Trends Reshaping the Future of HR

Trends Reshaping the Future of HR
The Rise of the Extended Workforce
By David Gartside, Yaarit Silverstone, Catherine Farley and Susan M. Cantrell
1 | Accenture Institute for High Performance | Copyright © 2013 Accenture. All rights reserved.
To compete in the future, organizations will
need to push talent management beyond the
confines of the enterprise wall to include the new
extended workforce: a global network of outside
contractors, outsourcing partners, vendors,
strategic partners and other nontraditional
workers. By maximizing the potential of both an
extended workforce and permanent employees,
companies can gain critical advantages—including
agility and access to valuable talent.
2 | Accenture Institute for High Performance | Copyright © 2013 Accenture. All rights reserved.
The Trend: The Extended Workforce
Will Be Critical to Competitive Success
It’s the end of work as we know it.
In the future, organizations’ competitive
success will hinge on a highly unlikely
suspect: workers who aren’t employees
at all. There are a growing number of
people who temporarily lend companies
their skills and knowledge in an everexpanding network of freelancers,
consultants, outsourcing partners, vendors
and other types of nontraditional talent.
Many of these individuals are jobless, but
not workless. Others have jobs in one
organization but perform work for another,
existing in a complex and intricate web
of cross-organizational relationships
that form a new “supply chain” of talent.
They help organizations supplement their
existing core set of employees with a
highly mobile, dynamic workforce to meet
the challenges of a complex and turbulent
business environment.
Take Procter & Gamble. More than
50 percent of product initiatives at P&G
involve significant collaboration with
outside innovators. Through its Connect
and Develop program, the company has
forged more than 1,000 agreements with
innovation partners. The company has
also tapped into a wide range of outside
individual contributors through new
crowdsourcing models by challenging
them to solve R&D problems or to
come up with new product ideas.
Workers outside of P&G have helped
develop hundreds of successful offerings,
such as Swiffer Dusters, the Crest
SpinBrush and Olay Regenerist.1
The extended workforce is expanding
fast (see “The Rising Tide of the
Just-in-Time Worker”) and its efforts
are becoming essential to organizations’
competitive success.
The Rising Tide of the Just-In-Time Worker
Economists project that the extended
workforce will continue to increase
as part of a long-term trend. Consider
the following statistics:
•By various estimates, 20-33 percent
of today’s US workforce now comprises
independent workers (freelancers,
contractors and temps), up from
6 percent in 1989 (1). Worldwide,
companies now spend an estimated
$300 billion dollars per year on
such contingent labor (2). Indeed,
temporary and contract labor is one
of the fastest-growing line items on
corporate operating statements (3).
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
predicts that employment services
will count among the fastest-growing
segments of the economy in the long
term, adding 637,000 jobs in the next
10 years—twice the growth rate for the
overall economy during the same period (4).
•The recent emergence of online
independent contractor talent platforms
that enable companies to access “talent
in the cloud”—like Elance, oDesk and
TopCoder—is a rapidly growing market,
with more than 1 million workers having
earned $1- 2 billion over the past 10
years in this industry (5).
3 | Accenture Institute for High Performance | Copyright © 2013 Accenture. All rights reserved.
•In some industries, such as oil and
gas, 77 percent of the workforce now
reportedly resides outside of the core
organization (6).
•Outsourcing contracts with Fortune 100
companies have more than doubled
since 2000. According to some studies,
about 20 percent of global companies
have outsourced or offshored workers
(7). Outsourcing is now an estimated $6
trillion global industry and is expected to
keep growing (8).
See Notes on page 14
Consider outsourcing. Today, companies
are no longer using outsourcing just
for augmenting staff who perform
administrative processes. In addition,
they’re using it strategically, to gain staff
who can handle higher-level, knowledgerelated processes. In a survey conducted
by Accenture and the International
Association of Outsourcing Professionals,
40-plus percent of respondents indicated
that outsourcing at their organizations
was increasingly focused on knowledgebased activities.2
Likewise, the sort of work done by
the contingent workforce is changing.
