Workforce Agility Archives - The Future of Work Exchange

AI Redefines Talent Upskilling

Business Leadership General Insights HR Talent Technology and Innovation by John Yuva on 02/06/2025

The Future of Work paradigm is being redefined by technologies complementing talent acquisition and workforce strategies. Undoubtedly, artificial intelligence (AI) is the driving technology most enterprises are trying to harness. While AI and its subsets, such as machine learning (ML) and natural language processing (NLP), are utilized across industry sectors, what does this mean for the current and future workforce? Undoubtedly, the automation derived from AI has created employee apprehension, when, in fact, there lies an opportunity to leverage the technology for strengthening workforce skillsets through upskilling. Most experts agree that automation will transform some jobs, leading to a greater focus on upskilling as workers strive to remain relevant and competitive in their career fields.

Upskilling is akin to learning new skills to better perform your job — not to be confused with reskilling, which is investing in skills for a different job. This leads to a key question: How critical is upskilling? According to the World Economic Forum, the U.S. could add $800 billion to its GDP by 2030 through upskilling efforts alone. Artificial intelligence can help execute upskilling initiatives and deliver on those economic estimates.

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Elevate Your Workforce Through Upskilling

Business Leadership General Insights HR Talent by John Yuva on 09/05/2023

“Upskilling, reskilling, and continuing one’s education journey — traditional or not — has the potential to serve as a great equalizer, providing opportunities for anyone at any stage of their career.” Par Merat, VP of Training and Certifications, Cisco U.

Workplace culture is a major determinant for candidate attraction and talent retention. Enterprises with a strong focus on professional development and organizational growth — upskilling — are reaping the rewards of higher levels of employee engagement, worker satisfaction, and sense of belonging.

Upskilling is akin to learning new skills to better perform your job — not to be confused with reskilling, which is investing in skills for a different job. How critical is upskilling? According to its 2021 report, Upskilling for Shared Prosperity, the World Economic Forum states that the U.S. could add $800 billion to its GDP by 2030 through upskilling efforts.

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Optimize Your Workforce with Recession-Proof Strategies, Part One

Business Leadership Contingent Workforce General Insights HR Talent by John Yuva on 08/03/2023

We’re now two months into the second half of 2023 and economically speaking, things are looking positive. The Bureau of Economic Analysis reports that GDP grew 2.4% in the second quarter of 2023. The labor market remains tight with unemployment at 3.6%, a rate not witnessed in decades. However, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the tight labor market provides the Federal Reserve with the flexibility to continue raising interest rates to fight inflation. Currently, inflation rests at 3%, a percentage point higher than the Federal Reserve’s longer-run goal of 2%.

Does the state of the current U.S. economy equate to a “soft landing” and the evasion of a recession? Maybe, maybe not. Due to the expectation of continued interest rate increases and the potential ramifications, uncertainty remains among executives and their enterprises. Thus, many are considering strategies over the next six to 12 months to recession-proof their critical workforce and their organizations.

With that in mind, over the next few weeks, the Future of Work Exchange will feature a three-part series exploring several contingent and overall workforce strategies to achieve a recession-proof enterprise. Let’s begin part one this week with a look at our first three strategies.

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Soft Skills Becoming the ‘Real Skills’ in the Workplace

Business Leadership General Insights HR Talent by John Yuva on 05/29/2023

For enterprises to succeed today, it requires a focus on skills beyond the vocational. This doesn’t imply that sales, procurement, or financial expertise are unnecessary or less important to an organization’s operational success. Rather, it means that “soft skill” attributes are now equally critical as hard skills within the workforce. In the competitive marketplace, agility, flexibility, and resilience are imperative to weather ongoing volatility and uncertainty. What enables this? It is soft skills, or as Seth Godin, entrepreneur, best-selling author, and speaker, calls them — real skills.

Soft Skills Transformed

The growing criticality of soft skills seems a natural part of the Future of Work transition. Skills such as empathy, communication (oral and written), adaptability, collaboration, leadership, and strategic thinking are now table stakes for managers and executives. However, it’s no longer the higher ranks where real skills are necessary and desired. These skills are now core attributes for any role in today’s organizations. Imagine a workplace where, regardless of role, soft-skill development was an integral workforce strategy.

This means that real skills such as communication, collaboration, and strategic thinking are occurring at every enterprise level and among employees and project teams. Essentially, soft skills become core principles that drive organizational success and competitiveness. Making that vision a reality, however, requires a shift in executive behavior.

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The Ultimate Value of Direct Sourcing

Direct Sourcing by Christopher J. Dwyer on 05/18/2022

Successful direct sourcing programs have made a large impact on the quality of the overall workforce by achieving better alignment between an organization’s needs and the best available talent than alternate recruiting methods. However, the competitive advantage in talent recruitment that the early adopters of direct sourcing have gained will begin to yield as more new programs are launched each year.

The 55% of businesses that are currently running some form of direct sourcing programs today are utilizing talent pools and talent communities as a viable means of building talent pipelines, reducing talent acquisition costs, ensuring strong skillsets and expertise, and structuring a truly dynamic workforce. Direct sourcing enables a business to act as its own recruitment firm and leverage the power of its brand to attract desired workers to its centralized talent pool. The process also helps enterprises engage candidates directly, increasing the chance of building stronger, longer-lasting relationships with top-tier talent.

