The Future of Talent in the Contingent Workforce - CXC …cxcglobal.com/whitepapers/tfotinthecw.pdf · The Future of Talent in the Contingent Workforce Introduction ... ing services

The Future of Talent in the Contingent Workforce

http://www.zenithtalent.com/

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Introduction

Tomorrow’s Talent 3

The Rise and Importance of Contingent Labor

The Novelty of Full-Time Employment 5

The Myth of Permanent Employment 6

The Future of Business

Leveling the Pyramid 8

What Does the Future Business Model Look Like? 11

The Future of Talent

Workers of the Future 13

Rise of Generations Y and Z 14

Mobility 17

Careers of the Future 19

Conclusion 21




Introduction

TOMORROW’S TALENT

What is the future of talent? For that matter, what is the nature of talent? Across the ages, workers have pioneered ways to achieve equilibrium between satisfying the requirements of their employers and providing for their families, while preserving a sense of independence, individuality and equity in the arrangements. We will soon see new structures and models rise to greet a fresh breed of talent with new ideas, new principles, new skills, new approaches and new innovations that will redefine the global business land-scape in the coming era. We are standing at the precipice of this epoch, this very instant, watching the future of talent stirring. The world of tomorrow will be transformed by talent through the transformation of talent.

In the 21st century, with the entrance of Generations X, Y and Z into the workforce, we are seeing a renaissance of values that emphasize freedom and entrepreneurialism, with unique twists and nuances that will define the future of talent. Just as businesses need the freedom to ramp up or down with demands that veer rapidly in different directions, so do workers. They seek the same liberties and options as they strive toward greater levels of inde-pendence, control, work-life balance and the ability to pursue different career avenues.

We have arrived at the threshold of the next big thing, an exciting talent revolution that promises untold benefits to employers, consumers, the economy and the talent that fuels it. The workforce today is becoming more indirect: contingent workers, project-

we are seeing a renaissance of values that emphasize freedom and entrepreneurialism




based contractors, freelancers and supertemps have taken their place as permanent fixtures in our business landscape. That trend will continue, and we will witness a decoupling of talent and employers. The workforce of tomorrow will not just be contingent, it will be fiercely entrepreneurial and competitive.

The pyramidal composition of business will flatten, giving way to clustered and self-directed working teams. Talent will be mobile – always connected and online, immediately deployable, deliver-ing services around the world from a virtual office. Employers will become consumers of self-directed talent. Their profits will soar as the burdens of operational overhead and employee management fade away. Workers will have more control of their assignments, their employer-clients and their opportunities. Staffing suppliers will evolve beyond sourcing, recruiting and placing talent to as-sume elevated roles as mentors and curators for driving efficien-cies in the online marketplaces where talent and businesses meet.

Now, let’s explore how far we’ve come and where we will be when the new world dawns.

Talent will be mobile – always connected and

online, immediately deployable, delivering

services around the world from a virtual office.




The Rise and Importance of Contingent Labor

THE NOVELTY OF FULL-TIME EMPLOYMENT

Traditional employment: a relatively recent concept

The modern notion of an employee is precisely that: modern. The labor movement as we think of it today grew out of the need to protect the common interests of the nation’s expanding workforce. The impetus sprang from industrialization. Prior to the adoption of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (FLSA), workers functioned as independent contractors. They were responsible for their own benefits, their own taxes, and they worked under limited standards for hours, job security and wages.

Today, one-third of the American workforce is again populated by varying iterations of indirect workers: approximately 42.6 million contractors, agency temps, independent consultants, freelancers and others, according to the Government Accountability Office’s most recent assessment. This trend has shown no signs of slowing since the production of the report. Why? Because as the nature of commerce has changed, so has the nature of talent. In both contexts, economic and vocational, the dynamics have adjusted to embrace flexibility, mobility, global diversity and scalability.

One-third of today’s American workforce is populated by varying iterations of indirect workers: contractors, agency

temps, independent consultants, freelancers and others

million 42.6


http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d06656.pdf



THE MYTH OF PERMANENT EMPLOYMENT

We’re all contingent workers

“The traditional model of lifetime employment, so well-suited to periods of relative stability, is too rigid for today’s networked age,” writes LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman in his latest book The Alliance.

