• Zoë Harte, Chief People Officer at Upwork.
• David Harris, SVP of HR for PepsiCo.
• Sarah Harse, Global Category Leader for HR Services and Professional Education, Johnson & Johnson.

The panel discussion covered a variety of topics. However, a central theme was HR’s cross-functional collaboration in executing the enterprise’s talent strategy. This article explores several areas around that theme. While HR is looked upon by the enterprise to drive talent and other critical initiatives, it cannot do this alone. There must be a partnership across the entire business with other functions like procurement, finance, legal, marketing, engineering, and the like.

Responsibility Lies With Everyone

When it comes to the role of sourcing and identifying talent, who is ultimately responsible? This was the opening question that Buffum posed to the panel. Harte believes everybody is responsible for bringing exceptional talent to drive the business initiatives that are the priorities for the organization. “HR has a powerful role in that. And so do the people managers and so does procurement. We all must do it together to be successful,” she said.

Responding with a procurement perspective, Harse says in the past the function took the upfront role of sourcing, finding the channel, putting it in place, and ensuring it operated. However, that’s not enough anymore.

“Just having the channel available is not enough to really solve the challenges that are ahead for our people leaders. The more we can do to partner with our HR counterparts, our finance counterparts, or our legal counterparts to connect those dots and really think about each of us having a unique role to play — with the hiring manager at the center helping to navigate all these different channels we have available — is really critical,” Harse said.

Communication Is the Cornerstone

Because several business units contribute to the identification of talent sources, cross-functional collaboration is imperative. Harris described this process at PepsiCo, which included partnerships with finance (always a major role within large companies), procurement (to ensure all the contracts and partnerships are in place), and the internal talent acquisition team (securing the available people when and where they’re needed).

Of course, such collaboration couldn’t occur without effective communication. What projects are underway and the associated strategies? What are the different metrics or objectives among the functional lines? Harte says each individual team may be working toward different metrics. However, the role of the leader is to take a step back and look at the overall objectives they’re working toward. Knowing the business mission enables everyone to work together.

“It’s then easier to see how you can merge your objectives and key results together to ensure you’re making good compromises,” said Harse. “Communicate and really have a conversation about that so people understand the give and take of everyone involved. You’ll be able to find alignment and come to some level of agreement.”

Commit to Early Engagement

However, even the best-laid plans and communication can pose challenges. Harse spoke about her own experiences in procurement working through problem areas cross functionally and where opportunities exist to work toward a better goal. She said a common pitfall is the last-minute rush that can occur when a project is tossed over the wall to another function. Because both functions have not been on that journey together, there’s a lack of understanding around the purpose of the project and the work that’s been put into it.

For the individual or team suddenly holding the project, there’s a lack of alignment in terms of priority regardless of the urgency involved. Harse said much of the issue can be resolved with better early collaboration during the ideation phase.

“We have a number of subject matter experts across all our large organizations who can bring significant value to the table. Procurement shouldn’t be viewed at the table as simply the purchasing or supply chain person, but rather the beneficiary of these strategies as well,” said Harse.

She adds that the greatest learning coming into a new role supporting HR is that everyone can identify with the need for talent access. All are people leaders who understand the challenge of filling the seats to get the work done.

“It’s easy to get people on board with that message if you bring them in early and start to engage with legal and finance counterparts at the beginning of the journey to bring down some of those barriers that inevitably come up. This is crucial for those unique relationships we want to build to really be successful,” Harse explains.

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Defining Grand Redesign

Sanders began his session with a fascinating story about the rise of Shantanu Narayen to CEO of Adobe Inc. in 2007. Adobe was a behemoth software company known for its innovative products like Illustrator, Photoshop, Acrobat, and many others. In the industry, it was second only to its rival Microsoft.

However, in 2007, the company experienced the ramifications of software piracy, losing $1 billion. A year later, the Great Recession took its toll on the company’s flagship Adobe Creative Suite product offering. At a $1,800 price point, companies closed their wallets and revenue declined 20% within the first eight weeks of the recession.

What was Adobe’s response? Mark Garrett, Adobe’s chief financial officer in 2008, recognized the potential of cloud-based subscription models. Thus, the company embarked on its grand redesign, transforming from a physical product-oriented company to a 100% digital, cloud-based subscription service. In 2012, Adobe released Creative Cloud to the world with an entry-level price point of less than $60 compared to $1,800.

