Blog - Page 3 of 7 - Yolanda Lau

Updated on February 24, 2024

Five Strategies For Building A Virtual Talent Bench

The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated a shift to remote and hybrid work while also increasing the number of independent workers. The future of work is now. As companies become more comfortable with building and integrating on-demand workers into their talent strategy, more companies are realizing the value of building a virtual talent bench.

What is a virtual talent bench?

A virtual talent bench is a pool of freelancers, independent contractors, vendors, and small agencies that you’ve sourced, vetted, and are ready to work with. Having a virtual talent bench allows your team to quickly staff projects as needed, particularly as work shifts from being role-based to project-based.

Why should you build a virtual talent bench?

Building a virtual talent bench makes it easier to deploy independent workers to work on critical special projects quickly. By creating your own in-house virtual talent bench, you’ll save time and money by reducing the time to find and onboard talent — and save fees you may have paid to sourcing agencies.

In addition, building a virtual talent bench well before engagement allows businesses to properly qualify, vet, and onboard talent. Having advised startups for most of my career, I’ve seen many companies bring on talent without formal contracts or vetting simply because of an eagerness to get to work. Without sufficient vetting and executing appropriate contracts before onboarding talent, companies open themselves up to worker misclassification risk and intellectual property issues.

Now that we’ve established the importance of building a virtual talent bench, here are five strategies for building your pipeline.

1. Start by assessing skills gaps.

Start by assessing the skills of your employees against the work you do and may do in the future. You’ll likely find areas where additional resources, specialized skills, or expert advice could be helpful from time to time. Once you have a sense of what kinds of people you need on your virtual talent bench, you’ll be able to start looking for and recruiting the external talent you need.

2. Identify experts and other independent contractors.

There are many ways to find experts, consultants, and other independent contractors, but I’ve found that trusted referrals are the best way to fill your virtual talent bench. Ask your existing virtual talent to refer other freelancers and independent contractors to you, and ask your network to share their trusted talent with you. Freelancer marketplaces like UpWork or Catalant are also another source of virtual talent if you’re having difficulty sourcing referrals. Or, if you are open to establishing a relationship with a company with a deep bench, consulting firms like Business Talent Group or our own firm, FlexTeam, are built on virtual talent benches so that companies don’t have to build their own roster of talent.

3. Develop processes to vet and onboard talent.

Once you’ve identified talent, it’s important to make sure they’re vetted. Check references, run background checks and make sure they are seasoned independent professionals. Then, when you’re ready to onboard your virtual talent, create a standardized onboarding process that makes it easy for your company and your talent to work together. Using automated and electronic onboarding processes makes it easier to ensure all the proper contracts and tax forms are signed quickly and stored safely. Vendor management systems can help you manage all onboarding, contracts, and payments for your virtual talent bench.

4. Develop relationships and prioritize communication.

Working with a virtual talent bench can be transactional, if you choose. But you’ll likely find that building relationships with your virtual talent bench improves outcomes. Not only does relationship building make it more likely that your virtual talent will want to work with you in the future, but it also makes each project run more smoothly. Make sure you’ve documented and communicated best practices and expectations to your virtual talent. Communicate frequently and clearly, both during projects and outside of projects. Engaging your virtual talent bench even when they aren’t actively working with you helps keep you top of mind — making it more likely that your virtual talent will choose to work with you when the time is right.

5. Create procedures for providing feedback and assessing performance.

Providing feedback to your virtual talent during each project is critical to building strong partnerships. Start by creating a procedure to assess performance and give feedback. Make sure all employees who have interacted with your virtual talent bench are asked to provide feedback. If appropriate, ask your virtual talent to provide feedback on the other individual freelancers or consultants they may have interacted with during projects at your company. In addition, store the feedback in your virtual talent bench database for future reference. This information should provide you with actionable insights to help improve future engagements.

Be sure to compile the feedback to share with your virtual talent. I’ve found that freelancers and consultants are eager for feedback, excited to learn, and keen to build new skills.

Transition to a blended workforce.

To successfully compete, companies need to be agile and have workforces that can flex to meet a variety of challenges and opportunities. With a virtual talent bench, your company will have a flexible, blended workforce. That workforce will be able to quickly tackle problems and take on new opportunities. Are you ready to start building your virtual talent bench?

This article was originally published in Forbes.

Interested in the Future of Work? Join the Work of the Future #FutureOfWork Facebook Group.

Yolanda Lau is an experienced entrepreneurship consultant, advisor, and Forbes Contributor. She is also an educator, speaker, writer, and non-profit fundraiser.

Since 2010, she has been focused on preparing knowledge workers, educators, and students for the future of work.

Learn more about Yolanda here.

Updated on February 24, 2024

Remote Work: Creating A Documentation-First Culture

By Yolanda Lau

Before the pandemic, the growth of remote work was already a significant workforce trend as part of the future of work — remote work options increased threefold from 1996 to 2016. After the experiences of the last year, this trend has only accelerated. My current team is fully remote (with a mix of employees, independent contractors, agencies, and freelancers), and I’ve learned that one of the keys to success with remote workforce management is documentation. Whether your company is considering an entirely remote workforce or a hybrid workforce, it’s critical to be a documentation-first company.

Benefits Of A Remote Or Hybrid Workforce

Hiring remote workers, including freelancers or independent contractors, has many different benefits for your firm. One of these benefits is cost savings, with a reduction in onsite operations costs. Even more importantly, your company has access to a much larger talent pool with the removal of geographic obstacles to hiring. And remote workers can be even more productive than onsite workers. A study published in Harvard Business Review found that work-from-anywhere arrangements were even more productive than traditional work-from-home policies. And in a recent PwC survey of U.S. executives, 83% of employers reported that their companies found success with shifting to remote work.

