Christopher Dwyer: All right, here we go. Good afternoon, everyone. And welcome to our afternoon session. Why the extended workforce is the cornerstone of the future of work. Really excited to be here. My name is Christopher Dwyer, SVP. The future of work exchange. So really excited to be here today. We've got a wonderful discussion. I've got three awesome panelists, two that are going to come in at the second half of the webinar and talk a little bit about why the extended workforce is so critical to this future of work.

Christopher Dwyer: So like I said, quick introductions, we'll get those out of the way really quick. We talk a little bit about the state of today's extended workforce, how much it's grown and really it's its true link to the future of the work movement. I've got some awesome discussions around the future of work itself and how it's impacting the way we all optimize how we get work done.

Christopher Dwyer: Like I said, round table discussion, really excited for that. And then time permits questions. If you have any, you know, we've got, you know, three distinguished panelists here as well as myself that have been in the industry for a long time. So, any questions at all about anything we're talking about, throw those in.

Christopher Dwyer: We're happy to discuss those. So, if you don't know a lot about me or ardent or the future of work exchange I've been an industry analyst for 16 years now. I've been Arden partners for almost a decade and just last summer we launched probably the biggest project that I've been a part of personally and professionally called the future of work exchange.

Christopher Dwyer: And it's at www.futureofworkexchange.com. And it really is the industry's dedicated destination site for all things related to the future of work. So it's not just related to talent acquisition, or contingent workforce management, but really the evolution of the extended workforce, remote and hybrid work, empathy at work, mental well-being, mental wellbeing of your workforce.

Christopher Dwyer: Digital workspaces we had an article, the other work day workweek. Think about all of the very interesting facets of the future of work. And chances are that we will cover them in the future of work exchange. And you can visit that at futureofworkexchange.com. Little bit about me. I mean, I'll go through this really quick.

Christopher Dwyer: Let's just say that I've been doing this a really long time. Well, we'll make that one really quick. All right. So the state of today's extended workforce you know, a lot of folks usually ask me, know, Chris I hear the phrase extended workforce a lot. I grew up with the phrase contingent labor contingent workforce.

Christopher Dwyer: Why do we need another phrase and the way that I always say it is that when something grows so phenomenally. When something becomes such a powerhouse in the world of business and in the world of work and talent it goes, obviously it goes through a really really robust transformation.

Christopher Dwyer: And that's what we've seen today's , to today's contingent workforce. And so I like to define. The extended workforce really is the natural evolution of the contingent workforce. Right? And so, the contingent workforce was always a part of enterprise and workforce agility. And today really given the technology that we have given the new strategies that we have given the growth of the contingent workforce, it's only natural that we use this phrase.

Christopher Dwyer: The extended workforce, because it does reflect all the advancements that we've seen in staffing and talent acquisition and in contingent workforce management. And so, sometimes I use the phrase agile workforce and extended workforce sort of interchangeably, but to me, extended workforce really encapsulates fully where our contingent workforce is today and where it will be tomorrow.

Christopher Dwyer: So I'm talking about workforce priorities. I think it's always a good sort of stage setter for going to be talking about the extended workforce in the future of work at some level. But you know, we found over the course of our 2021 research, our 2022 research is not out yet. We're about to launch that over the next few weeks.

Christopher Dwyer: We saw that businesses, you know, after a full year, In pandemic times they were really focused on a multitude of things, but the top two were agility and technology and obviously the link between the two. And so, the transformed, the transformation of of business into a more agile organization tells me that, you know, obviously, you know, we, we knew in early, I mean, if you could go back to the early, early, early 2020, Probably about two years ago, right now you hearing some news out of China about a novel virus, right.

Christopher Dwyer: But never could we have ever imagined ever that we would be put in the situation that we've been put in the past couple of years. And I even look at those very dark early weeks and early months of the pandemic. And think to myself. Wow. I mean, that's, it was an awful time and a very tragic and a lot of us have, you know, a little bit of PTSD out of you know, those first four or five months that we had to deal with that.

Christopher Dwyer: And you know, with the full year plus under their belts, I think businesses looked back and reflected in our research here that they were more focused on agility, more than anything else. And really what that meant was. Anything that happens to our business. We want to be able to respect, react in an on-demand way dynamically and in real time.

Christopher Dwyer: And obviously that has an incredible link to what we call the extended workforce. Also the agile workforce and the other really big workforce priority that I thought was amazing was addressing the technology gaps in the coverage of the total workforce. You know, there are certain businesses.

Christopher Dwyer: Didn't survive. There are a lot of businesses that thrived and there were a lot of businesses sort of in-between that it was more of a roller coaster, right. You know, up and down where they had a skill up, they had a skill down based on market conditions and based on sort of the, again, the rollercoaster effect of that, of the pandemic, you know, the first year plus.

Christopher Dwyer: And so it was really interesting to note that you know, technology played a big part in that, you know, how do we find talent? When and where we need it. How do we understand where our workers are, what they're working on? I mean, it must've driven business leaders crazy over those, you know, from March, 2020 and through the end of that summer you know, to just maybe just not know what was happening and in a multi location business, right.

Christopher Dwyer: Where am I workers? What are they working on? Are they in a hotspot? What happens if I have to shut down a factory or a warehouse and so on and so forth. And so, really interesting again, to see those be the priorities for businesses today when it comes to talent and work. And so, a lot of folks usually ask me as well, Chris, you know, the future of work is very.

