Talent Sustainability Archives - The Future of Work Exchange

How Direct Sourcing Drives Talent Sustainability

Direct Sourcing Talent Acquisition by Christopher J. Dwyer on 04/16/2024

In today’s dynamic business landscape, the age of “omni-channel talent acquisition” has emerged, providing businesses with diverse options to source and manage their workforce. From digital staffing marketplaces to traditional vendors and staffing suppliers, professional services, talent networks, and social media platforms, the choices are abundant. With this wealth of talent channels, matching project requirements with suitable skillsets has become more accessible than ever. Yet, securing top talent has grown increasingly challenging and competitive. Organizations that effectively harness direct sourcing and talent pools can cultivate a flexible, adaptable workforce, granting them a competitive advantage in a market that values agile, talent-centric responses to evolving business challenges and demands.

When it comes to direct sourcing, even the most basic programs can indeed yield tangible value, yet the stakes are higher than mere cost reduction and talent pipeline expansion. While these remain fundamental aspects, strategic approaches have evolved significantly since the concept’s rapid ascent years ago. In 2024, however, direct sourcing transcends its components; it embodies alignment with current and future business trajectories. Amidst an unsettled labor market and prevailing economic uncertainty, businesses engage in an ongoing battle for talent, confronted by historically low unemployment rates and millions of unfilled job openings. Concurrently, the Future of Work movement necessitates a shift in hiring strategies. Together, these factors present both a challenge and an opportunity for direct sourcing: enabling enterprises to foster a flexible and scalable workforce that sustains genuine talent development…and, more importantly: talent sustainability.

Over the past four years, direct sourcing has emerged as a dominant force in talent and workforce discussions, offering businesses a flexible avenue to engage directly with talent. Its profound impact on candidate experience, referral management, and talent community development has revolutionized how workers interact with potential employers, automated referrals, and cultivated on-demand talent pools. Additionally, direct sourcing leverages AI-driven technologies to enhance talent acquisition processes, streamlining candidate matching, assessment, and engagement, thereby optimizing recruitment outcomes.

As a preferred strategy for achieving genuine scalability and talent sustainability, direct sourcing aligns with organizations’ strategic goals, ensuring long-term prosperity by fostering employee engagement, development, and well-being. In addition, embracing socially responsible and ethical talent management practices further enhances workforce sustainability and equity, benefiting both the organization and its employees.

Talent Sustainability and Workforce Scalability: The Hallmarks of Direct Sourcing

Direct Sourcing by Christopher J. Dwyer on 10/25/2023

When we think of “sustainability,” it often brings to mind the idea of businesses operating in a way that benefits the environment, the broader community, and society at large. However, in the realm of the workforce, sustainability takes on a different meaning. It’s about a business’s capacity to maintain a self-sustaining ecosystem of talent by adeptly tapping into dynamic talent sources and channels. Direct sourcing, with its multifaceted intricacies, plays a pivotal role in this concept of talent sustainability.

Through the strategic application of direct sourcing methods and technology, along with the continuous upkeep of internal talent communities and talent pools, companies can construct a seamless pathway towards talent sustainability. By harnessing workforce solutions like extended workforce technology and Vendor Management Systems (VMS), by optimizing direct sourcing avenues, by tapping into next-generation innovations like artificial intelligence, and by fostering both private and public talent communities, organizations can establish self-replenishing reservoirs of talent that serve several critical purposes:

Adapt to the ever-changing skill requirements across the enterprise, in alignment with product development and the evolving needs of the organization.
Reflect the existing expertise and skill sets within the enterprise that can be harnessed for real-time deployment.
Empower hiring managers and other talent-focused leaders to employ nurturing and candidate experience strategies, ensuring that all networked workers remain open to reengagement for new or ongoing projects and initiatives.

In scenarios where significant skills gaps or a shortage of high-impact expertise occur, the concept of talent sustainability becomes a crucial ally for organizations. It enables them to create self-sustaining ecosystems of candidates who can be flexibly and promptly mobilized to address the ever-evolving demands of the global business landscape.

