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21 Thoughts for 2021: Future of Work Edition

General Insights Talent by Christopher J. Dwyer on 05/03/2021

Below we have 21 thoughts for 2021 related to the Future of Work:

Whether or not you despise terms such as “new normal” or “next normal,” most of 2021 for businesses will be spent dealing with 2020-esque issues on top of adapting to a “changed” world of work.
To that effect, is it time for businesses to create a “Chief New Normal Officer” role?
Before we even get started on technology and innovation, no business should be thinking about the optimization impact of automation without first reevaluating their diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.
And, speaking of D&I, this idea traverses beyond merely checking a box: in 2021, more so than ever before, diversity and inclusion will be true competitive drivers in an increasingly-globalized economy.
And let’s talk about that economy: businesses must know the difference between a weirdly-strong stock market and the reality of unemployment on the ground, and how this major gap will continue to affect the scalability of hiring in the first half of 2021.
That word, scalability, means so much more than ever before. Businesses must equate scalability with agility if they want to thrive in yet another uncertain and unprecedented year.
Procurement, meet HR. HR, meet procurement. Let’s make 2021 the year of true total talent management by blending the best attributes of each function!
Pre-pandemic, direct sourcing was perhaps the hottest topic in the world of talent. Mid-pandemic, it proved to be an invaluable strategy in the face of hiring uncertainty. In 2021, direct sourcing continues this push…and every organization should implement some measure of talent pool development if they haven’t done so already.
Also, on that topic: businesses should understand that direct sourcing automation (i.e., true direct sourcing platforms) and branded direct sourcing services (ala MSP-like services) will be the solutions that push direct sourcing even further in the year ahead.
Supply chain disruptions were expected to occur even before the pandemic hit due to escalating trade tensions around the world. With the pandemic’s unprecedented disruptions upsetting the world’s global supply chain, there were major lessons to be learned. Old-school and traditional supply chains are now primed for touchless, agile, and AI-led processes to improve the overall flow of goods and products.
Another ramification of the pandemic? “The biggest remote work experiment in global history.” Now that we’re nearly 10 months removed from the initial shock of the “work-from-anywhere” approach, businesses are finding that productivity hasn’t waned, but rather been enhanced due to a lack of unnecessary in-person meetings, long commutes, etc.
And there’s so much more to the remote work revolution than just acceptance and implementation of WFH approaches: embracing the work-from-anywhere model is just the initial step. Business leaders must optimize the remote work infrastructure through unified communications and more innovative collaborative tools, like virtual reality. While I’m not advocating for every business to create video-game-like VR environments for their workplaces, slowly integrating similar technologies into the remote infrastructure should help boost the overall employee experience, even if they’re at home.
Speaking of business leaders: leadership must change in 2021. It’s not an option. 2020 was an unprecedented year (take a shot, those still playing 2020 bingo!) and many facets of traditional corporate leadership were tested beyond their limits. Flexibility and empathy should be the foundational elements of business leadership not just in 2021, but also moving forward.
I understand that it can be difficult for business leaders to give more of their patience in the year ahead. However, the one common element of the pandemic was that it affected everyone…meaning that white-collar and blue-collar workers alike experienced similar hardships, such as a lack of daycare due to remote or closed schools. Talent is a company’s #1 competitive differentiator, so: business leaders, do what you can to lead with an empathetic approach if you want to keep that talent.
The “talent experience” was an incredible facet of the pre-pandemic business world, and, if there’s one attribute of life in 2019 that should make a return to 2021 it’s the overall experience of all types of work (both FTEs and non-employees). Individuals with unique or advanced skillsets will have amazing opportunities as the world gets back to a steady state; therefore, it is imperative that businesses do all that they can do to keep their highly-valued workers on-board through robust talent experience efforts.
There’s another concept with the word “talent” in it that is oft-overlooked: talent sustainability. Businesses already understand the value of both agility and flexibility in regard to their staffing and workforce initiatives. However, what happens if principles such as talent redeployment, talent pools, and direct sourcing become even more integrated into the realm of agile talent? The answer: a sustainable, “redeployable,” and agile stream of talent that is leveraged as needed in a dynamic manner.
The elephant in the conference room: do businesses mandate that their employees receive the COVID-19 vaccine when it is available for their age group (besides the front line, of course)? Can businesses even mandate something like this? Expect this conversation to occur soon if it hasn’t yet already.
We haven’t even discussed data yet! Wow. Well, to no one’s surprise: data and intelligence are going to be critical in a post-COVID world. Businesses must do whatever they can, and, of course, harness the power of innovation and automation, to gain as much visibility into their total workforce as possible. Not only is “total talent intelligence” a gateway to the realm of total talent management, but it will also help business leaders (hello HR, hello procurement) understand where their workers are, what they are working on, and any compliance risks that are apparent. Also, in a public health-conscious environment, businesses can leverage total talent intelligence to move on-site work to remote if needed (and vice versa) and measure global locations in relation to virus hotspots and more.
Another discussion about data: in 2019, news regarding artificial intelligence and machine learning ruled the business realm. This, of course, took a backseat over the past year. Businesses lightly understood the value of bringing AI into how they execute strategic talent, staffing, and workforce decisions, however, 2021 is the year that AI is fully ensconced into both contingent workforce management and talent acquisition. Businesses must harness the power of AI to better understand how to attract passive candidates, the markets in which to target, and the variability around skillsets and expertise around the world.
If you read the news (how can you not?), the early weeks of 2021 are literally an extension of 2020. However, the one major difference: there is more hope. There is optimism. The fantastic Angela Rasmussen said on Twitter: there is a light at the top as we continue to climb up from the dark well that was 2020. There will be hard work ahead, but we must keep climbing. We know these times will soon get better, that the darkness will subside. It’ll just take some time; and, that is what business leaders around the globe must drill into their minds: that we’ve already spent nearly a year living in the strangest of times and that the end is in sight. Hope and optimism can be incredible levers when the collective personal, social, and business realms are already exhausted.
Finally: if there’s anything that we learned from 2020, it’s that businesses should expect the unexpected, that the steady ground we seek from the past is still a bit shaky from the experiences of the past 12 months. Innovative thinking can be a force to get through these challenging times. Looking ahead, the Future of Work movement has so much to offer from strategic, talent, staffing, technology, and business transformation perspectives. In 2021, businesses will get back to doing what they do best: optimizing how work is done.