Christopher Dwyer: Very dynamic, very dynamic phrase, right? It means many different things to many different people. And I know the text is kind of small there. You may not be able to see it, but to me, the future of work is literally the strategic optimization of how work gets done through the evolution of various strategies and technologies and approaches.

Christopher Dwyer: And so I look at it through many different lenses, whether it's how companies are optimizing actual physical work itself whether remote work, hybrid work, digital workspaces using RPA bots having innovative workplace structures, whether it's talent itself through the agile workforce, the extended workforce, whether it's the utilization of AI and data, whether it's improving things like recruitment marketing, or leveraging the employer brand.

Christopher Dwyer: Obviously DE&I very critical as well. And of course transformation of both business leadership. So thinking in an empathetic way thinking with a more more flexible foot forward and of course, tech and innovation, right. You know, all of the wonderful solutions out there that I'm sure many of you are learning about over the course of the next 10, you know, the next few days of this conference where You know, technology and innovation are really paving a way for businesses to get talent, get better talent and faster, get work done more effectively and sort of assist with the transformation of overall business.

Christopher Dwyer: So, there's multiple cornerstones of the future of work. Obviously we sort of homed in a little bit on the extended workforce and we're going to get to that in a minute, but I felt that there's so much happening in our industry today that there are technically multiple cornerstones.

Christopher Dwyer: And so the first one I want to talk about is direct sourcing and something that I've started to call direct sourcing 2.0. You look at the value of direct sourcing, how hot it really became a couple of years ago over the course of 2020, 2021. And going into 2022, a lot of folks are sort of super pumped about being educated about direct sourcing, understanding how it can fit into their organization and the impact that it can have.

Christopher Dwyer: And the way that I looked at direct sourcing was even pre pandemic times, you're looking at a pretty pretty standard set of processes and strategies, you know, looking at talent curation. Talent pool development, talent pool segmentation looking at some collaboration and nurture of candidates, and then integrating all of that into your recruitment streams, right?

Christopher Dwyer: Whether it's your extended workforce system, your VMS, whatever platform that you're using you know, to pop open new requisitions and find talent. But I really thought about some of the other solutions and platforms and the other new ways of thinking that were impacting direct sourcing and came up with this idea called direct sourcing 2.0, you know, I think about digital recruitment marketing the fact that. You know, at the core direct sourcing is allowing a business to become its own recruitment firm and it's allowing it to save money. It's allowing it to find talent faster, better, more efficiently, more effectively. Why are we not applying digitization to that process?

Christopher Dwyer: To help us promote our employer brand help, try to incorporate social media and you sort AI led technology to help us build full pipelines of talent into. Into our organization. The second piece, which I think is really critical skills, assessment and validation obviously has some wonderful tools out there that do a fantastic job of not just skills, assessment and validation, but combating talent fraud helping organizations.

Christopher Dwyer: Identify the core skills and expertise gaps, and whether or not certain workers fit the mold that you're looking for. Maybe it's not just a very simple percentage match. It goes much deeper than that. Again, a big piece of direct sourcing, 2.0, and then advanced talent nurture. I think that this is one of the most critical aspects of direct sourcing 2.0.

Christopher Dwyer: Because it's not just a matter of, Hey, let's reach out to our candidates every other week. It's how we reach out. What time are we reaching out? It's really amazing to know that you can look at analytics to decide like, okay, if we reach out to this segment of our candidate population between 2:00 and 5:00 PM via a simple SMS text, we're going to get a better response than if we did this at 6:00 PM via email, right.

Christopher Dwyer: Advanced talent nurtures are a big piece of direct sourcing 2.0, and then scalability. I mean all of the talk, all the discussions, the talks that I've had around direct sourcing 2.0, really revolves around one thing. And that is, this is a very simple concept of making direct sourcing, repeatable and scalable to get the most impact and the most effective out of it.

Christopher Dwyer: So the second cornerstone are the future of work accelerants. And I know we said we had a section on the future of work. This was one of the sets of findings that I talked about so much throughout the second half of 2021. But it really speaks to just how much our world has been impacted. And if we're in a good way, And how much the future of work movement has really transformed the way we think about work and how we get work done.

Christopher Dwyer: Obviously the first takeaway is a gimme, right? We have a ton more workers working in a remote environment. I wrote an article today on the future of work exchange. On burnout and fatigue in remote workers. And one of the stats that I pointed out was that pre-pandemic around maybe 20 to 22% of the average company's workforce was working in a remote or hybrid capacity throughout 2021, that figure was doubled.

Christopher Dwyer: It was around 42 to 44%, which speaks volumes about how much we've come to really accept and embrace the remote work hybrid work from home distributed teams. Increase utilization of contingent non-employee labor. That's why we're here. That's why we're talking about why the extended workforce is a cornerstone of the future of work, because this has really looked at different ways of scaling up and scaling down based on.

Christopher Dwyer: The conditions of the market at the time. Right. And again, I always use the phrase rollercoaster, I think about, you know, March through, you know, June, July of 2020, I rollercoaster summer things are a little bit better fall. They weren't bad. Again, last winter, terrible spring times, vacs campaigns.

