There’s a sea change afoot in workplaces around the world: “work” – the age-old notion of showing up every day to perform a set of carefully-defined tasks laid out in a formal job description – doesn’t work anymore. For employees, the results typically include working in silos with little mobility or chance to unleash personal passions or learn new skills. For employers, it means low levels of productivity and engagement that drive up attrition.
It’s a problem that Kelley Steven-Waiss could relate to, acutely. As the CHRO at Here Technologies, Steven-Waiss witnessed first-hand the changing – and challenging – nature of work across the company’s 10,000-plus employees spread around the globe… and she was determined to do something about it. She and her team set out to create a technology platform that could inventory the skills and passions of Here’s employees and then match them to organizational needs in an effort to increase talent mobility and engagement while reducing attrition and hiring/training costs.
The more Steven-Waiss consulted with other “future of work” leaders, the clearer her vision became. And a book was born. In “The Inside Gig,” co-authored with Edie Goldberg, Ph.D., Steven-Waiss lays out the essential problem facing today’s companies and their employees.
“In today’s competitive landscape, companies need to develop fresh approaches to managing talent by leveraging the new technologies available and responding to changing business models that redefine employment relationships. It is no longer enough to have the most appealing employer brand, or best university relations programs, or even a best-in-class workspace, because how we define the workforce is not as clear as it once was.
When new methods for competing for human resources via “talent on demand” took us to platforms such as Topcoder and Upwork, the idea of a workforce composed of both employees and temporary talent began to make a lot of sense. However, the rise of machine automation and the Internet of Things (IoT) has fundamentally transformed not only the work we do but the speed at which we need to learn and deploy new skills that are often in higher demand than supply. This remains true no matter how one plans to source talent.
We must challenge what we thought was novel in talent management as recent as two to three years ago. Now it’s a race to acquire skills.
And just when we think we have everything under control, another emerging skill domain becomes both critical and scarce. Without a crystal ball, today’s chief executive officers (CEOs) and CHROs essentially manage their most valuable competitive resource blindly.
Enter a new era of competitive talent deployment via the internal gig network. Rather than acquire new skills by hiring from outside, the new and quite disruptive reality is that competitive advantage is now based on a company’s ability to rapidly develop and better leverage the talent supply within itself.
So, instead of competing for hot or in-demand skills that are in short supply, our book suggests you concentrate on what you have the power to control, based on:
1. Visibility of the internal skills you have and any gaps there are (supply)
2. Ability to accurately predict what skills you might need (demand)
3. Speed at which you can upskill current talent against new or critical skill domains
4. The digital horsepower (through man/machine collaboration via predictive analytics, machine learning, and automation) to accurately and efficiently match and deploy that talent to the right work, at the right time, at the right cost.”
Read more by visiting www.hitch.works and registering to receive a free chapter from “The Inside Gig.” You can also learn what the Hitch talent mobility and opportunity platform can do for your organization by contacting us for a free assessment call or meeting.