benefits:

  • Empathy-led leadership will help business execs develop long-lasting relationships with its workforce. Workers that can perform their tasks with a touch of flexibility whilst feeling comfortable and safe within an inclusive environment are more likely to want to have a better relationship with their managers. Workers will be more apt to open additional lines of communication with their leaders and be honest about their workloads and any pressure they may be feeling about their roles. These long-lasting relationships can be especially critical when workers have opportunities outside of the organization, and, could potentially be a deciding factor on taking their talents elsewhere or staying put.
  • Leveraging empathy as a core Future of Work tenet will result in more productive workers and teams (and better business outcomes). Appreciation is also another factor that can catalyze a workforce. Workers that feel appreciated, along with a sense of physiological safety in an empathetic environment, are more likely to perform at a higher level due to a better overall employee experience. If they truly believe in what they are doing and feel that they are appreciated in how they perform their jobs, that extra level of value certainly cascades into the ultimate completion of the project. “Better business outcomes” has long been a goal for organizations, and empathy as a foundational workplace facet can be a critical contributor to achieving this initiative.
  • Empathy fosters a better connection with workers that can help stave off potential issues before they are exacerbated. Workers that have an open line of communication with their leaders will always feel that they can discuss major personal and business issues without fear of scrutiny or reprisal. In these scenarios, simply talking about problems, especially before they become worse, can potentially stave off detachment from the role or even resignations. Leaders pushing empathy can foster stronger relationships with their workers and ensure that these unions are robust tools in boosting the overall talent experience. In age that some have dubbed “The Great Resignation,” anything that executives can do in terms of empathy, flexibility, etc. will go a long way towards key talent retention.
  • Empathy-led leadership is one of several solutions to worker burnout. Think about the world we’re currently living in. The pandemic has been nothing short of an anxiety-ridden rollercoaster ride. Some of us have lost loved ones, others have been sick and experienced COVID first-hand. Many of us still battle with the lingering personal ramifications of this public health crisis. As we discussed recently, worker burnout is an epidemic on top of a pandemic; business leaders are the essential front-line of defense when it comes to curtailing this major issue. Empathetic and inclusive workplace environments (including, yes, remote environments!) can help curb some of the worker burnout issues that plague today’s talent by helping employees feel that 1) they are not alone in what they are doing, 2) they can reach out for help if they are overwhelmed, 3) they can establish flexible boundaries for when personal issues need to be prioritized, and, 4) they can work effectively with their leadership team to construct the best possible work-life balance for the maximum productivity and wellness.

A phrase known as “compassion fatigue” has been uttered lately as more and more leaders tire of the past eighteen months and the changes they’ve had to make in how they manage their workforce (it’s also a phrase thought of and spoken by medical workers that are rightfully exhausted at the thought of caring for unvaccinated individuals as hospitals begin to surge once again across the country). The FOWX theory is this: if business leaders are tiring of pushing empathy and rooting it into the foundation of their workplace environments, they shouldn’t be surprised when productivity wanes or workers begin to quit.

The COVID-19 pandemic (an ongoing pandemic, I may add) has been stressful for everyone, no doubt. However, empathy is the only way forward for the world of business. It’s the only way that workers will have a sense of inclusion, wellness, and appreciation. Leaders must respond to challenging times with empathy and flexibility, not just for themselves, but for their direct reports, as well. According to Future of Work Exchange research, nearly 70% of businesses expect leadership to focus understanding the perspectives of the workforce as they adapt to personal and professional change over the next 12 months. When the public health crisis is in the rear-view, it will be those businesses that have led with empathy and truly understand the human elements of their workforce that will retain their top talent.

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The Permanence of Workplace and Workforce Transformation

Business LeadershipGeneral InsightsHRTalentTalent Acquisition by Christopher J. Dwyer on

Around this time last year, there was a spirit of optimism that had been missing for over six months. The waning weeks of 2020’s winter brought disruption like never before, with the spring months forever etched into our minds as a period of uncertainty, fear, and anxiety. The summer of 2020 brought a sliver of hope that coronavirus cases would recede in anticipation of a better fall. We unfortunately know how the story goes from there: inching cases from September through the end of November brought one of the globe biggest’s winter surge before millions of COVID vaccines were administered through the late weeks of winter 2021 and through the spring. And yes, now we’re living a Delta variant world, but there’s at least some science-led expectancy that its enhanced transmissibility will result in a shorter surge than the ones earlier in the year.