The Future of Total Talent Management

Contingent Workforce Talent by Christopher J. Dwyer on 04/30/2021

Back in 2016, I wrote and developed a research study called The Modern Guide to Total Talent Management, which included this passage:

The very simple argument for building or developing a total talent management program (defined by Ardent as the standardized and centralized program for engaging, acquiring, sourcing, and managing all types of talent via linked procurement and human capital processes, integrated contingent workforce management and human capital management systems, and utilization of total talent intelligence) that can be stripped down to a primary advantage: the contemporary talent supply chain is diverse, multifaceted, and spread across numerous sources (both legacy and fresh). Thus, the businesses that can effectively find, engage, source, and ultimately manage this talent under a centralized program will be rewarded with the visibility to execute far superior business decisions in a real-time manner. Relative to the adoption and implementation of total talent programs, it is no wonder that while only 16% of organizations have this type of program in place today, a majority (58%) expect to make total talent management a reality within the next two years.

Over the past few years, Ardent’s deep collection of contingent workforce management (CWM) and talent acquisition research data reflects a similar refrain: companies believes in the concepts and ideals behind total workforce management (a phrase I use interchangeably with “total talent management”), understand its value and impact, and even anticipate having the ability to build such a program within a matter of just 18 months or two years.

So, here we are, in 2020 (albeit a very strange year, indeed), and Ardent’s research reflects similar messaging around the notion of total talent management. Why is this the case? A few reasons come to mind, including:

Most obvious: a global pandemic disrupting all HR-, talent-, and procurement-related operations.
A misalignment within talent engagement and talent acquisition processes (contingent workforce management included).
A great divide between functional units, such as procurement. HR/human capital management, and talent acquisition, and;
A lack of the proper solutions and technology to bring together the core pieces of total talent management.

The foundational elements of total talent management include a total talent network, integrated procurement/HR/CWM competencies, integrated contingent workforce and HR technology, and total talent intelligence (gleaned from the aforementioned integrated capabilities and platforms). The benefit: real-time decision-making when it comes to talent, resulting in a truly agile workforce.

It may be a running joke that 2020 is one of the worst years on record, however, if anything, businesses must look to the experiences of the past seven or eight months and use this knowledge to better understand how they manage the many facets of their workforce to not only get work done, but drive overall better business outcomes. Total talent management is often a polarizing topic because of what seems like its core limitations: there are serious compliance concerns for treating non-employees like FTEs, procurement-led CWM programs will never fully understand or buy into hardcore human capital concepts such as succession planning, an inability to offer across-the-board reskilling/upskilling opportunities, etc.

However, the very future of total talent management depends on how well we’ve adapted to these uncertain times, and, most importantly, how agile we can transform our businesses based on this knowledge. Total talent management isn’t the same set of ideals it was just a few years ago, but rather takes into account the innovation within the workforce management technology landscape, the new strategies that can help businesses tap into new and deeper channels of talent, and the adaptation to new staffing/workforce trends.

