Tag: Future of Work

Updated on February 24, 2024

Seven Steps To Building Your Global Liquid Workforce

By Yolanda Lau

Companies are increasingly turning to the liquid workforce as part of their overall talent strategy. This talent is not only supporting short-term needs but also providing strategic support with knowledge workers serving as on-demand advisers to executive teams and corporate boards. But how do you develop a robust and reliable freelance talent pool that can become a strategic asset to help your company quickly pivot and scale where needed?

1. Start by identifying your talent needs.

Always start with your strategic priorities. Consider each and ask whether the priority could be accelerated by engaging the liquid workforce. Do you have talent gaps? Could a blended workforce fill these gaps? What are your near term needs and how could on-demand workers help?

The answers to these questions will help you identify where best to engage the liquid workforce and what skill sets and experiences you will need to look for when considering 1099 workers.

2. Source your global liquid talent.

There are many ways you can find liquid talent, including through one of the many freelance workforce marketplaces that provide access to workers around the globe. In my experience, the best freelancers and consultants that I’ve worked with have come through referrals. Ask your network for referrals, making sure to share details about the kind of skills and experiences you need. Your existing global workforce is also a great source for referrals to freelancers.

3. Build an onboarding process with ease and efficiency in mind.

First impressions have a big impact. Creating a standard onboarding experience for all your liquid talent not only helps your company save time (and reduce potential compliance risks) but also improves the experience for freelancers. The initial onboarding experience says a lot about what your company is like to work with. For example, you can make onboarding easy and efficient with automation. Using an electronic, automated process can significantly streamline the process for you and the freelancer, saving both of you time and effort. Ensure that liquid workers feel welcome throughout the process, not like they are jumping through a series of hoops to begin work.

4. Establish best practices for your hiring managers.

Working with the global, liquid workforce is a new form of people management, and your hiring managers need training to successfully manage freelance and on-demand talent. Their goal should be to build a relationship with the freelancer, not just oversee the churning out of a project. Sharing best practices for managing freelancers will increase the likelihood that this talent will want to work with your company in the future.

5. Build an internal talent database.

Managing liquid talent is similar in some ways to managing employee talent. Develop an internal talent database where you capture all the information related to your workers. What are their skills and experiences? How are their communication skills? What areas or functions are they best suited to support? What projects have they worked on? How were those projects rated? Capturing and tracking this information makes it easy to identify the right talent within your talent database for any given project.

6. Create a positive work environment.

Like your W-2 workforce, the global, liquid workforce also wants to work in a positive environment where their work is valued. Don’t forget this is a mutual selection process — the talent also needs to choose to work with you — both initially and for any future projects. Lead with mindfulness, be aware of time zones and cultural differences and get to know your on-demand workers as people. In my experience, I’ve found that this helps freelancers feel less like task robots and more like valued team members.

Consultants and freelancers seek opportunities to learn and continue to build skills in an environment with reasonable processes and procedures. To retain talent for future engagements, make sure to always compensate fairly and make payments on time.

7. Structure a performance management system.

Providing feedback to your liquid workers throughout and at the end of a project is essential to building a successful and ongoing partnership. Gather performance feedback from anyone who worked with an individual freelancer. Incorporate these responses and share them as a performance review with the freelancer. Keep track of the performance reviews in your database and include notes on working style or other factors that will help for partnering on future projects.

The future of work is here (it’s more than just remote work) and it’s time to strategically engage the liquid workforce as part of your company’s talent strategy. These tips can help you continue to grow and build it into a strategic asset for your company.

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

Increasing Mindfulness In The Workplace

By Yolanda Lau

Mindfulness matters. The ability to be present and mindful — to stay focused intentionally without passing judgment — is a 21st-century skill. Businesses with mindful teams are better equipped to compete in today’s ever-changing environment.

Mindfulness At Work

As most of us have experienced firsthand, stress and anxiety can take a significant toll on the mind and body. A study by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that nearly 40% of Americans feel that the stress of the pandemic has negatively affected their mental health. Not only is stress taxing, but it also increases inflammation and can lead to chronic diseases of the brain and heart.

On the other hand, research at companies like Google, Aetna and Intel have shown that increasing mindfulness in the workplace can decrease stress levels while improving focus, thoughtfulness, decision-making abilities, and overall well-being. Mindfulness gives employees permission and space to think — to be present — leading to mental agility, resilience, and self-awareness. In addition, mindfulness can reduce emotional exhaustion, increase openness to new ideas, and develop compassion and empathy.

In this day and age, being able to stay calm and rapidly adapt to shifting circumstances with an open mind is and will continue to be a competitive advantage. Moreover, a mindful workplace can be a powerful tool for recruiting purposes. After all, if given a choice between a company that invests in its employees’ well-being and one that doesn’t, which would you choose? Similarly, increasing mindfulness at work may lead to higher levels of commitment at work and increased engagement, ultimately reducing costly turnover.

Here are a few (perhaps unconventional) tips for increasing mindfulness and wellness in the workplace.