A contingent labor force is defined as “a provisional group of workers who work for an organization on a non-permanent basis.” The reality, then, is that everyone is a contingent worker. And that’s not going to change.

“In the at-will era,” Hoffman asserts, “employees have been encouraged to think of themselves as ‘free agents,’ seeking out the best opportunities for growth and changing jobs whenever better offers beckoned.”

“Few American companies can provide the traditional career

ladder for their employees anymore; the model is in varying

degrees of disarray globally.” ~Reid Hoffman




Supertemps

In 2012, Harvard Business Review noted another paradigm shift in contingent labor, this time ushering in the rise of the “supertemp.” Over a decade ago, renowned workplace author Daniel Pink evan-gelized the concept of a coming “free agent nation,” where the workforce reverted back to the independent nature of the pre- FLSA years. Of course, we’re already witnessing that realization of his vision. One interesting wrinkle is the supertemp, however, a rarified inhabitant of the freelance landscape with executive-level qualifications, experience, acumen and education.

For today’s top talent, the constraints and demands of full-time corporate service no longer justify the sacrifices to social and familial obligations. People are returning to the doctrine of work-ing to live, not living to work. Project-based work, for many, has become more attractive than the accepted alternative.

“ Supertemps are top managers and professionals—from lawyers to CFOs to consultants—who’ve been trained at top schools and companies and choose to pursue project-based careers independent of any major firm. They’re increasingly trusted by corporations to do mission-critical work that in the past would have been done by permanent employees or established outside firms. New intermediaries have sprung up to create a market for such marquee talent. Supertemps are growing in number, and we think they’re on the verge of changing how business works.”


http://hbr.org/2012/05/the-rise-of-the-supertemp/ar/1



The Future of Business

LEVELING THE PYRAMID

We have entered the Communications Age. This era will continue to expand and evolve with the future of talent, because this is also the age of knowledge, the computer, the Internet. Increasingly, businesses are no longer valuing their assets in terms of widgets and capital, they are measuring the information possessed by emerging talent. This is why organizations have begun investing heavily in education and training. Yet, it also creates a greater degree of uncertainty and volatility for employers with more control being gained by workers. Thought-leading talent recog-nize their worth. And their ability to choose new employers rises with the demand for what they know.

Self-directed team models: concentric vs. pyramidal

The model of self-directed teams allows managers to flourish in this capacity. One important aspect of self-directed teams is that they are not created from a pool of members exclusive to the department involved in or affected by the project. Employees from other departments have skills, knowledge, abilities and experience that may ideally suit the project. For example, a member of Marketing and a member of Customer Care may have the skills necessary to assist in an Operations project. Teams, therefore, may be comprised of members from overlapping departments who are tasked with a specific project or issue.

organizations have begun investing

heavily in education and training




Clusters

So what does this have to do with the future of talent? Everything. As businesses reshape their operations to agile models of client- centric, self-directed teams, they focus more on the aspects of project-based work – of clusters, an idea championed last year by Dave Aron, vice president of the Gartner CIO Research group. The future of talent, Aron prophesied, will spring from clusters.

• Clusters are populated by talent with established shared values, work practices, tools, roles and identified strengths or proficiencies.

• Clusters seek disparate skills, experiences, personalities, values and fields to ensure high performance, a robust offering and to instill balance, which fosters consensus in ideas.

• Clusters are self-managed: the cluster hires and fires members internally, governs itself, resolves conflicts, develops sustainable practices and tools and manages its interactions and engage-ment with other clusters serving the customer.

The values delivered by clusters closely mirror the best practices and ideals of self-directed teams.

• Higher levels of business performance through high motivation: purpose, autonomy and mastery drive performance.

• Higher levels of business performance through a custom work environment: clusters blossom around the varied and unique skills of the talent, and they are unencumbered by the typical bureaucracy of corporate structures; they fulfill diverse needs.

• Cost effective talent management: the cluster removes the burden of team and individual worker management from the business.

• Greater employee satisfaction: because clusters are small and congressional, the talent develops a greater sense of kinship with other members, retains a sense of autonomy, and works to bolster the development of peers in the group.

Aron predicts that “by 2020, 30 percent of the work will be performed by permanently employed, self-managed clusters.”




