Leveraging your workforce strategy: Understanding your talent needs

The workforce is changing in what is now the biggest human-centred transformation. As leaders catch up with digital, they risk missing the biggest workforce shift since the rise of employees’ rights and HR itself. That is the rise of the blended workforce—the formalisation of permanent employees with independent workers becoming the workforce of the future now, beyond managed services and as part of a borderless, more flexible, and fluid employee ecosystem.

This means we need new rules of the road to be ready to structure, manage, measure and reward for success in this brave new workforce world.

The lack of clearly outlined rules of engagement for freelancers predates the COVID-19 pandemic, which saw a major shift to remote work. A 2019 Deloitte report highlighted that less than 10% of organisations globally have effective processes for managing their alternative workforce.

It is crucial to create an environment where independent contractors can easily integrate with the full-time workforce. Many digital nomads, independent workers, and gigsters tend to work informally or travel discreetly because most organisations lack formal ‘work from anywhere’ policies. To engage location-independent employees, organisations need suitable protocols that balance their needs while protecting against compliance and other regulatory risks.

To do this, organisations should start by reviewing their existing people management policies and procedures to pinpoint the current barriers to engaging freelancers and adopting an OpenHR outlook and framework. More importantly, organisations should have an acute understanding of their overall vision for engaging different talent groups.

What’s your why?

To achieve equity and the evolution of the organisation’s workforce, organisations must reflect on their purpose and vision behind creating a future workforce strategy. Organisations engage freelance talent for many reasons, including filling talent gaps, speed and agility, rapid company growth, fresh or external perspective, and increased diversity of experiences.

Therefore, HR leaders must be aware of where demand for different types of talent comes from within the existing organisational ecosystem. To gain clarity is by identifying and analysing the existing workforce makeup. This requires an acute understanding of how talent is sourced and deployed across the organisation, or the ‘anatomy of a hire’.

To carry out this introspection, consider four key factors:

1. The talent pool or source: This refers to where talent is sourced, such as platforms, job agencies, internal talent pools, or internship programmes.
2. Contract or classification type: This defines the type of worker engagement, such as contractor, employee, or agency hire.
3. Engagement or scope: This outlines the nature of the engagement, such as short-term versus long-term, project-based versus time-and-materials, milestones, or the level of project privacy and risk involved.
4. Payment or fulfilment: This covers the processes related to payment and compliance, including vendor onboarding, professional employer organisation (PEO)/employer of record (EOR), or payment solutions platforms.

By examining the deployment of various types of talent across the organisation, leaders gain valuable insight into the requirements and contributions of different talent groups. This process needs a dedicated team of cross-departmental stakeholders who can act as a knowledge hub for the organisation’s future workforce and create context-driven mechanisms for blended working.

A blended workforce project team of key stakeholders should lead future workforce strategy initiatives, gathering knowledge on talent engagement, analysing past outcomes and future objectives, and using this data to gain buy-in and inform new practices. Centre of Excellence (COEs) or similar groups could pilot strategies before unleashing them into the wider company context.

Selecting a leader who sets the cultural tone and mobilises internal stakeholders is crucial. HR, with its broader resourcing and access to employee data and employment lifecycle, should lead or partner closely in this initiative. Organisations lacking an HR department must assess their circumstances to determine the most strategic approach. For those with limited resources, designating or recruiting a single coordinator to manage open talent and blended workforce strategy requires close collaboration with line managers, who bring practical insights into daily operations and can guide the review of existing tools, development of new engagement rules and explain changes affecting current employees and projects.

A key responsibility of an organisation’s blended workforce initiative is to identify existing talent streams and pipelines within the organisation and understand their past and present purposes. While some organisations question open talent use, many departments already engage freelancers, and many employees themselves are freelancing on the side. Thus, people management professionals should prioritise identifying and documenting these talent streams to understand how various talent sources are deployed across the organisation.

READ MORE: Redefining leadership: Multiculturalism and flexibility

With diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) a priority, this assessment can also help organisations pinpoint where diverse talent streams are accessed. This process enables organisations to learn how non-traditional talent is perceived compared to full-time talent.

Some key questions to ask may include:

1. Are there any existing DE&I talent streams or pools?
2. How do in-house employees and management perceive freelancers or non-traditional talent?
3. What is the balance of push and pull between managers choosing talent sources versus recruitment/procurement choosing approved channels?

This emphasises the need for organisations to collect data that reveals the different types of talent being used across the organisation, the contracts being used to hire non-traditional talent, the skills gaps being filled by such talent, and the various skills possessed by in-house employees.

In addition to identifying existing talent groups, organisations should also seek to understand further workers’ classification and what this means for the nature of their business interaction or working relationship. This should include whether they are operating as a limited company or as a sole trader, the current working practices used when interacting with freelancers, whether they have multiple clients or non-compete agreements, and whether they enjoyed working with the organisation. Leaders must be clear about how open talent is integrated into the organisation to ensure they can successfully navigate compliance and legal requirements.

Ultimately, the OpenHR framework provides a practical approach for managing a blended workforce, setting clear standards for engaging freelance and traditional talent in alignment with business goals. By implementing this framework, organisations can integrate freelancers, enhance compliance, and foster a culture of adaptability that values contributions across all employment types. This future-ready strategy enables organisations to attract top talent, respond to market changes, and create an inclusive workplace where all workers—whether full–time or freelance—can contribute meaningfully.

About the Authors: They are also the co-authors of the book OpenHR: The Human Capital Framework for a Blended Workforce.