7 Best Practices for Building a Blended Workforce

Introduction: What is a Blended Workforce and need for it (agile talent model)

The need for business agility is driving a demand for agile talent. This means talent which can flex as per the changing business needs and business goals. However, in reality, companies struggle with going agile on the talent spectrum. 

Only 10% of respondents strongly agree that their company attracts and retains talent effectively enough to achieve their agile goals.

The answer lies in a blended workforce strategy. Companies that build a blended workforce can unlock better relevance and resilience. 

A blended workforce is a strategic staffing model that combines full-time employees with contingent workers, such as freelancers, contractors, and part-time workers. The Solvecube approach to blended workforce is to enable access and hiring of a blend of different types of domain experts who have varied work contracts with the organization – a mix of on demand workforce and full time workforce. This presents the following advantages:

• Adaptable to change
• Unlock access to a wider talent pool
• Enable access to diverse, specialized, and niche skills
• Cost efficient
• Speedy and scalable
• DEI forward
• Better engagement and satisfaction for the workforce

Best Practices to Build a Blended Workforce

Building a blended workforce is an insightful journey involving the following: 

1.  Assess the need for a Blended Workforce – check for Business-alignment

The talent strategy must be aligned with the business strategy, in order create real and sustained business impact. The first step in building a blended workforce is to assess the need for such a model. Leaders must begin by asking the difficult questions – 

“What are the company’s goals and objectives, both short term and long term?”

“How does the people strategy align with these goals and objectives?”

Leaders must then question, “What is the ideal workforce mix to achieve these business outcomes?”. Analyse the factors such as the nature of business and the type of desirable talent, and evaluate whether these two align with the overall business strategy. 

Further, deep dive into what kind of blended workforce works well – “What is the mix of full time employees, versus contract employees?”. It is important to note that a blended workforce comprises of various flexible work formats – project consultants, subject matter experts, strategic advisors, domain experts, short term talent, interim talent, gig talent, apprentices, returnships, freelancers and even fractional CXOs. Choosing the right mix is a critical starting point. 

2.  Assess the current readiness for a blended workforce

Once the need for a blended workforce is established and clear, leaders should assess whether the organization is ready for the blended workforce strategy, from concept to creation to implementation. HR leaders can first assess the functional HR buckets such as talent acquisition, talent management, organization design, HR operations, legal and compliance, and so on. Some questions to ask –

“Can we effectively and efficiently hire a blended workforce”?

“Do we have the capabilities and infrastructure to manage a blended workforce?”

“What are the repercussions from a labour law and governance perspective?” and so on.

Building and managing a blended workforce requires a different mindset and culture. Perhaps the biggest challenge and need is to assess the leadership mindset itself – 

“Are leaders ready to embrace the blended workforce model?”

This will translate to conducting a readiness assessment, and arrive at what changes need to be made in preparing for the blended workforce strategy. 

3.  Identify your ideal workforce mix, devise a Strategic Workforce Plan to achieve your ideal workforce mix – Full time hires versus on demand hires

Once readiness for blended workforce is known, HR must devise a strategic workforce plan to design the ideal workforce mix. This ideal workforce mix will look different for every business. One can turn to the 7RS of Strategic Workforce Planning to arrive at the right blend – Right Size, Right Shape, Right Location, Right Time, Right Cost, Right Risk, and Right Capability – 

“What is the ideal mix of on demand talent and full time talent to achieve business outcomes?”

Analyse the talent supply and talent demand to arrive at the skills gap[MOU1] , which will help determine the desired mix of full time employees and contractual employees. Even within contract employees, be sure to clearly define the talent needs as per factors like job roles (functions and roles), seniority levels (junior, mid management, senior management, leadership, CXO level) , contractual formats (project-based, hours-based, fractional, short term, interim, gig) and ways of working (hybrid, in office, remote).  

4.  Set up talent processes and capabilities for blended workforce – talent acquisition capability, talent management capability, HR policy and process, 

Implementing the ideal workforce blend requires the supporting HR processes to be in place. HR leaders must evaluate talent processes and organizational capabilities with a moot question – 

“Will my people processes support a blended workforce strategy?”

This requires deep diving and assessing HR processes, HR policies, workforce and skills, HR technology, and HR tools from the lens of each HR function, be it organizational development, talent management, learning and development, talent acquisition, total rewards, HR operations, HR legal and compliance, or any others. One may need to redesign and redeploy certain talent processes to meet the needs of the new blended workforce. If the required capabilities are not available in house, this may require a significant investment of time, money, and efforts. Another cost-effective and faster way is to avail the services of a blended workforce service provider, and outsource the operational and process aspects to experts. 