Remote work arrangements benefit the company and the worker — increasing the attractiveness of working for your company not only for potential new hires but also for retaining existing employees. A Gallup survey found that 54% of office workers would leave their current job for one that offers flexible work.

Challenges Of A Remote Or Hybrid Workforce

But engaging a remote workforce does also create challenges. Managing benefits can become more complicated for your HR team, and communication can be a critical issue with the potential for not enough communication and/or remote employees feeling left out or excluded. Plus, building and maintaining your company culture takes more thought and dedicated effort and programs with a dispersed workforce. One of the ways to overcome these challenges is with a documentation mindset.

Going Beyond Onboarding

It’s common for companies to have a standardized onboarding process to complete and collect all the necessary forms, like W-2s for employees or W-9s for freelancers. A digital onboarding process makes it easy to assemble and organize all the required forms quickly. But when you have remote workers, it’s critical to go beyond the documents and deliver a comprehensive onboarding experience. After all, a 2018 survey found that 93% of employers concur that a good onboarding experience is critical to retaining workers.

You need a documentation-first mindset when engaging a remote workforce. Think about how you translate an onsite onboarding experience to a digital experience. How do you bring your company’s culture to life? How do you make your company’s resources and tools easily accessible and understood? What training do you need to provide?

Preparing and regularly updating documentation in advance is critical to success as you scale your remote workforce. This shouldn’t be an ad hoc exercise, but rather something that your company regularly dedicates time to create, maintain, and improve.

Increasing Knowledge Sharing

With my remote team, I’ve found that documenting our processes and best practices is essential to our success in working well together, regardless of location. Fostering knowledge sharing through “living” documents increases our ability to collaborate effectively and for employees and freelancers to quickly help with new projects or contribute impactful ideas. And one of the most important areas to document is related to communication.

Make sure that your employees and contractors have a dedicated place for communication. For example, we’ve defined Slack channels for a variety of topics and projects, as well as for sharing FAQs. We also have documented details like tips for communication styles, expectations for communication content and frequency for project updates, who to connect with for different types of questions, and more. Effective, two-way communication is even more essential when working with a remote team.

Plus, with a documentation-first approach, it’s much easier to shift to a project-based work model. Moving from a role-based to a project-based organization increases the speed and agility of your business. This type of organization is only effective with robust processes and communication.

Embrace The Remote Workforce

It’s time to embrace new models of work and grow your remote workforce. Hiring remote employees, freelancers and contractors strengthens your talent pool and helps make your company more agile. With a documentation-first mindset, your company can smoothly transition to a remote or hybrid workforce. And that mindset will also help you take a more agile and project-based approach to plan and execute initiatives. Get ready to thrive in the future of work by becoming a documentation-first company and growing your remote team.

This article was originally published in Forbes.

Interested in the Future of Work? Join the Work of the Future #FutureOfWork Facebook Group.

Yolanda Lau is an experienced entrepreneurship consultant, advisor, and Forbes Contributor. She is also an educator, speaker, writer, and non-profit fundraiser.

Since 2010, she has been focused on preparing knowledge workers, educators, and students for the future of work.

Learn more about Yolanda here.

Updated on February 24, 2024

How Organizations Can Become Project-Based In The Future Of Work

By Yolanda Lau

The nature of work is changing: Companies are increasingly thinking of work as project-based rather than role-based. We’re moving toward a project-based economy, and this shift toward the future of work is accelerating due to the pandemic. The more you can think of work as project-based versus role-based, the more agile your team and organization will be.

What Is Project-Based Work?

Project-based work has clear goals, milestones, and deliverables, and a defined start and end date. Projects may take hours or months or longer — the duration varies with every project and business need. But the work is aligned against business needs and objectives, not specific roles.

The Benefits Of Project-Based Work

As business leaders, we all want our teams to be agile and nimble, and embracing a project-based work mindset helps you increase speed and agility. A recent MIT and Deloitte report found that executives are increasingly thinking of their workforce as an ecosystem — drawing on the diverse skill sets of their universes of full-time workers and freelancers to meet business challenges.

With a project-based approach, you can innovate faster, quickly pulling skills internally and externally as needed. You can also operate more efficiently, dialing up and down skill-based resources by drawing on your workforce ecosystem.

How To Shift From A Role-Based To A Project-Based Organization

So, increasing agility, innovating more quickly, operating more efficiently, etc. — it all sounds ideal, but how do you evolve from a traditional, role-based organization to one that is project-based? There are a few critical steps to support success in this journey.

1. Change work definitions: First, you have to redefine the work. And this is an ongoing effort, not a one-time fix. Consider your immediate, short-term, and long-term objectives. How do you define these objectives in terms of projects? What skill sets do these projects need? Consider how your current workforce maps against these opportunities. Which skills do you need to source from freelancers and contractors? By developing what Deloitte calls “an adaptable network of teams,” you can build the flexible organization you need. Using a consulting firm that is experienced in project-based work can help you shift away from role-based work.

2. Focus on planning: For this model to work well, you must put an ongoing emphasis on planning. One of the advantages of working with on-demand talent is that you can pull in resources at short notice. However, when shifting to an overall project-based work approach, you need to plan ahead and have a project road map. Your road map will continually evolve to adapt to business strategy and needs, but you should always be thinking about the next project(s), particularly for your full-time employees.

3. Evaluate your processes: A flexible, on-demand workforce will not function well without robust processes and communications. The probability of redundancies, missed handoffs and other unforced errors will only increase when some or most of the team delivering the work includes freelancers, contractors, and consultants. Also, consider how you can improve the connections and communications with your team.

4. Build your talent bench: As you map the skills of your full-time employees against project-based work, you’ll find areas where you may need additional resources or different skill sets. Developing a bench of external talent makes it easy to pull in the right skill sets when and where you need them. I’ve shared my tips for building and integrating your on-demand workforce — this advice can help you scale your flexible workforce.