Clusters empower talent

Companies that have abandoned top-down hierarchical structures empower their talent to exercise greater degrees of initiative, alignment with internal and external customer needs, and assume more personal accountability for their performance. In this new business context, the working needs of employees begin to meld seamlessly with psychological and social drivers. This is particularly crucial because the workforce of the near future will be sculpted from the clay of the Millennial Generation, those young individuals who spurred the revolution of social media. In fact, we can rede-fine and renovate Abraham Maslow’s landmark hierarchy of needs to this new theory of human motivation.

These themes were most recently echoed at the June 2014 IESE HR Think Tank gathering in Barcelona, Spain. HR’s role in the future of talent must be transformative.

Self-Actualization Taking responsibility for one’s own actions and earning trust. A feeling of ownership, pride and accountability for outcomes. A sense that every stakeholder is part of the greater process and holds equal gain and loss for the work, not just a delegate far down the chain of command. A defined and shared sense of morality, creativity, spontaneity, problem solving, lack of prejudice and embracing of facts.

Esteem Understanding how the work relates to the realization of the company’s ultimate goals. Recognition for a job well done. The chance to achieve results that surpass expecta-tions, not merely meet standards.

Love/Belonging Being treated as business partners and sharing equity in some form. Opportunities to grow and learn, with paths to positions of greater responsibility and organizational value. Working with colleagues whose goals, professionally and personally, are aligned.

Safety A healthy working environment: clean, well-lit, adequate spaces; people who care and who communicate honestly and openly.

Physiological The tools, resources, and proper equipment needed to perform the work. Equitable compensation, linked not to tenure or rank but to performance.




WHAT DOES THE FUTURE BUSINESS MODEL LOOK LIKE?

Constellations in a galaxy of business

In space, our galaxy is filled with star clusters – globular groups of stars that typically contain few members that are gravitationally bound together. These stellar communities are spherically gathered and distributed across the galactic plane within spiral arms. If they become unbound, or when newly formed stars enter the group, the constituent stars continue to move in similar paths through space. In many ways, these stellar associations mirror the transfor-mative progress of work and talent that we’ve explored so far.

The contingent workforce is not only a new permanent reality, it’s going to keep growing and maturing. In the next two years alone, the average share of the contingent workforce will grow from 18 percent to 20 percent. When you put all the pieces and players together, you begin to see the future universe of flexible talent and businesses unfurling.




Tomorrow’s stellar associations

The Changing World Today

Businesses organize around their clients’ needs in self-directed teams, disbanding the singular and “set-in-stone” task-oriented department structure. Managers become team specialists and coaches responsible for supporting the team, not dictating to it.

Business mentors or team managers expose people to liberal amounts of feedback about their work. The practice goes so far as to encourage the junior workers to offer feedback and critiques to the senior coaches, in terms of work on a specific project or issue.

The clustered business environment fosters alignment between individual objectives and those of the organization to increase productivity.

The World of Tomorrow

Clustered teams of specialized contingent workers, contractors, freelancers, and independent consultants organize around a client’s needs, providing flexible and on-demand support for optimized business operations as well as mission-critical projects and processes. The consumer and the worker begin to decouple with the recent advent of online staffing platforms. With increasing frequency, these freelance marketplaces are enabling workers to sell their services directly to individual customers, not businesses.

The popularity, effectiveness and directness of online staffing will likely render the traditional role of staffing companies obsolete. They will instead evolve as job market and talent curators that align to provide overall program management, reporting, analytics, compliance and guid-ance to the clustered teams as partners in the solution – not owning them, dictating them or controlling them.

Staffing providers and Managed Service Providers (MSP) function as client liaisons while supporting contingent talent teams as communicators, mentors and advocates, with unparalleled access to critical data through Vendor Management System (VMS) tools, other Human Resource Information Systems (HRIS) or Enterprise Resource Platforms (ERPs). Staffing suppliers, workers, MSPs, and clients have respective portals to these systems, allowing universal data input, communications, reporting, metrics and performance tracking, etc.