With the increase of specialization in
the workplace and the heavy reliance
on project work in knowledge-based
organizations, highly educated specialists
and professionals are serving as contingent
workers in positions as varied as engineer,
information technologist, healthcare
worker and accounting and finance
professional.3 As much as 80 percent of
freelancers on Elance have a professional
degree, and their assignments can last as
long as several months, reflecting the shift
to knowledge and project work.4
Even top-level managers and executive
teams are being replaced by temporary
CEOs, CFOs, COOs and other highly skilled
troubleshooters brought in for their
expertise in solving specific problems.
For example, Wall Street—from boutique
investment banks to private equity
funds—is bringing in experienced, often Ivy
League-educated financial professionals
on an hourly, contractual basis to tackle
In addition, newly emerging healthcare
sporadic but critical projects. These projects exchanges and portable care in places
may range from evaluating transactions,
like the United States have made it easier
for people to have healthcare access
building financial models and researching
without being tied to a single, full-time
markets to assembling client pitch books
employment relationship.
and developing board presentations.
Staffing company Accordian, which
The new extended workforce is also
specializes in such Wall Street temps, is
increasingly mobile, global and borderless,
growing almost 100 percent each month—
thanks to technology advancements that
and executives there believe that the use
let people easily find opportunities and
of on-call deal makers could revolutionize
work remotely. This is giving rise to nearly
the investment banking industry.5 Netik
unlimited opportunities for workers and
LLC, a New York data management
organizations alike to match talent to task,
services firm, recently used Accordion
unencumbered by regional constraints.
for 95 hours of work on a private-equity
financing round. "These are guys that sat
The rise of new online contractor
around for five years eating cold pizza in
exchanges has also fueled the growth
conference rooms and working on deals,"
of the extended workforce. Just as
explained Rob Flatley, chief executive,
“cloud computing” has recently emerged
to The Wall Street Journal. "We could just
plug them into our models." About half
as a way for organizations to get
of the temporary analysts, say Accordian
on-demand, affordable access to a
representatives, have "Lehman" or "Bear
dynamically scalable, shared pool of
Stearns" on their résumés.6
computing resources over the Internet
paid for on a transactional basis, so too
Many of today’s contingent workers have
has “cloud talent sourcing” emerged
high-level skills, deliver top performance
as a new model whereby organizations
and are deeply engaged in their work.
can get on-demand, affordable and global
Often, they have consciously chosen this
access to a dynamically scalable, shared
type of work over permanent employment.
pool of skilled workers over the Internet
Their reasons include flexibility, the chance paid for on a transactional basis. With
to work on a variety of interesting projects, cloud computing, companies pay only for
the opportunity to build and exercise skills
the transactions they want handled.
more quickly than permanent employees
can and superior financial rewards. For
instance, many retiring baby boomers have
joined the extended workforce because
they want the stimulation and income from
working as well as the benefits of flexibility.
Contractors who are Millennials or working
parents in two-income households cite
the chance to quickly develop new skills
or to better balance work and family life.
4 | Accenture Institute for High Performance | Copyright © 2013 Accenture. All rights reserved.
With cloud talent sourcing, they pay only
for the tasks they want handled. Some
tasks are tiny, like copying text from a
business card on Amazon’s Mechanical
Turk talent marketplace (which pays
pennies). Other tasks are large, such as
selling products for a fee using LeadVine’s
talent marketplace. Yet others consist of
complex project work, including software
design and programming. (See also: Trends
Reshaping the Future of HR: Tapping Skills
Anywhere, Anytime).
Technology is facilitating the rapid
adoption of the extended workforce in
other ways, too. To illustrate, new Internet
sites enable individuals to inexpensively
rent unused office space in an organization
for the short term. Interacting face to
face with each other and with permanent
employees helps these workers feel a sense
of community, enjoy some social contact
and gain access to resources needed to
do their work. Social networking groups
such as Facebook and LinkedIn also enable
extended workers to connect with others,
share potential collaboration prospects
and forge a community. In fact, many
users of these groups take their friends
and colleagues with them when they stop
working for one organization and start
working for another. Moreover, technology
now helps organizations easily apply talent
management practices—such as performance
feedback, learning and knowledge
management—to the extended workforce.