If we look back to last summer, though, for just a moment, there was an aura of variability that sparked a temporary wave of thinking in how businesses managed their workforce and structured their workplace environments. “At some point, hopefully soon, we’ll get back to normal.” We’ve been saying it for months since then, hoping that there will be some sort of signal that it’s okay to get back to full office, cluttered highways, and crowded meeting rooms. Maybe there’ll be a point in time when those carefree, pre-pandemic days will once again be a steadfast reality, right?

Wrong.

If there’s anything that we should be discussing now, it’s the permanence of transformation. The pandemic left an indelible mark on how we get work done, from the way we engage talent to the means of aligning skillsets with specific roles and projects. In our personal worlds, we think, act, and move differently. Even those of us who are vaccinated routinely wear masks in grocery stores and other crowded areas. While there will absolutely be a day that we can battle COVID as an endemic piece of our seasonal virus gauntlet (much like the flu or the common cold), the truth is that we are all different from the collective experience of the past 18 months, which will soon be “the past two years” and then the “past 36 months.” We’re looking at a future of on-and-off mask mandates, vaccine boosters, and “embers” of hotspots where inoculation is low. We’re standing up against a continued fight against a “goldilocks” of a virus that will be with us forever.

That modicum of permanence, that we’ve been fundamentally changed…why can’t we accept that in how we conduct business? Do we really think that there will be a day sometime soon when we throw out all of the productivity gains we’ve seen from a shift to remote work? What about the realization that businesses can effectively engage top-tier talent no matter the location? And is there a point in time when enterprises suddenly stop relying on the extended workforce?

Well, no, of course not. Which means that the evolution we’ve collectively experienced as business professionals over the past 18 months is permanent, a series of uniform changes to how we think about talent and how we think about how work gets done. Consider that:

  • Nearly half (47%) of the total workforce is considered “non-employee,” another sharp increase from the year before and likely a result of the workforce agility gained from tapping into this on-demand, top-tier talent.
  • 75% of businesses state that the pandemic forced them to reimagine how they apply skillsets to projects and how they structure their workforce.
  • 70% of enterprises believe that the extended workforce effectively allowed them to be more adaptive during the challenging times of 2020.
  • 82% of businesses expect worker flexibility and related issues (such as empathy) to permanently transform how work is done.

Look at how fast the past year-and-a-half went by and the major talent/work shifts during that time period: remote and hybrid work as fundamental layers of survival, executive leaders managing with empathy and flexibility, the agile workforce becoming even more of a tool for thriving in changing times, etc. Change can be relative in most cases, but today, it is certainly not. We’ve all collectively experienced change in our personal and professional lives, and now the permanence of workforce and workplace transformation needs to be embraced as the current and future state of work. Businesses that don’t adapt and don’t buy into the foundational revolution of change will not only be left behind, but may find themselves never being able to catch up. Everything that’s happened in the greater world of work and talent, be it the viability of hybrid work or the massive shift to worker flexibility, is part of a permanent fixture of change and progression.

Workers understand what’s at stake and it’s the main reason why resignations are at an all-time high in the scope of business history. Worker experience (what we call the “talent experience” here at FOWX) is paramount for career development and work/life balance. Flexibility has cascaded down into the very fabric of the workforce and will forever become a crucial piece of the overall talent experience.

Given the uptick in extended talent utilization, the workforce has changed. Given the uptick in remote and hybrid work, the workplace has changed. Given the requirements and criticality of flexibility and the employee experience, the worker has changed. Permanently.

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Preparing for Tomorrow’s Workforce

Contingent WorkforceHRTalent by Featured Contributor on

[Editor’s Note: Today’s article is a guest contribution from Neha Goel, Vice President of Marketing at Utmost.]

