A preview to next Tuesday: How leading organizations are accessing the future workforce

Are you in New York next Tuesday, October 20?

We're hosting a dinner for private equity operating partners with distinguished guest Cory Eaves, Partner and Head of Portfolio Operations at BayPine. Prior at Private Equity International, I'll be chairing and Cory will be a mainstage speaker.

This dinner is for any leader putting innovative talent models at the top of their priority list.

Request your invite »

Here's what stands out this week:

• Staffing stopped shrinking. PageGroup posted its first quarterly growth since 2022.^[1] Robert Walters ended 13 straight quarters of decline.^[3]
• Contract work is leading the turn. At PageGroup, temp grew 3.0% and perm grew 0.8%.^[1] At Hays, contract fees fell 1% while perm fell 7%.^[2]
• Compliance is following the flexible worker. Since October 1, UK right-to-work checks cover contractors and gig workers, with fines up to £45,000 per worker.^[4] China's first draft rules for gig workers require human review before an algorithm can ban a worker.^[5]
• Risk is expanding everywhere at once. The Labor Department suspended Microsoft, TCS, and other IT giants from the PERM green card program over alleged H-1B abuse.^[6] 72% of staffing buyers hit candidate fraud this year, nearly double last year.^[7]
• The solutions are getting better, fast. Job&Talent says in-house AI agents cut its operating costs by more than 30%.^[8]

Here's my interpretation of the data:

1. The recovery shows up in contract work first. Temp outgrew perm at PageGroup almost four to one.^[1] Hays' contract fees held near flat while perm fell 7%.^[2] Companies are buying capability before they commit to headcount.
2. It has never been easier yet harder to bring flexible talent into your organization. Easier, because the solutions are better than ever. Suppliers are rebuilding on AI and cutting their own costs by more than 30%.^[8] Harder, because there are so many new solutions, and so many new risk areas: visa compliance at the largest employers,^[6] candidate fraud,^[7] and liability for contractors you never employed.^[4]
3. There is no single flexible workforce strategy. Every organization and industry needs its own. Our advice to a private equity operating partner is different from our advice to a portfolio company CHRO.
4. Operating partners have the advantage of scale. We stress vetted talent pools that every portco can tap quickly, so expertise used at one company is available across the fund. No single portco can build that pool. The fund can build the best one.
5. CHROs win on the hiring manager experience. It has to be both compliant and seamless. The UK just raised the stakes: right-to-work liability now reaches contractors and gig workers.^[4] If the compliant path is not the easy one, managers go around it.

Here's how Human Cloud is helping:

• Our Market Map helps your organization visualize the structure you need to balance what hiring managers need with your compliance and risk needs. See the Market Map »
• Our dinners let you sit with us and your peers who are solving this. Find or sponsor a dinner near you »
• Our executive community gives you a protected space to talk with your peers virtually. See the executive community »

Here's to making the world work!

- Tony

Tony Buffum Co-Founder & Chief Strategy Officer at Human Cloud. 20+ years in global HR and talent transformation. Former CHRO at FLIR Systems, VP HR at Stanley Black & Decker, VP HR Client Strategy at Upwork. Grab time with me »

PS: Building the case for a flexible workforce strategy inside your organization? Book an executive briefing »

Human Cloud Data

Every industry is building its own bench

Every 62 seconds, someone is looking at a solution profile on Human Cloud. Here is what they are searching to find them.

What the data shows

Consumer goods and B2B searches doubled this month. Marketing and cybersecurity rose 50%. Data labeling, media and entertainment, and healthcare all grew. AI fell 33%. Finance fell 80%.

Pharmacy, HR, and law showed up as searches this month after none last month. That is the same point from this week's Open, in our own data. Nobody is searching for a generic talent strategy. A consumer brand, a pharmacy, and a law firm are each looking for the specialists that fit their business.

Consumer Goods	+100% this month
B2B	+100% this month
Marketing	+50% this month
Cybersecurity	+50% this month
Data Labeling	+33% this month
Media and Entertainment	+33% this month
Healthcare	+25% this month
AI	-33% this month
Finance	-80% this month

Percentages are this month vs last month.