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Talent Sustainability

Why Tech is the Crux of Direct Sourcing 2.0

Direct Sourcing by Christopher J. Dwyer on

Direct sourcing has dominated discussions around talent, work, and staffing for the past few years because, when executed well, it can deliver incredible value to the greater organization through hard benefits (such as cost savings and a quicker average time-to-fill rate) and soft benefits (greater talent quality, better engagement with highly-skilled candidate, etc.). And, as the overall HR market evolves in the wake of rising worker resignations, smart businesses will prioritize the need for deeper assessment and validation of skillsets and place a greater emphasis on the candidate and hiring manager experience.

The starting point for most will be to build on their existing direct sourcing capabilities and work to develop a true Direct Sourcing 2.0 program…which, of course, is only achievable through the convergence of strategic and automated competencies.

The path to Direct Sourcing 2.0 is paved with technology. While elements such as talent curation, talent pool development, talent pool segmentation, and recruitment stream integration are core to any direct sourcing program, HR leaders and their teams must incorporate digitization and advanced direct sourcing competencies to get to the next level of performance. Achieving Direct Sourcing 2.0 requires advanced capabilities to be coupled with digital recruitment functionality in order to boost talent quality, enhance candidate intelligence, and develop repeatable and scalable methods for reengaging talent to build a truly agile workforce.

While predictive analytics are not commonplace today, soon, a majority of enterprises will look to scenario-building as a way to enhance overall talent intelligence. Predictive analytics, in this realm, will augment the organization’s overall knowledge of its in-house skills as well as the expertise available externally (across all talent communities, including talent pools).

This level of intelligence will spark new and targeted initiatives to find better-aligned candidates with stronger talent engagement efforts and push business leaders to better understand who the strongest candidates are for future roles, positions, and projects.

Sixty-five percent (65%) of businesses plan to link the candidate experience with hiring manager experience. As discussed in the Ardent Partners and Future of Work Exchange Direct Sourcing 2.0 research study, transforming talent acquisition into a consumer-like journey is just one side of the Direct Sourcing 2.0 coin. The other side focuses on the hiring manager experience, which should be seamless in order to streamline the means of finding, engaging, and sourcing talent for a full spectrum of open roles and positions.

While only a third (33%) of businesses have automated candidate experience capabilities in their direct sourcing programs today, 50% more plan to do so within two years. Personalization and sharing more specific details regarding a project/role match, when automated, are repeatable and scalable to ensure that all candidates have a more positive and compelling experience when recruited.

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The Extended Workforce is a Cornerstone of the Future of Work

Talent by Christopher J. Dwyer on

Over the past several months, I have been focused on (amongst many other research findings) a key statistic in Future of Work Exchange research: 47% of the average organization’s total workforce is considered “extended” or “non-employee.” This means that nearly half of the staff surrounding you (or, of course, working remotely) is comprised of temporary staff, SOW-based labor or professional services, gig workers, independent contractors, freelancers, etc.

Back in 2014, based on the trajectory of the growth of the contingent workforce, Ardent Partners had boldly predicted that it was a matter of when, not if, this workforce comprised half of the average company’s total staff. “Accelerants” along the way, particularly the growth of digital staffing, advanced Vendor Management Systems, Managed Service Providers expanding their breadth of offerings, and direct sourcing, all played vital roles in pushing the extended workforce to where it is today.

Of course, the pandemic played a role, too, in that more and more businesses found that the best way to be agile, and the best way to scale their workforce up and down as the market dictated, was to heavily-involve extended talent into their organizations. Future of Work Exchange research found that 82% of enterprises derived true workforce scalability and flexibility from extended talent throughout 2020 and 2021, with another 70% of businesses stating that the extended workforce assisted them with “business continuity” initiatives in the face of uncertain economic times.

That’s right: the extended workforce wasn’t just a way for businesses to leverage on-demand talent when and where they needed it…it was a way for enterprises to survive and thrive when the world was in utter chaos.

There are other critical aspects related to work optimization that were accelerated due to pandemic times, including remote and hybrid work becoming table stakes, DE&I becoming more integrated into core talent acquisition initiatives, and the rise of the empathy-led, inclusive workplace. These are all crucial attributes of the Future of Work that have been, since this site launched, significant conversation pieces around how enterprises effectively get work done.

