Companies choose flexible talent to be faster, not cheaper
Companies bring in independent talent for speed: 71% use it for specialized expertise, and only 14% use it to cut costs.
By Matthew Mottola, Tony Buffum and Jeff Nugent · Published December 1, 2026
Key findings
71% of companies use independent talent for specialized expertise; only 14% use it to cut costs.
Source: Human Cloud and Independently, 2026 Annual Flexible Workforce Study, company and solution surveys, fielded Aug to Sep 2026.
Exhibit 18
Why companies use independent talent
Percent of companies, multiple answers
Specialized expertise
71%
Project-based work
57%
Global talent access
43%
Cost
14%
Innovation
14%
Flexibility
14%
Source: Human Cloud and Independently, 2026 Annual Flexible Workforce Study, company and solution surveys, fielded Aug to Sep 2026.Source: 2026 Flexible Workforce Study, Human Cloud and Independently.
57% of companies say independent talent gave them faster access to skills, and 57% say it extended their reach into new markets; 14% say it reduced costs.
Source: Human Cloud and Independently, 2026 Annual Flexible Workforce Study, company and solution surveys, fielded Aug to Sep 2026.
Exhibit 19
What they hire it for, and what they got
Percent of companies
Reason for usingOutcome achieved
Specialized expertise
71%
57%
Global reach
43%
57%
Innovation
14%
29%
Reduced costs
14%
14%
Source: Human Cloud and Independently, 2026 Annual Flexible Workforce Study, company and solution surveys, fielded Aug to Sep 2026.Source: 2026 Flexible Workforce Study, Human Cloud and Independently.
Announcing a delayed product cut shareholder value by about 12% on average, in a study of more than 450 public companies.
Source: Kevin Hendricks and Vinod Singhal, study of product launch delays at more than 450 public companies, 1987 to 2003, reported by Georgia Tech, February 7, 2007.
87% of North American IT leaders report digital transformation delays from skills shortages.
Source: IDC survey of IT leaders, reported by CIO, January 22, 2025.
29% of companies say flexible talent produced no measurable outcome for them.
Source: Human Cloud and Independently, 2026 Annual Flexible Workforce Study, company and solution surveys, fielded Aug to Sep 2026.
The chapter in brief
Ask a finance team why the company uses contractors and the answer is usually cost. That belief shapes how most companies buy flexible talent: through procurement, against a price list, with the lowest hourly rate winning. The companies that use it describe something else.
A company that needs a Salesforce architect for a migration, or a pricing expert before a launch, could hire one. That takes a requisition, an approval and a search that can run for months. The companies using flexible talent have decided the months cost more than the rate.
A late product launch is not a small cost. Every launch has a window when demand peaks, and a competitor who ships first takes it, so the peak you eventually reach is smaller. Missing talent is one of the most common reasons launches slip.
The value of flexible talent is real, but hard to quantify. In verified cases on Human Cloud, Topcoder delivered 18 design concepts for macys.com in under two days, The Bench deployed 200+ contractors across 1,000+ event days for State Farm, and Wripple’s six-person team beat Equifax’s previous B2B social benchmarks. In each one, the flexible talent was the enabler, and the credit went to the outcome.
From the practitioners in this chapter
“They said we don’t care about cost savings, that is not important to us. We want to save time and energy and relieve burden off of our [full-time employees].”
April Beard
Contingent workforce program leader; Progressive Insurance and Centene · Ask The Expert, Contingent Workforce Institute
Solutions named in this chapter
Each one has a profile on Human Cloud, with its verified business cases.
Ten chapters, 40 exhibits, business cases verified by named companies, and a one-page action plan for innovation, HR and procurement leaders and for the solutions that serve them.