Tomorrow’s workforce is changing at a pace we have not experienced in past decades. The pandemic expedited what was already happening in the market: emerging technologies leading to automation and digital transformations; the desire for flexibility in how and where people work; a focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I); and globalization. It’s become clear organizations require a shift in how they think about and manage their entire workforce.

The Future of Work, which Ardent Partners defines as work optimization via the transformation of business operations, talent usage, seamless and comprehensive workforce management solutions, and flexible enterprise thinking, requires a change in how companies are tracking, managing, accessing, engaging, and reporting (i.e., spend, worker type, performance) on talent at an enterprise level.

Disparate systems make it difficult for companies to have visibility into their entire workforce. Even if an organization has a vendor management system (VMS) to track their contingent labor, they support as little as 10% of the total external workforce, which is now made up of project-based workers, freelancers, independent contractors, gig workers, and outsourced resources not captured in a VMS.

The Time is Now

As the non-employee utilization rate nears half of the total workforce (nearly 47% of the total workforce, according to Ardent), and more than 80% of large corporations planning on substantially increasing their use of a flexible workforce in the coming years, the time to prepare is now. The fastest-growing part of the workforce is the one that is currently not being tracked, which poses huge challenges for organizations.

This impacts activities like on/offboarding, classification, tenure, performance, payment, and reporting if only a portion of your total workforce is captured in your current ERP, VMS, and project-management tools. More importantly, it becomes impossible to assess and engage your total workforce in a scalable way without a single system of truth.

The Workforce is Changing

By 2025, 75% of the workforce will be made up of millennials — the most diverse group in American history, with 44.2% identifying as “non-white.” This should be a wake-up call for organizations who are not putting their DE&I initiatives at the top of their priority list. Having a platform that allows organizations to easily access, attract, retain, and report on diversity measures to meet their goals is crucial.

Millennials are also the first “digitally-native generation,” according to Pew Research, which means they expect to interact with work in the same way they interact in other aspects of their lives like ordering meals, rides, movies, and other services. They are demanding flexibility, engagement, diversity, career advancement, and a cultural fit regardless of how they are employed — be it full-time or contingent.

Future-Proof Technology

Together, all of these factors require organizations implement a technology platform built for the extended workforce. This can mean anything from connecting to new sourcing channels in an agile way to configurable back-end processes to managing distributed teams in a worker-centric way.

Utmost helps organizations fully engage and optimize their entire extended workforce. Built as a native application on the Workday Cloud Platform, Utmost provides a seamless experience for Workday customers to gain full visibility into their changing workforce composition, quality, and spend in an agile and scalable manner.

We believe the Future of Work is getting “the most from your all,” meaning the enterprise is getting the most out of its workforce, and talent has all the tools in place from their employer to bring their best selves to work. We believe this combination will set organizations, and their most significant competitive advantage, their talent, up for success.

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Welcome to the Future of Work Exchange (FOWX)!

General InsightsTalent by Christopher J. Dwyer on

Ladies and gentlemen, Welcome to the Future of Work Exchange!

This site is the culmination of decades of time spent researching and developing the strategies, tools, characteristics, and attributes that have come to define the Future of Work movement, including talent, technology, and business leadership. Powered by global research firm Ardent Partners, FOWX is a first-of-its-kind destination for HR, talent acquisition, procurement, IT, and finance executives focused on the convergence of talent and innovation and the impact that the extended workforce has on business operations and bottom-line performance. FOWX aims to help executive leaders across all enterprise functions optimize how work is done, build the best talent management strategies and programs, and understand the complex technology landscape.

Ardent Partners defines the Future of Work as the strategic optimization of how work gets done through 1) the evolution of talent engagement, 2) the advent of new technology and innovative tools, and 3) the transformation of business standards. Businesses across the globe believe that many significant Future of Work shifts will force them to reevaluate their current work standards, policies, and general practices. All aspects of the Future of Work Exchange will touch upon these ideas and assist business leaders become truly agile and dynamic organizations.

Over the coming years, community members can expect a non-stop stream of great content from our team (and guest contributors) on topics such as digital staffing, remote work and hybrid work models, contingent workforce management, blockchain, artificial intelligence, diversity and inclusion, empathy-led business leadership, direct sourcing, and much more. Our groundbreaking Contingent Workforce Weekly podcast will also be simulcast here on the FOWX.

