Talent Fluidity – Driving Agile Talent Models

The way people are envisaging and planning careers for themselves has changed. Traditionally split into ‘full time’ or ‘freelance’ (whatever form that may take), talent is starting to become fluid.

People are looking for roles in permanent or contract positions based on their goals and aspirations. Businesses need to be meeting people where they are to ensure they can access the best talent.

Professionals are starting to think about their career as a portfolio. They’re building a career made of brands, experiences, deliverables, projects, and teams that they were involved in. Their loyalty is primarily to themselves and not to the organisation or team or product being built.

This is a relatively new phenomenon and it is strongly coupled to the rise of agile talent models. Talent fluidity is being driven by skilled professionals, who are taking advantage of agile talent models that enable them to work on demand, on contract, on assignment or in permanent roles, depending on what suits them, and what career goal they are working towards.

People don’t want to be constrained to the same role in the same company for life – they want opportunities to grow professionally and personally. Talent on demand, contract work and per-project assignments are emerging as the ideal way for organisations to find skills, and for talent to enjoy more flexibility, diversity and independence in their work.

Pick a job

Graduates and young professionals no longer want to work for the same company, possibly doing the same job, for 40 years – no matter how big the brand is.
They want to become more valuable as professionals and increase their earning potential accordingly. On average, young professionals now change jobs every two years: they might alternate between fixed term freelance engagements, multi-year contracts, permanent employment, and back to independent work again.
Being an independent professional appeals to South Africans who are entrepreneurs at heart, or who want to be their own boss. Building their own, independent service offering and professional networks gives them greater work flexibility, allows them to gain more diverse experience, and control their career path. For recent graduates who would like to find permanent employment, independent contract work offers valuable hands-on experience and income, which may pave the way for long-term contracts or permanent job offers in future.

Cut costs and risk

For organisations, hiring experienced independent skills on a contract or project basis is a viable addition to their hiring processes – without the risks and costs involved in recruiting and hiring a permanent employee.Bringing someone onboard in a six-month contract with a 30-day notice period is a significantly lower risk than hiring an employee on a permanent basis.Should the skill prove indispensable, the organisation might later make them a permanent offer.Taking on independent contractors also offers a faster solution to plugging an urgent skills gap than advertising a vacancy, sifting through applications and CVs, and onboarding a permanent employee.In South Africa, for example, permanent hiring processes take on average 53 days and notice periods are typically two to three months.Our research finds that permanent hires come at a cost of roughly 20% more than their stated salary, thanks to leave and sick days.On the other hand, independent contractors take on the burden of managing their employee benefits, so organisations hiring them pay only for outputs, with no hidden costs.They may also benefit from knowledge transfer when they invest in the services of highly skilled talent for a while.

These new approaches to work offer myriad benefits but also require mindset shifts and adjustments to traditional operating models. New, more fluid job models may see some areas of talent management edging out of HR and into the procurement space.

For example, organisations running specific projects such as launching new products to market may need skills only for the duration of the project. Here, skills procurement might be seen as part of the project – not as an HR function.

Legacy permanent recruitment processes are becoming obsolete – as the rise of talent fluidity shows. Talented professionals aren’t going to sit through six-month, multi-interview processes when they have so many other alternatives that offer interesting work, flexibility and the means to decide their own futures. Businesses need to keep up or lose out.