Sanders noted that Adobe’s grand redesign was one of the biggest turnarounds in corporate history, growing its market cap from $15 billion in 2012 to more than $200 billion today. Knowing not to rest and accept the status quo, especially during a recession, the company leveraged the opportunity to combine desktop, mobile, and services into a single customer package — shutting the door to the competition.

Our Present Grand Redesign Opportunity

This brings us to today. Sanders explains that companies are experiencing another period of great disruption — the COVID-19 pandemic and its impacts. Now is the time to move beyond the status quo and redesign the workplace. He says there are six workplace design options on the table.

1. Remote first. Companies that choose this design option fully embrace remote work and use it strategically as part of their operational and talent acquisition models.
2. Remote-friendly. More organizations are choosing a remote-friendly design that embraces a distributed workforce for certain roles, talents, and situations. It is not a complete remote first transition, but companies are willing to consider it as a possible default. Sanders says that if companies are not remote first, they must accept remote-friendly to be competitive.
3. Remote for now. This has been the workplace design model for many companies since the beginning of the pandemic. However, this model will disappear as companies commit to a long-term design strategy.
4. Hybrid by role. Essentially, certain roles (e.g., doctors, nurses, warehouse workers, etc.) must be in-person due to the work type. Other roles can be accomplished remotely.
5. Hybrid-by-day mix. In many ways, this is simply a compromise for those who want to be remote. It allows remote work for two to three days per week. The drawbacks? There are no savings on real estate costs and there’s a reliance on local talent.
6. Onsite first. Everyone is required to work on-site with few to no remote work options. For retail organizations, Sanders questions whether it’s necessary for marketing or back-office technology employees to work on-site. There are remote work opportunities that could be leveraged.

Identify Your Model to Rewire Your Organization for Remote-First

Which workplace design model represents your company? Answer that question first, says Sanders, then pose three additional questions.

1. Are you satisfied with the talent in your local markets to make you competitive to achieve digital transformation and stand-up artificial intelligence? Are you ready? Are your local markets really that strong?

And as a follow-up question, are there any remote-first companies running recruitment ads in your market? If so, that’s going to change the picture even if you think you’re comfortable with the strength of your local market.

2. Have your leaders figured out managing based on outcomes or are they still stuck in the past of AAA management — attendance, attitude, and aptitude?

If your leaders have learned how to manage based on outcomes, then they’re completely equipped to manage without seeing people physically every day in the office.

3. Have you invested in tools and training for people to learn how to collaborate and culture-build at a distance?

Culture is not about your office. Instead, culture is a conversation led by leaders about how we do things here. It’s about storytelling and how we succeeded in the past. If you want to build a better culture, focus on cadence, not location.

Sanders says these are the questions to ask yourself. The good news? As you embrace remote-first (or at the very least, remote-friendly) workplace design, you are going to rewire the organization.

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Hayden Brown, President and CEO of Upwork, kicked off the conference reminiscing about what it was like when she finally made it to the corner office and when she got an office with a door for the first time in her career. Today, Hayden says, “Every employee can have their own corner office.” There are after all, new rules for work.

One of the major benefits of this new world of work is that control has been democratized. How, where, and even when people complete their work is in more of their control, and this is a huge benefit to all businesses, said Brown. She challenges the notion that the traditional workplace was what drove success, arguing that this misplaced nostalgia is actually caused by the Mandela effect, where false memories can sometimes be shared by multiple people. “The office was not the secret sauce [of business],” says Brown, and “It is time for business leaders to lead instead of react,” and find the true drivers of business value.

Brown continued her keynote by asking a few challenging questions for business leaders – “Will a location mandate get you the results you want?” and “Are you giving your team the what they need to succeed – the best tools and the best talent?”

The workforce game has changed forever and given the distribution of workforces and of talent overall today, talent access is the key to the new game, part of the new playbook that companies must use to succeed. Contractors will continue to play a larger role in business and the new rules of work must incorporate that view.

Brown believes that Upwork address all of the classic concerns (security and privacy, workforce reliability, cultural concerns, etc.) that business executives may have regarding this tectonic shift in how work is done and the broad shift to non-FTE workers. In today’s world, the leaders that get ahead on this major shift will win…and boldness will be rewarded.