This September, we will more formally launch the site and introduce a host multimedia assets on the “Exchange,” including exclusive research, conversations with HR, talent acquisition, procurement, etc. leaders that are challenging the status quo and advancing the Future of Work movement, as well as technology leaders that bring a wealth of insights to the evolving world of work.

The Future of Work Starts Here!

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The World is Nearing Normalcy, But Will the Workforce Ever Be the Same?

Business LeadershipTalentTalent Acquisition by Christopher J. Dwyer on

In mid-June, CNN’s collaboration with Moody Analytics (the “Back-to-Normal Index”) indicated that the United States economy is “90% of the way back to where it was before the pandemic began over a year ago,” a stark contrast to the heartbreaking days of last spring and summer. Air travel and transportation are actively reaching pre-pandemic levels, while some markets indicate that the global economy could mirror February 2020 by the very end of the year.

Consumers are certainly taking advantage of the COVID-19 vaccine boom, spending more and more of their funds on the goods and services that were mainly out of the question less than a year ago. This activity, perhaps, is the strongest indicator that we are, albeit slowly, getting things back to some level of what we could call “normalcy.”

However, the pandemic and its ramifications left an indelible mark on the workforce; the below shifts represent the fact that even though some elements of the world and businesses may return to normal, the workforce will never be the same:

  • The next mass exodus of women from the workforce is happening right now. Back in March on the Contingent Workforce Weekly podcast, The Mom Project’s co-founder and COO, Greg Robinson, predicted that we may see another mass exodus of caretakers from the workforce, especially moms. And a Washington Post article found that after the early COVID shutdowns, nearly 11.3 million jobs held by women “vanished almost immediately, as women are over-represented in the retail, restaurant, travel and hospitality sectors.” Add in the need to be home without proper, in-person schooling, and this is a recipe for disaster for women in the workforce…something that could take upwards of two-to-three years to return to pre-pandemic levels. Companies like The Mom Project are certainly helping to alleviate this issue (check out our conversation this past week with the solution’s Donna Yelmokas), and the advent of digital staffing solutions and talent marketplaces are enabling moms and other caretakers access to roles that fit within their schedules. However, it is also incumbent on today’s business leaders to cultivate a culture that is founded on flexibility and empathy to get back to those pre-pandemic points even faster and allow women, moms, and caretakers to bring their incredibly valuable skills back to the workplace.
  • And, speaking of flexibility and empathy, business leadership will never be the same. As the world evolves into a “new normal” (or whatever you want to call it), both longtime FTEs and extended/contingent workers are going to place evermore emphasis on the overall “talent experience,” a concept borne from an application of employee engagement and employee experience attributes applied to both employee and non-employee workers. Aspects like remote work, flexible hours, and an inclusive culture are all critical concepts for talented individuals seeking their next role (be it a full-time or contingent project). Business leaders must look to a “culture of flexibility” as the foundation to how they lead. Ardent’s upcoming State of Contingent Workforce Management 2021 research study also finds that 82% of businesses will provide more flexibility regarding worker lifestyle issues, including childcare/daycare, schooling, etc., in the year ahead.
  • “Alternative” channels of talent become primary means of talent engagement. Even though direct sourcing and talent pools were high-priority strategies going into 2020 (and before a worldwide pandemic), they became even more crucial when traditional means of talent acquisition (such as proper interviewing) weren’t possible. Today, direct sourcing represents an ideal means of converging top-tier skillsets and expertise and on-demand talent engagement in the same package, allowing businesses to funnel the best-of-the-best into segmented talent pools and talent communities. Too, the talent nurture aspects of direct sourcing enable businesses to foster strong communication with their candidates, ensuring a positive candidate experience even before these workers are engaged for a particular role or project. The “next normal” will see an exponential rise in the utilization of direct sourcing, for sure.
  • New and evolved work models form the foundation of the Future of Work movement. This all-encapsulating concept brings together the brightest of innovation from learnings over the past year, and the approach is multi-pronged: 1) understand which modes of talent engagement are best for the business based on the levels of skillsets required, 2) apply an analysis that can determine whether positions, roles, and entire divisions should be distributed/remote, 3) innovate around how productivity will be measured (with an edge towards outcomes rather than hours worked), 4) implement whichever new safety and health precautions that are required (which, yes, includes whether or not COVID-19 vaccinations are mandatory), 5) foster and cultivate a workplace environment of flexibility and empathy, and, finally, 6) determine the best possible alignment between digitization and human-led processes.
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Future of Work Friday: A Collection of Thoughts and Insights

