The importance of the ‘alternative workforce’

The term “alternative workforce” refers to the contractors and freelancers who complement an organisation’s core staff. It’s not so alternative anymore.

The mainstreaming of the alternative workforce is one of the top trends identified by Irish Insights – Deloitte’s 2019 Global Human Capital Trends Survey, which seeks out areas of immediate concern to HR executives.

Managing alternative forms of employment has now become critical for organisations that want to grow and access critical skills, it found. Despite this many organisations still look at alternative work arrangements as a transactional solution rather than a strategically important source of talent.

Only 20 per cent of organisations say they are ready to engage the alternative workforce. Half feel they are currently not effective in sourcing and managing alternative workforce solutions. But 62 per cent have recruitment strategies in place with specific plans for addressing talent management of the alternative workforce.

Digitisation

Through the use of digitisation, artificial intelligence and robotics, jobs are becoming more machine powered and data driven, it found. This is changing the nature of jobs, the skills required, and creating what it calls a new style of “superjob”. HR departments identify the pace of change, the employee experience and employee productivity as significant concerns right now.

Leadership effectiveness issues are identified too, with the top two blockers to it being “lack of empowerment” from fellow C-suite executives and performance management systems that are driven by traditional hierarchies.

What is required, the survey finds, is leadership that can lead “with more complexity”, an ability to manage remotely and leading through influence.

To achieve this, organisations need to re-imagine work in ways that meet the needs of workers of all kinds of jobs, from freelancers to superjob holders. It is important too, it suggests, to use innovative approaches that move beyond just managing people, to ‘optimising and leveraging’ them effectively instead.

Organisational strategies and cultures are already dramatically shifting, putting pressure on them to look more carefully at what makes work meaningful for people. There is a need to create more cross-functional teams to improve organisational performance, it says, as well as a need to refresh rewards programmes.

The report identifies a “clear disconnect” between what workers value versus what the organisation thinks they value and need. Rewards programmes are falling behind. The most important reward elements to engage the alternative workforce were found to be flexibility, followed by compensation.

Growth opportunities

Some 84 per cent of organisations globally recognise they need to rethink their workforce experience to improve productivity. In Ireland however, only 45 per cent of respondent organisations feel ready to enhance their employee experience and engagement, it finds.

The top three factors that are key to employee experience are a positive work environment, trust in leadership and growth opportunities.

The shift from hierarchical models of management to more cross-functional teams is gathering pace. Yet, despite the fact that “many understand the opportunities this shift presents, there is much more work to do”, it says. In fact, 50 per cent of organisations are still “mostly hierarchical”.

The primary challenges in moving to a team-based approach are leaders who don’t know how to co-operate, performance management that does not support team-based working, and compensation that does not fully support team-based working, it finds.

Finally, in the war for talent, organisations are battling to have the best employment brand and methodologies. All respondents agreed that the role of technology across sourcing, application, screening and interviewing will change in the next three years. Almost all, at 91 per cent, see learning as the most important “talent trend” in 2019. Despite this just under half, 49 per cent, say it’s a trend for which they are ready.