The very nature of contingent arrangements – with the autonomy, self-direction and control they afford – inherently supports the objectives of the talent within each cluster, who in turn can focus their skills and attention entirely on completing the task at hand. The fallacy of multi-tasking, widely proven to be counterproductive to work, is replaced by a highly efficient system of concentrated single-tasking. In Michigan State’s most recent research on the subject, analysts discovered that one three-second interruption to a student working on a computer led to double the mistakes.




The Future of Talent

WORKERS OF THE FUTURE

The crystal ball may be a mirror

Earlier in this book, we briefly glimpsed the future of talent by peering into the crystal ball of labor statistics and probabilities. What we saw could be described as “back to the future.” As we push ourselves to adapt to tomorrow’s needs and to resculpt our business models, we also rewind. It’s a bit of a time paradox where the old adage rings true: history is cyclical. So who are the workers of the future? According to the U.S. Department of Labor, “many of them will be older versions of ourselves.”

• Over half the population of 2030 are alive today.• In the next 50 years the U.S. population is estimated to grow by

nearly 50 percent, from about 275 million in the year 2000 to 394 million by 2050.

• Over 96 million Americans will be under the age of 17 in 2050, while the elderly will grow to represent 20 percent of the population, particularly as life expectancy is presumed to rise from 76 years to 82 years.

This demographic phenomenon is not exclusively relegated to the United States – according to the United Nations, the median age in the developing world will also increase globally. Around the word, the median age of workers in developed nations will be an unprec-edented 50 years. And in the developing world, the median age will climb to 35 years.

• Immigration is a huge factor in future population density: the government expects 820,000 immigrants to arrive annually in the United States, and two out of three, or about 67 percent, will have reached working age when they land.

• By 2050, immigration will have contributed to a population increase of 80 million people.


http://www.dol.gov/oasam/programs/history/herman/reports/futurework/report/pdf/ch1.pdf



RISE OF GENERATIONS Y AND Z

At 77 million strong, Millennials represent 24 percent of the total U.S. population. They spawned the social media movement and will continue to drive its evolution into the future; in fact, they are the architects responsible for laying the groundwork that will become the world of tomorrow. Their independence and entrepre-neurial spirit will infuse every aspect of the look and feel of tomor-row’s workforce. The values they hold dear will be instilled in their children and grandchildren. So the future of talent will be shaped and guided by the principles Millennials espouse and promote.

Millennials lack the same attachment to the idea of a career or the willingness to operate in static corporate environs. Growing up in the chaos of the worst economic climate since the Great Depression, they have become chaos-tolerant – they accept and embrace the vagaries of change. They are heralding the return of a work-force propelled by freelancers, contractors, consultants and independents. The generations they themselves engender will be tomorrow’s supertemps.




Virtual job markets

Online staffing platforms have become the next frontier in the journey to the future, particularly as businesses abandon top-down management structures in favor of scalable, clustered oper-ating models. Online staffing solutions provide buyers – business enterprises as well as direct consumers – with on-demand and pre-qualified talent. They allow freelancers and self-employed service providers – from plumbers to physicians – to peddle their wares directly, in a system that encourages open dialog, socializa-tion, community and collaboration – all hallmarks of Millennials.

The entrepreneurial, independent talent in the Millennial generation are driving not only the adoption of these tools but also the antici-pated future demand. More than vendor management systems, direct-hire applicant tracking systems and even social networks, online staffing venues promise to be the primary sources of hiring and job seeking as we look toward the world of tomorrow.

Unlike the oversaturated market of standard job portals, online staffing platforms operate with surgical precision. What makes online staffing truly unique, no matter the number of sources on the market, is the niche nature of these marketplaces. Among the top platforms worldwide, we see consistent trends that bespeak success in the emerging future of business and talent.

Online staffing platforms have become the next frontier in the

journey to the future




They target all buyers of indirect labor, blurring the distinction between small businesses and individual consumers. Sites such as Airtasker in Australia promote the services of independent contractors and freelancers, allowing them to sell cleaning services, courier services, home repair, IT support and more directly to households.

• Many focus on specific regions, appealing to the unique demographic, geographic, linguistic and cultural needs of buyers in those locales.

• Many are vertically focused, advertising only a core set of services and talent that specialize in those jobs. The online company Crew, for example, emphasizes curation and validating high- quality workers who solve demands for web programming, mobile application development and user interfaces.

