Exploring A New Workforce in 2020!

This week’s featured article is from Michele McDonough, Co-Founder of  C3 Executive Search. Building on many decades of her direct selling career experience, Michele partnered in establishing C3 Executive Search to best serve her community of colleagues and companies in the acquisition of exceptional executive talent in the Direct Selling channel. Michele is also Co-Founder of the Direct Selling Women’s PowerCircle.

Michele McDonough
Exploring A New Workforce in 2020!

One of the predicted trends for 2020 by Futurist Judy Galloway, G-group Market Research, suggests the need to be creative in order to meet the desires and needs of the various demographics found in today’s and near-future workforce.

Not only will you be looking for superior hard skills, but critical personal skills including collegiality, teamwork, creativity, empathy, and leadership to complete your organizational needs. With any of those important components missing, your culture will not necessarily suffer greatly, but employee retention and staffing costs might become a major issue in 2020.

Another ever-evolving aspect of today’s work climate is the option of “alternative” work environments … which for many years was referred to as contract work! How do you support and grow your workforce in today’s workforce evolution? What does it take? Here are a few of the ideas trending now:

• Outsourced Teams
• Contractors (full-time and part-time)
• Freelancers
• Gig Workers
• Outsourced Networkers

Times are telling us that alternative workers are essential for organizations to be successful in the future. Alternative workers can help organizations improve critical areas of the business such as productivity, speed, and costs. And we all want long-term employee retention, right?

Based on your organization’s needs, budgets, and objectives, stay current by considering what the entire workforce mix should look like, including full-time employees, alternative workers, contractors, and outsourcing!

Empower your Human Resource Department to support sourcing alternative workers by negotiating alternative working arrangements, benefits management, and onboarding techniques.

Determine how the organization can incorporate remote and dispersed workers through technology such as video conferencing, digital collaborative workspaces, internal portals, and communication tools. While companies must evaluate and determine their optimal mix of talent, those that leverage alternative talent effectively can expect more than just achieving and exceeding the goals of the enterprise. Those that do can set themselves apart as distinct industry leaders.

For 2020, be open-minded and explore alternative workforces along with innovative talent acquisition techniques. Attention and creativity applied to these details will help you prepare for the future and grow your business in an ever-evolving world!

Another trend to look at in 2020 is the demographics of the workforce (what’s it going to look like), and always creating compelling employee experiences including incorporating artificial intelligence. According to the 2020 workplace theory, over 36% of the workforce will consist of people born after the baby boomer generation. How can you best prepare for some of the upcoming trends?

Employees are projected to stay longer in the workforce in the coming years, which means that basically five generations of workers from diverse backgrounds will work together in collaborative teams.

Cultural diversity will eventually mean that businesses will need to incorporate a broader set of values than today. This means that companies will have to radically rethink all their internal interactions, especially those involving their human capital: namely how to approach, deploy, develop and retain people. In order to ensure that your business adapts and thrives, you need to learn to be flexible. Let’s explore what you need to change to keep up with the demands of the workforce that are currently reshaping the business landscape.

What Does Creating Compelling Employee Experiences Look like?

Unlike previous generations, millennials look further than job stability, competitive salaries and benefits to be committed and loyal to a company. They are driven by a sense of shared purpose, which means that they need to have a strong sense of their part in the ‘bigger picture’ to bring their best results to the workplace.

Currently, there is a significant gap between millennial workforce needs and what the workplace offers. If companies want to harness the massive potential of the future workforce, they need to start incorporating the tools and technologies that enable their productivity. This is all fine and well, but what do you need to do in practice to keep up with the workplace trends that are speeding towards us all?

The first thing is to work on a personalized relationship with your employees. Human Resource Departments are now turning to research principles, such as design thinking and sentiment analysis to better understand and serve the needs of the 2020 workforce.

Millennials are all about convenience, connectivity, and functionality. They expect to learn and work the same way that they entertain themselves – online. Giving them fast and easy access to a system where they can receive the training and mentoring, they need on demand will help them (and your business) thrive in the 2020 workplace. Include Artificial Intelligence elements in a blended workforce.

Technology is changing our lives in fundamental, profound ways. No news here, of course. We’ve known this for over two decades. However, with the rise of artificial intelligence and the proliferation of big data as a driver for business decisions (not to mention an important part of A.I. training), the changes are reaching all areas of the workforce.

So, as the global workplace is being reshaped this very moment, adapt, prepare, empower the ever-evolving workforce and what it brings to your organization!

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