Yoga And Meditation For Mindfulness

In 2018, the “Employer-Sponsored Health and Well-Being Survey” of 163 companies by the National Business Group on Health (NBGH) and Fidelity Investments found that 52% of companies offered mindfulness training that year. While there are many ways to offer mindfulness training, yoga and meditation are some of the more cost-effective methods. Yoga (which I’ve practiced for 25 years) and meditation are good for your mind and body, with benefits including stress management, concentration and focus, self-confidence, and overall fitness.

The past five years have seen an explosion of apps and programs for meditation and yoga: Shine, Meditation Studio, Headspace, Yoga Ed., and Calm are just some of the apps and training programs available for improving wellness and mindfulness. What I particularly like about Yoga Ed. is that it not only equips individuals with yoga and mindfulness tools to enhance their own wellness, but it also improves the lifelong health of the children and teens in their lives.

Moreover, workout apps like Nike Training Club, ClassPass, and Peloton also offer on-demand yoga and/or meditation classes. Most of these apps and programs listed above are relatively inexpensive and easy to implement via corporate partnerships — and certainly cheaper than hiring Jon Kabat-Zinn himself, who pioneered formal mindfulness training in the workplace, to run a corporate mindfulness seminar.

Brain Breaks And Unscheduled Time For Mindfulness

You probably think that long (boring) meditation sessions are necessary to achieve mindfulness. But research out of Wharton has found that even short — seven- or eight-minute — bursts of mindfulness results in more productive, helpful and pleasant employees. Even these short brain breaks have been found to increase rational decision-making skills and may improve attention and focus. Just a few minutes of mindfulness can increase “divergent thinking” to generate new ideas, an extremely valuable skill during times of uncertainty (and also a skill necessary for succeeding in the future of work).

I also recommend purposefully scheduling blocks of unscheduled time. These moments of planned solitude provide the silence needed to focus on higher-level thinking and stimulate creativity while increasing mindfulness. With the frenetic pace of our modern lives, it’s become harder to find quiet moments, hence the need to schedule them into our busy calendars.

Create Time For Mindfulness By Leveraging Automation

To make time for mindfulness, I’ve been relying heavily on automation. Technology is rapidly changing the nature of work, especially as artificial intelligence and machine learning become more sophisticated. These technologies are paving the way for automation of repetitive tasks — a little known cause of employee burnout. Research out of McGill University suggests that repetitive tasks impair judgment, aptitude for goal planning, capacity to focus, and risk assessment abilities.

I recommend taking advantage of the myriad of companies and services that increase automation, allowing your employees to focus on innovative thinking and other work that cannot be replicated by software. In particular, Zapier makes it possible for anyone to create automated workflows without code. I use this service to help automate marketing “busy work,” but there are thousands of use cases for every role and industry.

For example, services such as Coupa, Bill.com, and Liquid streamline accounting through automated payment approvals. Automating your accounts payable processes will not only reduce errors but also increase productivity and the overall well-being of your employees. The more you empower employees to automate their repetitive tasks, the more mindful they can be about the work that matters.

Leading With Mindfulness

Similar to emotional intelligence, increasing mindfulness in the workplace starts from the top down. Lead by example by taking brain breaks and blocking out unscheduled time. Invest in automation software or services. Start with yourself and your executive team and the effects will trickle down.

Bringing mindfulness to the workplace is advantageous on several levels. After all, investing in the well-being and resilience of all employees is simply the right thing to do. But mindfulness is also a sound business investment that pays dividends. It allows businesses to decrease stress, reduce turnover, improve productivity, recruit top talent, and increase innovation.

The future of work is more than remote work. It is human-centered, where workers thrive and mindfulness, wellness, and well-being become more than just buzz words. The human-centered future of work is a movement and it starts with each of us.

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

A Blended Talent Strategy: How To Develop Your Liquid Workforce

By Yolanda Lau

A New Talent Strategy

HR leaders everywhere are shifting to managing a talent-based workforce that consists of full-time workers and liquid workers. Managing a blended workforce requires a different approach to employee development — you need a talent strategy for your blended workforce, not just your W-2 employees.

An effective talent management strategy is essential for every company to be successful. As companies adapt to meet the opportunities and challenges associated with the future of work, a new approach to talent management is required. The war for talent, particularly top talent, continues to challenge large and small companies, particularly as the freelance workforce continues to grow rapidly. Agile companies are building on-demand talent pools that can be quickly tapped, enabling rapid flexing of resources to meet skill needs. For example, corporate boards and executive teams are increasingly relying on the expertise and advice of on-demand advisors and consultants.

Blended Talent Management

Talent management needs to encompass attracting, onboarding, developing, engaging and retaining both employees and liquid workers. HR leaders need to adapt their processes and systems for the new blended workforce.

In traditional HR strategic talent planning, HR leaders take the following steps:

1. Understand the company’s strategic direction. What are the company’s goals and priorities?

2. Understand how employees can impact the company’s ability to achieve the strategic direction. What are the business drivers and challenges?

3. Complete a talent assessment and gap analysis. What skills are needed to achieve the company’s goals? Do we have the breadth and depth of skills and experiences required? What are the near-term versus longer-term requirements?