Christopher Dwyer: Things are great. Then Delta comes in. I mean, it's literally been a roller coaster and obviously as a business leader, as a business manager it hasn't really made it so easy to understand their workforce ramifications of that. And so one of the things that I've been writing about the past couple of years is the fact that the extended workforce has been there to provide scalability.

Christopher Dwyer: It's been there to provide some level of support. Through times when businesses knew they needed help, they knew they needed the staff, but they couldn't hire back the 2 or 300 workers that they had to lay off or whatever your percentage of their workforce wasn't working for them anymore. Flexibility, empathy.

Christopher Dwyer: I mean, those have become really critical aspects of our world of work. The fact that you know, we as business leaders, if we're in that position, We need to manage our stuff in a more human, more emotional way. Right. I always think of the people that we're dealing with, you know, very young children who had to handle no daycare, maybe it was remote learning.

Christopher Dwyer: Maybe they had sick relatives that were, you know, dealing with COVID or related illness. Just think about the, sort the cross-section there between personal and professional rights workers were going through a lot. And having more empathy there. And the bit on the leadership side goes a long way.

Christopher Dwyer: So, some really interesting features of work accelerant. And then that sort of leads me into my next point transformation of leadership. Right. One reason why the future of work has become such a hot phrase to utilize is that it doesn't just speak to technology and innovation. I mean, I think that a lot of folks up until the past year or so had always equated the future of work with just we're just technology, innovation, automation, tech, and innovation, and newer platforms and platforms enhancing themselves. That is a big piece that is another cornerstone of the future of work, but also the strategic elements, the non-technological components play a big role more inclusion, you know, more DE&I baked into an integrated into what we're doing from a talent acquisition perspective promoting a more inclusive workplace environment ensuring that again, our leaders are leading with empathy, understanding the perspectives of workers You know, having the way we manage our staff be founded on flexibility.

Christopher Dwyer: It's so funny. I always joke. You know, the CEO of Google sometime over the summer, last year and said, well, the future of work is a, is flexibility. And I go, oh, damn, I've been saying that for seven or eight years. He stole that from me. But flexibility really is a big cornerstone for the future of work.

Christopher Dwyer: The idea that we have to think strategically about our workforce, our workplace, and how we're managing our staff and flexibility is not baked in. We're not going to survive. And then finally the impact of the extended workforce, the reason we're all here at this session today. And I thought that this was amazing.

Christopher Dwyer: I mean, I remember some of my earliest days as an analyst in this space looking at sort of, you know, maybe 16 years ago, this would have been the impact of contingent labor since that was a hot term used back then. But The number one impact area would have been cost savings. It would have been okay.

Christopher Dwyer: Well, allows us to, you know, shorter engagements, no benefits, a lot easier for us to, you know, to, to pay for our staff if we're not paying them for full-time hours. Right. But it's really interesting to see the growth and the impact of the extended workforce. And one stat that will bring out is that. Pre pandemic around 43% of the average organization's total workforce was considered non-employee extended.

Christopher Dwyer: And now we're looking at, you know, throughout 2020 and into 2021. Now with two years, hindsight is behind. We see that 47% of the average company's workforce is considered contingent or non-employee or extended in some manner. That's huge. That's huge. I mean, if I told you 10 years ago that at some point nearly half of your workforce will be considered contingent it'd be freelancers contractors, gig workers, temp, staff, professional services. A lot of people would have laughed. Right. But now we're at a point where I'm sure when I have new data this year. We're going to see that we're getting to that threshold at 50% threshold. So I'm really excited to see the figures through the end of 2021.

Christopher Dwyer: But again, the extended workforce, a big reason why it's the cornerstone of the future of work is that it is supporting those bigger themes. Scalability. Flexibility, business continuity in contributing to how companies are getting work done. So, want to bring in our esteemed panelists here, we have an awesome discussion.

Christopher Dwyer: We've got some great questions to chat about. Want to welcome Neha Goel, VP of Marketing at Utmost. Neha. Thanks for joining us.

Neha Goel: Hey, Chris. Thanks for having me. Yeah, just a quick introduction. My name is Neha . I am the VP of marketing at Upmost, as Chris said. If you're not familiar with Utmost, it's the first extended workforce system, we offer a complete next gen VMS capabilities to manage every category of talent in any geography.

Neha Goel: And like Chris I've been in the industry for a long time. My industry, my background in the VMS space led marketing for or consulted with many of the technology providers out there, along with the MSPs and. So great to be here. 

Christopher Dwyer: Great. Thanks Neha. Thanks for joining us. And we have Cesar Jimenez, CEO and co-founder of myBasepay. Caesar.

Christopher Dwyer: Thanks for joining us, my brother. 

Cesar Jimenez: Yes. Thank you for having me. I'm excited about this. Just a little bit myself, like, like probably everybody else say Chris, I've been in industry for a very long time. You know, see you in myBasepay, you know, he knows enough to be familiar with myBasepay. We are already an employer reconciliations platform.

Cesar Jimenez: So we're here. We're happy to hear. We're happy to hear that you contributed to today's session. 

Christopher Dwyer: Great. And also joining us gentlemen that I've known for a very long time and excited to see his face today. Mr. Mark Brodsky, VP of sales at Glider. 

Mark Brodsky: Hi chris. Good to see you. And yeah, just a quick kind of summary of me.