While the pandemic has turned job interviews into a more and, sometimes fully-, virtual process, the human elements of conversation, bonding, and interpersonal connection are not completely lost. Direct sourcing bypasses intermediaries and allows the candidates to develop direct connections (hence, “direct” sourcing) with hiring decision-makers. Candidates that are not hired initially can, nonetheless, become candidates for other positions in the future. By eliminating the agency or middleman, enterprises are better able to tap into a developed bench of previously engaged talent and cut lengthy time-to-fill rates. The same holds true for other candidates that have been vetted in some form and are “known” by the hiring team (i.e., “silver medalists,” retirees, past contingent workers or freelancers, etc.), or were targeted for curation based on their current job experience.

Beyond the candidate relationships, direct sourcing allows a business to leverage (and manage) its culture and brand to attract recruits that are easily engaged for future projects and initiatives. Hearing long-employed (and loyal) HR and business professionals discuss the traits and culture of their organization is a more significant and credible way to learn about a potential employer than through the words of a recruiter with a commission on the line. The informal testimonials of the internal hiring teams can effectively build engagement and ultimately, worker loyalty.

While the talent curation part of direct sourcing typically takes time to develop, most organizations possess an innate ability to identify strong cultural fits and highly-desirable skillsets. Additionally, the ability of internal recruiters, HR, and hiring managers to collaborate and tailor job searches to a unique team, manager, project, or location is unmatched when dealing with outside recruiters. The level of nuance can be akin to the difference between a surgeon and a butcher. The ability to increase recruiting precision can be particularly valuable when businesses are managing specific diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.

One other notable attribute of direct sourcing is that it avoids the heavy price of fully-loaded talent acquisition costs charged by outside firms. While successful direct sourcing programs reduce talent acquisition friction and costs in the short-term, as businesses continue to devote resources to it, they will find these programs can also transform how work is done. And, in a world that has become more digitized (especially in the HR and talent arenas), direct sourcing is fast becoming table stakes for businesses that are actively pursuing workforce agility.

The Key Differentiators of Best-in-Class Extended Workforce Management

Contingent Workforce Direct Sourcing Talent by Christopher J. Dwyer on 12/13/2021

Technology utilization and core competencies are the backbone of the Best-in-Class contingent and extended workforce program. However, there are other next-level differentiators that are driving innovation within these organizations and positioning them to become more agile and dynamic as the world of talent and work around them continues to shift and change:

Eighty-two percent (82%) of Best-in-Class enterprises have integrated SOW management and services procurement into their core CWM programs, a fact that reinforces the need for businesses to effectively track, monitor, and manage all elements of their extended workforce (not just staff aug). Often enabled by VMS or extended workforce solutions (and outsourced to MSP offerings), Best-in-Class businesses have integrated capabilities into their programs that include resource-tracking, milestone and delivery date visibility, full sourcing and bidding processes, and other processes required to manage what is often considered the largest chunk of non-employee workforce spend.
Nearly 75% of Best-in-Class businesses have a direct sourcing program in place today. Direct sourcing has become synonymous with the continued evolution of talent; businesses that desire true organizational and workforce agility are actively harnessing the power of talent pools (and injecting those candidates into enterprise recruitment streams) as a viable means of reducing talent acquisition costs, ensuring top-tier skillsets and expertise, and structuring a truly dynamic workforce. Direct sourcing allows a business to leverage its culture and brand to attract top-tier candidates that are easily engaged for future projects and initiatives. In a world that has become more digitized (especially in the HR and talent arenas), direct sourcing is becoming a differentiator for the Best-in-Class businesses that actively pursue workforce agility.
Seventy percent (70%) of Best-in-Class organizations are currently leveraging a “hybrid” talent acquisition model that utilizes equal parts digital and RPA-led processes (such as artificial intelligence and bots) and traditional human-led strategies and support. This hybrid approach ensures that aspects like repeatability, speed, and efficiency are top-of-mind in talent engagement efforts, while the human elements can deter unconscious bias in any digital talent acquisition initiatives. This differentiator is also a major reason why Best-in-Class businesses have thrived in challenging times; next-level digitization on the front end enables agility, while the human touch on the back end ensures that core cultural objectives are met.
Nearly 60% of Best-in-Class businesses currently have the ability to drive total talent intelligence within their programs. As explained earlier in this chapter, total talent intelligence is an incredible differentiator, as it helps businesses determine which candidates and which types of talent are the best fit for a new role, position, or project based on deep total talent data. More Best-in-Class programs are enabled with the required capabilities to execute informed and intelligence-led talent decisions in a real-time and dynamic manner…which, in essence, is the core of true business agility.

In looking at Best-in-Class organizations, the key to success is multifaceted and wide-spanning: embrace the evolution of talent, tap into both traditional and progressive platforms, and leverage next-generation strategies to best align the workplace environment with the best-fit talent and skillsets. Top-performing organizations are leading the next era of work optimization because they are actively adapting to the major shifts in the talent and work arena while also cultivating a culture of agility and flexibility.