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Staffing Suppliers

Talent Experts on FOWX — Evolution of Staffing and Growth of Extended Workforce

Direct SourcingGeneral InsightsPodcastSolution ProvidersTalentTalent AcquisitionTechnology and InnovationUncategorized by Christopher J. Dwyer on

Our “Talent Expert Series” on FOWX features podcast excerpts of today’s Future of Work thought leaders who appear on The Future of Work Exchange Podcast. The series kicks off with an excerpt from Season 7, Episode 12 featuring Kara Kaplan, CEO of High5, as she discusses a range of topics from the evolution of staffing to the growth in the extended enterprise to the next stage of direct sourcing.

Click to listen to the full interview. Note that this excerpt has been edited for readability.

Christopher Dwyer: Let’s begin with your general insights into the staffing industry, especially given your unique vantage point with High5. When you think of the evolution of staffing and the rise and continued growth of the extended workforce, where are we today?

Kara Kaplan: For starters, the evolution of staffing and the emergence of the extended workforce has ushered in this profound transformation that we’re seeing. It’s a fundamental shift in how companies view and engage with talent. The traditional employment model has been supplemented and, in some cases, supplanted by an extended workforce. Thus, you see many organizations today, if not most, embracing the extended workforce as an integral component of their talent strategy.

And when we look at the term “employee” in general, it’s really evolving with these new models. You have everything from full-time, part-time, contract, gig, remote, hybrid, shared and other terms emerging. Those organizations that rigidly stick to the traditional relationship are going to find themselves fighting an uphill battle. Conversely, enterprises that appreciate and use a mix of workforce models will ultimately be the ones that succeed and have access to more talent and better talent.

It’s more of an adaptation to the new global economy that we now live in and all the complexities and opportunities that are part and parcel of that global shift. At the end of the day, organizations need to embrace this evolution not as an option but more as a strategic imperative. The exciting thing is that organizations are starting to do that.

CD: There is definitely a talent revolution occurring and obviously companies like High 5 fit into that. However, how do you see companies like High5 and other digital staffing platforms fitting into this change in talent acquisition?

KK: Today’s talent revolution signifies a profound shift in how organizations acquire and engage talent. We’re seeing it become much more commoditized. Talent is more dynamic and diverse, as well as more digitally connected than ever before. With the rise of talent marketplaces and digital staffing solutions, they’ve been instrumental in reshaping talent acquisition strategies and truly enabling organizations to adapt and thrive in this global landscape.

At their core, talent marketplaces democratized new access to a global pool of talent. These platforms are empowering organizations to source talent with levels of speed and accuracy that were not possible just a short time ago. For example, in the recent past, when working with many staffing agencies, there was a significant amount of manual effort required in matching a worker with a shift — even if they had a robust ATS, it would only benefit them to a degree. However, today’s digital staffing solutions driven by artificial intelligence and automation have redefined the recruitment process and streamlined nearly everything from candidate sourcing to screening to onboarding and payrolling. It saves a vast amount of time and resources.

CD: In our industry when you think about digital staffing, what comes to mind is BMS, MSP, direct sourcing, total talent, workforce management technology, and artificial intelligence. AI has moved beyond hype and is generally accepted as table stakes in our industry. What are your views on AI and its impact?

KK: To your point, we can’t have this conversation without talking about generative AI and what it means. However, the idea that AI is table stakes for competitive differentiation may be overly simplistic. While AI can undoubtedly provide a significant edge, it’s not a cure-all as companies are seeing. Enterprises still have to remain focused on their core offerings and the human aspect of talent as well as customer relationships to build a sustainable competitive advantage. It’s certainly an exciting time for AI but also a scary one as well. AI is not going away and we’ll continue to hear frequently about the technology, but going forward we need to think about AI in the right way and in the smart way.

CD: Let’s pivot to direct sourcing which was gaining momentum even before the pandemic and is now another table-stakes strategy for businesses if they want to deepen their talent pool and scale their workforce. There’s so much more to direct sourcing than simply contingent recruitment process outsourcing (RPO). With that in mind, where do you see direct sourcing heading?

