Transcript
Mark Feffer:
Welcome to PeopleTech, the podcast of the HCM Technology Report. I’m Mark Feffer.
My guest today is Nancy Miller, the director of Talent Technology Solution Design at the staffing firm, Atrium. We’re going to talk about contingent workers, what they want and what employers should expect, and more on this edition of People Tech. Hey, Nancy, it’s great to meet you. So you’ve seen a lot go on during your time in the business. What do you think are some of the most important or significant developments regarding contingent workers that you’ve seen over the past years?
Nancy Miller:
When I think back to when I started in the industry, and I hate to say this out loud, but more than 20 years ago, the contingent workforce industry was really just thought of as, I need to fill a gap or a hole, I’ve got a receptionist going out for maternity leave and I need somebody to backfill. It was kind of that I need a temp mentality, and over the years, as companies have started to utilize more contingent labor, just seeing the industry evolve, and I think most recently it’s predicted it’ll be at least 50% in the next few years, and you’re definitely seeing that, especially post pandemic, and it’s really become a… Contingent workforce is more of a strategic part of a company’s workforce versus, “Hey, I just need a temp to cover for a few months for somebody’s leave.” So it’s gone from just filling a hole to really being a strategic part of the workforce, which is quite a change over the last 20 plus years.
Mark Feffer:
How’d that happen and why did it happen?
Nancy Miller:
Yeah, so I think there’s a few drivers behind that. I think as we’ve seen the job market in general have some up and downs, I think of the Great Recession, thinking back to how that changed company’s perception of, how do I make sure that I have a flexible workforce? I think companies always thought about how do I scale up and down, but that was a very drastic up and down, and even thinking back just how much Covid has pushed us forward in many areas, and contingent usage for sure has pushed, it’s pushed the industry forward quite a bit. When I think about, again, the scaling up and scaling down of contingent workforce during that time as well, we saw such great variance in usage, and so I think companies are starting to say more and more, “how can I utilize my workforce more strategically?”
And that thought process has continued over the last 20 plus years. I also think that with technology, especially you’ve got this work from home happening or really work from anywhere, there’s just a greater access to different types of talent, so there’s different ways to engage with those folks that’s very different just from your traditional staffing, and so there’s an awakening happening to say, “Hey, there’s different ways that I can get work done”, versus just having PERM staff and then having these folks that are my temp staff, and then I also think about just technology and the access to those workers. Back in the day, you had to have a local staffing company that had candidates that were local to you, that’s where you went for your talent, now you can use a marketplace, you can even engage yourself with talent, you can work with staffing suppliers in different parts of the world as well. So as we’ve become more of a technologically advanced and remote world in general, how we access talent has gone along with that as well.
Mark Feffer:
Right now there’s a lot of talk about the great resignation, which seems to be turning into the great return, but the great resignation represented a shift in the labor markets dynamics. So employers have had to work harder for one thing to find people. I know there are cycles that this is all cyclical, but do these new dynamics have staying power and specifically staying power with the contingent workers?
Nancy Miller:
I definitely think so, and I think about… We talked a little bit about direct sourcing as part of this as well, and feel free Mark to cut that out if you want to, but when I think about the access to information about companies and work environments and obviously the rise of social media, I think that when you’re looking at a role and you come into a company, you can find out beforehand anything about your boss, for example, your team, the company, the work environment, the culture, et cetera.
And then if you’re not feeling it, you can go and find out something about another company, and so there’s so much access to information, and I think that the way that people have started to think about work post Covid has changed dramatically as well, and I definitely experienced this myself, and I think that going through a pandemic, which is something we hadn’t seen in a hundred plus years, really shook us up from a psychological perspective and had people thinking differently about, how do I want to live my day-to-day life? So if I’m not happy in a job, if it’s not fulfilling my needs, and I think people just started to say, “Hey, I want to have that more meaningful experience day to day.” I think that people, again, going back to being able to see what it might be like to work in another company, branding, social media, all of that information available, I don’t see that going away anytime soon.
Mark Feffer:
If you talk to employers, they tend to talk about contingent workers as really happy people because they have flexibility and they’re more likely to work who they want to and all of that. Is that true? I mean, are contingent workers really that happy, or are they looking for a full-time job?
Nancy Miller:
Yeah, I think if they were, everyone would be right, that’s the secret sauce. There definitely is some flexibility that comes with contingent workforce, and I’ll put them into two buckets, one is thinking about independent consultants. So there was a big increase in company filings during Covid and just post Covid really for people who are filing as independent contractors and establishing their own business. So those are the people who said, “Hey, I’ve got a skill and I want to work when I want, where I want, and I feel like I can market that skill”, and I feel like those people do have a greater satisfaction because of that flexibility. I think you’re also going to have those individuals who are still on your typical contract roles, whether it be someone who’s a project manager or someone who works in a call center.
And that varies, some do like to maybe work for six to eight months and then have a month off and then maybe go back to a different assignment, or they like to bounce around from company to company if the opportunity is there. There are others that are still entering those contingent workforce roles and saying, “I’m going to come in as a contractor and I really want to be hired onto this company.” So I don’t think you can say a generalization when you put the entire non-employee ecosystem together and say, all of those folks are happier, but when I think about those individuals who kind of stepped out on their own and are empowering their own career, I would say yes, those individuals do tend to be happier people.
Mark Feffer:
What about the people who are both, they have a full-time job, but then they need a second job, so they’re driving for Uber or just taking part-time shifts at the grocery [inaudible 00:08:38]?
