| | October 20219· Freelance/Independent Workers: Workers who extend the core employee workforce and are typically paid by the hour, day, or other unit of time.· Gig Workers: Workers paid by the task to complete a specified piece of work.· Crowd Workers: Workers who compete to participate in a project and are often only paid if they are among the top participants in a competition.Even among companies with policies and standards, our experience suggests that a strategic, enterprise wide approach is rare. What is needed is an enterprise wide rewiring of how organizations operate as it relates to alternative labor--one that allows it to connect the appropriate talent with the appropriate roles no matter how that talent is sourced. Part of the answer lies in connecting the various parts of the enterprise involved, often in a fragmented manner, in hiring alternative workers. This includes procurement, IT, and, increasingly, HR.Remembering the principles for human capital reinvention, businesses must consider issues of inclusion, diversity, fairness, and trust when constructing organizational systems around alternative work. Alternative workers can have different backgrounds and cultures than many traditional workers, and these individuals are often accessed in different ways. Can managers lead a team with a diverse mix of people from both traditional and alternative talent pools, when each may come to work with a different set of motivations? Can the organization engage the alternative workforce in a way that promotes the organization's brand as a social enterprise?What Is The Role Of HR Department? How Will They Facilitate?It's important that the entire workforce, both alternative and traditional, be treated with respect with regards to culture, inclusion, and work assignments--and that perceptions on all sides reflect these values. While the greater risk is arguably that alternative workers will feel they are treated as outsiders--thus potentially damaging an organization's overall employment brand--it's also possible for the knife to cut the other way. At one major European bank, for example, as part of a movement to create more flexible access to talent in various technology-related fields, managers in the IT department started working systematically with contractors, freelancers, and consultants. But over time, leaders realized that the function's on-balance-sheet employees, who worked almost solely on legacy systems, felt "penalized" compared to these external workers, who were hired for more-interesting projects with "cool," newer technologies. The bank's IT leadership took steps to rebalance the mix--and the experience has now enabled the bank to more effectively access and use alternative labor pools in its IT function. Risks and challenges like these are not insurmountable, and the alternative workforce is now a critical mainstay of the workforce for a growing number of employers Organizations that take this type of workforce seriously can build strategies and programs to access and engage talented people wherever they may sit in the labor pool, driving business growth and extending the diversity of the workforce. Technology plays a great role by enabling sourcing, tracking, engaging, hiring, managing payroll, work and productivity of the workforce
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