4. Enable talent management through the support of workflows (e.g., onboarding, performance management), software systems, and training and professional development. What HR support is required for managers to lead and develop teams successfully? What HR support is needed for employees to be successful?

5. Evaluate success through “SMART” (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-based) KPIs and metrics. What will indicate the success of your talent management strategy?

These same steps can be adapted to incorporate a blended talent management approach. As you think through your talent assessment and gap analysis, consider where you have near-term versus long-term needs. Does your company need a surge in one area to scale new capabilities or a new business line quickly? Does your workforce have a digital-readiness gap? Is there an area that needs fluid resources that can ramp up and down as needed? Addressing questions like these as part of your talent assessment will help you develop your blended strategy and determine where liquid workers are best utilized.

Growing And Retaining Blended Talent

However, standard processes and systems cannot be used as-is when you expand from a traditional workforce to a blended workforce. Processes and systems need to be adapted or rethought to be effectively utilized for liquid workers. For example, to de-risk compliance issues, companies should separate employees and contractors into different systems for management and payment. Likewise, onboarding processes will be different for freelancers, emphasizing contractual elements (such as the master services agreement, statement of work and nondisclosure agreements) and enabling the freelancer to hit the ground running from the moment onboarding is completed. KPIs must also be adapted and focus on areas like project success rates and freelancer performance ratings.

Once you know what liquid talent you need as part of your blended workforce, you can focus on growing and developing that talent pool. Talent can be sourced through referrals from your professional network, recommendations from other workers and online talent platforms.

Innovative leaders will build their company a database of vetted liquid workers. Freelance and on-demand talent should be identified and sourced based on the identified needs from the assessment and skills gap analysis. Use trial projects to evaluate and assess liquid talent, and make sure that performance reviews are ongoing by collecting feedback and ratings for every worker with each project. Give thought to retention strategies and programs that specifically consider how to retain the best liquid talent. For example, some companies may provide back-end profit participation, equity or performance bonuses.

For leaders and companies that are ready to address the future of work, focusing on a blended workforce talent strategy will allow you to become more nimble and agile in achieving your company’s goals. The future of work is more than remote work, and it’s time to adapt our traditional approaches to talent management and shift to thinking centered around a blended workforce.

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

8 Steps to Land Your First Consulting Client / Creative Gig

By Yolanda Lau

Whether you’re just venturing out in your new self-employed career track or just starting to explore project-based work, the key to your success will be finding and landing clients. Fundamentally, this begins with thinking of yourself as a business and learning how to promote and grow your business.

Whatever services you’re offering, you’ll have to be your own marketing and sales team. You’ll have to learn to market your expertise and services, build your credibility, articulate your value to clients, and sell yourself and your service offerings.

1. Get comfortable selling yourself

When you start a small business — and yes your own creative or consulting business is a small business — selling certainly can be of the most daunting tasks at hand. If you’re a natural salesperson, consider yourself lucky. For the rest of us, it can be the most frustrating and challenging part of being self-employed as an independent consultant. Whether it’s because we feel underqualified for the position — hello, imposter syndrome — or simply because we lack experience in sales, we have to get comfortable selling ourselves and our services to get work (and get paid).

2. Determine your rates and convey your value

Use your previous salary to calculate your hourly rate for on-demand consulting, advisory, and creative services. If this is your first consulting gig, be honest — building trust goes a long way — and be prepared to offer a discounted rate to the client to win the business. That said, it’s best to understand the value of your services and the return on investment (ROI) it will provide to your client. If the total projected ROI is higher than what you would likely bill at an hourly rate, then it may be advantageous to sell your services at a flat project fee. Whenever possible, be prepared to reframe conversations on the value that you provide via your services — versus simply what you charge.

3. Refine your brand and marketing strategy

Now that you’ve started your own consulting or creative business, you are your own business — you are your own brand. Work on establishing your brand, building your credibility, and cultivating your pitch to market your services and skills.

4. Plug into your industry

Hopefully, before you started your new creative or consulting business, you invested time and energy into establishing yourself as an expert in your industry. Attend conferences (even virtual conferences), and join and contribute to online industry forums. These are valuable opportunities to connect with potential clients. Offer advice when asked, say yes to speaking opportunities when they present themselves, and share your thought leadership.

5. Reach out to your network

Networking is the best way to get work as an independent consultant. Most independent consultants that I’ve spoken to have landed their first client through their personal and extended network. This means you have to be confident enough to tell friends, former colleagues, and acquaintances that you are available for work — practice your pitch often so that your network can pitch others for you. Former colleagues or industry peers often make the best first clients as they are already familiar with your work and understand the value you provide.

6. Learn how to qualify leads

Qualifying leads a critical step in the sales process. Do it efficiently and you’ll waste less time with potential clients they will never pan out — allowing you to spend more time on the prospective clients with more potential. Start by making sure your lead is a decision-maker. Thinking you’ve closed a sale only to find out that your prospect has to check with his or her boss is deflating — and not a great use of your time.

Create a list of qualifying questions to quickly assess whether or not you can meet the client’s needs. If your services don’t align with what they’re looking for at the price point you’re offering, move on.