Mark Brodsky: So I spent the last 14 years running sales regionally for a large VMS provider and have. I spent the last year and a quarter with Glider AI. So we're the leading assessment provider in the space. So I run sales and partnerships for Glider. 

Christopher Dwyer: Great. Well, Cesar ,Neha, Mark. Thank you guys for joining us.

Christopher Dwyer: We're going to dive right in and we've got a ton of awesome questions. The first one is how do you see the extended workforce impacting the future of work. Neha we'll leave you here. 

Neha Goel: Yeah. So I think just like you had mentioned in your research, right? And your research has shown that the train of extended workforce, it's basic, it's growing in importance.

Neha Goel: And I think there's every reason to believe that it's going to exceed traditional employment the next year, next two years, and then growth in that population. That's going to impact so many of those different aspects of the future of work that you'd talk about in your report. But to me, I'm thinking particularly of the process and technologies that we use to engage that talent, like the population of talent.

Neha Goel: So it makes sense that the people's strategy is going to have to be. To include that extended workforce at its central. A lot of times right now that workforce is at the periphery. It needs to become part of the center, just like the employee population or the full-time permanent population. And since that construct is something that we don't generally do in traditional VMS is range our systems because of the way they were.

Neha Goel: I think we're going to have a lot of tech innovation coming out.

Cesar Jimenez: Yes. Great contact. Great question. You know, from a long time when Neha was mentioned, I believe that the adoption rate with these new work models is just going to grow. They just maturing a lot faster than ever ability to have organizations to be able to get talent now with talent platforms, you know, the extended workforce, you know, just in general, overall holistic provides a great deal of agility that we all need as organizations need in order to be able to scale up and scale down and also capture that talent quickly.

Cesar Jimenez: So I just, in my opinion, I feel like they're just going to continue to grow and become more mature and be you know, one of the key factors in order for organizations to deliver on their initiatives.

Christopher Dwyer: Great. Mark ?

Mark Brodsky: Yeah. Not to beat a dead horse but you know, certainly, you know, if organizations want to stay competitive, they're going to have to start moving.

Mark Brodsky: Yeah, this extended workforce into more strategic roles within their organizations. I think the reliance on the extended workforce is going to grow and they're going to be less tactical and the role that they play within organizations and they're going to be, they're going to be much more strategic.

Mark Brodsky: You know, there is a massive deficiency right now in supply demand. Supply for quality talent is, you know, short. And so I think we're going to see the other panelist point out a shift to where, you know, the extended workforce is not going to be complimentary, but it's going to become extremely strategic, you know, in the near future.

Christopher Dwyer: Right. Great answers over one. And I'll just add here too, right? I mean, I had said that we're approaching the halfway point, right. Where 50% of the workforce will be considered an extended, mean, I feel that's the biggest impact area right there. All right. Question number two here.

Christopher Dwyer: Digital staffing, talent marketplaces, alternative staffing channels, all impacting how we find talent. How do these sources, how do these channels, these technologies impact talent acquisition in 2022 and Caesar looking at your direction. 

Cesar Jimenez: Sure no, this time when I, you know, best topics that like, are there anything different?

Cesar Jimenez: It's about all different alternative sources to secure talent, right? 

Cesar Jimenez: And I just think they've been around for a couple of years now. I think they've matured. I just think they're going to compete more as organizations. I think also the talent platform out there and marketplaces have also matured as well.

Cesar Jimenez: Like I think they're a little more easier to use today and they're a little bit easier to work with. So I think that's going to help them, you know, roll their roll this line of business, roll these type of channels into more mainstream in

Mark Brodsky: Yeah. I mean we're, well, I think digital staffing technologies, the use of them is up somewhere around 250, 300%, I think with you know, whether it was COVID driven but you know, to, to some of the topics you talked about, you know, I think as the lines of geography, blur, and folks can work. Remotely. I think we're going to see this being a huge strategy and in the usage of these digital staffing technologies and these market houses is going to grow you know, and what organizations are going to start looking to utilize these for is, you know, there is no more brick and mortar kind of geography around finding jobs.

Mark Brodsky: So I think what you're ultimately going to see is, you know, New York based firm sourcing in New Mexico or Boise, Idaho, and going where the talent is. Because especially, you know, if you look at traditionally like the FIS, they, you know, the financial institutions historically have always said, Hey, if you want to work here at the bank, you really have to be within our brick and mortar.

Mark Brodsky: We're a financial institution. I think we're COVID because the teacher has taught the industry that you don't need. In a certain building. See there are core positions that probably need to be by the firewall but in general, I think that COVID has taught us that there may be hotspots for certain talent across the, you know, different geography and so opening up digital marketplaces makes you more competitive to go find that talent.

Mark Brodsky: And you're not limited to a certain geography.

Neha Goel: Yeah. So, I agree with everything that Mark and Caesar said. So I don't want to repeat that. I think the only thing I'll add is that I think we're also going to start seeing some consolidation and I think a lot of the key players out there, they're figuring out how to create these networks and how to connect these large talent pools.

Neha Goel: So I'm really excited about some of the stuff we're going to see as some of the, and even some of the traditional staffing contractor relationships, how they morph into something that's more flexible and more nimble. I'm really excited to see kind of how that progress yet. 

Christopher Dwyer: That's really good. Awesome. Yeah.

