A healthy AND vibrant workforce consists of these 3 types of workers… [Fridays: Mindfulness by Miles]
Miles Everson’s Business Builder Daily speaks to the heart of what great marketers, business leaders, and other professionals need to succeed in advertising, communications, managing their investments, career strategy, and more.
A Note from Miles Everson:
Hello, everyone!
We hope you’re having a good time today.
In this article, we’d like to focus on one of the things we’re advocating for here at MBO Partners. We believe this strategy is crucial in filling solution gaps in a changing workforce structure.
Ready to know more about this topic?
Continue reading below.
Miles Everson
CEO, MBO Partners
Chairman of the Advisory Board, The I Institute
Mindfulness by Miles
Nowadays, corporations see challenges that fall on the human resources (HR) floor. These include the need to fill skills gaps by hiring contingent workers, freelancers, and contractors.
The thing is, this tactic still falls short of all the work an organization needs to accomplish. To effectively strategize for the future of work, firms need at least 3 types of workers working TOGETHER: Full-time employees, contingent workers, and problem solvers sourced through open innovation and crowdsourcing.
Sadly, some firms fail to realize or act on this because they see this as a herculean task.
Photo from Idea Deployer
According to MBO Partners CEO Miles Everson, a diverse-status workforce consists of the right balance among problem solvers, freelancers, contractors, and full-time employees. This is because using more than one entry point to capture a workforce fosters diversity.
… and for Everson, a diverse workforce helps companies adapt to a new and changing landscape, and enables firms to thrive in the future of work.
Allow us to further explain why a diverse-status workforce is crucial in today’s work environment…
Full-Time Employees: Essential Solutions
Building an organization starts with its employees. They are the ones who “keep the lights on” and perform the day-to-day work that needs to be done.
As Everson says, employees are the backbone of an organization, and companies benefit from them. However, there’s a catch.
If firms only consist of 100% full-time employee workforce, they will fail to solve problems and miss out on various advantages that a diverse-status workforce can provide. That’s why there’s a need to hire other types of workers.
Contingent Workers: Ad Hoc Solutions
Contingent workers or independent contractors get the job done with fewer parameters compared to full-time employees. They solve ongoing problems or accomplish tasks that are too infrequent to constitute full-time employment.
Firms attract these workers by offering clear guidelines and expectations for tasks not fulfilled by the full-time workforce. These specialized workers are usually tapped to help solve an issue that they have successfully solved for other organizations in the past.
Everson says the freelance workforce requires direct management—meaning, managers should set clear boundaries with detailed contracts, goals, and delivery expectations, then interact with these workers through solutions-focused conversations.
He believes by doing these, organizations will constantly evolve and be able to solve problems using solutions that can be found outside the full-time workforce’s skill sets.
Problem Solvers: Evolving Solutions
Everson agrees that forward-thinking companies must consider solutions beyond their current workforce. In his words:
“Contingent workers can only provide some solutions on an ad hoc basis, and future workforces need to be powered by evolving solutions to problems using a larger pool of thinkers. The ability of an organization to crowdsource solutions using a broad pool of problems provides a necessary capability that was once seen as impossible in the worker ecosystems of the past.”
Everson also adds that attracting problem solvers is more manageable than any other employment status because open innovation platforms, artificial intelligence (AI), and smart-tagging algorithms help firms find the RIGHT people to solve relevant problems.
Besides, who knows? As a company grows, these problem solvers may be interested in becoming contingent workers or full-time employees in the future.
Since solving problems gives this type of workers insights into a company and its goals, having them as part of the more concrete workforce in the long run is a great way to not only obtain real solutions and ideas but also build a firm’s pool of contingent worker or full-time worker candidates.
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According to Everson, open innovation is necessary to acquire these types of workers and build positive relationships with them. He says this workforce strategy fills a need for thinkers and talented problem solvers who don’t fall into a niche category and provide out-of-the-box solutions for growing institutions.
What’s more?
Companies using open innovation are ready to embrace breakthrough ideas once left unanswered. They grow and thrive with ease, and are ready for the future.
In other words, firms that implement crowdsourced ideas will be ahead of their competitors and attract educated and skilled workers!
We hope you learned a lot from today’s topic on the importance of a diverse-status workforce and open innovation!
Remember: Full-time employees, contingent workers, and problem solvers make up a healthy and vibrant workforce that fuels growth and diversity within a company… and a diverse-status workforce is easier to achieve with a comprehensive open innovation platform where employers come to grow their organizations into the future of work.
Start optimizing your workforce now with a harmonious mix of full-time employees, contingent workers, and problem solvers!
(This article is from The Business Builder Daily, a newsletter by The I Institute in collaboration with MBO Partners.)
About The Dynamic Marketing Communiqué’s
“Fridays: Mindfulness by Miles”
High-performance businesses are run by people who think and act differently.
In other words, these are people who are high-performing individuals.
Companies and individuals of this kind have found ways to escape the grind of commoditization and competition by focusing on the RIGHT goals.
High-performing businesses and individuals are also “return driven” businesses and “career driven” individuals. They conscientiously develop unique capabilities and resources that allow them to deliver offerings in ways no other firm or individual can.
Every Friday, we’ll publish tips and insights from MBO Partners and The I Institute’s “The Business Builder Daily” newsletter.
These will help you gain knowledge on the things that Miles Everson, the CEO of MBO Partners, often talks about regarding the future of the workforce.
We’ll also highlight other mindfulness advice on how you can be a high-performing individual both in your career and personal life.
Hope you’ve found this week’s insight interesting and helpful.
Stay tuned for next Friday’s “Mindfulness by Miles!”
Cheers,
Kyle Yu
Head of Marketing
Valens Dynamic Marketing Capabilities
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