The Agile Workforce

The year 2018 was an intriguing one for the contingent workforce industry as it saw some unusually big developments. First and foremost were the acquisitions of WorkMarket by ADP and DCR Workforce by Coupa. These acquisitions relate to the two most important areas concerning contingent workforce industry – Total Talent Acquisition (TTA) and Services Procurement respectively. The second major development was on the demographic front where the total number of job openings in the United States surpassed the number of unemployed people. This development is expected to result in increase demand for contingent workers which are already being leveraged extensively by businesses.  Digital transformation was another theme which played out consistently and continuously in the contingent workforce space in 2018 and was more prominent than previous years and is expected to become mainstream in 2019. While increased activity in the contingent workforce industry is encouraging, enterp...

Blockchain can be leveraged across the entire HR value chain starting from recruitment and all the way to retirement. Below are some use cases for blockchain in HR: Recruitment is one of the most important task of an HR department. False information in resumes is one of the biggest problems that recruitment departments face followed by unsuccessful background checks. Blockchain is a distributed, shared digital ledger made up of a chain of verified facts which can’t be tampered. Now in case of HR, these facts can be the educational and professional details of employee. As they are now stored in blockchain, they are impossible to tamper as they are referenced to earlier blocks and are digitally encrypted. Once these details are linked to broader personal and background details of the prospective candidate in government databases, it will become cost effective and highly efficient for HRs to screen candidates and detect fraud. Other key area in HR which can reap the benefits of...

Blockchain is being touted as the greatest invention since the advent of internet. It started with the emergence of Bitcoin, an alternate currency system, which leveraged blockchain as the core concept. While bitcoin was a game changer, companies fast realized that there are broader uses of blockchain which can have ramifications in multiple areas. These, beyond the bitcoin capabilities of blockchain have caught the fancy of the business and the technology world and has resulted in a constant stream of investments pouring in anything and everything related to blockchain. The emergence of bitcoin as an alternate  currency system spearheaded its use in transaction space.  However, once the concept of blockchain got wider acceptance, its alternate uses are dominating the insurance and capital markets domain.  There have been multiple potential use cases and few successful small scale implementations of blockchain ranging from customer facing payment technology to ...

Services procurement spend constitutes a major part of the contingent workforce spend accounting for almost 60% of the ~US$300 billion spend. However, until last few years, this major spend category was hidden from buyers as it was spread across the organization within different department’s individual Statement of Work (SoW) engagements. As buyers realized the quantum and importance of this spend, they became increasingly interested in realizing savings from their consulting engagements, offshore initiatives and other outsourced services typically procured through a statement of work. This interest from buyers led to development of specific technology tools for managing SoW engagements. These tools enabled the organizations to have a centralized view of their services procurement spend and relieved them of the pain of managing these processes through compartmentalized and basic methods. There is no doubt that these technology tools have provided organizations suitable opt...

Contingent labor in all its forms has been a constant presence in any organization’s staffing plans. However, due to economic uncertainties, changing preferences of millennials and technological advances, the use of contingent labor has increased considerably. This has resulted in contingent labor becoming a more integrated piece of the overall workforce. Due to this, it is becoming imperative for organizations to focus more and more on effective sourcing and management of this workforce. Until past few years, only temporary workers constituted a large part of the contingent workforce. There were staffing agencies which employed these temporary workers and enterprises either managed these staffing agencies internally or they outsourced this management of staffing agencies to MSPs. MSP model became really effective for managing this temporary labor as it saved enterprises a lot of time and money that went into gruesome task of managing staffing agencies. As new ways of engagi...

Talent shortage has been a consistent theme while talking to talent acquisition practitioners across multiple industries and in different continents. It is confusing as well as interesting that whether it is the global recession of the past decade or the strong employments numbers this year, employers continually face talent issues. However, after going a bit deeper, one can understand that firstly, the shortage is for qualified and skilled talent and secondly, it’s the enterprise lack of expertise in attracting and engaging the workers which is leading to these talent issues. While enterprises realized that the scarcity problem is perennial, they focused their energies on engaging and attracting talent. This resulted in emergence and adoption of employer branding as a potent weapon for organizations in their fight against talent attraction and retention. In recent years, employer branding has gained lot of traction in HR circles and talent organizations looking to attract...