5 | Accenture Institute for High Performance | Copyright © 2013 Accenture. All rights reserved.
Impact on the
Business
Over the last decade, companies have
changed how they tap into the extended
workforce. Initially, they did so as a tactical
response to an immediate need. But then
they began making this workforce a key
component of corporate strategy. This
shift has enabled organizations to achieve
two of the most sought-after competitive
capabilities: agility in the face of a highly
turbulent business environment and access
to high-performing, highly skilled talent.
These twin capabilities are essential
for success. For instance, in today’s
competitive global market, time to market
can make the difference between success
and failure. By bringing in people when
they’re needed who can hit the ground
running without time-consuming training,
businesses can get a product or service
out in front of the competition. Likewise,
they can quickly adjust to changing
global demand patterns, scaling staff up
and down fast and efficiently to meet
shifts in demand in various parts of the
world. By using the extended workforce,
organizations can also quickly change
the mix of skills available to them, which
can help them adapt swiftly to changing
customer preferences.
The relentless pressure to innovate and the
pronounced shift to knowledge work mean
that today’s world is far less predictable
than yesterday’s, and that companies that
have developed greater agility can often
outperform the competition. Employers’
focus on stable, predictable job roles is
giving way to an emphasis on project work,
which lends itself to hiring more workers
on a project basis. Increasingly, jobs may
become replaced by projects. This could
give rise to a highly mobile workforce
whose members rapidly assemble and
reassemble around projects. In today’s
organizations, people are often pulled onto
teams because of their formally defined
role in the organization. We believe that
enterprises could radically boost their
performance by sourcing talent for each
task from anywhere inside or outside the
organization on one criterion: who is the
best person to perform the task?
Indeed, evidence suggests that the
traditional model of employees holding
static jobs doesn’t help organizations get
the most value from workers’ skills. In
a recent Accenture survey of 1,088 US
workers, only 34 percent of respondents
reported feeling that they could easily
move to other roles or jobs in their
organization where their skills would
best be utilized, and only 62 percent
6 | Accenture Institute for High Performance | Copyright © 2013 Accenture. All rights reserved.
felt that their employer fully leveraged
their unique skills to achieve corporate
goals.7 By drawing on extended workers,
organizations may be able to unleash the
full potential of their human assets by
more fluidly matching task to talent. In
addition, companies could gain access
to a much wider range of expertise and
skills that may not be readily available
in their existing talent pools.8 This can
be particularly important for small
organizations, because accessing an
extended workforce helps them access
the same level of talent and services
as large enterprises.
A big extended workforce can also
improve talent-pool quality overall.
In one study carried out by the Human
Capital Institute, many respondents
reported that outsourcing and temporary
staffing significantly improved the
organization’s talent quality (69 percent
and 68 percent, respectively).9 Using
contingent workers may also help an
organization hire better-quality regular
employees: A company can try out workers
on a temporary basis before hiring them
permanently. Actual performance on
a temporary assignment is a far better
predictor of future performance than job
interviews, resumes or assessments.
Moreover, using an extended workforce
can foster innovation—an essential part
of any growth-driven competitive
strategy. Bringing in new thinking and
talent from the outside can help open
an organization’s eyes to new ideas and
fresh, counterintuitive ways of thinking.
Consider the rise of crowdsourcing—use
of the general public to perform work
ranging from product design to the
creation of ad campaigns. This form
of sourcing has garnered much attention
for its power to harness collective
intelligence and spark innovation.
Numerous studies show that the shift
toward using the extended workforce
as a strategic asset can help push a
company ahead of the competition.
In one study, the majority of executives
surveyed (55 percent) described the
contingent workforce as highly valuable
for their business.10 In another study that
was performed by Manpower and that
surveyed 41,000 employers in 35 countries,
34 percent of respondents said that nonpermanent members of an organization’s
workforce (including outsourced workers
and consultants) were an important
element of their organization’s workforce
strategy.11 Yet another study revealed
that the most successful companies use
contingent workers more often and more
strategically than low performers do.12
Impact on HR
As guardians of their organization’s talent
strategies, HR will need to redefine its
mission and activities—and perhaps create
new roles and organizational structures
to maximize the extended workforce’s
strategic value. It will have to create new
strategies that reflect new realities (see
“The Extended Workforce: Old and New
Realities”). In particular, HR could benefit
by taking the following actions:
Redefine HR’s customers. Traditionally,
HR’s “customers” have been employees.