Think about it: the Future of Work movement has always followed, amongst other key focal areas, a considerably powerful mantra. Optimize how work is done. In both the good times and the bad, non-employee talent has been there to help businesses maintain continuity, support resiliency efforts, and, most importantly, serve as a talent-fueled boost to true workforce scalability. Getting work done today means tapping into the very strategies that support Best-in-Class extended workforce management, including:

  • Boosting candidate experience and hiring manager experience efforts with “Direct Sourcing 2.0” technology and approaches.
  • Applying the next-generation functionality and purpose-driven technology of today’s extended workforce platforms to both tactical and strategic elements of extended workforce management.
  • Deriving value from integrated workforce management systems that can play “platform” roles in managing all facets of the extended workforce, from direct sourcing and SOW management to DE&I.
  • Providing upskilling and reskilling opportunities to talent pool candidates as a way to enhance talent redeployment efforts.
  • Developing true talent sustainability that can blend total talent intelligence with talent nurture processes to ensure that all networked workers are amiable and open to reengagement for new and/or continued projects and initiatives.

The extended workforce will soon comprise half of the total global workforce. As enterprises continue to optimize how work is done, this workforce will continue to be a crucial cornerstone for the Future of Work movement.

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“Talent Sustainability” Is the Next Great Workforce Strategy

Business LeadershipDirect SourcingHRTalent by Christopher J. Dwyer on

It’s not easy out there for hiring managers, HR executives, and talent acquisition leaders. Besides both the personal and professional panic over the Omicron variant (even though we’re still in the throes of Delta’s continued rampage), these roles must consistently battle the ramifications of the so-called “Big Quit,” aka “The Great Resignation,” and otherwise known as “The Great Reassessment,” etc. Around these parts, we understand it’s instead a “talent revolution.”

There have been many theories, approaches, and strategies proposed that could curb some of the effects of The Great Resignation, but even now, there is no cure-all series of processes that can outright solve all of the current talent issues that are plaguing organizations across the world. And, to be honest, having more and more attributes of the traditional employer-employee relationship shifting towards the worker in regards to “power” is something that has been a long time coming. Aspects such as flexibility, empathy, better working conditions, and more inclusive workplace environments are all now table stakes for the modern-day workforce.

One of the key facets of the Future of Work movement in 2021 (and even more so in 2022) is the enterprise’s renewed focus on its human capital and overall depth of skillsets across the greater organization (as 62% of organizations are prioritizing right now, according to Future of Work Exchange research). So many major workforce shifts over the past two years, including the overall desire for real business and workforce agility, mean that enterprises must reimagine how roles, jobs, and projects are executed over the short- and long-term, given the natural progression of market, economic, and corporate factors (not to mention the ongoing uncertainty regarding a true end of the pandemic in the United States and across the world).

In 2022, enterprises must build towards “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.

There are, of course, several caveats to a true talent sustainability strategy that represent several key innovations and forward-thinking ideas. These items, listed below, all meaningfully contribute to this progressive approach:

  • A workforce management “system of record” (i.e., VMS, extended workforce platform, etc.) that can blend both non-employee and FTE data to generate true “total talent intelligence.”
  • Access to on-demand talent communities and talent pools via both direct sourcing platforms and talent marketplace solutions.
  • An artificial intelligence-led architecture that augments and transfers the mobility of talent to where it is needed most.
  • Machine learning- and AI-led candidate assessment, skills validation, and talent fraud prevention.
  • A robust DE&I initiative that prioritizes both diverse hiring and inclusive workplace culture.
  • A major emphasis on the depth of skillsets, expertise, and human capital available across the greater organization.
  • Creating a “culture of learning and development” (via upskilling and reskilling opportunities) help the organization hedge against future skill gaps.
  • Joint collaboration between HR and procurement to facilitate total talent management-like capabilities, and;
  • Deeper automation of recruitment marketing, referral management, and other facets of direct sourcing to expand talent pools.

Businesses do not want to be caught off-guard when they have a critical need for specific skills, especially in an era when the vaunted “war for talent” rages on at a level never seen before in workforce management history. The Future of Work is many things, and, talent sustainability is becoming one of its most crucial elements.

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