Scalability, much like sustainability, is a coveted objective for modern enterprise functions, offering businesses substantial rewards when they can expand their processes and strategies. In the realm of talent acquisition and human capital management, scalability assumes fresh importance, particularly in the wake of a global health crisis that thrust many organizations into the uncharted waters of aligning workforce depth with the unpredictable fluctuations of the market.

Within the context of direct sourcing, scalability encapsulates two distinct concepts:

Optimizing direct sourcing processes. This involves enhancing direct sourcing processes through seamless internal integration and end-to-end automation, allowing the strategy to be seamlessly applied to hiring initiatives across the entire organization.
Extending the value of direct sourcing. It also entails harnessing the undeniable value of direct sourcing to dynamically scale the workforce in response to internal and external factors.

When executed effectively, direct sourcing influences both FTE nd non-employee hiring. This means that enterprises can capitalize on talent communities, talent pools, and robust talent nurturing capabilities to swiftly expand their workforce in alignment with their specific needs…something is incredibly desired in today’s frenetic and evolving business landscape.

Scalability, Sustainability, and Direct Sourcing

Direct Sourcing by Christopher J. Dwyer on 07/12/2023

This month, Ardent Partners and the Future of Work Exchange will publish its landmark Direct Sourcing 2023: Scalable Processes, Sustainable Talent research study. Today’s article is a sneak peek of the report, which is sponsored by Opptly and WorkLLama.

The phrase “sustainability” typically elicits thoughts of an enterprise operating in a manner that positively affects the environment, general community, or society. In the workforce arena, however, sustainability translates into the ability for businesses to sustain their own ecosystem of talent through the agile utilization of dynamic talent sources and channels. Direct sourcing and its many inner workings fit firmly into this concept of talent sustainability.

By utilizing direct sourcing methods and technology (and, subsequently, executing consistent maintenance of internal talent communities/pools), businesses are able to build a more seamless bridge to talent sustainability. By leveraging workforce solutions (such as extended workforce technology, VMS, etc.), direct sourcing channels, and both private and public talent communities, etc., self-sustaining outlets of talent allow enterprises to

Better align evolving skills requirements across the enterprise given product development and the progression of the greater organization.
Enhance the ways existing expertise and skillsets across the enterprise can be leveraged for real-time utilization, and;
Allow hiring managers and other HR/staffing executives to leverage nurture and candidate experience strategies to ensure that all networked workers are amiable and open to reengagement for new and/or continued projects and initiatives.

With the frequent occurrences of major skills gaps or a lack of high-impact expertise, the notion of talent sustainability can assist organizations in generating self-sustaining ecosystems of candidates who can be leveraged in an agile and on-demand manner to meet the evolving needs of global business.

Scalability is often a goal for many modern enterprise functions, as businesses that can scale processes and strategies reap much value. In the world of talent acquisition and human capital management, scalability takes on new meaning… considering that a worldwide health crisis launched many organizations into the new and uncharted territory of aligning workforce depth with fast-shifting market dynamics.

Regarding direct sourcing, scalability translates into two distinct ideas:

Amplifying and enhancing direct sourcing processes via harmonious internal synergies and end-to-end automation so the strategy can be applied to hiring initiatives across the greater organization
Harnessing the undeniable value of direct sourcing to effectively scale the workforce as internal and external factors dictate
When properly implemented and utilized, direct sourcing has an impact on both FTE and non-employee hiring, meaning that businesses can leverage talent communities and talent pools, as well as deep talent nurture capabilities, to quickly scale their workforce as they see fit.

The Direct Sourcing 2023: Scalable Processes, Sustainable Talent market research study publishes later this month.

How Does Direct Sourcing Fit Into Today’s Talent-Driven Environment?

Direct Sourcing Talent Talent Acquisition by Christopher J. Dwyer on 05/10/2023

Over the past three years, the talent acquisition landscape has undergone a significant transformation, largely driven by the global pandemic. In the face of economic uncertainty and unprecedented challenges, organizations have realized that attracting and deploying top talent is no longer just an advantage but a critical necessity. As we navigate this new era, the ability to foster innovation, creativity, and drive has become essential to survival and success. It is abundantly clear that the post-pandemic world will reward those who can attract and retain the best talent.

