Growing a Blended Workforce: How HR Can Support Contingent Talent

Listen to the podcast episode, "HR, We Have a Problem - How to Build an Adaptive Workforce."

Companies around the world are seeing the contingent workforce not only as an increasingly integral part of their workforce strategy, but also as an opportunity to better their overall business strategy. As they continue to leverage this growing workforce, enterprises have begun to shift the management of their external workers into their HR function, so they can better align their external and full-time workforces. 

On this Sapient Insights Group podcast, Teri Zipper, CEO and managing partner of Sapient Insights Group; Kerry Kiley, head of extended workforce program management at Workday; and Cliff Stevenson, director of research and principal analyst at Sapient Insights Group, discuss using a vendor management system (VMS) and HR expertise to strategically fill skills gaps, support full-time employees, and increase productivity. 

By analyzing data from a recent survey, these experts identify the benefits of having integrated technology to support and tap into the growing contingent talent pool. Below are a few highlights from Sapient’s “HR, We Have a Problem” podcast, edited for clarity.

• “When we ask in the survey—‘What percentage of your workers are contingent workers?’— it’s about 49% this year when you average across all those different industries and sizes. And because we’ve been asking this question for a while, it’s been pretty amazing to watch how that percentage has grown.” - Cliff Stevenson Director of Research and a Principal Analyst, Sapient Insights Group

• “If you want to outsource something, that is a different set of vendors than if you need a specific individual to come in and be embedded in your team with a really specific skill set. So there’s a lot of different ways that you can engage talent and a lot of different reasons that we see contingent workers engaged.” - Kerry Kiley, Head of Extended Workforce Program Management, Workday

• “Any technology that you’re using in this space will allow you to have things like compliance, which is certainly important, become table stakes. And those become the foundational pieces of a program to just have repeating at scale. And so it becomes this system of really valuable data that you can then use to be more strategic in the running of your program.”- Kerry Kiley, Head of Extended Workforce Program Management, Workday

Read Transcript

Announcer: Welcome to the HR Huddle Podcast, presented by Sapient Insights Group, the ultimate resource for all things HR. It's time to get in the huddle. 

Teri Zipper: Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the HR Huddle. I'm your host, Teri Zipper, CEO and Managing Partner at Sapient Insights Group, and I'm back for another exciting episode of HR, We Have a Problem. This is the show where we break down the big and most relevant issues of the day in HR. We like to help you make sense of what they mean, and we talk about some things you might do about them. Joining me today is Kerry Kiley, Principal at Workday, focused on the extended workforce, and Sapient Insights’ own Cliff Stevenson, Director of Research and a Principal Analyst here. Welcome, Kiley and Stevenson. Great to have you guys on the show.

Kerry Kiley: Thank you so much. Great to be here.

Cliff Stevenson: Yeah, wonderful. Really enjoying it. We're from multiple time zones, I think. This is exciting.

Zipper: Yeah, we're all across the country this week, I think. So this should be fun. Hopefully, you guys are awake since it's a little bit earlier for you than it is for me.

Stevenson: Ready to go.

Kiley: Had plenty of coffee, ready to go.

Zipper: Plenty of coffee. So the new buzzword, at least for the last year or two, has been adaptive, and we've been talking about the evolution of an adaptiveness of the modern workforce a little bit, more specifically, how we might use the contingent workforce to support our talent strategy. So I thought this would be a great conversation to share with our audience. Does that sound like a good plan to you guys?

Kiley: Sounds great.

Stevenson: Absolutely.

Zipper: All right then, let's get into the huddle. So HR leaders, I think they've been facing some serious headwinds. Talent shortages are high on the list. Job requirements keep changing. Remote work and the great resignation has obviously had a big impact on the workforce, not to mention the normal business pressures, and now the talk of how AI is changing the world. So leaders have a lot on their plate, and some of the traditional approaches to workforce management aren't necessarily working the way they used to. And the contingent workforces I think we're seeing are on the rise, right? So I want to talk about that. But before we dive in too deep, let's just define what we mean by contingent work or contingent worker for the audience. Kiley, you've been doing this for a while working in this area. How would you define this group or what parameters would you put around this sort of contingent workforce?