Now, they should also include members
of the extended workforce. To serve all
of these customers, HR professionals need
to develop a broader perspective on talent
management and create a permanent
strategy for extended workers. This means
establishing a seamless approach to
everything from recruiting to performance
management to learning. The goal is to
balance the needs and expectations of
each type of talent with the strategic
goals of the business.
Integrate processes and systems. Instead
of using vastly different processes and
systems to acquire and manage talent,
leading organizations will develop a
unified strategy and set of processes
and information systems that span all
talent segments, including the extended
workforce. Technology advancements like
the development of SaaS (software as a
service) will make it easier for companies,
for example, to capture data on contingent
workers and manage it in the same system
7 | Accenture Institute for High Performance | Copyright © 2013 Accenture. All rights reserved.
that they use for employees. Although
this may add additional costs to licensing
agreements from HR information system
vendors, benefits can far outweigh the
costs. Understanding all the talent that
performs work for an organization can
help managers make better decisions
regarding whether to “buy” vs. “build”
vs. “borrow” talent in specific geographic
areas or specific talent pools, as well
as help an organization better manage
risk through tracking certifications
or training, or through establishing
standard security access and provisioning
processes. In addition, skill gaps in the
entire workforce can more easily be
tracked, as well as performance levels
that can help a hiring manager decide
whether to rehire a contingent worker,
convert them to permanent employee
status, or even consider them in an
organization’s succession plans. Creating
an integrated talent management system
will be a critical responsibility for HR in
the future, and will enable organizations
to gain greater agility and maximize the
performance of their entire workforce.
The Extended Workforce: Old and New Realities
Dimension
Old Reality
New Reality
Extended workers as a
percentage of the workforce
Small percentage
Large percentage
Type of work performed
by the extended worker
Primarily low-skilled, low-value
Increasingly high-skilled, high-value knowledge work
Location of work performed
by the extended worker
Local; workers live close
to the organization
Anywhere; workers are globally accessible and can
perform tasks remotely
Personal profile of the
extended worker
Not well educated; younger,
non-professional
Increasingly well educated, all age ranges,
professional
Engagement level of the
extended worker
Low
High
Reasons for becoming
an extended worker
Involuntary reasons –
Difficulty finding a job
Voluntary reasons – Attraction to flexible work
schedules and roles, ability to quickly develop skills,
and access to interesting and varied work
Reasons companies use
extended workers
Address an immediate need
Gain agility and access to top talent
How work is configured
Hierarchical, permanent jobs
Dynamically configured project teams comprising
employees and non-employees
Who manages the
extended worker
Procurement with a cost orientation,
or line managers individually
HR, with a strategic orientation and with input from
the functions
Corporate perception
of the extended workforce
Assets to be managed at cost
Individuals to be managed for value
How the extended workforce
is found
Through temp agencies
Through a variety of sources – including cloudbased platforms of freelance workers, online social
networks, alumni/retiree networks, outsourcing
providers, business partners and crowdsourcing
platforms
Talent management practices
Applied only to
permanent employees
Applied to permanent employees and the extended
workforce
8 | Accenture Institute for High Performance | Copyright © 2013 Accenture. All rights reserved.
Create new organizational structures
or roles that cross boundaries and
disciplines. Everyone from procurement
to finance to legal to line managers could
conceivably take responsibility for the
extended workforce. But HR should play
a central role. To do so, HR will need to
collaborate with other functions that also
have a stake in the extended workforce
or create roles that integrate a diverse
array of skills typically found in different
functions. At Royal Bank of Canada, for
example, a steering committee comprising
representatives from procurement, human
resources and enterprise operations is
responsible for managing the company’s
extended workforce.13 Other organizations
are designating new extended workforce
manager roles staffed with people who
have skills not typically found in any
one job description. Such skills include
knowledge of employment law; contract
negotiation; and project, talent and
organizational management. Companies
can even set up an extended workforce
talent management office that reports
directly to the executive level.
