How To Blend The Workforce To Bridge The Talent Gap and how can you benefit from the Blended Workforce Outsourcing?

The term “blended workforce” appears more and more frequently in the context of bridging the talent gap of an organization. It stands for – full-time employees and outsourced talents working side-by-side.

The blended workforce is one of the highlighted workplace trends in the modern business world. So, a year ago, in an article published in Forbes, Dan Schawbel predicted a blended workforce as one of the most important workplace trends in 2017. And he was right!

Recent research shows that a significant percentage of executives believe that this trend can be their competitive advantage, if not actually – a regular way of getting things done quickly and in a high-quality manner.

But blending the workforce is not just placing full-time employees and outsourced professionals in one room and telling them what they should do together. It takes more to create an efficient environment that will bring to the perfect outcome.

Seven steps for creating efficiently blended workforces.

In this post, we’re explaining how to blend the workforce in the best possible way to bridge the talent gap and get great results out of this strategy. However, for the blended workforce outsourcing strategy, tips will be given.

Step 1: Define how you want to benefit from the blended workforce.

Before rushing out in the search for outsourced talents, define which type of engagement you need.

Is it occasional external assistance to your permanent workforce, or is it needed on an ad-hoc basis and not regularly? Do you want to engage outsourced professionals regularly with a more strategic approach allowing you to build long-standing relationships?

Defining the type of blended workforce cooperation is the starting point for your offer to the outsourced professionals and the organizational preparations for the new strategy.

Step 2: Prepare your full-time employees for the blended workforce strategy

Once you have decided which type of cooperation you want to try, clearly communicate the organization’s upcoming changes.

Make sure that your employees don’t feel threatened by outsourced professionals.

Step 3: Attract top talent freelancers into your blended team.

If you want the best specialists to join your team, you need to show that you are their best choice.

Top talent freelancers are expensive, but often it’s not enough to offer them an attractive income. Everybody can offer more money. In addition to income, concentrate on appealing working conditions and exciting projects, which will allow top talents to grow professionally and leave a significant mark on their working experience.

Finally, take care of your employer branding because it can be a plus.

Step 4: Tune your work systems and operational practices with the blended workforce strategy.

Once you ou have defined what you want to achieve with the assistance of the blended workforce outsourcing strategy and explained how your whole organization would benefit from the new situation. Now it is time to adapt your work systems and operational procedures.

Make sure that both – internal and external workforce is committed to the common goal. Induce colleagueship between your teams. The adaptation of work systems and operational processes is important for the new strategy to run smoothly. Set the goals and metrics, and measure performance to be ahead of eventual deviations.

Step 5: Make sure that your team managers know how to manage blended teams.

On the other hand, managing in-house teams can be challenging. Let alone managing the blended workforce, composed of permanent employees and outsourced professionals.

Managers involved in dealing with Agile teams need to find ways to make outsourced talents feel like team members and not like outsiders. Further, permanent employees shouldn’t think temporary colleagues receive more attention and effort.

Moreover, agile teams are not news anymore, but learning how to manage these teams is still in its early stage. That’s why supervising a blended workforce requires a lot of self-learning and balancing.

Step 6: Build a solid partnership with your outsourced blended workforce.

First, when you find a valuable agile talent source, build a partnership.

It is vital to building a network for your future needs. Secondly, knowing when you will need the highest quality again a faster approach to a specialist; more options to choose from, or a professional who can quickly and easily get involved in your organization.

Step 7: Focus on outcomes and performance management.

If you want to know how successful your blended workforce is, you need to clearly define the project’s outcomes and set the metrics to measure the performance.

To conclude, once that’s done, you can monitor the project flow step-by-step and see who of your outsourced professionals performs best, fits in best, and delivers the highest value for the money you’re paying.

Trends reveal – the blended workforce is growing fast.

New technologies have provided organizations with numerous possibilities to identify and reach talents across the world and to engage them in work directly or virtually.

By 2027, most US workers will be freelancers, according to the recently published Freelancing in America: 2017 Study, jointly commissioned by Upwork and Freelancers Union. Hard to believe it? Given the fact that more than 80% of large corporations plan to substantially increase their use of a flexible workforce in coming years (as stated in The Intuit 2020 Report about the significant trends that will shape this decade), the growing trend of the blended workforce might not sound that crazy.

Do you have experience with the blended workforce, as a manager or as a team member?