A 5-step framework for flexible talent success
Five steps move a company from its first flexible talent project to a program: the need, the speed, the border, the repeat and the skills.
By Matthew Mottola, Tony Buffum and Jeff Nugent · Published December 1, 2026
Key findings
Companies that are high performers with AI are nearly three times as likely to have fundamentally redesigned their workflows.
Source: McKinsey, The State of AI 2025, November 2025, Exhibit 10.
72% of employers struggle to find the talent they need, and for the first time AI skills are the hardest to find.
Source: ManpowerGroup, 2026 Global Talent Shortage Survey, February 26, 2026.
A global technology and services company cut data analyst hiring from 6 to 8 weeks to about 2 to 3 weeks through Gigged.AI, a 66% cut in recruitment time.
Source: Business case on Human Cloud; figures reported by the solution.
The chapter in brief
The need: work no team was built for. Most flexible workforces start with a piece of work that does not fit the org chart. Redesign the work, then staff each task: start from the outcome, break it into tasks and the skills each needs, then pick the best resource for each one.
The speed: weeks instead of months. Speed does not have to mean short-term; the fastest teams are often building something permanent. The border: talent in countries where you cannot easily employ people, where the question changes from who to how.
The repeat: the same people, project after project. A flexible workforce starts to compound when the same outside people come back into the company’s work until they work like part of the team. The skills: a mature flexible workforce uses its outside network to find skills the company could not recruit for on its own timeline.
The five stages also work as a checklist. A program that has handled the need and the speed but not the border will stall on employment in its next market. One that has crossed the border but never goes back to the same people is not building the trust that makes the next project fast.
Solutions named in this chapter
Each one has a profile on Human Cloud, with its verified business cases.
Source: 2026 Flexible Workforce Study, Human Cloud and Independently.
All the numbers: flexible workforce statistics 2026 →