KK: So much has changed in just the year since I started High5. There’s no doubt that direct sourcing has emerged as a pivotal force in recruiting and is definitely here to stay. There are sessions at major conferences dedicated to direct sourcing with brands like Northern Trust, Toyota, and Meta espousing its benefits. When that starts to happen, the more prominence direct sourcing will have. Clearly, in terms of the future of direct sourcing, the benefits are there. However, its adoption will require an education process. Anytime an education process is involved, it’s going to slow things down, particularly from a sales cycle perspective, but that process plays a vital role in ensuring that organizations realize the efficacy of direct sourcing. To be successful means ensuring that best practices are being followed. When direct sourcing initiatives fail, it’s because they didn’t follow best practices. Again, I’m extremely bullish on the future of direct sourcing, but I do think it will take some time for that education to catch up.

CD: Before we wrap up, 2023 is quickly coming to an end. What do you see on the horizon in the year ahead?

KK: I wish I had a crystal ball. For us, 2024 is about strengthening our position in the market. Being known as the “tech first” company, we’re making heavy investments in our tech enablement, our marketplace, and our other platforms. We have a great deal of excitement around some of our recent tech acquisitions and the compelling value proposition that creates for us going forward.

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Optimize Your Staffing Suppliers

Business LeadershipContingent WorkforceDiversity and InclusionGeneral InsightsHRSolution ProvidersTalent Acquisition by John Yuva on

The contingent workforce is now an essential component of enterprise execution and competitiveness. For many organizations, direct sourcing or online marketplaces are a primary means of securing non-employee talent. However, enterprises continue to utilize traditional staffing suppliers as well. In some cases, these relationships are based on a long-standing foundation for sourcing contingent workers.

Staffing suppliers, however, come with their own risks and rewards. Ongoing oversight is necessary to ensure these relationships are optimized and the organization’s staffing and workforce goals are met. The following are several considerations when managing staffing suppliers for contingent workforce engagement.

Track supplier performance for greater optimization. There are metrics for a host of business processes; the same should be true of staffing suppliers and their impact on talent management goals. According to Prosperix, a provider of workforce innovation solutions, staffing suppliers are not just meeting a talent need but contributing to a total talent management ecosystem. As such, a service-level agreement (SLA) detailing specific performance metrics must be established with regular tracking to mitigate potential risks.

What performance metrics are critical and specific to staffing suppliers? Prosperix says four KPIs are the most important.

  • Submissions to Positions
  • Submissions to Interview
  • Submissions to Hire
  • Assignment Completion

“These KPIs measure each staffing supplier’s responsiveness, whether they source an appropriate number of candidates, the quality of those candidates related to open positions, and whether they source reliable hires who successfully complete their assignments. Any staffing vendor that does those well is a worthy partner,” explains Prosperix.

Gain transparency and flexibility with contingent workers. Similar to enterprises being unaware of their supply chain’s second- and third-tier suppliers, many organizations lack adequate HR tracking of the identity and location of their contingent labor. This lack of transparency puts the organization at great risk for fraud, theft, etc. Awareness of potential risks and global compliance issues when engaging with contingent workers are paramount.

Equally important is having flexibility for how and where contingent labor works and resides. Globalization and the technologies to bridge teams from afar only broaden the talent pool — a good thing for organizations and their total talent management objectives. “Increasingly, workers choose how they want to work. Accommodating freelancers, independent contractors, alumni, interns, and project workers for difficult-to-fill positions and establishing a network of suppliers across a larger geography helps expand recruitment pipelines and improves access to qualified talent,” Prosperix says.

Communicate with your staffing suppliers. Signing the contract with a staffing supplier doesn’t mean the relationship goes on autopilot. Quite the opposite. A staffing supplier should receive the same level of due diligence and supplier management as any critical supplier. Often, it requires weeks or months to adequately track performance and determine supplier effectiveness. Thus, it’s imperative to have specific staffing targets identified and communicated.