General InsightsTalent by Christopher J. Dwyer on

From time-to-time, it’s beneficial to take a moment to collect random thoughts regarding the Future of Work movement, since there’s so many varied pieces of the complex, evolving puzzle that is the world of talent and work. It’s been a whirlwind year thus far (can you believe it’s already JUNE!?), but the next six months promise to be even more impactful when business leaders think about talent, their workforce, and how work gets done.

  • This week, CNN reported that although unemployment rates are at their lowest since before the pandemic hit, there are still over 8 million job vacancies across the country. Retail, hospitality, light industrial, restaurants, etc. are the particular industries where the vast majority of these roles are open. Much of the discussion revolves around the deeper conversation of wage and compensation (and rightfully so), however, businesses in these sectors should seriously consider direct sourcing as an avenue to get candidates into the door, even if they’re not for full-time/longer-term positions.
  • My wife has worked in the veterinary industry for nearly 20 years. Over the past year, this industry has faced their biggest mass exodus of workers in its history. The main culprit? Employee burnout. Hospitals are so short-staffed that many roles in veterinary medicine, from doctors to specialists to veterinary technicians, are clocking incredible hours, all the while dealing with pandemic restrictions (clients not allowed into the building, hospital employees must come outside and retrieve animals, etc.). This is not the only industry in which its workers are facing extreme burnout. While much of the focus of the past year has been on the rollercoaster of boom-or-bust workforce scalability, business leaders should never forget that the biggest piece of the overall talent experience is whether or not its workers are running on fumes. Worker mental health and well-being should be at the top of the priority list when it comes to how executives manage their total workforce.
  • Last year, Ardent Partners predicted that the global business landscape would experience a sharp uptick in the utilization of non-employee labor as a direct result of the pandemic’s sweeping organizational ramifications. Going into 2020, 43.5% of the average organization’s total workforce was considered “contingent.” Today, that number sits at 46.5% and promises to grow as the transformation of talent and work continues. Furthermore, 82% of businesses direct state that the challenging times of 2020 created a bigger need for extended and non-employee talent. If there is one thing that the past 12 months has revealed, it is that workforce scalability is essentially linked to economic survival in the now-chaotic, hyper-competitive world of global business.
  • In mid-March 2020, safety took precedence over anything else in regard to traditional workplace environments across the world. Stay-at-home advisories, social distancing recommendations, and curfews/lockdowns ruled the day and forced businesses to push the vast majority (or all, in some cases) of its workers into a remote setup. I’ve been reading so many articles recently that state that the hybrid model (mix of in-person and remote work) won’t survive past the end of the pandemic. Well, these pundits couldn’t be more incorrect. Ardent’s research finds that businesses are expected to double the amount of its staff working remotely moving forward, a factor which not only takes into accounts the productivity and efficiency gains experienced over the past year via remote and distributed teams, but also the incredible flexibility that these setups offer.
  • Ninety-three percent (94%) of business leaders in Ardent’s upcoming State of Contingent Workforce Management 2021 research study stated that their agile or extended workforce is a critical and strategic facet of their organization. If anyone ever had doubts about its continued growth, this finding should alleviate that concern. By the end of 2022, nearly half of the global total workforce will be considered agile/contingent/extended.
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Why Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Need to Be Core Future of Work Tenets, Part III

