From seeing the worker as a consumer to the talent crisis, remote work and more, leaders at four of the largest US staffing firms discussed issues impacting the industry during a keynote panel Tuesday at Staffing Industry Analysts’ Executive Forum North America in Austin, Texas.

But panelist Peter Quigley, president and CEO of Kelly, said he probably wouldn’t use the term, “talent crisis.”

“I think we certainly have challenges,” Quigley said. “I look around this room and think about the quality of the companies and people and the innovation and creativity. I think the challenge we have is something we can certainly overcome.”

Still, those challenges are real.

In the short term, people are staying on the sidelines for health reasons and school closures —but that’s a temporary situation, he said. Long-term, the issues affecting labor are baby boomers retiring at record levels and the declining birth rate.

Workers are also changing how they view work.

Consumer trends have seeped into staffing, said panelist Becky Frankiewicz, president, North America, at ManpowerGroup Inc.

These consumer trends bring a new set of expectations by workers. They now expect automation, frictionless engagement and more, Frankiewicz said. The pandemic has only served to accelerate those trends.

“We saw workers choosing when, where and how they wanted to engage and contribute in the workplace,” she said.

Expectations have impacted wages as well.

“We’ve seen the end of minimum wage,” Frankiewicz said. “There is no minimum or maximum, there’s only required wage.”

Talent shortages won’t go away any time soon, but automation may help, said panelist Chad Lane, president of Allegis Global Solutions.

“There was a time when we thought about technology and automation as taking jobs, and now the mindset probably needs to be that we need technology and automation to take the bad jobs —and ‘whatever jobs’ — so our people can take the better jobs,” Lane said.

Focusing on IT, there was a shortage before the pandemic and it will remain afterward, said panelist Mahfuz Ahmed, CEO and founder of Disys.

“As our entire economy is moving to a more digital platform, you need more IT, so I don’t think the need is going to go down anytime soon,” Ahmed said. The gap is between what skills schools are producing and what is in demand, he said.

The move to remote work brought forth by the pandemic did provide companies with the ability to source workers from around the world, he said.

Remote work also brings its own challenges, and it will likely continue in many places in some form even once the pandemic becomes history.

Frankiewicz noted that members of Gen X and baby boomers tend to prefer coming to the office while millennials see remote work more favorably. And while 10% of people want to work remote all the time — and 10% want to come into the office every day — it’s the middle where most people are.

Going forward, “I think we will have some version of flexibility that people have the right to engage in by their performance, by their tenure and by their results,” she said.

However, it will be incumbent on firms to ensure “presenteeism” doesn’t trump performance, Frankiewicz said. Not doing so would be devastating to the already existing gender imbalance.

Looking ahead, Kelly’s Quigley also noted the hard work during the pandemic will continue afterward.

“Our Covid legacy is not going to be created in the first two years of the pandemic,” Quigley said. “Our legacy, each of our legacies, will be determined in the next two years of how we handled the pandemic.”

Leaders will be judged on the decisions they make about their workforces and workplaces, and right now it’s all the more important that staffing firms come together and share best practices, he said.

Tuesday’s panel was led by Staffing Industry Analysts President Barry Asin, and was titled “Leadership and the Future of Staffing.”

The Executive Forum North America continues through Thursday.