5. Hire and train for critical thinking skills: Soft skills, like adaptability and self-motivation, are essential in the future of work. Critical thinking is one of the keys to success with project-based work. Asking the right questions is critical. Employees and freelancers need to ensure they have the right level of clarity and detail so costs and effectiveness aren’t compromised.

Project-Based Work Is The Future Of Work

Not only how we work is shifting toward project-based work, but also how we hire team members and promote our own experiences. In the future of work, roles and buzzword-filled online profiles will become less important while project-based identities become more meaningful.

A project-based work model can help your team be more nimble and innovative. It’s time to start thinking about your team’s skill ecosystem and how you can organize and deliver in a project-based environment.

This article was originally published in Forbes.

Interested in the Future of Work? Join the Work of the Future #FutureOfWork Facebook Group.

Yolanda Lau is an experienced entrepreneurship consultant, advisor, and Forbes Contributor. She is also an educator, speaker, writer, and non-profit fundraiser.

Since 2010, she has been focused on preparing knowledge workers, educators, and students for the future of work.

Learn more about Yolanda here.

Updated on February 24, 2024

Scaling Your Flexible On-Demand Workforce

By Yolanda Lau

The future of work is now, and it’s more important than ever to develop a modern business strategy that relies on building and scaling your liquid workforce as a critical component of your blended workforce. The pandemic has made it clear that enterprises need to build and develop a flexible, on-demand talent pool to be prepared for changing market demands and trends. In fact, a recent HBS and BCG study found that nearly 90% of business leaders expect that working with on-demand talent will be important to the success of their future strategic initiatives.

But scaling your liquid workforce is easier said than done, especially for companies without the structure or processes in place to develop and manage this at scale.

Scaling Your On-Demand Workforce As A Competitive Advantage

When you’ve built your on-demand workforce in a scalable way that anyone in your organization can access, it is a competitive advantage. Business leaders can quickly find, hire and deploy deeply experienced talent such as consultants, project managers, researchers, or even interim executives to lead or support mission-critical projects.

It becomes possible to deploy temporary resources to strategic initiatives in supply chain, logistics, pricing, operations, product, finance, marketing, strategic planning, digital transformation, R&D, data analytics, or market research — for both high- and low-complexity work — to overcome capability and capacity gaps. This allows for increased speed to market as it becomes easier to find the right people at the right time to help you enter new markets, launch new products or move into new regions.

The rate of innovation is increased and seen through new business models by testing new products and ideas more efficiently without committing internal resources — and by accessing broader talent pools. The increased labor force flexibility allows companies to try new ideas without increasing fixed costs in the form of new full-time employees.

Whether you’re a consumer packaged goods company, a social enterprise, a life sciences conglomerate, a tech startup, a financial services firm, an agency, or any company in any industry, developing and scaling your liquid workforce can help you grow your organization more efficiently.

Understand Your Existing Capabilities

The purpose of the liquid workforce is not to replace all employees with contractors, consultants, and freelancers. The goal is to build an elastic set of skills that can be deployed on-demand whenever and wherever they are needed — and those skills can come from both internal employees as well as external talent.

Begin with building visibility into the skills available both inside and outside your company. This is about more than job titles and salary history — it’s about creating a repository of skills and background knowledge.

Make sure all executives and leaders are aware of all consultants, freelancers, and vendors that all teams have worked with. This kind of holistic and centralized approach to integrating the liquid workforce is important. I’ve seen different teams inside the same company hiring different outside consultants and researchers to achieve similar goals, resulting in 50% to 100% greater costs.

Furthermore, make sure all leaders and managers know what skills are available within the company. Sometimes it may make more sense to pull an existing employee to work on a short-term project rather than hiring external talent.

Find Or Designate An Executive Sponsor

As you may have noticed, companies struggle to develop a flexible, on-demand workforce without a companywide strategy for building a digitally ready liquid workforce. While I believe that human resources departments can spearhead a blended workforce strategy, most companies benefit from having someone at the executive level who can internally advocate for liquid talent as a strategic advantage. From my experience, this person is typically the COO, CFO, or CHRO but can also come from procurement or other teams.

This C-level advocate must believe in the importance of shifting talent strategies to include external talent. They must be passionate that shifting talent strategies is a competitive advantage. But more than that, they must have cross-functional relationships to change how employees perceive external talent, fostering much-needed change.

Integrate An Operational Platform

Managing the on-demand workforce is both like and unlike managing a full-time workforce. To effectively scale an on-demand talent pool, companies must have an operational platform like Liquid (our offering) that will support end-to-end management. This platform is the key to enabling visibility and transparency, which provides a companywide view of all projects, costs, and talent. Plus, an operational platform can help standardize, streamline and automate the core processes involved in managing an on-demand workforce — a critical requirement for successfully scaling.

Embrace The On-Demand Workforce

It’s time to move to a blended workforce and build your on-demand talent pool. A flexible workforce provides the agility that companies need to quickly take advantage of opportunities, grow in new areas and respond to challenges. To compete and thrive in the future of work, engaging the on-demand workforce is no longer optional — it’s essential.

This article was originally published in Forbes.

Interested in the Future of Work? Join the Work of the Future #FutureOfWork Facebook Group.

Yolanda Lau is an experienced entrepreneurship consultant, advisor, and Forbes Contributor. She is also an educator, speaker, writer, and non-profit fundraiser.

Since 2010, she has been focused on preparing knowledge workers, educators, and students for the future of work.

Learn more about Yolanda here.

FlexTeam is a mission-based micro-consulting firm, co-founded by Yolanda Lau in 2015, that matches talented mid-career women with meaningful, challenging, temporally flexible, remote project-based work opportunities. FlexTeam’s clients are businesses of all sizes across all industries and sectors. FlexTeam’s most requested projects are competitor / market research, financial models, and investor decks. FlexTeam is also the team behind Liquid.