Christopher Dwyer: And one thing I'll add here, it's always cool to throw data out there. I think from a period from 2015, up until the end of 2021, we saw that there was a 700% increase in the utilization of talent marketplaces and digital stopping solutions. That's, it's, that's pretty incredible. So, going to see those become even bigger in 2022.

Christopher Dwyer: All right. Question number three. AI, one of my favorite topics, AI, undoubtedly, one of the biggest tech wild cards of 2022, given how powerful it is. How do businesses put it to effective use for extended workforce management? Mr. Brodsky, you can start here. 

Mark Brodsky: Yeah, well obviously give it, given my organization, use it as part of our brand and our name.

Mark Brodsky: Near and dear to the heart. I think the important factor, when you look at AI to consider, is that AI is never going to replace the human element of what we do in the human capital management space. Right. I think what we really, you know, speaking from a Glider perspective, what we were really kind of rest our laurels on is, you know, we're providing data, we're providing some automation, we're increasing confidence in decision-making.

Mark Brodsky: We're never gonna make decisions on behalf of a hiring manager or a program. But the goal of AI is really to provide data and enablement in a quicker, faster, cleaner way so that the predicted outcome of your decision has a higher probability of success than without the AI driven data that you possibly use to make that decision.

Mark Brodsky: So, you know, I do always kind of go back to the fact that we're not trying to replace, or AI will never replace the human element, especially in the talent acquisition. The human capital market, but it shouldn't make you a smarter buyer, a faster buyer and a more successful buyer of humans.

Christopher Dwyer: Great. Neha? 

Neha Goel: Yeah. So first I'll just give a plug to Glider because I am a big fan of the technology. And if you haven't checked out Glider, you should be checking out Glider. But AI, right? It's like, I think it's just gonna impact everything. The full worker life cycle, everything from onboarding performance management.

Neha Goel: I think the workers are going to get more involved as they add their own skills and track them as they work across different projects. And on the other side of it, I think for the enterprise that AI enabled automation, you can have more productivity across the workforce, making connections with people, connecting non-employees, connecting employees, and it's all about, like you said, press getting work done.

Neha Goel: Right. So AI is going to just make that faster. 

Cesar Jimenez: Well really tough followup. Those are two great answers. I will share with you. I have perspective, at least from my lens, from myBasepay lens as an employer record my, how I think TA is going to be able to benefit from it. Now, I believe helping identify talent, you know, a little quicker onboarding talent faster as well. If we can leverage some of that technology to help onboard the talent, you know, the onboarding is your first. It's my first experience with an organization. So anything to do to make investments in that area to make sure it's seamless and quicker, the better. Right. And you know, I would say just, I love to see the technology improve a little bit more from being very agnostic or just unbiased.

Cesar Jimenez: And those are the things that were again, I'm glad to hear the mark mentioned those those comments regarding You know, it's not going to replace the human because that's the business that we're in, but it should just be able to, those analytics should be able to provide, you know, some data, some proven data on tendencies and things like that to help you make better decisions.

Cesar Jimenez: I mean, in sports, I'm a big sports guy. So in baseball they've been using analytics for years and I'm finally gonna apply it into like in talent acquisition community. So it's good to see that we're adapting that type of technology. 

Christopher Dwyer: Right? Cesar forth and one. We do a QB snake. What are we doing? What are the stats?

Cesar Jimenez: It depends. Who's behind the center. 

Christopher Dwyer: You're behind center. My friend. Let me throw a curveball right here. Since we're talking about AI, we're talking about talent acquisition AI being another gateway to total talent management. What do you guys think? 

Mark Brodsky: Well, so, so Chris, you and I have talked about this, right?

Mark Brodsky: Like when I hear like total talent management, there's two really distinct camps, right? Most people use total talent management and they use talent as a right. Talent could be replaced with human body management. And so where I think AI is going to have the largest impact is when you start looking at.

Mark Brodsky: Talent as an adjective, right? Like, like where our proficiencies and skills that an individual brings into an organization are best harnessed. And I think that's where, you know, obviously from a Glider perspective, we really hang our hat to say, understand what you're getting. Right. Just because someone has seven years of experience doing something doesn't mean they're more proficient than someone with two years of experience.

Mark Brodsky: And things like AI you know, really kind of help the fit for purpose you know, and making sure that, again, going back to that supply and demand supplies is, you know, is at all time high and, or I'm sorry, demand is at an all time high and supply is that afforded. And so finding kind of that right fit for the purpose for the project, for the assignment, was becoming more and more critical. And so when I hear total talent management a lot of times I'm thinking about it. All the people within an organization and not really, how do we leverage the talent of this specific individual to make us a more competitive organization?

Christopher Dwyer: Great Neha, Caesar trim in there. 

Neha Goel: Yeah, a little bit about in the past about like Virtual, total talent management start and it's around visibility and intelligence, right? Like knowing who your workforce is, even which for many organizations is a challenge. Like they don't even have that level of detail. I mean, I'm not sure exactly how AI is going to fit into it, but I can definitely see an application to what, just getting that data, like starting with the information and that access to information.

Cesar Jimenez: Yeah. I'm going to have to kind of reiterate what Neha is saying. As far as, you know, the visibility is probably the key factor to help, you know, help total talent management painting. 

Christopher Dwyer: Great. Appreciate you guys. Rolling with my curveball question. How much. I love these guys. Good panelists. All right.