• Online staffing facilitates the clustered business model of the future, allowing pre-screened and vetted Statement of Work (SOW) contractors or teams to vend their offerings directly to buyers in need.

• As niche providers, online staffing solutions make it infinitely easier for buyers to locate the precise talent they need for projects.

• They drive the contingent model of the future, empowering supertemps like attorneys and doctors to reach buyers directly at more competitive rates.

• More importantly, they meet the needs of Millennials, super-temps and other freelancers who wish to control their work schedules and balance their social obligations with their vocational goals.

Even better, online staffing solutions bring greater value beyond serving as talent marketplaces. They also support that gamut of services needed to enable the performance of superior work. Because they capture a robust array of extensive datasets about workers, projects, job performance, skills, qualifications and reve-nues, they create rich business intelligence systems from which big data can be culled.




MOBILITY

Business without borders, talent without tethers

The future will see a truly global, unified, and connected planet, enabled by the advances and social nature of technology. It’s not a cliché – the Internet really did change everything, in the same way the steam engine did. In both cases, these inventions spurred systems that connected disparate and isolated regions of the world, enabled commerce, created the need for new kinds of talent and pushed the boundaries of work to greater levels of geographic and philosophical mobility.

Interconnectivity between countries will bring diversity and adaptability to the forefront of organizational operations, bolstering the need for cross-cultural competency and virtual collaboration. Business models, now truly multinational, will evolve into super- structured enterprises where social technologies will inspire new forms of production and value generation. And Millennials are already poised for this new, integrated era. They are the most racially and ethnically diverse group in today’s workforce and will continue to be so in the coming decades. The criticality of social capital in this future business environment will also raise the value of interactions-based talent.

The Internet really did change everything,

in the same way the steam engine did




Talent mobility timeline

1970 to 1990Large multinationals are predominantly based in North America and Europe, and are few in number. The industries typically include those reliant on natural resources, such as oil exploration, petroleum pipelines and mining. Talent are dispatched from the main country to perform field work in other parts of the world.

1990 to 2010Offshoring becomes the new mobility model. Low-cost manufacturing becomes the catalyst, yet businesses also begin utilizing Internet- based resources for buying and selling. Companies tap into emerging talent pools in Asia, however mobility is largely confined to commuting, expatriates and some remote assignments.

2010 to 2020Global mobility and virtual operations become the new normal. Talent is fluid and assignments are handled remotely through telecommuting and social platforms. More cooperative, cross-border security and IT infrastructure remove many of the old obstacles. In many developed European nations, such as the United Kingdom, over 20 percent of employees are already working efficiently from home.

2020 and beyondThe freelance Millennials and clustered teams of contingent contractors become the face of business. Assignments are finite and defined by purpose. Work is performed internationally based on the skills and qualifications of the talent, not on location. Clients select employees from virtual marketplaces for specific projects or rotational programs. Contingent labor becomes the norm for businesses around the world in need of short-term support or specialization. Because the world is connected and virtualized, no longer dependent on geography, contingent workers also have more options for and access to assignments. This is particularly relevant considering the emerging markets in Asia and Eastern Europe.

• Socialized technologies enable virtual communications, meetings, file sharing, reporting and team collaboration across time zones.

• Resignation rates among job-hopping Millennials show no signs of slowing.

• Companies today fight to develop innovative strategies for retention. The contingent nature of work and talent will embrace the short-term and mobile traits of this workforce.

• Workers abroad will no longer seek to earn education, skills and experience in the West as emerging markets in China, elsewhere in Asia, and other developing nations begin to rival Western institutions in terms of vocational development and compensation.

• Prospering domestic markets will be open to talent from all corners of the globe as the business culture becomes a purer meritocracy.

• Remuneration based on location will fade away as global systems and international policies align with mobile talent.

• Businesses will enjoy reduced overhead as the need to house workers or pay for travel becomes archaic and is eventually eliminated.




CAREERS OF THE FUTURE

Young as the Millennials may be in the labor force, their impact is already making waves. Their push toward independence will shape the coming generations and the increasingly more contin-gent nature of talent.

• Future talent born from Gen Z will reach unsurpassed levels of mobility and demand socialized communication vehicles to support their nomadic lifestyles.