To thrive in the competitive and uncertain labor market, businesses must do whatever it takes to stay ahead of the game. This means expanding their talent pipelines, improving hiring strategies, and scaling talent acquisition in ways that benefit the organization in the long term. While direct sourcing is not a new strategy, it has gained popularity due to its alignment with the direction of the world of work and talent.

Direct sourcing allows organizations to leverage an internally-led, internally-developed “recruitment agency” that removes third-party staffing suppliers. This enhances the overall control of talent engagement in terms of both quality and spend, while also ensuring consistency in branding, communication, and culture across all departments involved in talent attraction. As a result, direct sourcing has evolved from a novel idea in 2019 to a proven strategy that allows businesses to align their core initiatives with available skillsets and maximize the overall impact and value of their talent community.

While basic direct sourcing programs can generate tangible benefits, such as cost reductions and talent pipeline expansion, the stakes are much higher than that. Strategic approaches to direct sourcing have evolved significantly since the concept’s rapid rise a few years ago. In 2023, direct sourcing is no longer just the sum of its parts. Instead, it represents a near-perfect alignment with the direction of business today and in the foreseeable future. The labor market remains unsettled, and economic uncertainty continues to prevail. Businesses are engaged in a fierce battle for talent as unemployment reaches historic lows, and millions of job openings go unfilled.

Moreover, the Future of Work movement and its resulting transformations actively call for businesses to shift their hiring strategies. These factors together represent both a new challenge and a new opportunity for direct sourcing: to help enterprises cultivate a flexible and scalable workforce that drives true talent sustainability.

Talent Sustainability Through Direct Sourcing

Business Leadership Direct Sourcing Diversity and Inclusion General Insights Talent by John Yuva on 05/09/2023

In 2023, direct sourcing is more than the sum of its parts; rather, it represents near alignment with the direction of business now and in the relative future. The labor market is still unsettled, while economic uncertainty (unfortunately) still rules the day. Businesses are in a continued war for talent, as unemployment sinks to historic lows and millions of job openings remain.

In addition, the Future of Work movement and resulting transformations actively dictate that businesses shift their hiring strategies. All of these facets together represent both a new challenge and a new opportunity for direct sourcing: helping enterprises cultivate a flexible and scalable workforce that drives true talent sustainability.

Direct Sourcing Evolves

Enterprises need sustainable talent most to remain competitive and enable future agility. Direct sourcing can help enterprises achieve talent sustainability through several means.

Tapping the Pipeline

First and foremost, it’s about building a talent pipeline of potential candidates, which can be tapped into immediately. By cultivating a talent pipeline, enterprises can proactively source and develop talent, avoiding circumstances where critical roles are vacant for long periods. Often, organizations struggle to implement adequate succession plans. Direct sourcing can help make succession planning a reality — a critical component of a sustainable talent strategy.

Linking Diversity to Innovation

A flexible workforce is not just associated with work models but culture as well. Fostering a diverse and inclusive workforce through direct sourcing opens the door to varying perspectives on enterprise challenges. Contingent and permanent job candidates view flexibility as a means to encourage diversity, equity, and inclusion — a driver for talent retention and enterprise innovation. Diversity-focused organizations, networks, and forums are channels for direct sourcing engagement. And by sourcing talent from diverse channels, enterprises can build a more inclusive and diverse workforce that better reflects the communities in which they operate.

Building a Talent Community

One of the biggest challenges with direct sourcing is building a pipeline of quality candidates. What is the solution? Organizations must transform their engagement efforts by leveraging the very strength of direct sourcing itself — building relationships through intentional and strategic talent outreach. Engaging with talent directly helps to build relationships with candidates and to foster a sense of connection with the organization. This can lead to higher retention rates and a more immersed and committed workforce.