With this in mind, the future of total talent management hinges on:

The success of direct sourcing programs and initiatives and how businesses continue to drive incredible value from talent pools. (And, to a larger extent, how candidates from these talent pools are widely reflected in enterprise recruitment streams).
The enhancement of diversity and inclusion initiatives to bolster innovation and bring new voices into the organization.
Procurement and HR working together for the greater good of business agility.
The ability for business leaders to tap into total talent intelligence that is a true, real-time representation of the total workforce (via data gleaned from HRIS, VMS, ATS, etc. platforms).
Capabilities for scaling learning and development across types of workers.

I’ll reiterate a phrase I’ve been saying for years: total talent management is for real. Businesses just need to reimagine its foundational components, understand the technological aspects involved, prioritize the collection of total talent data, and, most importantly, begin to build a culture of change around all attributes of talent. We’ve learned one incredibly useful aspect from a strange 2020: agility is crucial, thus, agile talent is critical. Total talent management, for most organizations, may still be months (or years) away, however, its underlying elements are what will assist in driving true workforce agility now (in challenging times) and in the future.

The Value of Total Talent Intelligence

Contingent Workforce Talent by Christopher J. Dwyer on 04/26/2021

Back in early 2012, I began work on what would be perhaps the industry’s first large-scale research study on “total talent management,” an initiative that is also known as “total workforce management.” Back then, while businesses understood the true value proposition of such a program, the vast majority of enterprises could not picture a way to tightly-integrate core human capital and contingent workforce capabilities and systems in such a way to make the program viable. Eight years may have passed since I formulated those initial thoughts on TTM/TWM, however, the underlying principles remain the same: there is clearly a need for total talent management, but its components are akin to organizational and technological puzzle pieces.

Ardent Partners defines total talent management and total workforce management as the standardized and centralized means for engaging, sourcing, and managing all types of enterprise talent under a single banner program. The fundamental principles of total workforce management include integrated procurement and HR competencies and systems, prioritization of visibility into the total talent pool (FTEs, contingent workers, gig workers, freelancers, independent contractors, professional services, etc.), and streamlined and standardized means for engaging and acquiring all types of talent. As the contingent workforce continues to rise (43% of all talent today is considered non-employee or contingent, according to Ardent’s State of Contingent Workforce Management research study), total workforce management initiatives, of course, become more critical.

Thinking about integrations, cross-functional coordination, blending core HR and contingent workforce management competencies, etc. can be maddening, for sure. This is why, especially in today’s strange 2020, businesses should consider taking a much more streamlined path and prioritize total talent intelligence as an initial cornerstone for what could blossom into full-blown total talent management in the months and years to come. In essence, total talent intelligence gleans valuable worker-based insights from both FTEs and non-employees by harnessing collective data from Human Resources Information Systems (HRIS), Vendor Management Systems (VMS), time and attendance solutions, Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS), Freelancer Management System (FMS), and similar platforms to gain the deepest possible view into an organization’s total talent pool. There are several reasons to prioritize total talent intelligence today:

In an age when worker health and safety is paramount, businesses need to know where you workers are at all times. Although many portions of the globe are in much different situations now than they were months ago, the initial weeks of the pandemic caused many an executive to panic regarding where their workers were situated, what they were working on, and, most importantly, their relative health and safety. Total talent intelligence allows businesses to pinpoint which workers are currently sitting in hotspots (or geographical locations that might soon become high-risk zones) and act accordingly (shifting work to different regions, placing workers in remote work setups, etc.).
Total talent intelligence begets workforce agility. Sometimes lost in the overarching discussion of total talent management is the very underlying purpose of this program: driving towards the ability to make workforce- and talent-related decisions in near-real-time. Having intelligence into the business’ total talent pool allows business leaders and hiring managers to very quickly understand how to approach a new project or initiative given the depth of expertise and skillsets within the greater organization (including, yes, both FTEs and non-employees). This level of intelligence and its associated, enhanced reactions are paramount in the quest for true workforce agility.
Businesses can better understand the true complexity of its workforce’s expertise. Pertinent to the above bullet, we are living in a skillset-led world. Ardent’s upcoming Direct Sourcing Toolkit research study finds that 72% of businesses are fixated on new and evolving skills. Executives today understand that the next influential project or initiative may not be completely supported, driven, and/or managed by existing full-time workers or other in-house resources, especially considering the quick-paced advancements occurring in the world of technology and automation. Total talent intelligence enables business leaders to truly understand the depth of its total available resources and expertise, allowing them to begin developing an approach for the evolving skillsets that they may need in the future.
Total talent intelligence can enhance diversity and inclusion initiatives. Enterprises are (finally) learning that the deepest talent pool is a diverse talent pool. Diversity and inclusion initiatives often involve several pieces of the organization working in unison, however, a key strategy in understanding a business’ true diversity is harnessing total talent intelligence to understand the relative makeup of the organization’s total workforce (such as employee demographics). This intelligence, of course, must be leveraged into talent-based decision-making to enhance future D&I initiatives.
Businesses that have experienced (and will continue to experience) massive shifts in remote work will require deeper intelligence for workforce planning and performance measurement. Although the world will soon return to some semblance of traditional office life, today’s workplace environment is still mired in social distancing measures (some pundits peg that metropolis-level offices, such as those in New York City, are average 7%-to-10% capacity today, with those in suburban locales at twice that level). This can be incredibly difficult on managers and executives that are used to in-person interactions to gauge worker performance. As more one-on-ones and reviews shift to a remote setting, these leaders will have to become more reliant on “business outcomes” for performance measurement in lieu of traditional benchmarks. Total talent intelligence can provide excellent perspectives on total worker output and the work performed by both FTEs and non-employees.

