Worker Trust

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.