7. Sell your skills and services

To get ready to sell to your first client, be prepared to speak to your industry experience, previous roles, level of seniority, and your unique and specialized skills. Make it easy for your prospective clients to understand who you are from looking at your LinkedIn profile and reviewing your business website. Then, when you do meet with a qualified lead, work to convey to them that you are the expert with the right problem-solving skills to address their pain points. Be prepared to use the initial meeting to conduct a needs assessment — use this time to evaluate the problem, understand the gaps in the client’s workforce, and start considering possible frameworks for your solution. End the meeting by promising a written proposal, and then follow through. How you evaluate the pain points, approach the solution, and draft a proposal are critical to winning business.

8. Be prepared to walk away

I firmly believe in building a business based on trust and honesty. Don’t be afraid to share your qualification process with your clients — and to let the client know if you’re not the right fit. Do this right and the client will come back to you when the right opportunity presents itself. Or a project that isn’t a good fit at a risk to your client relationship. In addition, learn to make peace with firing clients. Your consulting or creative business doesn’t have to be for everyone. If a client isn’t a good fit for your working style, feel free to turn down future projects; though, if possible, I would recommend referring your former client to other consultants who he or she might be able to work with.

Sales doesn’t come naturally to most of us. And it can be even more intimidating when the product you’re selling is essentially yourself. Build confidence in promoting your business and you’ll find success landing clients — and join the future of work while finding work-life fit.

Got questions? Let me know in the comments!

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

The Future Of Work Is More Than Remote Work

By Yolanda Lau

An Entrepreneurial Workforce

What is the future of work? For many, this idea has become focused solely on shifting to a digital workplace. Covid-19 has caused us all to rethink how and where we work, accelerating the shift to the remote office, but the future of work is so much more than going remote. In my view, the future of work is the liquid workforce where workers are self-employed entrepreneurs.

Companies are increasingly relying on a blended workforce, engaging a mix of full-time and on-demand talent (or liquid workers). This enables companies to smartly and cost-effectively employ the best available talent to meet their skill and work needs at any given time. Liquid talent is being engaged at all levels, even as on-demand consultants and advisors for corporate boards. As the liquid workforce becomes a critical strategic asset for companies, HR leaders are evolving their roles and responsibilities to take charge of leading a blended workforce.

For liquid workers, and particularly knowledge workers, the future of work offers a return to our entrepreneurial roots. Liquid workers can achieve “work-life fit” and gain greater independence and control of their work.

Opportunities For Companies

This shift to the future of work is resulting in challenges and opportunities for companies and for liquid workers.

Shifting to a blended workforce requires companies to rethink their processes and systems. Liquid workers are not employees and need different workflows — for example, think about onboarding. The compliance steps and documents required are distinct for 1099 versus W-2 workers. How you welcome and bring on the liquid talent also needs to be different. Your onboarding needs to enable the flex worker to hit the ground running from the moment they start.

Working with liquid talent is also inherently very fluid, with projects simultaneously starting and ending across a company. It’s essential to have a robust contracting process that you can simply and easily replicate with every new liquid worker. Likewise, you need to have the right financial processes and systems in place to ensure full visibility of liquid worker costs, invoice management and payment. Today, many companies still manage their freelancers and independent consultants using spreadsheets.

Opportunities For Liquid Workers

To fully take advantage of the future of work and maximize talent pools through a blended workforce, we need engaging liquid workers to become as easy and as operationally standardized as it is with full-time employees. It needs to be easy and efficient to source, contract and manage liquid talent.

For individuals, although the idea of being your own boss and having your own company can be exciting, it’s also daunting. Just as with a startup, being a solopreneur can be an uncertain endeavor. It can also be confusing to figure out everything that needs to be done administratively as a self-corporation, particularly in areas such as insurance, disability and professional development that might have been taken for granted when working in a traditional corporate environment. Individuals new to being liquid workers can also find it to be isolating.

Solving The Future Of Work

To shift from the traditional to the future of work, individuals need help to make running their businesses easy and time-efficient. They need support in managing their companies, addressing benefits (such as insurance, access to credit and disability), meeting legal requirements and building human connections (training, coaching, etc.).

The shift of the professional workforce will continue, and the pace is likely to increase. The focus on the rights of liquid workers, such as with California’s AB5 law, is not abating. Managers will need to adapt their people leadership skills to lead, motivate and integrate a blended workforce successfully. But to fully achieve the future of work and realize the true potential of the liquid workforce, we need solutions that will address the barriers that still exist.

Many solutions are under development, but there’s still so much opportunity left to build the capabilities required for the future of work, which include:

  • Helping companies and liquid workers find each other and connect.
  • Making it easy and straightforward for contracts to be executed.
  • Enabling companies and liquid workers to work with each other effectively and efficiently.
  • Simplifying the process of establishing and managing liquid workers’ businesses.
  • Offering options for liquid workers that meet needs for traditional benefits, such as insurance and 401(k)s, professional development and community connections.

