Contrary to an anticipated pandemic-induced surplus workforce, the American economy is witnessing new realities. 4 million people voluntarily quit their jobs in April 2021, putting the American Labor Market at crossroads in dealing with the huge rise in talent shortages. To tackle the ongoing economic uncertainty and the fluctuating talent demands businesses are noticing the utmost need for workforce agility.
The Evolution of Contingent Workforce Models
Although the use of contingent workers has been steadily increased over the years, the ongoing pandemic has accelerated interest in the contingent workforce model. A contingent workforce program not only provides businesses improved cost efficiencies and skill-gap reductions but also the ability to effectively meet workforce demands at any given instant. In other words, contingent workforce programs enable workforce scalability.
Building An Elastic Workforce
An elastic workforce is a human resource management strategy that employs proactive workforce planning in tune with the talent market volatilities. An elastic workforce supports the peaks of valleys of businesses by helping them scale up or down to mitigate overstaffing or understaffing. Workforce elasticity is fundamental to building an agile workforce and provides an array of benefits, including reduced operational costs, access to wide pools of talent, and quicker hiring times.
But, the degree to which you can make your workforce elastic directly depends on the workforce solution governing your contingent workforce program.
Operationalizing Elasticity Using a Hiring Marketplace
The utilization of hiring marketplace solutions has increased by nearly 700% over the past 6 years. Hiring Marketplace workforce solutions have evolved from being mere facilitators of automatic talent matching to ecosystem-based solutions governing end-to-end contingent workforce management. These solutions support the operational aspects of scaling a workforce by automating core hiring processes like requisition management, talent pipelining, payroll, onboarding. Additionally, these modern hiring solutions ensure complete workforce visibility which is crucial for businesses to be more efficient, responsive, and effective.
Futuristic Hiring Marketplace based workforce solutions integrate a high-tech and high-touch approach combining automation with white-glove managed services. By providing intelligence, metrics, and automation, these solutions enable businesses to strategically build their workforce and forecast future talent needs while paving the path towards workforce agility.
Mining Talent and Building Talent Communities
While Talent Pools refer to a collection of vetted and qualified talent, Talent Communities consist of existing employees and prospective candidates grouped by a common interest. Both Talent Pools and Talent Communities have been gaining steady traction in the staffing industry especially since they directly influence a company’s Direct Sourcing initiatives. The primary requirement for a Direct Sourcing program to flourish is a constant supply of quality talent. Both Talent Pools and Talent Communities ensure that businesses always have a repository of readily accessible talent, thus making hiring agile.
Investing in a Hiring Marketplace is the first step towards achieving a strong Talent Community. Since Hiring Marketplaces are built on the talent networks of diverse suppliers including individual recruiters, boutique staffing firms, large staffing firms, and national or international suppliers, they provide businesses access to a greater depth and breadth of talent spanning across industries, skills, and geographies. Hiring Marketplaces also serve as a common digital platform for businesses, staffing agencies, independent recruiters, and candidates, fostering an ecosystem that enables faster matching of candidates to jobs. All in all a marketplace approach supplements hiring initiatives while providing a buffer against talent market volatilities.
Managing a Modern Workforce
The future of the workforce has changed overnight, with the arrival of the pandemic. The workforce is no longer geographically restricted and the popularity of remote work continues to soar among both businesses and candidates. As a variety of industries are experiencing spikes in workforce demands, tapping into remote talent is the perfect window of opportunity to fill in the skill gaps and overcome talent deficits. Futuristic workforce solutions not only empower businesses to build a hybrid workforce but also foster long-term resilience.
Prosperix understands that embracing agility requires workforce management solutions to be all-encompassing as opposed to point-based solutions. With Prosperix, businesses can govern all aspects of a growing contingent workforce with the Crowdstaffing Vendor Management System (VMS), intentionally designed to help businesses build and manage an extraordinary workforce. If developing a workforce that is elastic and scalable is important, take a look at our Crowdstaffing Hiring Marketplace. If you are interested in accessing proactive talent pipelines that will allow you to hire on-demand, you will want to learn about our Direct Sourcing and Talent Pool solutions. And this is just the tip of the iceberg.
Power a new-age workforce using Prosperix’s workforce management solutions!
Schedule a demo with us to learn more about how Prosperix can empower your hiring efforts.