Christopher Dwyer: Question four. How does direct sourcing fit into the future of work in 2022 in our Caesar runaway one, we'll leave with you. 

Cesar Jimenez: Okay. Definitely. I think it's going to be an absolute must. I mean, I think that direct sourcing is not just the future, it's here now. I think. Well, the last couple of years, I think, you know, you had direct sourcing and now you love your new one direct sourcing 2.0.

Cesar Jimenez: I just think it's going to get even better. It's going to grow. I think organizations are, you know, it's because supply is so low because suppliers are also, in my opinion, you know, have all of their clients, you know, fighting for their time, you know, to be able to supply resources, direct sourcing initiatives, it puts them in control.

Cesar Jimenez: It puts them in the driver's seat to build that direct relationship with those talent communities that they're trying to build. So I think the better, the more mature as they get more mature, the stronger results are going to be able to provide. You know, I've talked to a number of different people about, you know, enterprise buys about direct sourcing and what I like more than anything is that cost savings is not at the top of the board.

Cesar Jimenez: It's kind of fourth or fifth. You know of the plus the pleasant advantages when it comes to direct sourcing, people want to build proactive talent communities. And you know, it's hard for an agency to do that for you because they're on a contingent basis, right. They need to be able to fill that position.

Cesar Jimenez: That's how they make their revenue, how they make their numbers. So I just think this is going to an area that's just going to soar. It's going to thrive. It's gonna grow. But you have to consider a lot of different things when, you know, when you're taking on this type of initiative, because they're basically becoming you know, having the state staffing capability, staffing, interim staffing, agency capabilities, and that's where they got to turn into.

Cesar Jimenez: So I think there's, it's going to continue to thrive and sore because they need to fill these positions. They can't continue to be deprioritized by the suppliers. 

Christopher Dwyer: Great. Neha? 

Neha Goel: Tell me echoing what Caesar's. I think direct sourcing is going anywhere. It's here. It's going to continue to increase in importance.

Neha Goel: I mean, companies across any vertical today are struggling to fill roles, they need to attract that new workforce today. And they need to do it in a way that, where they meet that workforce, that talent, where they are and how they, in the way they want to engage. I recently saw a Ted talk from Target, which was trying to bring onboard hourly and gig workers because they wanted to meet seasonal.

Neha Goel: That's meeting the talent where there is, but ultimately it's just about finding a scalable, repeatable, flexible way to attract and engage that talent and direct sourcing is very likely one of the best routes to get there. 

Christopher Dwyer: Great. Mark?

Mark Brodsky: Yeah. I mean, not to just go on, you know, the other panelists but I would say that your organizations, I think, are also going to start looking at this from the last point.

Mark Brodsky: Those organizations that deal with seasonality. Those organizations that have a clean line of sight of upcoming projects and initiatives, you know, direct sourcing really allows them to get ahead of the curve. Right. If they use it strategically it allows them to take some of the burden off of their traditional staffing suppliers and really begin to do some forecast planning and some resource planning.

Mark Brodsky: And look, I mean, we're just into this and you're already doubling 2.0. Oh, right. And so I think that. Just this hyper quickly, this right sourcing is growing. I feel like it was only like a year and a half ago that we truly saw adoption in the marketplace, direct sourcing. And now we're already naming it 2.0, so it's certainly not going anywhere.

Mark Brodsky: And I think it's going to start to become a more strategic kind of avenue that organizations are going to utilize. 

Christopher Dwyer: Yeah. I agree with the panelists here and I think Mark brings up a good point of. Well, I mean, a couple of years ago, we were talking about this as a brand new strategy, even though we know that there are some businesses that have been using it for years and years, I know in Europe and UK, it's been a core piece of the MSP RPO model for such a long time.

Christopher Dwyer: So yeah, so you know, we're already dubbing this DS 2.0 but I think the big reason behind that is to look at some of the topics we were talking about. AI. We were talking about the extended workforce. We're talking about relationships. We're talking about flexibility, scalability, what is direct sourcing offer?

Christopher Dwyer: I mean, it's all part of the direct sourcing initiative today. So it touches almost every point of the future of work. And so a great conversation here. So question five candidates experience more critical than ever. How do businesses navigate through this through both technology and new strategies and mark, we're going to leave.

Mark Brodsky: Yeah, well, look, I think that the candidate's experience has become paramount at this point, right? I mean, we keep talking about supply and demand and how demand is far out seeding supply right now. And so I think the candidate's experience is probably the most important thing. Look at contingent labor or non FTE labor.

Mark Brodsky: It used to be a foot in the door to some of these organizations, right. Temp to perm that's not even a carrot that's dangled anymore. Right. Well, how do you attract the quality talent in your organization by providing them the ability to use their skills, the ability to grow their skillset and diversify.

Mark Brodsky: Part of their exposure to some of these skills. And so I think that we've seen almost a flip to where, whether it's a staffing supplier, whether it's an organization directly, but they're now having to sell the candidate. On what it's going to be like to work within their organization. And it's not the ancillary perks anymore, right.

Mark Brodsky: It's really exposure to new technologies. It's training. It's being on the cusp of emerging and innovative kinds of nuances in the market. And so candidate experience is the most important thing because I have a ton of options. And they're not looking to take a six month assignment and turn it into a 20 year career.