Companies and individuals are continuing to shape the evolution toward a more entrepreneurial and independent workforce. Remote work is just one aspect of the future of work. Consider how you can go beyond the integration of remote work and include the future of work in your human resources strategy.

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

Rethinking The Role Of Human Resources In The Future Of Work

By Yolanda Lau

The future of work is the liquid workforce, and as such, the role of human resources must evolve to meet today’s challenges. Yet, many HR leaders are only engaged in areas related to their full-time workforce and aren’t involved in the planning and management of the liquid workforce.

Here are some things to keep in mind as you rethink your HR role.

Automation Is The Future Of Work

A recent McKinsey report predicts that automation will result in many occupations — such as administrative assistants and bookkeepers — shrinking through attrition and reduced hiring. Millions of Americans will need to be retrained and redeployed during the coming automation age.

HR will need to take the lead in helping to develop a digitally ready workforce that can adapt to the changing needs of each company. But this workforce will also look very different from today’s — companies are migrating toward a blended workforce that includes full-time workers and liquid workers. HR leaders need to reconsider how they develop and retain the best talent. To do this, they need to fully understand the direction of their companies and the types of talent and skills needed to support that direction.

Digitalization Is The Future of Work

As HR leaders shift from managing full-time employees to managing talent, they will need to embrace digitalization. For HR, Gartner noted that digitalization is changing everything. With a blended workforce, your talent acquisition processes and systems must evolve to encompass traditional hiring and on-demand skills sourcing.

In many companies, HR leaders are not involved in overseeing the contingent or liquid workforce. Often the procurement or purchasing department takes the lead, resulting in an emphasis on cost over talent sourcing or management.

HR leaders need to develop a talent network that encompasses internal and external talent and focuses on identifying, matching and developing the skills that the company needs at any given time. As part of developing that talent network, HR must build relationships with global online talent marketplaces.

Shifting To A Talent-Based Workforce

As HR leaders rethink their workforce strategy, they need to assess where using the liquid workforce makes sense. What skills does the company have within its full-time workforce? What skills will it need in the near future? Are these long-term or short-term needs? Will the demand for these skills vary over time? HR leaders should assess these factors to determine where the liquid workforce should be integrated into their strategic workforce plan.

As the blended workforce grows, HR needs to reconsider not only how and where talent is sourced, but how to manage that talent. Organizations must have rigorous contracting and onboarding processes in place for their liquid workers. These processes protect the company, aid in meeting compliance requirements, and enable the rapid on-ramp of liquid workers. Also, a consistent onboarding process helps liquid workers instantly feel like part of the team and hit the ground running on projects.

Managing Performance With A Liquid Workforce

The skills required to engage with and manage a liquid worker are similar in many ways to those required with full-time employees. However, the “how” and “what” of using those skills are very different since liquid workers are entrepreneurs who are working in partnership with an organization. People managers will need support and training from HR to adapt their styles to partner most effectively with their liquid workers. HR leaders should encourage the sharing of best practices for working with liquid talent across the organization.

Performance management also needs to be rethought with a blended workforce. Having a performance management system with your liquid workers is essential. Every engagement with a liquid worker should be evaluated and assessed against performance metrics and goals. Evaluations should be maintained in your talent database.

Similarly, retention strategies need to be redeveloped for a blended workforce. Consider how to reward high-performing liquid talent. For example, some organizations offer performance bonuses, equity or back-end profit participation.

Modern companies are shifting to a more blended workforce where liquid workers represent a greater and greater share of the workforce. HR needs to take the lead on the workforce strategy and plan not only for full-time workers, but also for liquid workers. Liquid workers are human resources and, as such, should be part of the strategic remit of HR leaders rather than co-mingled and lost among vendor spending. It’s time for the role of HR to evolve and truly encompass all human resources.

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

Secrets Of Developing A Digitally Ready Workforce

By Yolanda Lau

Before 2020 started, remote and virtual work had already grown 159% since 2005. This growth has been driven in part by the rise of the liquid workforce. Freelancers and independent consultants have long been shaping the future of work and making a digitally ready and virtual workforce a reality.

The work that we do and how we do it is also transforming. The World Economic Forum has predicted that over the next 10 years, digital skills will be required for 9 out of 10 jobs, and automation will change 5 out of 10 jobs. Freelancers are also at the forefront of this skills transformation.

Rethinking The Workforce

The current environment is rapidly accelerating these trends. So how can we develop a digitally ready workforce that can scale and grow a business? Insights from working with executive-level freelancers and consultants can help provide the answers.

The liquid workforce has steadily grown over the last decade, with over 57 million people freelancing in the US last year. This growth has been driven in part by the shift to more project-based workflows in companies. One of the fastest-growing segments of the gig economy is knowledge workers due to the demand for a digitally ready workforce. Knowledge workers serve as on-demand consultants and advisors, helping companies to take advantage of business and technology trends.

Redesigning Work Styles And Workspaces

Increasingly, companies are moving toward a blended workforce, with a strategic talent pool of full-time workers for long-term needs and liquid workers for dynamic, short-term needs. This strategic approach increases flexibility, agility and diversity while fluidly scaling digital readiness.