In some cases, HR and business leaders must cultivate relationships over a longer period. This is where talent communities can benefit. A talent community is a group of individuals who have expressed interest in working for a particular company or in a particular industry. Talent communities can take many forms, from LinkedIn groups to online forums. At their core, talent communities provide a platform for organizations to connect with candidates and nurture relationships over time. They are also ideal for expanding the employer brand to a wider audience and communicating the organizational culture — both leading to attracting top talent and creating a competitive differentiator for the enterprise.

Direct sourcing is not simply a portal for attracting potential job candidates. Instead, it’s a strategic imperative that is paramount to enterprise talent sustainability. And with sustainability comes organizational agility, flexibility, and resiliency — all of which enable an enterprise to thrive in a volatile marketplace.

The Link Between Direct Sourcing and Talent Sustainability

Direct Sourcing Talent by Christopher J. Dwyer on 05/01/2023

In just a few weeks, Ardent Partners and the Future of Work Exchange will publish their Direct Sourcing 2023: Scalable Processes, Sustainable Talent research report. “Talent sustainability” is a key focal area not only for direct sourcing strategies, but greater talent acquisition initiatives, as well. Let’s revisit a critical piece from 2022 on the link between these talent-driven programs.

Many HR, talent acquisition, and contingent workforce program leaders overlook particular phases of direct sourcing, especially talent curation and segmentation, since they have been conditioned to manage their processes within the confines of a traditional contingent workforce management (CWM) initiative that follows more procurement-oriented procedures (i.e., supply management, heavy cost focus, etc.). Even under a centralized CWM program, the most critical direct sourcing strategies and capabilities require more time, focus, and resources than what is typically available with non-employee workforce management.

For example, talent curation is a critical piece to the direct sourcing puzzle and is considered crucial to the entire hierarchy of the process. In a direct sourcing program, recruiting expertise (via an MSP, talent curation partner, etc.) curates talent for the business, ultimately helping its client build a deep talent cloud or community using a series of augmented approaches, including branded job portals, targeted ads and recruitment marketing campaigns, and artificial intelligence-led candidate matching. The solution that is leading the direct sourcing program can also leverage the organization’s brand power to attract potential candidates, as well.

While some enterprises maintain deep pools of talent that are more “general” in scope, these may not be effective from an agile workforce perspective. Organizations typically overlook talent pool segmentation and maintain a single repository of talent pool candidates; this failure to segment is a missed opportunity to build a nimbler approach to finding candidates based on geography, skillset, role, etc. Talent pool segmentation enables enterprises to better “organize” their candidates for easier, faster, and better alignment with future requirements, as well.

A typical first step in talent community segmentation is to conduct due diligence around candidate skillsets, past work history, compensation, proficiency, and overall enterprise hiring alignment. Segmentation is what allows a business to be more dynamic in how it addresses its talent needs. It also answers many current sourcing challenges while fostering relationships with candidates with emerging and new skillsets or expertise.

By spending more time in the initial phases of direct sourcing (and, subsequently, executing consistent maintenance of internal talent communities/pools), businesses are able to build a more seamless bridge to “talent sustainability,” which the Future of Work Exchange defines as a by-product of leveraging workforce solutions (such as extended workforce technology, VMS, etc.), direct sourcing channels, and both private and public talent communities, etc. to build self-sustaining outlets of talent that 1) map to evolving skills requirements across the enterprise given product development and the progression of the greater organization, 2) reflect existing expertise and skillsets across the enterprise that can be leveraged for real-time utilization, and, 3) allow hiring managers and other talent-led executives to leverage nurture and candidate experience strategies to ensure that all networked workers are amiable and open to reengagement for new and/or continued projects and initiatives.

The Great Resignation has become more volatile, and with its wide-sweeping ramifications playing critical roles in how enterprises structure their workforce in the second half of the year, it is crucial that strategies such as direct sourcing contribute to overall talent scalability. Leveraging the power of direct sourcing’s key elements (and associated technology) can assist businesses in maximizing the positive elements of the “Talent Revolution” and parlay them into means of attracting the best-fit, highest-quality talent. Talent sustainability will be the way businesses thrive in the near future…and direct sourcing is a direct link to get them there.

