“Pre-pandemic, nearly 43% of the average company’s workforce was considered contingent; in mid- and post-pandemic times, that figure could experience another increase, depending on several factors: the trajectory of economic recovery, the specter of hotspot-specific lockdowns, and the volatility of traditional hiring.” Last week, we wrote about the reality of contingent workforce growth in the months ahead and the shifts happening in the world of talent and work.

During the Great Recession of 2008-2009, contingent labor proved to be a valuable tool in the face of economic uncertainty. Even with “phased reopenings” happening across the world, businesses still face many difficulties as they slowly rebuild towards recovery.  Our new State of Contingent Workforce Management research study points to the strength of the non-employee workforce as a means of combating these intricate obstacles:

“Well over a decade ago, the contingent workforce proved to be an incredibly valuable lever in economic recovery and business survival, helping organizations pivot from “survival mode” to “revival” quickly and efficiently. Today’s uncertainty is wreaking havoc on the global economy; however, when these tough times pass, Ardent Partners expects that most businesses will pursue on-demand sources of talent to help them emerge as demand for their products and services return to pre-pandemic levels.”

I once again spoke to various technology leaders about the possibility of contingent workforce growth, the role of the agile workforce, and the value of flexibility as businesses build towards recovery:

Tammy Browning, President, KellyOCG

“KellyOCG remains optimistic about 2020. While we have certainly seen impacts related to contingent worker demand, particularly in skilled labor categories, we are starting to see improvements. At Kelly, our product offerings and industry mix have allowed us to identify opportunities that support the re-opening and back-to-work efforts in a rapid way.”

Matt Fischer, President and CTO, Bullhorn

“COVID-19 has turned the entire world upside down, but according to our GRID research conducted last month, 56% of recruiters expect the economy to bounce back by the end of the year and 30% actually think their businesses are doing better now than they were at this point last year. What we do know is that the transition to remote work was exceedingly difficult for firms that hadn’t already invested in a cloud-based platform and embraced digital transformation. The firms that had already done that were not only better able to weather the storm but will be poised for immediate success once the labor market recovers.

Automation isn’t the foray of the forward-thinking anymore, it’s actually table stakes. If you don’t embrace automation, you’ll be left behind. Some staffing firms learned that the hard way in this crisis when they saw their workforce suddenly become scattered and remote, with no access to server rooms or on-premise solutions. And for those that took a revenue hit and had to furlough or lay off employees, the need to do more work with fewer employees underscored the need for intelligent automation that reduces the busywork of everyday interactions and meets the candidate where they live – online, on their mobile devices, multiple places at once. The key to making automation work for your business is optimizing your recruiters’ time to focus on building relationships, not just collecting data. A machine can do the data collection part much more easily.

Marc Husain, Managing Director, VectorVMS

The workforce will look very different post-COVID when the utilization of a non-full-time workforce will be vital for many companies’ talent workforce strategies. The way we work with the contingent workforce will also need to change with a heavy emphasis on engagement and reskilling. These workers are critical to your success so make sure to integrate them into your engagement and learning strategies.

We were already in a time where the Gig Economy meant looking at different ways to acquire talent. COVID-19 will accelerate that growth with new models from direct sourcing and freelance management companies that will be integral for a successful talent acquisition strategy.”

Jennifer Torney, Vice President, Client Engagement, North America, TAPFIN

“As markets have reopened, many employers have begun to increase their permanent hiring, but contingent hiring remains steady at 16% domestically and 19% globally. A critical factor in future contingent labor hiring is the increased focus on recruiting professional skills for remote work, which has increased significantly as a result of COVID-19. Job requisitions lacking location specificity allows recruiters to broaden the scope of candidates sourced which, thus far, indicated shorter hiring cycle times and a greater ability to control labor costs.”

Praneeth Patlola, Chief Product Officer, WillHire

“In recent years, the paradigm shift in the mindset of the workforce leaning towards more flexible work has been adding to the growth of contingent labor. With the COVID-19 impact, both companies and individuals have already adopted the new norms of onboarding and working remotely, which gave opportunity on both sides to re-think investments into co-located physical offices and the cultural aspects which are generally deemed full-time work perks against flexible contract work. The crisis has also made organizations realize that they were not fully prepared to address the immediate spikes of essential and frontline workers, wherein they now see the importance to build a scalable supply chain of an on-demand workforce, which further fuels the growth of the contingent workforce. Direct sourcing and private talent pools are already gaining full attention and adoption to address this growth in contingent labor to enable organization for faster and flexible scalability to manage contingent labor programs.”

Sunil Bagai, CEO, Crowdstaffing

“The market is in flux. Businesses are mixed in terms of hiring and laying off, with some scaling up due to higher demand and others scaling down because revenues have been impacted. This trend will continue for the most part of 2020 and likely into the first half of 2021. For the first time in a decade, we have a talent surplus due to high unemployment, however the skills are heavily skewed towards non-professional and non-technical roles. The companies that can benefit from this surplus are not the ones that are hiring for the most part. Therefore, this surplus will remain mostly intact until the businesses that are not doing well are able to get back to stability and growth. It may take years to get everyone that is unemployed back to being employed.

Solution providers that are incorporating design principles such as agility, flexibility, scalability, diversity and innovation into their product solutions will benefit the greatest in the coming years as they will be able to add great value to customers by helping them become resilient and adaptive to high amounts of change.”

Sukhi Bhullar, Founder and CEO, Bench

“The use of contingent workers will become a central pillar of an organization’s workforce strategy, even more so than in the past. Traditionally, the major channel to access contingent workers has primarily been one dimensional, through recruitment/staffing agencies. 2020 marks the beginning of a new era. We will now see the advent of market networks as the vehicles through which organizations can gain access to trusted, community vetted contingent workers, and opening up new channels and models of engagement.”

RELATED RESEARCH

“This Week In Procurement” – Subscribe to Ardent’s Weekly Newsletter

The Reality of Contingent Workforce Growth in 2020 (Part I)

Which Future of Work Transformations Will Become Permanent in a Post-Pandemic World?

Analyzing the Global Business “Reopenings” and What It Means for the Workforce

Tagged in: Christopher Dwyer, Complex Categories, Contingent Workforce, Future of Work, Innovation, People, Solution Providers, Strategy, Technology