Mark Brodsky: Like they weren't 2010. And so the leverage has shifted a little bit to the candidates.

Christopher Dwyer: Neha?

Neha Goel: Yeah. I mean, like I said, Mark hit the nail on the head there. It's just, it is important. It's critical. I think there's also the worker side of it. You have new technology, which, like I said, we were talking about AI. We were talking about all these things and new techniques, new expectations, and let's take something completely unrelated and simple, right.

Neha Goel: Or bring up pizza today. It's completely, we take it for granted that we can go on our phone, order a pizza. We can track it directly to our door. We know exactly when it's going to be delivered, how it's coming, everything. Why would a candidate who applies for a job expect anything less? Why would they expect to be left in a limbo?

Neha Goel: Why would they expect not to have that great interview experience in that skill assessment process. It's tech is going to allow us to cut through that noise and shorten the time it takes talent to come in and find meaningful work. And I think mid COVID virtual hiring has just accelerated the need for that.

Neha Goel: Right. It's just recognizing that everything that this is critical and for businesses to just kind of be prepared that you need to re-look at your employer brand, you need to re-look at your career site, your application process, because there may be ways that you can make small micro improvements that are gonna make such a difference to the candidate experience.

Neha Goel: And you're gonna get better talent. 

Christopher Dwyer: Great.Caesar.

Cesar Jimenez: Oh no, those are great answers. I could appreciate that. Well, I would say from the lens of myBasepay perspective and my personal industry experience. I just think the worker experience should be number one, you know, it's everything. Like when Mark mentioned you know, the shit is levered shift, right? You used to it, like you said, like it was great, it was getting your foot in the door right now. They have options. Now it's more the employers. Let me see if we can get a contingent worker or an extended worker or extended worker.

Cesar Jimenez: You know, commit to our opportunity, right? So it's shifted, it's completely shifted in the recruiting, putting an approach to this. I think companies that maybe take a step back and make a little bit more investments into their employer value proposition are going to arm themselves to compete in this market a little bit better from a tech perspective. You know, from my lens, I'm just big on onboarding.

Cesar Jimenez: I just think giving the candidates, you know, given the work or the visibility of the onboarding process, a lot of them are a little bit shut the door. Right understanding. So that can be his point is like, you know, the whole visibility of when you ordered a pizza, it's when it's getting there, you know, that's going to really help a lot.

Cesar Jimenez: You know, it keeps somebody connected and just, you know, doing things a little different. How can you separate yourself from the rest of the pack? You know, what are you offering to contingent workers or extended workforce? Are you giving them benefits? Are you giving them, you know, you know, pay time off?

Cesar Jimenez: Are you giving them almost. You know, those advantages that, you know, some of the full-time employees are able to get just doing, making sure you're doing it in a compliant way. So I just think investing in your worker, any worker experience you can not lose is the one thing you lead with and you should be able to attract talent if you really practice and believe it.

Christopher Dwyer: Okay. Great. Great answers. Another question, is it true that Jan from Candidate.ly Is going to buy pizza for everyone attending the session? You got them on the hook now you know, a serious follow-up to this question. So we talked so much about candidate experience and one thing that I've really been trying to use the future of the work exchange platform to do is talk about the hiring manager experience.

Christopher Dwyer: I mean, it's, that's something that's overlooked a lot. Do you guys have any thoughts?

Neha Goel: It's critical again. I mean, any technology you put out there, if the managers aren't using it, it's not going to get adopted. Your program's not going to grow. Like you need processes. You need technologies that the hiring managers have buy-in on, to make it easy for them.

Cesar Jimenez: You know, for me, my personal opinion, I think, you know, You know, hiring managers need to get on board, understanding the market condition out there. I just think if they can leverage the technology or just in the approach and from a feedback perspective, you know, cause it's hard enough to locate and get a, you know, a consultant committed or interested in your opportunity.

Cesar Jimenez: It's also acting on it. So I just think it's from a technology also, just from a process perspective, I'd like to see a little things can become a little more. 

Mark Brodsky: Yeah, I just fell off and just said, look, you know, when we use the word and it's like in our industry, right. A hiring manager isn't a hiring manager.

Mark Brodsky: They're actually. Someone that has a job to do for the organization. Hiring is a facet of doing their job, right? They're not, when someone says, Hey, what do you do for ABC Corp? They're not like, Hey, I'm a hiring manager. And so when we provide these hiring managers a tool, it has to make their job of hiring more efficient because this is their second job, right.

Mark Brodsky: They have an organizational commitment to deliver some product, some service, some deliverables. We look at them as hiring managers in this industry, that people at this conference they're hiring managers to us that's not their role. And so I think any technology we put forward, it's really important for the hiring manager to understand that the ultimate goal is not to have them, you know, not to get them to hire it's, to get them, to get their job done more efficiently, because a by-product of that is they need to staff a team.

Mark Brodsky: They need to staff a project. 

Christopher Dwyer: Great answers to my follow up question there. Question six. How do businesses leverage their existing contingent workforce experience or expertise to manage the extended workforce? Neha you first? 

Neha Goel: I think it goes back to what we were talking about a few minutes ago, it starts with the worker, right?

Neha Goel: Like I think organizations do a great job and they have a wonderful feedback loop when it comes to their suppliers. Not sure how it is necessarily with every single worker that's having that experience with that organization. So I think listening to those workers incorporating those ideas into the processes.