The events of 2020 are likely to result in fundamental changes to our workspaces, accelerating the shift to virtual and flexible work and making it increasingly important to communicate effectively with fewer meetings. The new digital workspace will require managers to embrace flexibility and autonomy. Freelancers have learned how to build trust virtually. A key enabler to building that trust is having shared, clear goals and objectives. Combined with proactive, open and transparent communication through modern communication channels, freelancers can establish effective working relationships despite never interacting in-person.

Developing An Agile Mindset

The accelerated shift to digital and virtual interaction in our workspaces will put pressure on soft skills, with communication, collaboration and emotional intelligence all increasingly essential. The importance of emotional intelligence, also referred to as EQ, is often underestimated but is directly related to not only great leadership, but also the ability to learn from experiences. We all need to learn to adapt our work styles to match the fluidity of our workspace with a more versatile approach. For example, we need to easily pivot between multiple internal communication channels, adapting our communication style and tone to each for effective virtual and in-real-life collaboration.

Core to any digitally ready workforce is the ability to handle and seek change. Individuals need to be agile, flexible, and willing to learn. Successful freelancers are entrepreneurs and, as such, must be nimble, ready to take risks, and look for opportunities. These freelancers are curious and take the initiative to continue to advance their knowledge and skills. When hiring freelancers, you can use trial projects to gauge fit. Similarly, you can task employees with small projects to assess their agile potential.

Investing In Continuous Learning

To develop the necessary agile mindset, individuals must be comfortable with being uncomfortable. According to research by McKinsey, the key traits to seek among individuals are the ability to handle ambiguity, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. Agile thinkers embrace change and adaptability and strive to keep improving their skills and knowledge.

Successful freelancers continually assess and develop their skills, following personalized pathways of development. Seventy-eight percent of freelancers surveyed by Upwork responded that soft skills were at least equally important as technical skills to their success. These development pathways are pursued by combining online courses, mentoring, coaching, and experiential learning. For freelancers, proficiency in using collaboration and productivity tools is a minimum standard to achieve. They also require strong technical skills in their areas of specialty, combined with cognitive and soft skills.

Developing a digitally ready workforce requires assessing your company’s current talent in terms of both hard and soft skills. You also need to understand their passion for learning and curiosity — key traits that the best freelancers share. Support continuous, ongoing learning within your team, and help individuals develop the best personal learning pathway. Developing digitally ready talent isn’t a one-size-fits-all journey.

Identifying and developing digitally ready talent sets the foundation for an agile business that is ready to adapt and scale. While half of jobs may change due to automation, creative and critical thinking, thoughtful communication skills and emotional intelligence will be essential strengths to develop, regardless of how technology evolves over the next decade and beyond.

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

Four Tips For Managing Your Liquid Workforce

By Yolanda Lau

We’ve all heard that the “gig economy” is the future of work. Estimates put the number of Americans doing freelance work between 54 million and 90 million. In particular, there’s been an increase in the number of freelance strategy and management consultants, as well as marketplaces and platforms connecting businesses to independent consultants. Boutique sites like SpareHire, HourlyNerd, MBA and Company, Hillgate, Toptal Business (formerly Skillbridge) and 79 Studios’ own FlexTeam make top quality consultants more accessible to and affordable for smaller businesses.

The future of work is the liquid workforce, and trends show that it’s imperative for companies to activate this cohort in order to maintain their competitive edge. Managing your liquid workforce — from freelancers to highly specialized on-demand advisors and consultants — is both like and unlike managing your full-time workforce. Overall, much is similar, but the specific strategies and techniques are slightly different.

Having managed hundreds of freelancers, I’ve learned that to successfully grow and manage your liquid workforce, you need to think like both a human resources leader and a finance leader. Once you’ve mastered this, your company will become more agile, and you will accelerate your own career development.

Here are four tips that can help leaders working with the liquid workforce, whether you are managing a few freelancers or hundreds.

1. Developing Your Talent Pool

How can you attract the right freelance talent for your company? In many ways, it’s similar to searching for the right candidate for a full-time position. When hiring an employee, establishing the strengths, experience and skills the right candidate will possess is critical. You also need to assess and evaluate the candidate, along with checking referrals. To source candidates, canvas your network for recommendations and use online portals.

From a tactical perspective, these actions are mostly the same when hiring a freelancer or vendor. The main difference is that instead of posting a job, you will post a request for proposal (RFP).

Your approach to liquid and full-time talent will diverge on strategy for developing those pools. Inherently, your freelance talent is fluid. How often and how long you work with each freelancer will vary. Often, you will want to start freelance work within days — or even hours. What this means is that to fully take advantage of the potential for liquid talent to accelerate your business, you need to approach the development of this talent pool strategically.

Think ahead about the types of skills your business will need over the coming year. Do you already have relationships with freelancers with those skills? If not, consider using smaller trial projects to recruit and vet new freelancers. Keep track of your liquid talent pool in a database or freelancer management system — make it easy to search and find the talent with the right skills and experience.

2. Onboarding And Processes

Just like your company has human resources management systems and processes for managing full-time employees, you need to have the right processes and systems in place to successfully grow and manage your liquid workforce.