Nancy Miller:
I think that there’s definitely something empowering about having the opportunity to jump into an Uber, for example, and be able to figure out, “Hey, this week I’m going to do three driving shifts because I want to take this vacation”, or something, and having an opportunity to jump into a gig like that versus going to a grocery store, like you said, maybe you required to work 20 hours a week and you have to work every Saturday and you don’t want to work every Saturday. So I think there’s some empowerment to having choice in the opportunities that you can take that didn’t exist even really four to five years ago.
Mark Feffer:
Those workers, those full-time and contingent workers, aren’t they tired? Aren’t they feeling put upon because they’re working more than the usual amount?
Nancy Miller:
Yeah, a hundred percent. And I think that’s where if you have a full-time employee that feels like they have to go get a part-time job to make ends meet, I think as a company, that’s where you should be worried, and that’s where, as we were saying, the great resignation comes into play. It might be very easy for that person to find out that there’s a similar company, in a similar role, and they’re paying 50% more, “hey, I don’t need my part-time job anymore.” So, I mean, I definitely don’t think that’s an ideal situation.
Mark Feffer:
So, if you were talking to some corporate leaders, what would you tell them the role of contingent workers should be for them? And how do you think that’s evolving as we move into the future?
Nancy Miller:
I definitely think that they should take a long hard look at how they’re using their contingent labor currently, and whether or not that’s meeting their needs. Are they able to meet their strategic business objectives with the labor force that they have? And that could include full-time as well, and really looking at your mix.
There are some organizations I would say, maybe are too heavy on the contingent side, and maybe they’re experiencing some turnover and that’s impacting productivity, or maybe they’re outsourcing and that company doesn’t have the level of expertise that an in-house team might have, for example. So I think that they need to take a look at their workforce mix as a whole. I also think that engaging with their workforce planning team or having someone come in to help them with workforce planning is becoming more and more critical. Again, talking about being able to be scaling up and scaling down with contingent workforce, I think they really need to think strategically about how they’re going to use it when they’re going to use it, and be able to look at their business with their workforce planners and say, “okay, if we want to achieve these objectives, what type of workforce mix do we need to achieve these objectives?”
Mark Feffer:
Let me shift gears a little bit. Usually, or traditionally, it’s been HR deals with bringing on full-timers and procurement deals with bringing on contractors. Those worlds are starting to mesh and overlap. So, what’s going on there, and where do you think it’s going to go, especially on the HR side?
Nancy Miller:
I love this question, and I’m probably a little bit biased because I led a contingent program that was part of the HR department for six and a half years, so I certainly will probably always lean on the side of having it sit in HR, but in all honesty, I think this is where it belongs, I don’t think contingent labor is a commodity, I don’t think it should ever have been treated that way, although I understand there’s a lot of pieces of it that seem like they should sit with a purchasing department or procurement department, but really it’s people, we’re talking about people and we’re talking about workforce, and if there are HR departments that still say, “Hey, we don’t deal with our contingent workforce, HR just deals with our permanent in-house workforce”, they’re missing the boat, I really think, and I do see a lot of companies that are having HR, specifically TA, start to own those contingent programs, and I think that’s the right move. You can’t not look at it holistically and expect to have those results.
Mark Feffer:
And how are solutions providers doing with all this, the people that make the HCM platforms or the talent acquisition platforms? Those things really have been designed for full-time workers. They’re starting, I think, to move into contingent worker management, but are they doing a good job? Are they addressing the right things?
Nancy Miller:
That’s such a great question and this is the world that I live and breathe in every day, and I would say there is not one platform that I can tell you that’s doing it right a hundred percent of the time. We’ve now seen, let me take a step back. So you have your traditional ATS, you have your traditional CRMs, and all of those are designed for permanent in-house hiring. Very recently in the last few years, you’ve seen the rise of some technology specific to direct sourcing, so for example, your Work Lomas of the world, your WillHire’s, TalentNet, et cetera.
LiveHire’s a new on the scene out of Australia as well, and they’re taking the idea of our traditional permanent, hiring your ATS, your CRM, and designing them for your contingent direct sourcing programs, so they’re getting it right over there I will say, because again, it’s a very different world, although the elements of ATS and CRM as we know them traditionally are still there. So great, they’re doing that. Then we’ve got your permanent hiring solutions that are traditional that way, but no one’s quite brought it together yet. You’ve got your different VMS systems that say, “Hey, I can put together your permanent and your contingent workforce in two, one dashboard”, for example, but there really isn’t one that’s crossing holistically. I think about the Workday acquisition of VNDLY. If they can bring that together in one true platform, you might have a soup to nuts with your external and your internal, but again, I would say that there’s no one technology that’s doing it all.
Mark Feffer:
Well, Nancy, thanks very much for your time today. It was great to meet you and talk to you.
Nancy Miller:
You as well. Thanks, Mark.
Mark Feffer:
My guest today has been Nancy Miller, the director of Talent Technology Solution Design at Atrium, and this has been PeopleTech, the podcast of the HCM technology Report. We’re a publication of Recruiting Daily, we’re also a part of Evergreen Podcasts. To see all of their programs, visit www.evergreenpodcasts.com. And to keep up with HR technology, visit the HCM Technology Report every day. We’re the most trusted source of news in the HR tech industry. Find us at www.hcmtechnologyreport.com. I’m Mark Feffer.
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