Communication is a basic tenet of any business relationship. However, with talent management and matching contingent workers with specific positions, a lack of communication between HR and a staffing supplier could mean a significant loss in revenue and training costs. A supplier could lack a quality talent pool of contingent workers or an absence of diversity in its mix of candidates. Today’s skills-based hiring also presents additional challenges for staffing suppliers. Does the enterprise require a specialized niche of skilled labor? If so, can the staffing supplier tap into a large talent pool with those skills? Effective communication can help mitigate potential risks and ensure the organization attracts contingent workers that meet its talent requirements.

Staffing suppliers remain a value channel for sourcing contingent workers. Like any supplier relationship, however, performance and optimization are only achieved if HR and business managers have their staffing needs clearly defined and communicated.

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FOWX Notes: October 8 Edition

General Insights by Christopher J. Dwyer on

Some picked-up pieces from across the industry, which we call “FOWX Notes,” for the week ending October 8:

  • The Mom Project raised $80M in Series C funding, the provider announced this week. This is not only a huge win for the digital staffing industry (which is garnering the attention it deserves as an innovative series of platforms and marketplaces that can revolutionize how talent is engaged), but also for the millions of U.S. working mothers that had to leave the workforce in 2020. Look for extended coverage of this exciting news next week on FOWX.
  • HR has so much to manage these days, including many of the Future of Work attributes that are guiding workforce management today. I’m excited to join Utmost for an exclusive webcast on October 28, Five Things Every HR Executive Should Include in 2022 Planning, that will help HR and talent acquisition executives enhance their 2022 planning while keeping in mind the transformative shifts that the Future of Work is bringing to this evolving function.
  • Beeline’s partnership with iValua is a signal that spend management and procurement-led functionality is still critical within the world of contingent workforce management. Although “cost savings” as both a metric and a focus item aren’t as high on the priority list as they were years ago due to the talent-led shifts in CWM, they are still critically important via supplier optimization as it relates to non-employee workforce spend management. This integration will enable a single channel for automated data control, talent spend intelligence, invoicing, and payment.
  • “Trust” will become a key Future of Work element in 2022 from various workforce management angles. Trust was one of the early non-tech Future of Work attributes that came to attention when businesses were forced to enact on-the-fly remote work policies and business leaders were concerned about worker productivity. However, trust slices so much deeper than whether or not a manager trusts its staff to stay in-tune with its laptop screen for eight hours; trust is now a factor in how businesses view their candidate pipeline and talent pools. In the Future of Work Exchange’s upcoming Direct Sourcing 2.0 research study, we write that part of an advanced talent acquisition strategy, especially within the confines of a direct sourcing program, must include next-level skills validation, expertise assessments, and talent proctoring.
  • Interesting to see the unique partnership between TAPFIN and Qwil earlier this week, which represents a supply chain finance-like experience for suppliers within the TAPFIN MSP’s network to gain early access to funds. It’s always exciting when an innovative arena in another industry realm (such as “ePayables,” which Ardent Partners uses as a catch-all term to describe invoice and payment automation) converges with the world of workforce management technology and solutions. This partnership should be the first of several to follow, as more and more suppliers lean into various financing options to continue to grow and thrive their businesses.
  • Do falling U.S. COVID caseloads in conjunction with soon-to-be-vaccinated youngsters mean that return-to-office plans could shift closer? There’s been much discussion (and something covered frequently in The New York Times) regarding the “two-month cycle” of COVID surges; with the U.S. on the tail-end of the Delta variant’s mid-summer push (now that we are in autumn) could that translate into business leaders feeling safer to inch up return-to-office plans? With 5-to-11-year-olds in line to inoculated as early as the first week of November, will that also contribute to a change in thinking? If working parents that are currently battling with daycare and remote learning struggles in COVID hotspots have additional peace of mind if their children are vaccinated, it could mean a shift in how some professionals structure their short-term career paths now that more safety is baked into the world around them.
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