Use analytics to become an expert
advisor on the talent landscape.
Deciding when to use which talent pools,
for which tasks, today and in the future
will become an increasingly critical HR
capability. HR professionals will need to
perform fact-based analyses to make
staffing decisions across their talent
pool. They will have to use data from a
variety of sources to identify labor trends
for different talent pools and geographic
markets and to anticipate risks of sourcing
from particular talent pools. Having a
strong analytics capability can also help an
organization develop closer relationships
with talent suppliers. These suppliers can
better anticipate an organization’s needs,
prepare the talent pipeline and provide
just-in-time resources.
Become a talent broker. HR practitioners
will need to become talent brokers—
facilitating matches between specific
workers (extended or permanent) to
specific tasks or teams. To serve in this
role effectively, HR professionals or hiring
managers will have to evaluate the talent
coming from other organizations (such
as outsourcing providers or consulting
organizations) and select the right talent
for each project/assignment. HR also will
need to mine and analyze the vast array
of highly predictive data (beyond workers’
skills and experience profiles) that is now
available on online labor platforms such
as Elance, Inno360, Behance, Guru and
Empire Avenue. Consider a few types of
data that HR could analyze to find the
right worker for a task:
9 | Accenture Institute for High Performance | Copyright © 2013 Accenture. All rights reserved.
• Performance on key indicators from
previous assignments
• Peer/team feedback, perhaps signaled
by badges in a game-like format
• Feedback, reviews, recommendations
and referrals
• Cultural fit assessments
• Competency, skill and knowledge
assessments
• Willingness to work in particular
geographies
• Training transcripts
• Test scores in massively open
online courses
• Samples of previous work performed
• Individual work preferences (type of work,
hours willing to work, location, etc.)
• Expertise and knowledge as indicated
in people’s journal entries, blog postings
and social media contributions
Forge new relationships with partner
organizations. Increasingly, work is
getting accomplished through a network of
organizations. For this reason, companies
may have to redefine the nature of their
relationships with one another. Today,
organizations often identify specific key
performance indicators for partners such
as outsourcing providers or consultants.
But they leave it up to partners to
determine which talent can deliver on
those indicators and how best to motivate
and develop that talent. In the future, HR
organizations may need to evaluate their
partner organizations’ talent management
practices and write talent management
practices into service agreements.
Apply talent management practices
• Performance feedback, rewards and
to the extended workforce. The rise
incentives. HR will need to facilitate
of the extended workforce will require
performance feedback for extended
HR organizations to rethink talent
workers and motivate them with the
management practices and determine how
right rewards and incentives. To do so,
each practice can be extended to include
HR will increasingly use tools like
workers other than employees in order to
work.com, which enables workers
best maximize their potential. For example:
to provide real-time feedback and
recognition to one another, track projects
•Onboarding and collaboration.
and set goals. HR professionals may
Extended workers should be able to
also need to tap into extended workers’
quickly join teams, orient themselves
intrinsic motivation. LEGO did this by
and collaborate on tasks. HR—as well as
encouraging enthusiasts to help develop
recent technology advancements—will be
the new version of the MINDSTORM
instrumental in facilitating this process.
product; the fun of indulging in their
For example, technology can now help
passion was their reward.14 Interweaving
all workers understand how each is
game-like features into the work itself
contributing to the organization’s goals.
can also help. For example, Netflix
It can also help workers understand their
offered a $1 million prize for members of
relationships with one another through
the general public who could create the
the creation of a dynamic organizational
best software algorithms used to offer
chart based on analysis of e-mail
customer video recommendations.15
and other electronic communications
that reflects how work is really being
•Learning. Most organizations seek
accomplished and by whom. In addition,
extended workers who already bring the
requisite skills to the table. Managers
workers can use technology to find one
may wonder why they would invest in
another, collaborate, explain and track
learning for such workers when they
tasks, and look up previous work samples
can easily take newly learned skills to
or related work in knowledge repositories.