Updated on February 24, 2024

Eight Practices Of Successful COOs

By Yolanda Lau

Being the chief operating officer or head of operations is hard work. In many organizations, from tech startups to social enterprises, the COO is the director of “getting everything done.” While COOs need to have strong organizational, analytical and project-management skills to solve problems strategically and create procedures, there’s much more to the job.

Whether you’re a new COO or an experienced VP of operations looking to level up your game, you’ve come to the right place.

The following are eight things successful operations leaders do:

1. Build COO-CEO partnership and alignment.

The COO role is unique at every company and depends on company specifics and the CEO’s needs. Align with the CEO early and often on what you can take off their plate. This might be a mix of company-wide alignment and planning, owning departments or teams and taking on special projects or initiatives. Never forget that the CEO and COO are partners in growing the business together.

In some ways, the COO role is a lot like the chief of staff role — you are a sounding board and thinking partner. Like any meaningful relationship, trust, empathy, and communication are foundational. Building and maintaining trust requires maintaining confidentiality when needed, being transparent with the CEO, and thinking through situations and problems using the lens of what is best for the organization and the CEO. Always own up to any mistakes made and lead with grace and compassion.

2. Develop relationships.

Yes, you need to be intelligent, perceptive, and organized, but operations is also about knowing the right people and getting them together to get stuff done quickly and efficiently. One COO I know told me that the biggest value-add this past year has been running workshops to help people decide what their priorities are — not the analytical bits she was hired for.

Make time to put yourself in other people’s shoes. Adapting your style to what others need allows you to develop more robust relationships with your team and colleagues. Be willing to shift how you talk and act, depending on what is appropriate for that specific person in that particular conversation.

Put the work into understanding the power dynamics and politics in your company. In every organization, there are people who are not necessarily senior in role or title but who are very well respected. These are people you don’t want to overlook — you want them on your side.

3. Develop adaptability, flexibility, and resiliency.

Just as soft skills like resilience and adaptability are essential for the future of work, these same skills are needed to be a high-performing COO. Adaptability fosters creative thinking, which is critical for planning and executing strategic initiatives. Flexibility enables you to quickly pivot to any opportunity or challenge, while resiliency helps you overcome those challenges.

4. Prepare, prepare, prepare.

As a COO or director of operations, your time is limited. Preparation is invaluable. Have a clear plan of what you need to get out of each discussion before going in. Prep your presentations and workshops with as much detail as is practical. The more work you put into clearly understanding what you need out of each meeting or event, the more likely you will get it. And the more efficient you are with each meeting, the more people will know you appreciate their time and, in turn, will appreciate you.

5. Develop a data-driven mindset.

For COOs, a data-driven mindset is essential for tackling day-to-day and strategic decision-making. Successful COOs rely on data and metrics as critical inputs when determining recommendations and decisions. But being data-driven doesn’t mean using any and all data. You need to know which data matters, why, and for what purposes, while being mindful of any data limitations. A data-driven mindset requires open thinking, not rigid thinking — data can yield unexpected possibilities and opportunities but can also leave questions unanswered.

6. Keep it simple.

Don’t overcomplicate things. You may be tempted to demonstrate your intelligence by using fancy words or phrasing things in a complex manner. Instead, make it a point to create simplicity and clarity with straightforward questions, clear reports, simple explanations, easy-to-follow presentations, and uncomplicated plans. The more you can distill complex concepts into something easy to understand, the better. While your work is complex, present it so that anyone can follow along — which will make work more efficient. Simplicity breeds speed, scalability, and success.

7. Build your team.

Like any leadership role, as COO, you’re only as good as your team. But as the future of work evolves, how you build, grow and adapt that team is changing. A 2020 HBS and BCG study surveying business executives found that 90% expect that talent platforms will be critical for their competitive advantage. As COO, you need to draw on the right skills and expertise at the right time — on-demand freelancers and consultants can add and supplement the skills and expertise of your team to accelerate strategic initiatives and ensure success.

8. Don’t forget the strategy.

There is never a lack of high-priority things to get done. It can be too easy to get down into the weeds and neglect the high-level strategy. Spend some time each week thinking about the largest obstacles to the company delivering on its goals — like needing more output from a particular team. While you might not be able to address everything immediately, make sure you’re making significant progress each quarter and over the course of a year.

Take operations leadership to the next level.

Following these eight practices can help you achieve success as COO, regardless of industry. Evaluate to what extent you’ve already adopted these practices and what you can do to continue to improve in each area. You’re no longer just the COO — you are the critical partner in helping to grow and evolve your business.

This article was originally published in Forbes.

Yolanda Lau is an experienced entrepreneurship consultant, advisor, and Forbes Contributor. She is also an educator, speaker, writer, and non-profit fundraiser.

Since 2010, she has been focused on preparing knowledge workers, educators, and students for the future of work.

Learn more about Yolanda here.

Updated on February 24, 2024

Six Tips to Build and Integrate Your Flexible, On-Demand Workforce

By Yolanda Lau

How we work has changed. The pandemic has accelerated trends already in progress, and it’s become imperative for organizations to develop a flexible, on-demand liquid workforce.

1. Develop a flexible, on-demand workforce as a competitive advantage.

A November 2020 HBS and BCG study of leaders and executives reveals insight into how companies are changing how they think about their workforce. A growing number of organizations are shifting their talent model to a blend of full-time employees and freelance workers as a future competitive advantage. Nearly 90% of respondents expected working with on-demand platforms for premium talent to be critical to the success of their strategic initiatives in the future.

More than half of leaders responding to the same study said they expect their full-time workforce in the future to be much smaller than their current one, and the same number said they would increasingly prefer to rent, borrow or share talent with other companies.

Executives and leaders agree that the future of work requires embracing a modern business strategy that includes working with on-demand consultants and advisors.

