Rob's Blog: Divergence and Convergence

Last week I was invited to join a discussion on “MSP 2.0: Navigating the New Terrain of Workforce Solutions” at the TALiNT Partners Talent Solutions Conference

Moderator Ray Chambers asked “What does the future of Contingent Workforce Management (CWM) look like”

So, what do I see as the main trends?

Convergence in demand

Traditionally most organizations had a “permanent/employee” and a “temporary” workforce and each was viewed separately with limited cross over in visibility or utilization. In many organizations each population was managed through a separate process and systems and under different policies and owners.

Nowadays, rather than specifying a demand for a Permanent hire, Temp, Freelancer or Services/SOW progressive organizations are outlining the ‘work to be done’ and the “skills” needed to deliver that work without a predetermined answer of what type of worker, or workers, are best to fulfil it.

Divergence of supply

In contrast to the internal convergence in how organizations see work there is a divergence in the way people engage in work.

Historically when someone wanted to find work they applied directly to an organisation of via an agency as an intermediary. Conversely if an organisation was looking for from talent it could be assured of connecting with most of all of the market through these channels

Today there are multiple alternative ways people can find work often building a portfolio career as an employee, temp, contractors, freelancers or service provider.

No one channel can now offer organizations a universal view of the talent market and they must now use an omni channel strategy “meeting people where they are” and “engaging them how they want to be engaged”

Globalization

Many organizations did, and still do, look at their workforce by location, country or region. While there are still legislative and cultural considerations that have to be addressed locally there is clear benefit in having universal visibility of your workforce - If you can’t see it you can’t influence it.

Organizations are therefore globalizing their approach to how they identify and engage their workforce. This can offer immediate process efficiencies while also providing the data to identify and manage risk and cost exposure.

Long tern those organizations with a truly global approach may be able to increase overall productivity through more efficient and effective use of a single global workforce.

Regulation

While the many and diverse ways organization and people are engaging to get work done has increased opportunity for both it has also created new challenges in managing data, employment rights and tax.

Governments have tried to close tax “loopholes” but in some cases this has resulted in the application of legislation made for the old ways of working to the new ways with varied success. In other instances, “traditional” employment rules designed for a steady state workforce are being applied to the new flexible “gig” economy’.

These changes have increased the workload placed on employers to comply with these regulations while they also having to meet their own internal governance and even protect themselves from new external forces like cyber-attacks.

The skills “nexus”

With the change in both demand and supply combined with increased external control the opportunity, and threat, is how do we manage this complex interaction or “skills nexus” to take advantage of this new market.

The old MSP and SoW/Services Procurement models worked in the old siloed market but a Total Workforce Model is required today.