Total talent management and total workforce management are still incredibly valuable concepts that will one day become widely-adopted. In fact, Ardent’s research finds that upwards of 75% of businesses today expect to implement such a program within the next five years. Businesses must look at total talent intelligence as a critical area from which to start and an arena from which to drive short- and long-term value independent of bigger total talent management initiatives.

Total Workforce Management’s Place in the New World of Work

Contingent Workforce Talent by Christopher J. Dwyer on 04/23/2021

Editor’s Note: If you’re interested in learning more about the progressive workforce model discussed in today’s article, download our latest report, The Modern Guide to Total Workforce Management, by clicking here, here, or here.

Any executive that takes a short peek outside of their business will notice something astounding: founded on innovative talent engagement methods, the world of work has evolved in just a short period of time. New demand for talent, along with the fading of archaic recruitment strategies and rise of real-time talent engagement, have revolutionized nearly every facet of work within the modern business:

Jobseeker behavior, now more than ever, is changing to reflect the desire for a more flexible lifestyle that promotes entrepreneurship.
Online talent platforms, labor automation systems, and digital staffing outlets (as well as social networks) have transformed how talent is found and engaged.
Everything, from data and intelligence to process delivery, is expected on-demand within the average business…and talent engagement is following suit.
Mobility and mobile applications are taking their cue from the consumer world and expanding into the business realm.
Skillsets and expertise (and their alignment with enterprise projects), not costs or budgets, have become the top requirements for new talent.
Management of an increasingly strategic element of business (the contingent workforce) has had to evolve such that the “great divide” between organizational functions like procurement and human resources/human capital management is starting to fade. More and more businesses understand that all talent, regardless of its source, must be managed under a standardized and centralized program that promotes visibility, skillset alignment, adherence to budget, real-time engagement, and an open network that can be tapped for talent in an on-demand manner.

The above attributes of the new world of work are magnified by a simple fact: the non-employee workforce shows no signs of slowing down in the coming years. Ardent Partners has, for the last four years, predicted that, by 2020, between 45%-to-50% of the world’s total workforce will be classified as non-employee, which includes freelancers, independent contractors, professional services (and consultants), temporary workers sourced via staffing agencies/suppliers, “gig” workers, and robotics. The time is now to bridge the gap between traditional and non-traditional talent management and truly define the means by which all workers can be managed under the same standardized and centralized program.

Total Workforce Management: The Time is…Now

Many of today’s business functions are either built on a foundation of holistic and seamless processes, or the desire to reach a similar state knowing the core benefits of such a model. It would only make sense, then, for the world of talent to follow suit. The very simple argument for building or developing a total workforce management (TWM) program (defined by Ardent as the standardized and centralized program for engaging, acquiring, sourcing, and managing all types of talent via linked procurement and human capital processes, integrated contingent workforce management and human capital management systems, and utilization of total talent intelligence) that can be stripped down to a primary advantage: the contemporary talent supply chain is diverse, multifaceted, and spread across numerous sources (both legacy and fresh). Thus, the businesses that can effectively find, engage, source, and ultimately manage this talent under a centralized program will be rewarded with the visibility to execute far superior business decisions in a real-time manner. Relative to the adoption and implementation of TWM programs, it is no wonder that while only 16% of organizations have this type of program in place today, a majority (58%) expect to make total workforce management a reality within the next two years.

The crux of any total workforce management is deep and complex. The underlying structure of such an initiative is usually wrought with functional, technological (i.e. integration), cultural, and strategic shifts, all of which contribute to a development plan that is near impossible to implement within a short time span. Unlike larger, better “known” initiatives related to talent acquisition or even contingent workforce management (CWM), TWM is a new area, and industry-wide standard practices have not yet been fully-developed. Thus, many organizations are unsure of where to start and which functions to engage. Sixteen percent (16%) of businesses today have some form of a total workforce management program in place (9% in place for several years, 7% only just within the past 12 months), but the real value in this set of findings is not found in looking at the “haves” within today’s marketplace…it is knowing that many of the “have nots” do have something that proves that TWM’s place in workforce, labor, and talent management history is now: a desire to implement this forward-thinking concept sooner rather than later.