The Kelly Services® Approach for Effective Company Staffing in Today¡¦s ¡¥Free Agent¡¦ Worker EnvironmentIt's been five years since the 2008 Global Economic collapse and there are still nearly 200 million unemployed people around the world. Despite this, 8 out of 10 companies are having trouble finding talent. How can that be?
According to Ms Teresa Carroll, Senior Vice President and General Manager of KellyOCG (the Outsourcing and Consulting Group of workforce solutions company, Kelly Services), the problem lies largely in poor supply chain management of talent. At a recent luncheon in Hong Kong at the Peninsula Hotel, Ms Carroll shared her thoughts on the latest trends in talent acquisition. She also explained how talent supply chain management can help companies overcome their staffing problems in today's diversified and complex business world.
Ms Carroll opened her presentation citing a counterintuitive fact that despite today's high unemployment situation - "Companies all over the world are having trouble finding skilled talent for new work that needs to be done."
Rise of the Free AgentPart of the problem, she says, lies in the fact that the traditional ways of recruiting and staffing have changed. Today we're seeing the advent of what Ms Carroll refers to as 'free agent' employees. These workers comprise independent consultants, company alumni, retirees, and interns, as well as service providers who may work on a project-by-project basis. In the US, 44 percent of the workforce is made up of free agents while the figure is close to 30 percent worldwide. You see free agents in many roles but they are especially prevalent in the field of IT with nearly 50 percent handling the IT work being done by companies.
Ms Carroll says the main thing that distinguishes free agents is the fact that they are choosing the way that they want to work. She cautions that "If you want the best SAP programmer, they might be working on a beach in Tahiti and you're going to have to send the work to a beach in Tahiti." That used to be a running joke in the industry but she says she knows a customer that is doing just that now. It's all about flexibility and accessing talent on their terms.
Companies are now finding that they have to change the way they attract talent and also how to redesign work duties to make talent fit within their operations. Free agents may not want to put in the long hours that normal Hong Kong workers are used to. "Free agents are making choices based on the way they want to work versus the way companies want them to work," says Ms Carroll.
Given these trends, companies still recognise the fact that attracting good talent is a differentiator in their industry, but most are not really doing much to improve their ability to secure those top talents.
Talent Supply Chain Management and PsychographicsA key analytical tool for attracting talent these days lies in the study of psychographics, which defines how workers like to work and how a company might have to fit a job description around a particular talent.
Kelly®has recognised and closely monitored this free agent trend in the workplace for some time. The combination of their research on free agent growth and recent industry trends toward outsourcing have resulted in a solution approach they call 'talent supply chain management¡¦ (TSCM). TSCM essentially focuses on a more holistic way of evaluating a company's talent recruitment needs.
Ms. Carroll points to a particular psychographic segment called 'Generation Asia'. She says "I was amazed to learn how often full-time employees are turning over¡Kevery year, every two years, from the next opportunity to the next opportunity. It seems like even full-time employees are actually acting as free agents in Asia.¡¨ She adds ¡V ¡§Loyalty is pretty much dead!"
All the different work styles in place today are causing the demand for talent to be all over the place. So how can a company accurately predict and plan their talent supply?Ms Carroll poses the question ¡V "If demand and supply for talent is so highly variable, how easy is it to match the supply with demand?" Her answer - "Not very easy!"
Add to all this the fact that countries also create the added burdens of various employee regulations. For example, contract employees may only be allowed to work for a certain number of months. Then there is the pressure of company managers being told to save money, so the cost of finding and securing talent is making things that much more difficult.
Ms Carroll shared data from Kelly's annual survey, the Kelly Global Workforce Index, with luncheon attendees. According to the current survey, more than 50 percent of employees are looking to change their jobs in Hong Kong, especially younger workers.
So just how does talent supply chain management actually help companies in today's era of free agency in the workforce. TSCM holistically evaluates all of the input of talent supply, including full-time, temporary, contract workers, independent consultants, freelancers, alumni retirees¡K and finds out how to optimise these different types of workers and work styles to meet the needs of a company's operations and strategic plans.
Ms Carroll notes that many companies still segregate all the categories of their workers, so that an HR department might have a person who looks after full-timers and another who looks after freelancers, etc. But if you put all the information together and collect the data you can really change the behaviour of any company on how to acquire talent.
The Kelly TSCM model combines all the types of workers and then talks to different department heads to systematically see how each worker fits within the department's needs. This allows for a better match of skills with operational demands while lowering costs.
Ms. Carroll summarises that "The holy grail of the TSCM model is for companies to facilitate workforce planning. They can consult their different departments and look at future needs and ask 'what is the hot skill set that you are going to need over the next year?'" Based on that information a company can then figure out the best way to bring that skill set into the operation.
"Mindsets are hard to change because companies have a kind of 'brand arrogance' where they think they can do the talent search themselves. They don't recognise the changing psychographics of the workforce," says Ms Carroll. She goes on to cite the best practices of top companies today that have two or three things in common; they use more flexible talent (in some cases up to 50 percent), and they all do some level of worker needs planning.
Ms Carroll concluded her presentation with two future trends that are taking hold in the business world. One is Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) in which companies are allowing outside firms to handle all their full time recruiting needs. Another future trend to look for is Managed Service Providers (MSP). This involves letting outside firms handle all the temporary staffing needs of the workforce for companies. These two trends are converging to make it possible for companies to outsource their whole talent supply chain for talent acquisition.
by Coco Dante
