Talent Management Archives

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.

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.