What changes will the staffing industry see in the next 10 years? Here are a few predictions: Healthcare staffing will be a platform play, focus on external customers will increase and data will be used in more meaningful ways. Those predictions came from a keynote panel of executives last Thursday at Staffing Industry Analysts’ Collaboration in the Gig Economy conference.

The panel included:

• Eric Gilpin, chief sales officer at Upwork Inc.
• Cherie Kloss, founder and former CEO of SnapNurse
• Doug Leeby, CEO of VMS provider Beeline
• Billy Milam, CEO of industrial staffing provider EmployBridge

SIA President Barry Asin moderated the panel.

And some of the predictions were big.

“Healthcare staffing will be a pure platform play in 10 years; part of that is going to be the disruption of the nurses owning their own credentials because essentially they will have the power because there’s such a great shortage right now that they’re pretty much in control,” Kloss said. “And there will be an emerging technology or current technology that will be the platform that all of the hospitals will log into, and there will be no fee.”

Kloss’ firm, healthcare staffing platform SnapNurse, posted $1.13 billion in revenue during 2021 after its platform launched in 2018.

Leeby said he can see a large firm — something on the order of a Microsoft or an Amazon — with a massive amount of funding that could cause serious disruption in the industry with technology, machine learning, etc., though that’s not likely within 10 years.

“I do believe firmly, that probably won't happen at least in 10 years,” he said. “But I firmly believe that we will absolutely see the game changer is data, and those with the data will start to leverage it in ways that actually are meaningful and insightful at the decision point.”

Milam said there will be a much greater focus on the external customer in the next 10 years — both clients and the talent — and less on solving internal problems within firms. His company EmployBridge is working on that.

“How do I target my talent, my associates, my candidates?” Milam said. “How do I get stickiness with them? You mentioned redeployment. You know, there’s a reason I will go back to my Delta app, or my Hilton app, or my Chick-fil-A app … they’ve got stickiness. I’ve got points accumulation. They incent me. They talk to me. They like me. I like them. There’s a reason behind that, so we’ve really zeroed in and got super focused on the talent engagement and talent experience, and we’ve done the same thing for the client. True value-add services to the client.”

Gilpin said one sure thing will be change. “It’ll definitely be different,” he said.

“I think there is nostalgia in this space, but think about the last 20 years,” Gilpin said. “I’ve been fortunate to be a part of this industry in the last 20 years, and look how much has evolved.”

In the fight of future vs. business model, the future always wins, Gilpin said. One example of a change: Gilpin recalled a room in 2011 and a discussion on the budding rise of professional networks such as LinkedIn.

“Someone said ‘Who is actually going to take their résumé and put it on the internet for everybody to see publicly?’” he said. “Apparently, everybody.”