2. Change work definitions to be project-based.

A flexible, on-demand workforce cannot function if leaders don’t get better at planning and defining the work itself. The risk of redundancies, missed handoffs and other unforced errors only grows when some or most of the team responsible for delivering work includes freelancers, consultants, and contractors.

This starts by training employees to ask the right questions to get to the right level of clarity and detail about what needs to be done. Use this input to clearly define the scope into discrete pieces of work with finite milestones for external talent. Ambiguity and shifting goals can quickly escalate costs and reduce effectiveness when working with the on-demand workforce.

3. Create an integrated approach for the liquid workforce.

At most companies, consultants and vendors are kept isolated from the inner workings of the company as much as possible. Executing work across cross-functional teams has always been challenging. These issues can be magnified when working with external talent without an integrated mindset and approach. All workers — employees as well as freelancers, consultants, contractors, and vendors — need to understand the overall goals of work. They must also have visibility into pre-existing and ongoing work that informs the work at hand. Keeping the liquid workforce siloed can duplicate work and increase the time and cost for completing work.

Truly confidential and sensitive information should be protected with many internal safeguards. And it’s essential to have every external worker and employee sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) or, as we use in our company, a confidential information and invention assignment agreement (CIIA) before work begins. But while it is necessary to keep strictly confidential information safe, it’s paramount to also provide access to the data, information, and people needed to get projects done quickly and efficiently.

4. Define new processes and guidelines.

At some companies, consultants, freelancers, and vendors are subject to rigorous scrutiny, including background checks. Some may have master services agreements (MSAs) or independent contractor agreements (ICAs) or similar contracts in place. But in all too many companies, external workers are governed on a case-by-case basis at best — or with verbal agreements at worst. This puts undue stress on hiring managers and workers, as well as the legal, finance, procurement and HR teams who share the burden of compliance.

Make sure to get fully signed and executed MSAs/ICAs along with NDAs/CIIAs and clearly defined work orders before work begins. This helps to mitigate compliance risk and ensures that work gets done smoothly.

5. Change the culture.

A flexible, on-demand workforce is disruptive. It’s the future of work. Workers and managers will have to rethink their roles, and some will question — or even resist — change. Great shifts require cultural adaptation.

Executives and employees will need to trust outsiders with information and think about freelancers, consultants, and contractors as more than just people who execute non-strategic work. Leaders will need to be more transparent and better at communicating specific, discrete objectives for the work they need to accomplish. Teams must become adept at working with a revolving set of colleagues, both full-time employees, and on-demand workers. This begins by building the habit of explicitly verbalizing formerly implicit team norms and making progress more transparent for others to track.

6. Build in software that integrates your flexible, on-demand workforce.

Moving to a flexible workforce requires leaders to think very differently about how they integrate outsiders with their most important work. A successful organization must build the capacity and capability to manage the complexity of compliance, payments, and legal agreements across multiple cross-functional teams. Key to building this capability is partnering with a vendor management system (VMS) or freelancer management system (FMS) like Liquid (our offering), WorkMarket, or Coupa with the tools and processes to help.

Using a VMS can help organizations scale and optimize project-based work at a lower cost, with lower risk and greater transparency and visibility. The same HBS and BCG study mentioned above also found that difficulty in onboarding external talent quickly and efficiently is a barrier for companies engaging flexible talent. Automated onboarding is just one of many key benefits of using a VMS or FMS.

Building Your Flexible, On-Demand Workforce

Building and integrating a flexible, on-demand workforce requires rethinking work definitions, integrating external talent, adapting company culture, and enabling via processes and software like a VMS. While these requirements can initially seem daunting, each is critical for companies to engage their on-demand workforce successfully. And flexible, on-demand workforces are increasingly becoming an essential strategic lever for companies. It’s time to embrace the future of work.

This article was originally published in Forbes.

Interested in the Future of Work? Join the Work of the Future #FutureOfWork Facebook Group.

Yolanda Lau is an experienced entrepreneurship consultant, advisor, and Forbes Contributor. She is also an educator, speaker, writer, and non-profit fundraiser.

Since 2010, she has been focused on preparing knowledge workers, educators, and students for the future of work.

Learn more about Yolanda here.

Updated on February 24, 2024

Five Reasons A Chief Of Staff Will Be Your Best Hire

By Yolanda Lau

Today, the Chief of Staff (CoS) role has become common in corporations and startups — though it dates back centuries and originated in politics, government and military. CEOs and owners of growing companies, whether startups, small businesses, professional service companies, or agencies, are always short on time and resources. Even after hiring an assistant, senior managers and executives, CEOs and owners often find that their focus is still divided among too many different priorities. All too often, a CEO or owner needs more help than they are getting.

A Chief of Staff is very different from a virtual assistant (VA) and is also distinct from an executive assistant (EA). A VA is usually a freelancer who works on remote administrative tasks on demand while an EA manages your calendar, emails and other correspondence, day-to-day schedule, and travel arrangements. In contrast, a CoS thinks strategically and works independently. In addition, a Chief of Staff is often a part of the senior management team.

While no two CoS roles are the same, here’s why a Chief of Staff will be your best hire.

1. A Chief of Staff will save you time.

Most executives I’ve talked to who have hired a Chief of Staff say that doing so gives them a quarter to half of their time back. They also can get more done in the time they have left. This is because not only do Chiefs of Staff take day-to-day tasks off your plate, but they also create and implement systems and processes to help you get more chunks of focused time.

In a startup’s early days, your CoS may help you systematize your marketing plan, then manage your QA automation team, then move on to build a repeatable sales process, and then create an internship program. And that’s all while helping to manage budgets and prepare for board meetings. Your Chief of Staff should be a generalist who can go from one project to the next without missing a beat, allowing you to focus on strategic thinking and planning.