• They want interaction and dialog but not intrusion.• Successful recruiting will require honesty and confidence.• The talent of tomorrow will not be enticed to jobs that demand

office presences or static schedules.

Attracting the talent of tomorrow

The online staffing platforms of today will become the primary recruitment tools of tomorrow as talent collectives. The members of each unique online talent marketplace share common skills, goals, motivations and behaviors. Integrated social media tools will be prominent, standardized functions for facilitating all inter-actions. As talent transforms, we will likely witness the rise of a passive workforce, defined by evergreen job orders, the develop-ment of virtual candidate benches and redeployment of known former employees in supertemp roles.

Capturing the interest of our future talent will require piquing their attention, keeping them engaged and presenting an offer alluring enough to win them over without breaking the bank. Success in online “cold calling” through social networks requires a great deal more than a fearless attitude, stamina and ability to post messages; it requires preparation, a deep understanding of branding and unparalleled expertise in the best practices of sourc-ing -- the world in which staffing partners will live and thrive as curators between talent and employers.

Staffing professionals know how to promote the job and convey its exceptional qualities. The work must come across as intriguing




and compelling as possible to sell the candidate on the job. Staffing experts are adept at creating performance profiles that define the job – its rewards, opportunities and challenges. Hiring managers will no longer have the time to conduct exploratory interviews and pore over resumes. And as consumers become direct buyers of contingent talent, they may not understand all the nuances involved in the hiring process. Engaging a skilled staffing curator will demystify the process and allow companies to build a virtual bench of all-stars to fill critical needs as they arise. Staffing curators know how to instill knowledge and an accompanying sense of confidence in describing jobs to the passive candidates of the future. They understand the unique differences in sourcing, assessing, recruiting and hiring processes for this top talent.

Talent collectives

• Staffing curators will provide collectives with meaningful, rele-vant and engaging content to keep the interest of members as prospective talent for buyers.

• Staffing curators will facilitate interactions between talent collective members that include discussions, client and product reviews, criticisms, suggestions and the otherwise free exchange of ideas. For buyers, email blasts and notifications will be ignored by members of the collective. Anyone who is hiring will need to become a part of the interactions. Demonstrating knowledge, a compelling offer and creativity will earn respect and win the day.

Engaging a skilled staffing curator will demystify the process and allow companies to build a virtual bench of all-stars to fill critical needs as they arise.




CONCLUSION

Just as businesses need the freedom to ramp up or down with demands that veer rapidly in different directions, so do workers. They seek the same liberties and options as they strive toward greater levels of independence, control, work-life balance and the ability to pursue different career avenues. History, it would seem, is about to come full circle with the rise of talent who actively seek flexibility, freedom, autonomy, community, connectedness and innovation. The future of talent will see pyramidal business struc-tures topple and make way for fluid, concentric business models where consumers, talent buyers and talent are decoupled. Staffing firms and MSPs will also transform, utilizing their recruitment and sourcing skills to curate the job marketplace exchanges, taking a more active role in developing talent relationships and mentoring teams – not just filling headcounts. The future workforce will emphasize both a spirit of solidarity and independence, where businesses will reach new heights of productivity with talent who share and drive the values of entrepreneurialism, scalability, agility and a pioneering attitude toward new frontiers of commerce.

As a premier staffing company, we’re passionate about putting the very best talent to work for you. Zenith Talent’s unique Crowdstaffing model produces

unrivaled results; delivering talented people, fast submission times, with infinite scalability for high volume hiring needs. We provide nationwide coverage and have expertise in IT, Engineering, and Professional positions

Call us to plan the workforce of tomorrow; we have tomorrow’s talent today.

Contact us at 844-467-2300 or request talent at zenithtalent.com/request-staffing


http://www.zenithtalent.com/request-staffing

Zenith Talent3315 San Felipe Road, Suite 37San Jose, CA 95135

Tel: 844-467-2300Fax: 408-705-1953Web: zenithtalent.com

Sunil Bagai, CEOTel: [email protected]

Len April, Vice PresidentTel: [email protected]


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The Future of Talent in the Contingent Workforce - CXC …cxcglobal.com/whitepapers/tfotinthecw.pdf · The Future of Talent in the Contingent Workforce Introduction ... ing services