Business LeadershipTalent by Christopher J. Dwyer on

Over the past two weeks, we’ve discussed why diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) should be considered core tenets of the Future of Work movement. Diversity, equity, and inclusion represent, perhaps, the most important of the strategy-led Future of Work tenets and deserve a rightful place in the pantheon of work optimization approaches. Diverse workforces, inclusive workplaces, and an overall environment of equity can pay massive dividends for businesses seeking to spark innovation within their total talent community.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion have become top-of-mind priorities for businesses in regard to their workforce. New and exclusive Ardent Partners research finds that:

  • 94% of businesses are focused on transforming their workplaces to be more flexible and inclusive.
  • 62% of businesses have injected DE&I and workforce culture into their plans for future innovation.
  • Nearly 65% of businesses plan to, over the next two years, create a “Chief Diversity Officer” role within their enterprise.

I once again spoke with several technology leaders across the contingent workforce, digital staffing, and HR arenas for their unique perspectives on DE&I as core Future of Work tenets:

Dan Beck, COO and Co-Founder, Utmost

“I’ll take this one step further: DEI needs to be more than just a future of work tenet, but it needs to be a core business strategy. In the same way that enterprises have focused on purchasing from diverse suppliers, we’re seeing a trend of enterprises looking at the DEI composition of the workers themselves. 

While HR certainly plays a role, DEI is an overall organizational initiative that requires investment from all teams and especially leadership. To truly reap the performance gains of an inclusive workplace, it needs widespread adoption and not just from the workforce management side of an enterprise.”

Saleem Khaja, COO and Co-Founder, WorkLLama

“When we have conversations about DE&I, I begin with questions, a lot of questions. First: “What is the core problem we trying to address?” Once an organization hones in on the problem statement, a plan can be developed to move forward. The most common problem statements include “How do we hire diverse talent, treat diverse talent equally, or ensure we are inclusive?”, “Is the new generation of workforce going to evaluate an organization based on the organization’s approach to DE&I?” Therefore, to be successful organizations must make DE&I core tenets of their culture and policy. Is awareness one of the problems to solve? Immersive training for all employees with scorecards to measure progress is key.

DE&I is more of a people, process, culture, and policy problem to solve as opposed to a technology problem if you exclude reporting, delivery, or training/measuring, and eliminating bias in AI.

From that standpoint, I am also having a lot of conversations around bridging the income gap.  Regardless, if it is this question or one I have already mentioned, I believe addressing the supply of diverse talent starting at ground zero is at the core. Building, nurturing, and growing a diverse talent pipeline should be a key pillar in an organization’s DE&I strategy. This means making investments in facilities and infrastructure; providing affordable access to education and training; etc. Hiring diverse talent contributes towards this, but at that point an organization is dealing with qualified talent – finished product, so to speak. Impactful DE&I strategies focus on talent at its origin and not just the finished product.”

Patrick Dunn, Chief People Officer, Bluecrew

“Diversity, equity, and inclusion remain an essential component of any elastic workforce strategy. These qualities reinforce a culture that attracts and retains quality talent, the foundational catalyst to drive forward looking innovation and strategy. For an elastic workforce, the diversity of perspectives that come from strong DEI initiatives can ensure the workforce prioritizes the right work and delivers productive results. The studies that offer compelling evidence that DEI improves team performance have reinforced personal experiences where monocultural teams suffered from blind spots and tone-deaf messaging. And because anti-diversity forces are so pernicious and self-reinforcing, you can’t make progress without conscientious commitment to DEI. Only prioritizing these goals with a core tenet encompassing empathy and DEI, will set an organization up to do the right thing and maximize opportunities.

It is also important to recognize that diverse hiring is impacted at every level by unconscious bias. Data-driven hiring practices, which de-emphasize traditional human-to-human interviews, put everyone on an even playing field and leverage the data that workers provide as part of their behavioral assessments and screening questions to evaluate their potential. Scientifically crafted assessments have proven to be better at determining worker performance than human interviews and using these techniques can remove bias and interference in the hiring process. In doing so, workers are judged only on their performance with the complete removal of factors like race, gender, or other protected class.  We are proud that Bluecrew is made up of Crew Members with a wide range of skills, experiences, cultures, and viewpoints. The diversity that they represent is a genuine strength that can only be leveraged when they can bring their authentic selves to work everyday.”

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