Neha Goel: Like I think that's, I think that's an area that CW teams that MSPs all of the program teams can really lean into more.

Christopher Dwyer: Great. Mark?.

Mark Brodsky: Look, I think like anything else, right? It's either you mature and you learn from your history or you dock. And so I think that for businesses to truly kind of grow they have to look at what were some of their shortfalls, what were some of their gaps in the way they have.

Mark Brodsky: Historically and not long-term, but short-term historically engaged in managed, you know, non-employee labor. And they need to share that up and they need to continue to evolve their process. You know, obviously from a Glider perspective, we sell it every day, right? Like if you're having talent issues, It's coming from a number of areas.

Mark Brodsky: Right. And so, there's a lot of solutions out there that shore up gaps, but from a Glider perspective that their talent issues we'll make sure you understand what the talent is prior to bringing them in shore up that. You know, I think there Caesar made a point about, you know, or you know, about kind of time to fill and candidates really wanting to understand what the process looks like.

Mark Brodsky: Well, if you're seeing drop-off because your organization is struggling with managers, making decisions, managers, providing feedback, you better sure that up in some capacities we hear it all the time. Right? We have candidates and we just can't convince hiring managers to communicate next steps or schedule that next interview.

Mark Brodsky: Well, if you don't do something about that, candidates are going to go find another job. So I think it's really kind of utilizing lessons learned to evolve your program. 

Cesar Jimenez: Yeah. Great answers. I mean, that's a beautiful lesson learned. I think you having an opportunity to do. And you know, looking at your most successful hires, you know, some of these contingent or extended workforce workers, understanding that a little bit more, I would say understanding where the source of where you have successful placements are coming from and just kind of doubling down there and actually building some, you know, relationships with those types of talent communities.

Cesar Jimenez: They're going to help from an intake perspective and attract talent. 

Christopher Dwyer: Great answers there. A final question for the panel and I was worried we weren't gonna have time to get to this, but I'm glad we did future of work predictions for 2022. And we're gonna go ladies first here. Neha. 

Neha Goel: This is a tough one, cause I have a lot.

Neha Goel: I'll give you one. I think more purpose, like purpose build systems, purposeful processes that are just built. They're going to enable and allow companies to really manage that unpredictability and complexity of this workforce. There's been so much change in the past 20 years, and there's just a clear market need for scalable, flexible systems services that support that high growth and constant change.

Neha Goel: And those use cases that we haven't even imagined yet. Yeah. I think that's where it's heading, whether it's technology, whether it's facets of technology, whether it's innovation in how we provide services in how we process data, it's just getting more purpose out of it and just building for the future.

Neha Goel: Like keeping that in mind that it is changed, it is going to change. There is a future out there and it's going to look very different from where we are today. 

Christopher Dwyer: Right, Mark? 

Mark Brodsky: Sure. I think we're going to see organizations become a lot more pragmatic in how they source, right. You know, five, six years ago, if you didn't have a college degree, you probably had very little chance of getting a good job, right?

Mark Brodsky: In an IT department, out of Facebook, out of Google or one of these large, you know, fortune 500 organizations. And I think organizations are going to have to start looking at. You know, talent for talent and stop kind of looking at things like rate cards and saying, well, you only fit because you have two years of experience in this category of rate card.

Mark Brodsky: I think that organizations are going to have to be really flexible and extremely pragmatic in kind of moving away from their traditional marching orders to attract, retain talent and just. 

Christopher Dwyer: Great Caesar. 

Cesar Jimenez: I love that answer. I think that you know, the more rigid, there's so many different things I want to say here, but I would say, I agree with Mark too. Like I just think it's, you know, acquiring talent is it's got, it's not a black or white type thing, you know, it has to be gray. 

Cesar Jimenez: I mean, you know, you got to look for talent. So I try to, I know you looked for a prediction, but I just had to reiterate. I just think that's gonna be a lot of growth in talent platforms. I just think there's going to be a lot more there. I think direct sourcing models are going to be in every single enterprise organization. I think they're going to be really successful and something you had said earlier than I wanted to say towards the end, but I think there's going to see a lot of consolidation.

Cesar Jimenez: I think there's a lot of opportunity within an equal system. There's a lot of point type solutions. We're going to see some great solutions come together and kind of provide a really holistic, you know, comprehensive solution to organizations to help with the future of work. 

Christopher Dwyer: Great. I'll pop one, one in here because we have a little bit of time.

Christopher Dwyer: I think we're finally going to stop talking about the great resignation as a great resignation and talk about it as a talent revolution. The fact that workers. Workers want more. They want to prosper. They want flexibility. They want to thrive and succeed. And I think we're going to do away with that great resignation phrase hopefully very soon and start calling it a talent revolution. So that's my future of work prediction. I'll leave my email address up if anyone wants to reach out and contact me about the future of work exchange or any Arden research, always happy to talk shop. Big thanks to Neha at Utmost, Caesar at myBasepay and Mark at Glider.

Christopher Dwyer: You guys killed it today. A wonderful session. Can't thank you enough. Big, thanks to Jan and the Candidate.ly Lead team for bringing us all together here. So thanks for attending our session. 

Cesar Jimenez: Great guys. Pleasure. Pleasure.