All of this knowledge helps them to hit
other companies, including competitors.
the ground running on a new assignment.
But the best HR organizations of the
future will offer learning opportunities
to extended workers. Why? Doing so
improves their value to the organization.
It also helps the company attract the
best of the extended workforce. In fact,
learning can go both ways; organizations
themselves may also learn valuable
insights from extended workers by
10 | Accenture Institute for High Performance | Copyright © 2013 Accenture. All rights reserved.
capturing the knowledge extended
workers have developed by working at
a variety of organizations. To gain these
advantages, HR might extend e-learning
and social media learning platforms to
extended workers as well as provide
opportunities for informal learning.
HR can also facilitate knowledge
transfer from extended workers to regular
employees and provide incentives for
knowledge sharing. This is especially
important at the project level, where
new online, collaborative tools can
capture knowledge and conversations,
email chains, document versions and
other information related to a project.
When an extended worker leaves, the
project keeps running smoothly, because
everyone who remains has access to
all the essential information.
•Advancement and career development.
HR will also need to provide
opportunities for extended workers
to advance and grow. Providing such
opportunities will enhance these workers’
value and help the company attract and
retain the best of this workforce. Leading
companies may track the performance,
skills and career aspirations of their
extended workers just as they do for
permanent employees. This approach
can help companies source top talent.
A company might also want to include
high-performing members of the
extended workforce in its succession
planning, regardless of whether workers
will convert to permanent employment
or continue on to other assignments in
the organization. To support effective
succession management, HR could use
technology to access a global pool of
free agents. The technology lets users
advertise themselves as free agents,
enables companies to search for available
free agents and helps employees
nominate free agents to succeed them.
Segment the extended workforce. Like
permanent employees, extended workers
are a highly diverse lot. What motivates a
worker in an Eastern European outsourced
call center will likely differ markedly from
what motivates a scientist participating in
a crowdsourcing competition to develop
a new product. Leading companies are
tailoring their people practices to meet the
needs of a highly diverse employee base.
(See: Workforce of One: Revolutionizing
Talent Management through Customization,
Harvard Business Press, 2010 and Trends
Reshaping the Future of HR: Managing
Each Employee as a Workforce of One).16
Companies must apply this same approach
to extract maximum value from extended
workers as well. For instance, they can
customize their talent management
strategies to extended workers’ performance,
potential, geographic location or any other
meaningful criteria. But an organization
should always think carefully as to whether
a specific initiative will work with all or only
some segments of the extended workforce.
An organization may open its knowledge
management and learning systems to
temporary professional employees, for
example, but not to people participating
in crowdsourcing competitions.
Or an organization may extend learning
and career development to individual
contractors, but not to employees of an
outsourcing provider. To be successful, an
organization will want to create targeted
talent strategies for various segments of its
extended workforce based on their unique
needs and requirements.
11 | Accenture Institute for High Performance | Copyright © 2013 Accenture. All rights reserved.
Bottom Line
Yesterday, work was organized in
hierarchies according to jobs and roles.
Tomorrow, it will be characterized by
dynamically configured teams of workers
who may not be an organization’s
permanent employees. Instead of a single
enterprise with full-time employees
and a recognizable, enduring hierarchy,
companies will increasingly be comprised
of formal employees and an ever-shifting
global network of contractors, temporary
staff, business partners, outsourcing
providers and members of the general
public. As talent supplies span regional,
national and organizational boundaries,
HR professionals will need new talent
practices to ensure that their organizations
are performing at the top of their game.
Quickly bringing together globally
dispersed, blended workforces to achieve
an organization’s goals will require no
less than a management revolution. And
that revolution is only just beginning. HR
practitioners who can capitalize on and
harness the power of the new extended
workforce will position their companies
to gain unique advantages and outperform
the competition.
About the Authors
About Our Research
David Gartside is the managing
director responsible for HR offerings
and capabilities within the Accenture
Talent & Organization practice. He
specializes in large-scale global
transformation programs that impact
all areas of HR capability. Based in New
York, Mr. Gartside has deep experience
in addressing the geographic complexities
involved in driving a successful global
HR strategy.