5.  Invest in right technology to support the blended workforce strategy

One way to implement the blended workforce strategy is to develop the capabilities and infrastructure inhouse. The question to ask is – 

“Do we have the inhouse technologies and tools to make this work?”

In today’s age of AI and Gen AI, organizations must tap into the “digital edge” i.e. the right HR technologies and HR tools. This is essential for productivity. For example, there lies an opportunity to enhance Talent Acquisition using AI – 57% of recruiting pros using Gen AI tools say it’s faster and easier to write job descriptions. Some other must-do applications of HR tech are AI-based sourcing and screening of talent, tech-powered talent assessments and selections, platform-led talent aggregation to enable access to a wider talent pool, AI-recommended learning journeys for better and faster upskilling, intelligent career pathing suggestions based on job role, performance and potential, and many more. The caveat is that, emerging technologies like AI tools do not come easy or cheap. Hence, investing in such new-age HR technology may not make ROI sense for many organizations, at least at the outset. 

6.  Uphold DEI

While much talk happens around the business case for DEI, there seems to be a lack of visible progress on DEI from the employee perspective –  97% of HR leaders say their organization has made changes to improve DEI outcomes, but only 37% of employees strongly agree that they are making progress. This indicates a gap in what employers do versus what employees want. Because a blended workforce strategy ushers in a diverse workforce in multiple work formats like full time, part time, needs-based,  time-based, remote, hybrid, in office, DEI-centric actions  around hiring, engaging and retaining are even more critical to success. HR leaders must ask – 

“Is our workforce inclusive and equitable for our diverse blended workforce?”

Organizations must build and maintain equitable and inclusive people policies and processes to ensure the on demand workforce feels valued and engaged. HR leaders may need to look at HR processes from the DEI lens. A case in point – from a Total Rewards perspective, pay equity is a basic input in order to uphold employee equity, HR leaders may want to change the rewards philosophy to better suit an on demand workforce. Hence, leaders must relook at all people processes from the DEI lens. 

7.  Create a conducive culture for a blend of various talent 

A blended workforce has diverse skills, experience, backgrounds, views, thoughts, and opinions. Hence cultivating a conducive culture based on openness, transparent communication, collaboration, and innovation is important for setting up such a workforce for success. For example, an on demand talent may value flexibility and freedom more than a full time workforce, this is the reason they would have chosen to work “on demand”. While a full time workforce may value security and stability more. HR must redesign the fundamentals of work to make it more exciting and engaging to different needs. 

Another cultural aspect is that of change readiness. Transitioning from a traditional workforce strategy to a blended workforce strategy is a huge change management exercise in itself. Leaders must prepare their people for this shift. Leaders must “walk the talk” to inspire people to embrace and imbibe the new ways of working and new expectations. Spreading awareness and acceptance is essential to get diverse employees to work towards a common business goal and purpose. Curating a shared vision and values is the way to unlock the “on demand advantage”. 

Closing: 

Clearly, making the shift from a regular workforce to a blended workforce requires humongous resources; it is not an easy task. Moreover, building the right mindset is a time consuming and intensive agenda. Businesses who embark on this blended workforce journey may find it difficult to realize ROI quickly and effectively. But often, the need it real and immediate. In such scenarios, enrolling the right partners in the blended workforce journey can make all the difference between success and failure. Talent experts with an expertise in on demand workforce services can provide the strategic knowhow, tactical guidance, and operational hand holding needed to bring the blended workforce strategy to life. They may even have ready to use, deployable models, tools and technologies to facilitate easy, speedy, and scalable implementation. A plug-and-play model can help enterprises realize the blended workforce edge without the initial investments.

Solvecube offers the right blend of tech and touch in this journey to access, hire and engage a mature, global, on demand and full time, niche skilled, senior level workforce. 

• An expert and experienced senior founding team offers deep Talent Advisory on the strategic decisions.
• An AI-led talent platform with Source-Search-Shortlist capabilities, tech-enabled diagnostic tools (ice.cube, p.three)
• A ready to use policy templates (hr.ready) can help companies quickly unleash the blended workforce advantage!
• The comfort of “human touch” is retained thanks to real human interventions by Relationship Managers, Recruiters on Demand (RoD), Strategic Growth Partners and Business Growth Partners. 

Unlock the blended workforce benefit,

and build your business for agility, resilience, and future-relevance!