“Flexible and open talent” resolves remote work demands and staff shortage

While the hybrid and remote work models seem to have been institutionalized, new employment and recruitment approaches continue to emerge. Flexible and open talent model, the latest to join the list, combines hybrid work with outsourcing and freelance staff hiring to give employers malleability.

Flexible and open talent marries the concept of hybrid and remote work with concepts like outsourcing and hiring freelance staff all while answering employees’ work from home demands. And the best takeaway employees can get is the freedom to scale their business to size whenever they need to. 

Harvard Business Review says that the defining feature of this concept is project-based or temporary work that is staffed with workers who are not permanently attached to a company. If done correctly, these ways of working can help organizations access skilled talent while providing the flexibility that many workers increasingly crave.

So what are the advantages of flexible and open talent?

• It offers the ability to accommodate labor demand variability.
• It allows small-task outsourcing for situations where hiring a full-time equivalent would not be justified and where the overhead requirements of traditional temporary staffing solutions would slow the project or be cost-prohibitive.
• Flexible talent strategies provide access to innovative or diverse skill sets beyond traditional recruiting pipelines. 

However, Harvard Business Review said that although this emerging model fully integrates the demands of the pivotal time in workforce history many companies still have reservations about adopting it.

Labor market platform Upwork notes some stumbling blocks in implementing this model immediately. 

• Flexible talent is disproportionately remote. 
• IP and security risks
• Employees’ lack of familiarity with new tools

Furthermore, Upwork’s survey found that more than 50 per cent of hiring managers indicated that remote work opened up their willingness to utilize or on-board remote freelancers..

Respondents reported both opportunities for and interest in using more freelance options. Respondents who had worked with or hired independent staff in the last year said that, without the external help, they would have done the work themselves (35%) or asked their teams to do it (28%) — options that could contribute to burnout. 

Twenty percent said they would have hired an outside service company; 3% would have hired a staffing firm. Just 8% said they would have made new full-time hires, and 6% said the work simply wouldn’t have been done.

Read more here.