2. A Chief of Staff will improve the flow of information.

An experienced Chief of Staff will significantly improve the flow of information between departments that were previously siloed. Plus, they will also improve communication between you, your senior management team, and the rest of your staff. Your CoS will cultivate relationships throughout your organization, allowing him or her to give you unfiltered and unbiased opinions. Without ties to a particular department, you will also find that your Chief of Staff may become one of your most trusted advisors.

3. A Chief of Staff will help you make better decisions.

An experienced CoS will help guide and implement an objectives and key results (OKRs) process throughout your company. With more time on your hands and better information, you’ll be better equipped to think through important decisions. And with your Chief of Staff knowing your business as well as you do, he or she will be a wise and reliable counsel for difficult decisions.

4. A Chief of Staff will identify and reduce your costs.

A good CoS will identify areas for improvement and take action. For example, if your company is manually paying invoices and onboarding 1099 workers, your CoS may recommend implementing a contractor management solution (CMS) or vendor management system (VMS). Switching to a VMS or a freelancer management system (such as Liquid) should help reduce person-hours needed for these manual processes, reduce direct costs due to overpayments and late fees and help your team source pre-vetted talent across departments.

An experienced Chief of Staff will always be looking for operational inefficiencies like these, recommend solutions, and then implement them. And then your CoS will move on to the next project or opportunity.

5. A Chief of Staff will help you boost your impact.

The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the shift to the future of work. Companies are increasingly comfortable with remote work and relying on blended workforces of employees and on-demand workers. In this environment, the CoS role becomes even more essential, not less, helping you to more nimbly adapt and iterate to take advantage of opportunities.

A Chief of Staff will help you maximize your time, improve your decision-making, make the flow of information to you more efficient and help you reduce your costs. A Chief of Staff will have a direct positive impact on your business, particularly in areas that fall outside of scope for your other executives. In short, hiring a Chief of Staff will help you be a more effective executive, allowing you to build your company and focus on your vision.

It’s time to take your company to the next level. Define what you need in a chief of staff, then find that perfect match. The Chief of Staff is a role you won’t regret adding to your management team.

This article was originally published in Forbes.

Yolanda Lau is an experienced entrepreneurship consultant, advisor, and Forbes Contributor. She is also an educator, speaker, writer, and non-profit fundraiser.

Since 2010, she has been focused on preparing knowledge workers, educators, and students for the future of work.

Learn more about Yolanda here.

Updated on February 24, 2024

Hiring For Skills Of The Future: Part Two

By Yolanda Lau

Whether you’re hiring employees or freelancers, some of the same fundamentals apply. Work has changed and will continue to change. Today, the shelf life of a hard skill — content-based knowledge — is very short. Over half of today’s job activities could become automated by 2055. To succeed in a continuously evolving and changing economy requires highly adaptable workers. Your people are your best asset, and it is crucial to understand each person’s future potential for roles they’ve never done before — instead of hiring them only for what you need today.

In addition to soft skills, here are three additional skills of the future, how to hire for them, and how to teach and/or acquire these skills.

Lifelong Learning And Coachability

A 2017 Deloitte report states that professionals in software engineering, marketing, sales, manufacturing, law, finance, and accounting must update their skills every 12 to 18 months. Time is a scarce commodity, and you don’t have time to hire and train new people with this frequency. One way around this is to hire on-demand workers for specific projects as needed. However, I would argue that even when working with independent contractors, it’s best to work with people who love to learn, who love to receive feedback, and who can quickly get up to speed in changing circumstances.

For workers, I recommend that you ask for feedback from colleagues and supervisors and take action on that feedback. Also, take advantage of the many platforms available to update your skills continuously.

For hirers, there are a few questions I like to ask potential employees and freelance consultants:

Are there skills you are working to acquire?
Are there random things you would like to learn about?
Tell me about the most impactful feedback/constructive criticism you’ve gotten.

These questions help evaluate the degree to which someone is open to feedback and an eager lifelong learner.

Written And Oral Communication Skills

As the world has shifted to remote work during our current crisis, we’ve all seen for ourselves the importance of clear and effective communication. When communicating over Slack, Google Chat, Microsoft Teams, or email, it’s necessary to be able to infer what someone’s unspoken concerns are and to respond appropriately. Listening skills are an essential component of successful communication.

As machine learning and artificial intelligence begin taking over more job functions, skills that are harder for computers to complete effectively become more important. While some AI are capable of writing — and even effective copy for content and ads — effective written and oral communication skills are currently beyond the reach of machines.

For workers, the best things you can do are write more memos instead of having more meetings and practice being aware of how you communicate. Your words, tone, and method of communication affect the outcome you desire.

When hiring potential employees and freelance consultants, I recommend requiring several writing samples. In addition, conduct interviews through short, written messages to mimic communication over Slack as well as interviews over Zoom to evaluate both written and oral communication. I like to ask them the following question: “Can you think of a time you were communicating with someone and they did not understand you? What did you do?” How they respond shows the degree to which they are aware that how we communicate is important and can shift communication styles when appropriate.

Computational Thinking Skills

Computational thinking (or algorithmic thinking) is a phrase that became more widely used since 2006 when computer scientist Jeannette Wing published an essay suggesting that computational thinking is a fundamental skill for everyone, not just computer scientists. I think of computational thinking as the ability to think logically and strategically, work with uncertainty (and a lack of complete data), break down complex issues into smaller pieces, quickly recognize patterns, use patterns to think through potential solutions, manipulate and use data to gain insights and iterate when appropriate. As the world has become increasingly interconnected and complex, this skill has become ever more important.

I’ve found that consultants who lack computational thinking skills require more supervision, generally due to the lack of creativity to complete tasks. A computational thinker is agile, is adaptable, and generally learns quickly.

An example of a question to ask a potential hire might be something like: “How many tennis balls does it take to fill an SUV? And how did you arrive at your answer?” There’s no “right” answer, but asking a question like this allows you to evaluate how a candidate breaks down a complicated problem, makes assumptions, works through potential solutions, gut-checks their answer, and iterates if necessary.