The Talent Supply Chain Is Evolving…It’s Time to Rethink How We Approach It

Contingent Workforce Direct Sourcing Events Talent Talent Acquisition by Christopher J. Dwyer on 03/22/2023

Earlier this month, I had the pleasure of joining Prosperix‘s CEO, Sunil Bagai, and Defiant Solutions’ Bryan Pena for a spirited discussion on the evolution of the talent supply chain. Everything You Know About The Talent Supply Chain Is Wrong featured some new Ardent Partners and Future of Work Exchange research, as well as a high-energy roundtable chat focused on how businesses can balance the power of today’s progressive labor market with the proper strategies for thriving in the months ahead.

If you missed the live event, we have you covered. Check out an on-demand edition below.

The Unique Impact of Direct Sourcing in Today’s World of Work

Direct Sourcing Talent Talent Acquisition by Christopher J. Dwyer on 02/15/2023

Over the past three years, direct sourcing has dominated discussions across the world of talent and work, and rightfully so: it was a top priority for enterprises leading into the pandemic. During the first year or so of the crisis, businesses realized the workforce scalability and candidate experience enhancement inherent in direct sourcing programs.

Diversifying and expanding talent sources has become a critical element of this evolving world of work. Not only do businesses require the ability to directly source talent by transforming their operations into internal recruiting agencies, but they can also leverage their workplace culture, employer brand, and other organizational attributes to attract the best-fit talent and expertise.

This, of course, plays directly into the concept of “omni-channel talent acquisition,” in which hiring managers and recruiters (and, to a larger extended, the enterprise HR and talent acquisition functions) leverage real-time, on-demand talent culled from a variety of both digital and traditional sources, particularly digital staffing outlets, talent pools and talent communities, talent marketplaces, social media, and expert networks.

[To learn more about omni-channel talent acquisition and its impact on hiring, be sure to register for next week’s exclusive webcast.]

All of these outlets have one major element in common: they were borne out of the overarching need for workforce flexibility and workforce scalability. While each source, be it talent marketplaces or expert networks, are incredible channels of top-tier skillsets and expertise, there is something much different that sets apart direct sourcing from the rest…mainly, its ability to transform hiring and help enterprises develop repeatable, automated, and most critically, scalable, hiring processes.

This level of workforce scalability is the foundation of what the Future of Work Exchange refers to as “talent sustainability”:

“The concept of talent sustainability revolves around the idea that businesses can, through their workforce solutions (such as extended workforce technology, VMS, etc.), direct sourcing channels, and both private and public talent communities, build self-sustaining outlets of talent that: 1) map to evolving skills requirements across the enterprise given product development and the progression of the greater organization, 2) reflect existing expertise and skillsets across the enterprise that can be leveraged for real-time utilization, and, 3) allow hiring managers and other talent-led executives to leverage nurture and candidate experience strategies to ensure that all networked workers are amiable and open to reengagement for new and/or continued projects and initiatives.”

Talent sustainability is always a crucial attribute of the modern business, but it means so much more today, with a more-volatile-than-ever labor market, uncertain economic times abound, and a years-raging war for talent. Direct sourcing (and direct sourcing platforms, such as Opptly, LiveHire, WorkLLama, Prosperix, WorkSuite, amongst several others) is a fully-aligned link to driving a sustainable talent supply chain that can be leveraged to support hard-to-fill roles and demands for specific expertise. In an age when forward-thinking concepts like “open talent” are revolutionizing the labor market, it is critical for businesses to reimagine the ways they address talent acquisition.

Direct sourcing represents a dynamic entry-point to talent sustainability. Considering its impact on the candidate experience (transforming how workers engage with potential employers), referral management (automated, mobile-optimized referrals), and talent community development (boosting talent curation and progressing into a new stratosphere of on-demand talent pools), direct sourcing is a robust strategy to developing real workforce scalability…and talent sustainability.

BEST OF 2022: The Link Between Direct Sourcing and Talent Sustainability

Direct Sourcing Talent by Christopher J. Dwyer on 12/27/2022

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

The Link Between Direct Sourcing and Talent Sustainability

Direct Sourcing Talent by Christopher J. Dwyer on 07/05/2022