The primary objective of this large-scale
research initiative is to develop insights
that can be useful to both HR and business
executives as they seek to maximize the
role of HR as a critical function within
the organization. We are exploring how
current business trends might reshape the
nature of the function—in terms of HR’s
mission and mandate, the key activities
HR performs, the skill set necessary for
HR professionals, the metrics on which
to evaluate HR’s performance, and the
organizational and governance models
and roles that will most effectively help
HR maximize its value to the business.
We also are examining current best
practices in HR, as well as some of the
obstacles HR is facing and how those
obstacles can be overcome in the future.
Yaarit Silverstone is the managing
director responsible for talent offerings and
capabilities within the Accenture Talent
& Organization practice. With more than
25 years of experience in management
consulting, Ms. Silverstone has extensive
experience diagnosing complex
organizational performance issues and
designing, implementing and sustaining
human capital strategy and talent
management solutions. Based in Atlanta,
she is co-editor of The Organizational
Network Fieldbook (Jossey-Bass, 2010).
Catherine Farley is the managing director
responsible for Accenture Talent & HR
Services. She is responsible for integrating
and innovating the talent and HR solutions
Accenture brings to its clients, spanning
all aspects of Accenture’s business in
consulting, technology and outsourcing.
Based in Seattle, Washington, Ms. Farley
has extensive experience with workforce
restructurings and the implications of this
type of change.
Susan M. Cantrell is a research fellow
at the Accenture Institute for High
Performance. Based in Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania, Ms. Cantrell is the coauthor
of Workforce of One: Revolutionizing
Talent Management Through Customization
(Harvard Business Press, 2010). She has
co-authored more than 30 articles or book
chapters, including Elements of Successful
Organizations (The Workforce Institute
at Kronos, 2011).
12 | Accenture Institute for High Performance | Copyright © 2013 Accenture. All rights reserved.
Related Reading
Making Cross-enterprise Collaboration Work,
by Yaarit Silverstone, Terence Wallis and
Craig Mindrum, Outlook Journal
Workforce of One: Revolutionizing Talent
Management through Customization,
by Susan M. Cantrell and David Smith
(Harvard Business Press, 2010).
Notes
1. “Partnering with the World to Create
Greater Value,” a factsheet produced by
Procter & Gamble on its Connect and
Develop program, 2010 (http://www.
pg.com/en_US/downloads/innovation/
C_D_factsheet.pdf) and “Connect and
Develop: Inside Procter & Gamble’s New
Model for Innovation,” by Larry Huston
and Nabil Sakkab, Harvard Business Review,
March 2006.
5. “Wall Street's On-Demand Deal Makers,”
by Leslie Stevens-Huffman, blog posted
March 28, 2011; and ”Investment Bankers
for Hire, Temporarily,” by Liz Moyer and
Kyle Stock, The Wall Street Journal,
December 14, 2010.
12.“The Contingent Worker Debate,”
by Lorrie Lykins, i4cp's Trendwatcher,
February 16, 2011: http://www.i4cp.com/
trendwatchers/2011/02/16/the-contingentworker-debate
13.“Contract Talent Is a Business
6. ”Investment Bankers for Hire,
Imperative,” webcast presented by
Temporarily,” by Liz Moyer and Kyle Stock,
Katie Ratkiewicz, Practice Leader, OD &
The Wall Street Journal, December 14, 2010. Leadership of the Human Capital Institute,
and Teresa Butson, Senior Manager, Global
7. For more details on this study, see
Contingent Workforce Management
“Solving the Skills Paradox: Seven Ways to
Program at Royal Bank of Canada, July
2. 2010 survey as cited in “Outsourcing
Close Your Critical Skills Gaps,” by David
8, 2010: http://www.hci.org/lib/contractBeing Used More Strategically for Higher
Smith, Diego S. Leon, Breck Marshall and
talent-business-imperative
Knowledge Processes, IAOP Survey
Susan Cantrell, Accenture, 2011.