The WWL event featured a variety of industry leaders sharing their thoughts regarding the new world of work:

• “Data gives us the opportunity to be predictable,” said Vito Labate, Vice President, Global Industry Marketing Leader at Capgemini during a panel discussion hosted by Upwork CMO Melissa Waters. In a chat centered around the changes in marketing, this panel highlighted how the application of top-tier freelance talent is a true differentiator (especially within their industry, where personalization is a key factor for clients).
• “Companies have become a bit more comfortable with distributed and remote teams,” said Deb Elias, Director, Product Strategy and Operations at Chargebee. “Technology has played a critical role in how non-co-located team members to collaborate.” Upwork’s Chief Product and Experience Officer, Sam Bright, led a spirited panel discussion on how “the impossible” could be achieved via new Future of Work concepts (and technology!) in functions like product development and engineering now that they have access to highly-skilled, global talent.
• “We’re not just listening…we’re counter-arguing,” stated Jonah Berger, Professor at Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania during his afternoon keynote address. “We have to allow for agency; we have to give them back some of that freedom and control.” Berger’s fantastic presentation focused on how business leaders can stop “selling” change and begin changing the mindsets around transformation…a crucial factor considering just how much the world of work has changed over the past few years.

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Upwork, one of the industry’s largest and market-leading digital staffing players, recently introduced its “Virtual Talent Bench” offering, which essentially converges the full spectrum of Future of Work attributes into a solution that enables real workforce scalability while optimizing how businesses get work done. The Virtual Talent Bench is a powerful offering that blends key elements of the digital staffing model (talent marketplace functionality and deep candidate networks) with direct sourcing (curated talent “benches” that can be engaged and hired in an on-demand fashion).

“Our goal is to help businesses and independent talent get work done, and done well. We know independent talent want to build long-lasting work relationships with clients, and businesses want an easy way to work with the talent they love time and time again,” said Sam Bright, chief product and experience officer, Upwork. “We launched Virtual Talent Bench to help businesses find and engage a fleet of highly-skilled independent professionals through an easier way to discover, access and organize their go-to freelancers. From sign-up to superuser, we’ve designed and created a simple experience for clients to not only find new, talented freelancers, but also remember their strengths, flag their special skills, and organize them however they like.”

Upwork’s multifaceted approach towards talent engagement and contingent workforce management allows its users to leverage the Virtual Talent Bench to develop talent pool-like “benches” of freelancers and non-employee workers that can be tapped into in an on-demand manner. The VTB places scalability firmly within its core by allowing Upwork clients to quickly reengage high-quality talent in an agile fashion. This is functionality akin to direct sourcing automation, only with Upwork’s vast talent marketplace powering the candidate engagement process and seamlessly integrating “curation-like” functionality into the Virtual Talent Bench. And, by surfacing individual talent profiles and projects based on past searches and job needs, Upwork users can derive more value from the solution’s “Discovery” module, with these results embedded within the Virtual Talent Bench for direct access when building freelance teams for future projects.

With this new solution, Upwork is firmly entrenching itself as a forward-looking platform that embraces the Future of Work. The convergence of direct sourcing and digital staffing, combined with the ways talent engagement is evolving, is one major reason why the Virtual Talent Bench is an ideal feature for the transformative world of work and talent.

“In our recent Future Workforce Report stemming from a survey of U.S. hiring managers, we uncovered that 40.7 million Americans expect to be fully remote in the next five years. What’s more, 53% of businesses say that remote work has increased their willingness to use freelancers and 71% of hiring managers plan to maintain or increase their use of freelancers in the next six months, creating more hybrid workforces,” said Bright. “Offices have reopened, but many professionals aren’t willing to give up the flexibility of working remotely. Over one-third (34%) of workers who were remote are not excited about returning to the office, and of the 10 million Americans currently considering freelancing, 73% cite the ability to work remotely or flexibly as a reason why.”

“As remote work projections remain strong and businesses plan to continue engaging more independent talent, we’re already planning to expand features in Virtual Talent Bench to enable more collaboration and better organization in the months to come, including features allowing clients to invite an entire talent bench to submit a job proposal.”

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