CWS 3.0: June 25, 2014

Print

Should you, could you or would you be resource agnostic?

Last week, a member of Staffing Industry Analysts’ Contingent Workforce Strategies Council discussed how her company lets its suppliers specialize. The company, Cisco, has even become resource agnostic for its statement-of-work (SOW) projects. By definition, this means that a resource is chosen based solely on the ability to get the work done in a manner that meets cost, efficiency, quality and risk goals and objectives and not chosen based on the “type” of resource (FTE, independent contractor, SOW or temporary staff).

The article goes further to say that the only resources that are of importance to Cisco are ones that are responsible for the governance of the project. Otherwise, those who are assigned project-related tasks do not matter to Cisco. While SOW engagements comprised 95 percent of the company’s contingent workforce program, this concept made sense, and it might be something for other contingent workforce buyers to consider.

The workforce, in general, is becoming more sophisticated, mobile and technologically savvy. It’s possible that there would be a shift toward resource selection being driven by the talent itself, for example. Perhaps real-time qualifications, references, compensation requirements and availability will be brought to the table with some technological review mechanism in place to keep it all honest. The talent could choose to be engaged in a number of ways, based on skill level, lifestyle choices, geography, technological expertise and where they are in their careers; in many respects, this is already happening.

But businesses today tend to engage talent in a much more restrictive manner, with little crossover. Need a worker for a short leave? Hire a temp. Have a project that you want overseen from beginning to end? Engage a consultant with a team on a statement-of-work contract. Do you need specialized expertise for a one-off engagement? An independent contractor might be the first resource you think of. While you may have a wide variety of approved choices to engage talent now, what happens in the future when the talent can easily shift how they wish to be engaged and create robust, accurate talent profiles and communities of their own through technology? Would it be possible to become resource agnostic and could it be a competitive advantage?

Taking a look at some of the tools used now, it is apparent there is a shift to wider public sharing of qualifications, history and references. Through social media, we get notifications every day of individual promotions, job changes and credentials, as well as job opportunities. At some point soon, would companies choose to recruit the talent based purely on some quantitative metric that encompasses all the relevant attributes for success and then engaged them through the talent’s preferred choice? It makes perfect sense for SOW and project work to be resource agnostic, and companies that have the choice to try it might want to do so. While becoming resource agnostic across the board would be a large paradigm shift, perhaps new and different talent communities will drive interest and technology can become a trusted tool that enables companies to become truly flexible in their resource choices.