A robust onboarding process that includes both automation and customization is just as critical for your freelancers as it is for your employees. The right onboarding process not only gets your project off to the right start, but also ensures your company is compliant with regulations. Make sure your onboarding process includes executing independent contractor agreements and nondisclosure agreements, as well as collecting all the W-9 information your company will need for filing 1099 forms.

Your systems and processes should also make it easy to manage and pay your freelancers. As you grow this team, keeping track of projects and invoices can become complicated and time-consuming very quickly. Plus, as your liquid workforce becomes a critical part of your overall workforce, you need to have robust financial management. Your company needs to not only accurately track payments, but also track cash flow and future expenses for your freelancers. To become an expert manager of your liquid workforce, you have to be more than an HR leader — you have to also be a finance manager with complete control and visibility into current and future expenses.

In my experience, depending upon the number of freelancers you hire, you can easily save 20 or more hours every month by using an FMS instead of manual processes and spreadsheets.

3. Evaluating Your Team

Effectively managing your liquid workforce is about much more than handling RFPs, contracts and invoices. Providing feedback to your freelancers throughout a project is critical to successful project completion and to building long-term relationships — 360-degree feedback matters for freelancers, too, not just employees. Gather feedback from anybody who worked with an individual freelancer. Use the responses to share feedback and to review their performance.

As part of your review, remember to think ahead to potential future projects. What types of projects is this freelancer best suited for? What level of complexity can he/she handle? Keep notes on working style or other factors to help you partner even more successfully on the next project.

4. Retaining Your Freelancers

Like your employees, freelancers want to be valued. Would your employees still want to work for you if they were underpaid? What if you didn’t pay them on time? Are you offering the freelancer routine work, or is it more interesting, challenging and intellectually stimulating? Do you provide positive and constructive feedback? Are you committed to the freelancer’s success and providing support when needed? Think about these factors from the freelancer’s perspective; this will help you build long-term relationships with your liquid workforce.

Don’t forget that for most freelancers, one of the critical benefits of freelancing is flexibility. Make sure you are supporting this and respecting any boundaries set on available hours for communication and meetings.

Beyond Liquid Workforce Leadership

As you develop, manage, evaluate and retain your liquid workforce, you’ll expand your skills as an HR professional and position yourself for executive-level advancement. What’s more, using these tips will help you grow your liquid workforce into a strategic advantage for your company, with agile talent ready to tackle any challenge. You and your company 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

The Future Of Work Is The Liquid Workforce

By Yolanda Lau

The future of work — or, as some call it, work of the future — has been a hot topic for many years. Most people think of the future of work as it relates to a specific technology or social issue. For example, the wide range of ideas I’ve heard discussed around the future of work include:

  • Jobs at risk of being automated due to advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML).
  • The end of physical office space as companies transition to fully remote operations.
  • A digital workplace that includes virtual reality (VR) or augmented reality (AR).
  • Diversity and inclusion.
  • Attracting and retaining top employees in an increasingly competitive talent market.
  • Soft skills and emotional intelligence.
  • Retraining and reskilling workers for the future.
  • Finding work-life balance or work-life fit.
  • The rise of multivendor software as a service (SaaS) for personal and team productivity applications.
  • Good jobs that pay a living wage, regardless of education or sector.
  • The gig economy.
  • Government-enacted policies and regulations, like California AB5, designed to protect and effectively tax freelance workers.

So which of these many options is truly the future of work?

I believe it’s a combination of all of the above, and it can be summarized by saying that the future of work is the liquid workforce.

Working For Yourself: The American Dream

Working for yourself used to be the American Dream. We were a nation of farmers, creators, builders and individuals with a shared identity as aspiring achievers taking charge of our futures (and destinies). According to historian Steve Gillon, before 1860, most Americans lived in rural areas, and upward of 80% of the workforce was self-employed. By the late 1970s, the self-employment rate dropped to an estimated 7%. Today, that percentage has risen and continues to rise faster than the overall labor growth rate — 10% of workers are classified as self-employed, and 20% to 30% of people are engaged in some kind of independent work.

Corporations And The 9-to-5 During The Industrial Era

As America transformed from a nation of rural farmers to one of industry, so did the way we work. America became a nation of large hierarchical corporations, and our industrial economy required reliable, cookie-cutter workers. The 9-to-5 traditional workforce is a relic of this era: Early 20th century factories introduced the five-day workweek (down from six days to improve productivity).

Future Of Work In The Digital Age

In today’s digital age as AI and machine learning begin to automate jobs and as VR and AR change our workplace and training abilities, the structure of work and the skills needed to succeed have changed. Soft skills like emotional intelligence are now paramount to success, requiring changes to our education system. People are increasingly looking for work-life fit and choosing to leave traditional jobs and instead engage in independent, and often remote, work.

From the corporation side, the talent market is becoming increasingly competitive, requiring companies to engage the liquid workforce as part of their talent strategy. Remote work is becoming commonplace for both liquid workers and traditional workers. Governments are looking to regulate and capture taxes as the workforce evolves. And as the business case for diversity and inclusion has been made clear — that diversity in thought correlates directly to increased economic output — corporations need to add more diversity to their workforce. Corporations are increasingly turning to on-demand workers, consultants and advisors as part of their diversity and inclusion strategy.