Real-World, Project-Based Learning Experiences

Apprenticeships, internships, fellowships, course work or independent work focused on complex real-world problem-solving are a few ways to gain experience. Experiential learning is the surest way to gain the skills needed for success. When hiring employees or freelancers right out of school, I look for people who have had real-world, project-based learning experiences.

Prepare Your Team For The Future Of Work

As companies work to become more agile and adaptable in their business strategies, it’s essential that they are hiring workers with the skills needed for the ever-changing future of work. HR leaders are rethinking their roles and talent strategies as they prepare for the future of work with a blended workforce model. Building and growing a team able to meet the opportunities and challenges ahead requires life-long learners who embrace feedback, communicate effectively, and fuel creativity with computational thinking skills. By hiring workers with these three critical skills (and with soft skills), your team will be ready for the future of work.

This article was originally published in Forbes.

Interested in the Future of Work? Join the Work of the Future #FutureOfWork Facebook Group.

Yolanda Lau is an experienced entrepreneurship consultant, advisor, and Forbes Contributor. She is also an educator, speaker, writer, and non-profit fundraiser.

Since 2010, she has been focused on preparing knowledge workers, educators, and students for the future of work.

Learn more about Yolanda here.

Updated on February 24, 2024

Soft Skills Are Essential To The Future Of Work: Hiring for Skills of the Future, Part One

By Yolanda Lau

Whether you are hiring employees, independent contractors, or a blended workforce, we all know that the world is changing rapidly and how work gets done is evolving. As a result, how we screen and hire employees and freelancers has changed too. Soft skills — such as empathy, emotional intelligence, kindness, mindfulness, adaptability, integrity, optimism, self-motivation, grit, and resilience — have become crucial success factors.

Why Soft Skills Have Become More Important

As more and more job activities become automated, soft skills, which cannot yet be replicated by machines, have become more important. In 2017, Deloitte also reported that “soft skill-intensive occupations will account for two-thirds of all jobs by 2030” and that hiring employees with more soft skills could increase revenue by more than $90,000.

Empathy And Emotional Intelligence

The importance of empathy and social-emotional skills cannot be overstated. Emotionally intelligent teams have a competitive advantage, and I have found that empathy is one of the most important skills to hire for. Caring about how your teammates and customers feel and sensing their unspoken feelings is a true skill that I believe increases productivity and revenue. Empathy and emotional intelligence require self-awareness and enable better listening, leading to improved communication.

When screening potential employees and freelancers, I like to ask if there are charities or causes they care about. This gives me insight into whether they care enough about others to take action. I also like to ask this question: “Can you think of a time when you worked with someone difficult to get along with — how did you handle interactions with that person?” This shows me whether their empathy and emotional intelligence enabled them to not only defuse a challenging situation but turn it into a win.

Integrity And Ethical Responsibility

Billionaire Warren Buffett is famously credited with calling integrity the most important trait to look for when hiring. I agree that this character trait is critical to long-term success. I’ve found that my most successful employees and contractors are those who are ethical, take responsibility for their successes and mistakes, have humility, respect other people’s time, give others credit and take full ownership of their work — especially for losses. When someone tells me they’ve made a mistake and how they intend to fix it, I know I can trust them. In today’s fast-paced world, integrity is even more critical. It’s easy to take shortcuts and show short-term gains, but it’s harder to do things right to set yourself up for long-term success.

In the days of in-person interviews, I liked to ask the receptionist how applicants treated them (and if a meal was involved, how the applicant treated the wait staff). In our remote work world, ask admin assistants how applicants treat them over email. How people treat others reflects their true character.

To encourage a culture of integrity, I own up to mistakes and encourage others to do the same. To screen for this, ask potential workers to explain an incident that occurred in their life that didn’t go as expected and how they resolved it. How they respond usually shows whether they are capable of taking responsibility when things go wrong.

Adaptability And Resilience

As technological advances come more rapidly, hiring for adaptability and resilience is critical. You need open-minded people who can shift gears and take on different responsibilities as needed, adapt their behaviors to their teammates’ needs, manage uncertainty and find the positive when things go wrong. Agility and flexibility — which go hand in hand with adaptability — allow workers to bring and implement fresh ideas.

One question I like to ask potential employees and independent contractors to look for adaptability is, “What’s the most stressful situation you have handled, and what was the outcome?” I also look for people who have combined working part-time during college or graduate school or taken on different roles and responsibilities. To build adaptability and resilience, challenge yourself to be comfortable in unfamiliar environments and situations.

Self-Motivated And Self-Directed

Self-motivated workers, people who have intrinsic motivation, need less oversight and management. Self-motivation and self-direction enables people to take initiative and ownership of their work, set achievable goals against a schedule and take steps accordingly and adapt their plans as necessary. In a future where things are constantly changing, these skills are paramount to success. While I’ve found these skills difficult to develop, helping connect employees to find intrinsic motivation in their work can help.

One question I like to ask potential employees and freelancers is “Tell me about a time when you set a goal for yourself and what you did about it.”

Mindfulness

Mindfulness is a soft skill that builds on other skills. Those who are mindful tend to be more emotionally intelligent, adaptable, and forthright. Mindful people stay more focused during difficult situations. Mindfulness is the amplifier of all other soft skills as it cultivates the awareness and discretion to know how to respond in a centered, balanced way across diverse situations.

While I don’t have a secret for hiring for mindfulness, I believe in mindfulness training. Companies can support developing mindfulness by offering perks like a subscription to Headspace or Calm. Or, if you want to maximize the benefits of mindfulness, a subscription to Yoga Ed. so your employees and their families can benefit from on-demand mindfulness and yoga practice. (Full disclosure, I’m an investor in Yoga. Ed.)

