Guest
Blogger, Andrew Karpie, is Principal Analyst at The Research Platform and a
recognized expert on emerging online work intermediation platforms as well as
their impact on the staffing industry.
Over the past three years, he has produced and published numerous
research reports and articles on these subjects with Staffing Industry
Analysts. He has also produced research
and published content for a number of major staffing firms and online staffing
platform businesses, and he serves on the Advisory Board of The Rise of the
Platform Economy research program, a joint initiative of Stanford University
Business School and The Center for the Global Enterprise. Andrew holds an MS in Policy Analysis from
Carnegie Mellon University, and he lives with his family in the San Francisco
Bay Area.
The trend toward the use of “contingent workforce” is clearly on the rise. In 2012, per Staffing Industry Analysts, the worldwide staffing industry supported spend of about $350B on just “temporary staffing” contingent workforce, and the total global contingent workforce spend numbers (including SOW, ICs, freelancers) was several multiples larger. There are now numerous forecasts that point to on-going growth in contingent workforce in future years, and it is not uncommon to find growth rates of 10% or more. Certainly, this continuing growth is being driven by a number of factors, including the development of new ways of procuring and providing contingent workforce in different forms (i.e., not just continuing to do things only in the same way as was done before).
Over the past three years, my
research and analysis has been highly focused on the emergence of so called
“online staffing” and other “human cloud” platforms--and their development
alongside and within the established staffing industry. While many in the
staffing industry have reacted to online platforms with concerns about
“disruption,” I have tended to expect the impact and change to more of a “transformation”
of the industry, as more and more staffing firms adopt “digital platform
models” in some way and use them to innovate their staffing business models.
In the past year, I developed the Staffing
Industry Analysts 2020 forecast of
the aggregate worldwide contingent workforce spend that would be enabled by
“online staffing” types of platforms (whether they were platforms of new,
free-standing platform-based businesses like Elance-oDesk, Field Nation, etc.
or they were “digital platforms” that staffing firms adopted to innovate and
evolve in different directions from the traditional staffing business model).
In one article about that 2020 forecast (which ranged as high $46B
in “online staffing-based spend”), I shared my perspective on how “online
staffing” and the established staffing industry might “co-evolve:”
“To forecast to 2020 and create a
few plausible scenarios, we considered a range of potential drivers and
constraints,” …“It’s hard to build anything other than expansive scenarios. The
big questions seem to be how fast, in what forms and to what extent. I think
two of the big wildcards here are the pace of larger enterprise adoption and to
what degree staffing firms (and managed service providers/vendor management
systems) start to adopt and leverage these models. By 2020, my guess is that
the staffing business will be much more hybridized, similar in some ways to
what happened with retail and online shopping.”
What I say in the last sentence about “hybridization” means two things (and refers to the retail industry as an analogy). First, I mean the staffing industry will become more of a (hybridized) mix of different types of firms (so just as in retail today you find Amazon and Walmart, in staffing you will find something like an Elance-oDesk and a Manpower). Second, I also mean that established staffing firms will adopt and adapt online staffing platforms into their own businesses (so just as today, Walmart and most retailers are also online, in the future most staffing firms--that are successful—will also have leveraged and integrated online staffing platforms into their business models).
So in the future, many of the successful staffing firms will
likely be “hybrid” staffing firms. That does not mean that they will stop
being staffing firms (doing some part of their staffing in the way they did
before) or that they will start offering “wild west” open marketplaces that
leave clients and themselves open to compliance and other risks. What it
really means is that staffing firms will appropriate and leverage digital
online platforms to expand and innovate their businesses in many directions.
Certainly, it is conceivable that a staffing firm in the future
will offer its clients access to “online workers,” but those workers will be
vetted and classified and paid properly just as they would be today. By
adopting and starting to leverage digital platforms, staffing firms will
gradually discover that such models open up all kinds of innovative
opportunities for serving their clients’ changing needs, improving staffing
firm cost structure and service performance, attracting new worker populations in
different ways, and most likely creating new revenue-generating lines of
staffing services, etc.
For the purposes of this blog post, it is important to make the
point that successful staffing firms of the future are likely to be
“hybridized” firms that have managed to leverage digital platforms to innovate
their business models and services in a variety of ways, depending upon the
staffing segment, the firm strategy, etc.
At the beginning of this post I said that claims of “online
staffing” suddenly “disrupting” the established staffing industry seem to me to
be over-blown, and I have discussed what I foresee as an evolutionary process
of “transformation” and “hybridization in the years to come. However,
“transformation” and “hybridization” are not just buzzwords, they describe
real, active developments and changes that have already started in some
staffing firms today and will continue to develop in more and more staffing
firms in future years.
It is critical for staffing firm owners/executives, therefore, not
to just think, “Ok, no disruption, just transformation… I can relax, I’ll
just sit tight and wait out the storm.” That attitude could underpin a
superlative strategy for “being left behind,” while other staffing firm
competitors innovate and outflank you.
I can assure you: “the time is now” to get started, to begin
learning, and to put the investment of time into figuring out how to best
innovate your business using a digital platform and keep your business at the
front of the competitive pack.
A recent report by research and advisory firm, Ardent Partners, (“The
State of Contingent Workforce Management: The 2014-15 Guide for Managing
Non-Traditional Talent”) reveals some eye-popping data from its survey of
contingent workforce buyers. Ardent
asked those surveyed about what would be a source of contingent talent now in
2014 versus what would be a source in 2016.
- 88% said Traditional Staffing Suppliers/Agencies for 2014, but for 2016 that % was only 78%! The way I interpret this is that fewer survey respondents (78%) will regard Traditional Staffing Suppliers as a source of contingent talent in 2016 than in 2014 (when 88% of the respondents consider Traditional Staffing Suppliers as a source).
- Alternatively, it seems the use various “non-traditional” sources of contingent talent would be increasing -- for example, “Private talent pools/“known” networks [2014 45% versus 2016 61%] and Online labor marketplaces/freelancer networks [2014 23% versus 2016 46%].
To make this shift and not be left behind, it is important to start right now by adopting and starting to use an online staffing platform and beginning the learning process to eventually understand the best ways for your own staffing business to leverage this high-potential tool set with your target clients and workforce and find better, innovative ways to serve them both and stay competitive in the staffing game.
No comments:
Post a Comment