The Liquid Workforce

What brings this all together is the idea that the future of work is the liquid workforce — a diverse, robust economy where more and more workers go back to being self-employed, where we go back to our roots as an entrepreneurial nation.

Where the corporation was once the structure driving our economy, the future is an agile, technology-enabled, human-optimized and inclusive system. The individuals who comprise the liquid workforce will work anywhere, anytime on projects with varying durations. This idea encompasses the changing policies, mindsets and strategies of the future of work, and more importantly, the opportunities that follow.

Opportunities Ahead In The Future of Work

Integrating the liquid workforce will bring fresh and diverse perspectives to companies and add new energy and ideas. Businesses will be nimbler and able to quickly respond to changing customer expectations or shifting markets. Developing an adaptive workplace and systems will enable companies to support their flexible blended workforce in terms of both productivity and experience.

The future of work is the liquid workforce, and it is already here. Companies that expect to compete in today’s fast-paced digital landscape must activate the liquid workforce, often by engaging on-demand advisors and consultants along with other freelance workers. Are you ready to take advantage of the opportunities that lie ahead in 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.

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

Hiring On-Demand Consultants And Advisors As The Gig Economy Matures

By Yolanda Lau

When you think of the gig economy, you most likely think of people shuttling around passengers or delivering food and of companies like Uber, Lyft and Taskrabbit — companies whose workers are, generally, not thought of as highly skilled. You may also think of companies like Upwork, whose success is proof the business model for freelancer workers is here to stay. McKinsey reports that up to 162 million people in Europe and the United States are engaged in some form of independent work. That’s 20% to 30% of the working-age population!

From Low-Skill Freelancers To Specialized Knowledge Workers

But the gig economy is more than low-skill freelancers and side hustlers, more than drivers shuttling passengers, people hosting overnight guests and workers delivering meals and groceries. Today, highly experienced — and highly educated — knowledge workers and creative professionals are the fastest-growing segments of the gig economy.

Companies are realizing that the quickest and most efficient way to get specialized talent is to hire them as project-based gig workers. Corporate boards and executive teams are hiring experts who can provide high-level advice on how to take advantage of business and technology trends while also delivering tactical insights on implementation. These knowledge workers are changing the face of the gig economy.

The Role Of On-Demand Consultants And Advisors In Changing Times

With the rapid rate of change in today’s world, it can be difficult, time-intensive and expensive to assess and react to each new technology trend and challenge on your own. How should your company incorporate artificial intelligence and machine learning into its strategic plan? What are the latest cybersecurity threats, and is your company prepared for them? What is the internet of things, and how does it affect your market? Why should your company care about blockchain or 5G? How can your data be analyzed to provide deep insights into new product and market opportunities?

These kinds of questions and problems are perfect for executive-level consultants who have deep industry experience and can be contracted at an hourly or project rate.

How can on-demand consultants and advisors help?

On-demand advisors can help with a variety of needs — whether it’s providing an in-depth report on competitors, spending an hour giving advice on a potential new product, writing a memo on entering a potential new market, creating financial models and investment memos, or providing expertise on switching software systems. Executives can use on-demand knowledge advisors as sounding boards, to brainstorm ideas, get vital introductions, and ask for advice and insight at critical times.

How are corporate boards engaging on-demand advisors and consultants?

Corporate boards are also relying on independent subject-matter experts to help with high-level, long-term planning and strategy that management teams may not be focused on. Moreover, on-demand consultants can bring unique outside perspectives, which are particularly helpful at companies that lack diversity. I’ve seen it firsthand: Our consultants have helped corporate boards assess expansion plans, acquisition plans, capital raises and exit strategies. These kinds of projects are critical to strategic planning and management in today’s fast-paced economy.

So, how do you find these advisors and consultants?

Start by asking your network for referrals; someone you trust is likely to be able to make an introduction. And, after all, you’re most likely to have a successful engagement with someone who has a track record of delivering strategic insights. If your network fails to uncover the right professionals, there are marketplaces and providers of on-demand executive-level advisors like Business Talent Group, Catalant, and our firm, FlexTeam. Some outsourcing options provide rigorously vetted executive-level consultants; through others, you vet the workers yourself.

Not sure how to vet your on-demand advisors and consultants?

When vetting your on-demand advisors, start by asking whether they have an incorporated entity and an EIN (IRS-issued employer identification number), as those are indicators of commitment to their consulting business. Review their LinkedIn profile and website for red flags. Then, if all seems well, ask for references, and request case studies that illustrate their value proposition. An experienced and reputable advisor may not be able to share work samples due to nondisclosure agreements but should be able to speak confidently about the kinds of work they have done and the outcomes they have achieved.

With more and more companies using on-demand knowledge workers, it will soon become commonplace to hire on-demand advisors. Companies that don’t will risk falling behind their competitors.

The future of work is here, and the decision to adapt and change for the better is yours.

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.