Hiring For The Future Of Work

Assessing soft skills should be an essential part of your hiring process for potential employees and contractors. Soft skills strengthen other skills and abilities, and teams with these skills will be equipped to adapt more quickly and easily as the future of work continues to evolve.

Next time, I’ll share additional skills required for success in the future of work, how to hire employees and freelancers with these skills, and to develop these skills with your teams.

This article was originally published in Forbes.

Interested in the Future of Work? Join the Work of the Future #FutureOfWork Facebook Group.

Yolanda Lau is an experienced entrepreneurship consultant, advisor, and Forbes Contributor. She is also an educator, speaker, writer, and non-profit fundraiser.

Since 2010, she has been focused on preparing knowledge workers, educators, and students for the future of work.

Learn more about Yolanda here.

Updated on February 24, 2024

Five Ways The Pandemic Has Accelerated The Future Of Work

By Yolanda Lau

When the COVID-19 pandemic started, few of us had any understanding of how a global pandemic would drastically alter our lives — from curfews and lockdowns to an increase in remote work and an evolving workforce. What we’re seeing is an acceleration of the future of work.

Here’s how the COVID-19 pandemic has and will permanently change how we work.

Soft skills enable adaptability in the future of work.

This year has upended almost everything. It’s become increasingly clear that you can’t just hire for knowledge, content, and hard skills. Hiring adaptable, self-motivated people with soft skills such as mindfulness and emotional intelligence is paying off as these kinds of employees are more adept at adapting to changing circumstances, and learning new skills as necessary.

I’ve found this holds true for employees as well as independent contractors. While some circumstances are well suited for hiring a freelancer to do exactly what he or she has done for another client, I’ve found that looking for soft skills in freelancers results in more successful outcomes, too. This shift has been on the horizon for some time, but the pandemic has accelerated the importance of hiring for soft skills. This should also result in more diverse workplaces, as hiring for soft skills is more equitable across racial, socioeconomic, and gender inequities.

Remote work is here to stay.

With all its benefits and downsides, remote work and telepresence are here to stay. Companies will need to continue to offer remote work as an option to retain top talent, but offices aren’t going away. Working from home has shown us how efficient remote work can be while also highlighting how important face-to-face meetings are for more creative and collaborative work.

What we’ll see post-pandemic is a reexamination of when telepresence is sufficient and when in-person meetings are needed. Companies will choose to reduce office space’s size (and expense), but we’re likely to see most employers land on some hybrid work schedule. Many employees will be able to work from home while being expected to come in from time to time — but executives may be expected to mostly work from the office.

More workers are switching to freelancing; companies are increasingly engaging a global, liquid workforce.

Now that most companies have gone remote, leaders have been forced to focus on outcomes rather than time in the office. This puts freelancers on an ever more equal footing with traditional employees.

Moreover, many of those laid off during this pandemic are choosing to join the gig economy instead of looking for traditional full-time employment during challenging times. People are reevaluating whether employment provides “job security” and more people are concluding that self-employment — with multiple sources of income — may be more secure than a traditional job.

Your company’s workforce of the future will include a greater percentage of 1099 workers. More workers will choose to freelance and work with multiple clients on clearly defined projects — to work only on interesting, challenging projects that suit them. Working in this way allows these freelancers to keep their skills sharper than traditional employees. And so the shift from a blended workforce toward a liquid workforce will accelerate faster.

Also, companies using a liquid workforce can more quickly adjust to changing trends. As executives come to see the advantages of working with a liquid workforce, the gap between companies that activate a liquid workforce and those that choose to rely on a traditional workforce will widen. Agile companies will see greater economic gains and be better positioned for post-pandemic recovery and success.

The expansion of benefits will further accelerate the shift to a liquid workforce.

Moreover, the pandemic has led to freelancers finally gaining eligibility for unemployment benefits due to the CARES Act. With millions left uninsured due to pandemic-induced layoffs, the pressure to disassociate health benefits from the employer-employee relationship has increased. As freelancers’ benefits expand and as health insurance becomes portable, we can expect to see even greater shifts to a liquid workforce.

Software innovation will serve an interconnected workforce.

As work continues to change, so too will the software we use. While the pandemic led to a dramatic increase in video meetings, we are seeing a gradual shift toward a combination of video meetings, memos in lieu of meetings (or as preparation for meetings), and asynchronous video communication via software such as Loom, mmhmm, and Vimeo.

In addition, working remotely has deprived us of serendipitous conversations at the water cooler or break room. Expect to see software innovation to help facilitate these unplanned conversations that often lead to new ideas (and new lines of revenue) — particularly when those conversations are between employees in different teams or departments.

As reliance on freelance workers increases, companies are finding they need software specifically built for contracting, managing, and paying their global liquid workforce. Working with freelancers is very different from hiring employees or managing inventory; companies shouldn’t be managing and paying freelancers via payroll or ERP software. We created Liquid to solve this growing demand.

We need to prepare for the future.

The pandemic has accelerated the progression of trends that were already underway, including shifting skill sets, more remote work, a growing freelance workforce, and collaboration through innovative software. Now it’s time to prepare for a resilient post-pandemic future. Start by thinking about how the nature of work, work styles, skills, and the workplace have changed over the last year. Focus on the areas that have positively impacted your business and workforce and use this to reevaluate your hiring processes and software solutions. It’s time to embrace a modern business strategy that includes the liquid workforce as an integral part of your talent management. Get ready — the future of work is now.

This article was originally published in Forbes.

Interested in the Future of Work? Join the Work of the Future #FutureOfWork Facebook Group.

Yolanda Lau is an experienced entrepreneurship consultant, advisor, and Forbes Contributor. She is also an educator, speaker, writer, and non-profit fundraiser.

Since 2010, she has been focused on preparing knowledge workers, educators, and students for the future of work.

Learn more about Yolanda here.