Managing talent used to involve at least a few certainties. You knew what roles you needed to fill and where you could find the talent to fill them. When people worked for you, they came to your building in the morning and left at the end of the day. You could see and interact with them. And they could see you.
Today, things are different. Changes on a global scale have upended these familiar patterns, and talent and employers now seek each other out, on more equal terms, from anywhere in the world. The evolving workforce is a mixture of full-time employees, contractors, and freelancers, and— increasingly—people with no formal ties to your enterprise at all. People move more freely than ever from role to role and across organizational and geographic boundaries. Global markets and products, driven by rapid innovation and post-digital disruption, seem to demand new talent models that can be rapidly configured and reconfigured. Businesses expect agility, scale, and the right skills to be available faster than ever—in real time.
Welcome to the open talent economy—a collaborative, transparent, technology-driven, rapid-cycle way of doing business. What the open source model did for software, the open talent economy is doing for work.
What could this all mean for business and HR leaders? It could mean challenging core assumptions about how people enter the workforce, how they work together, and how to develop their potential. It can also mean devising new operational frameworks that allow organizations to embrace those changes instead of falling behind.
While traditionally, companies have focused on the talent and workforce within their organizations and on their balance sheets, increasingly companies are expanding their talent networks to include “partnership talent” (employees who are parts of joint ventures), “borrowed talent” (employees who are part of contractors or outsourcing relationships), “freelance talent” (independent, individual contractors), and “open source talent” (people who don't work for you at all, but are part of your value chain and services). This trend will ultimately rewrite what the term “workforce” actually means: work is being and will be further redefined.
Founded by IO Owner, Pramod Raheja, MyStaffNow is a new Intelligent Office business Partner. Visit https://www.facebook.com/MyStaffNow for updates and news.
