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Scale up, skill up A new talent model is needed in a footloose world, writes Marion McGovern
Dialogue Q4 2018
a tube. Various efforts are being pursued, one of which – Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (HTT) – now has 800 people working on their version of the innovative new transit system. There are 40 partnerships with universities, 50 teams on six continents, and only 12 regular employees. HTT may be the epitome of the agile organization, where workers combine for oneweek sprints, complete their work and move on. These examples may seem extraordinary, but they are happening. And right now, 28% of the Fortune 500 are active users of online talent platforms to meet their demands for expertise. According to the Oxford Internet Institute in August 2017, they are looking for: Numerical flexibility The ability to rapidly adjust the size of the workforce Functional flexibility Being able to add new or different skills as needed Financial flexibility Adjusting the cost of labour as needed
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There is much talk about how companies need to become more agile. Firms need to be able to quickly prototype, test and refine not just new products but whole new strategies. This calls for a new approach to deploying talent, one which Workforce 2025, a 2015 study by Randstad US, called the agile workforce model. It defined it as “the strategic ability to meet talent needs through the real-time use of contract, temporary, consulting or freelance workers”. It also found this practice grew 155% from 2014 to 2016. This idea is being endorsed by leading companies. For example, GE has launched GeniusLink, a crowdsourced expertise platform that serves up challenges to the knowledge market with the goal of developing novel solutions. One such challenge is developing new nut assemblies for aviation engines to mitigate failures. These critical projects historically would have been done by in-house R&D teams, but no more. Or, consider the Hyperloop, a proposed mode of passenger and freight transportation where a sealed pod travels at high speeds through