Shows,” press release from International
14.Paul Jackson with J.P. Gownder
Association of Outsourcing Professionals,
8.See, for example, “The Role of
and Laura Wiramihardja, “Social Media
April 15, 2010: http://www.reuters.com/
Contingent Workers in Workforce
for Product Development,” a Forrester
article/2010/04/15/idUS197045+15-AprStrategy: Global Key Findings,” Manpower
report, September 29, 2009. http://www.
2010+MW20100415
whitepaper, October, 2009, and “What
forrester.com/rb/Research/social_media_
Influences Contract Talent Usage,” a white
for_product_development/q/id/55198/
3. Survey findings are detailed in “What
paper produced by the Human Capital
t/2#endnote4
Influences Contract Talent Usage,” a white
Institute, 2011.
paper produced by the Human Capital
15.Ibid.
Institute, 2011.
9.“What Influences Contract Talent Usage,”
a white paper produced by the Human
16.Workforce of One: Revolutionizing
4. Statistics are from a survey of 1,500
Capital Institute, 2011.
Talent Management through Customization,
freelancers on Elance as cited in “Freelance
by Susan M. Cantrell and David Smith
Talent Report,” Elance, 2011: http://www.
10.Survey of 170 companies reported
(Harvard Business Press, 2010).
elance.com/q/freelance-talent-report-2011. in a webinar, “Best-in-Class Contingent
Workforce Management Strategies,” based
on a report by the Aberdeen Group report
titled “Contingent Labor Management:
Strategies for Managing the Complexities
of the Contingent Labor Umbrella” (study
underwritten by Randstad), 2009.
11.“The Role of Contingent Workers in
Workforce Strategy: Global Key Findings,”
Manpower, October 2009.
13 | Accenture Institute for High Performance | Copyright © 2013 Accenture. All rights reserved.
Notes (for page 3)
3. Ibid.
1. The Freelancers Union, a non-profit
advocacy organization, estimates that
30 percent of the US job market is made
up of independent workers. Source: “Five
Recommendations for Assembling
a Successful Team of Freelancers,” by Ray
Grainger, Mashable Social Media, April 8,
2011: http://mashable.com/2011/04/08/
freelance-business-tips. The Government
Accountability Office (GAO), using US Labor
Department data, found that contingent
workers constituted 31 percent of the
total workforce. Source: “U.S. Employers
Shift to Temp Workers,” by Ruth Mantell,
MarketWatch, Wall Street Journal, April
27, 2011: http://articles.marketwatch.
com/2011-04-27/finance/30752291_1_
temp-workers-contingent-workersalternative-workers. Dr. John Sullivan
and Master Burnett estimate that 27
percent of the US labor force consists of
contingent workers, up from 6 percent in
1989. Source: “Managing Contingent Labor
Strategically,” by Dr. John Sullivan, Ere.net,
March 15, 2009.
4. “Heady Debate,” by Rita Zeidner,
HR Magazine, February 1, 2010:http://
www.shrm.org/Publications/hrmagazine/
EditorialContent/2010/0210/
Pages/0210zeidner.aspx
2. “Contingent Workforce Management:
A Clear and Present Opportunity,” a Taleo
industry paper, by Michael Gregoire,
October 23, 2008.
5. “Paid Crowdsourcing: Current State and
Progress Toward Mainstream Business Use,”
Smartsheet.com, September 19, 2009.
6. “One Single Source of Security for the
Extended Workforce,” Covisint, 2011: http://
www.covisint.com/c/document_library/
get_file?uuid=4189020e-0a3a-49aa-a1e9f39d622508f4&groupId=100135
7. “Outsourcing Contracts Annual Review
2009: Outsourcing Uptake Continued, but
Megadeals Declined,” by Dean Blackmore,
Allie Young and Sandra Notardonato,
Gartner, March 18 2010; and “What’s Wrong
with America’s Job Engine?” by David Wessel,
Wall Street Journal, July 27, 2011.
8. “Outsourcing Being Used More
Strategically for Higher Knowledge
Processes, IAOP Survey Shows,” Marketwire,
April 15, 2010.
14 | Accenture Institute for High Performance | Copyright © 2013 Accenture. All rights reserved.
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