Kiley: Yeah, there's quite a few different terms that you'll hear used in various geographies or companies. I think every company has their own sort of flavor of terminology. At Workday, we call the program that I run our extended workforce program. That's a term we're hearing a lot more frequently to sort of include all of those flavors of what are effectively non-employee individuals and individuals that are employed by third parties, not your company. Some of the other terms that you'll hear often used interchangeably are contingent workers. You'll sometimes hear vendor workers, gig workers, freelancers get thrown in there sometimes for fun. So when you're being all inclusive with the term, you're really talking about any and all non-employees that are providing services to your company.

Zipper: Great. That makes a lot of sense. And how large is this group in terms of the sort of general percentages that makes up of an orgs workforce? I know it's a little bit different depending on what area you're in, but I've seen these numbers start to be on the rise. So I'm curious what that looks like for you. And then Stevenson, I know we asked about this in the survey this year, so I'd love to know what the survey says.

Kiley: And in my experience, I've run global contingent workforce programs for four different tech companies, specifically located in the Bay Area. And those percents of the contingent workforce as a part of the total workforce has varied significantly between those companies. So I think often this can be an output of the company's strategy or the actual work that the company does. And of course, there are certain types of work and certain departments that tend to lean a little more heavily on their contingent workers. So I've seen as a percent of total workforce, contingent workers make up anywhere between 6% of total workforce on the low side and as high as 50% or more on the very high side.

Zipper: Yeah, Stevenson, what did we see in the survey? Because I know we asked this question this year, and I know there are some differences based on size and industry and other factors. What are you seeing?

Stevenson: Yeah, well, it's interesting you mentioned the 50%, Kiley, because that's actually what we're seeing as an average overall when we ask it in the survey, "What percentage of your workers are contingent workers," with all those different kinds that you mentioned. And it's about 49% this year when you average across all those different industries and sizes. And because we've been asking this question for a while, it's been pretty amazing to watch how that percentage has grown. When we first started asking this about seven years ago in 2016, it was closer to 20%. So it's definitely something that jumped a lot during the unspeakable 2020 years or so. But I think it was always going to be on the rise. It's been a pretty steady increase because of some of the pressures that Zipper mentioned earlier.

Zipper: Yeah. Obviously, this is having an impact on organizations in general, and I've seen the organizational focus on mobility over the last couple of years has been a positive development. But I don't see it solving all the talent problems that HR leaders are facing, right? So contract labor seems like it's become a more important part of the organization's strategy. And it sounds like with the growth, that makes a lot of sense. Kiley, what are some of the primary reasons organizations are expanding their use of contingent labor, and what falls into that category?

Kiley: Yeah, it really could be kind of anything from soup to nuts, but some of the most common reasons that we'll see are coverages for FTEs out on leave. We'll see project support, right? So you have a new project or initiative, you don't have head count for it, or enough people with a particular skill set to finish that project. So then you would bring in additional talent to supplement the workforce that you already have. In some of these cases, there are specific groups, departments, functions that companies are outsourcing entirely. And so they're saying, "We don't want to do this work internally. We want to outsource it to a third party with expertise in this area." And so they'll ship all of that work out to a third party. So there's really a variety of different reasons for doing it. And there's a lot of value depending on the reason to selecting the right path, right? If you want to outsource something, that is a different set of vendors than if you need a specific individual to come in and be embedded in your team with a really specific skill set. So there's a lot of different ways that you can engage talent and a lot of different reasons that we see contingent workers engaged.

Zipper: Yeah, I would think across some of those tech companies, the skills gap would have been a big reason for starting to add to their workforce, right? How do I fill that skills gap, whether I need it temporarily or even whether it's some longer-term support, right?

Kiley: Yeah. And I think we've been seeing that reason specifically grow more and more, especially as companies are evolving and changing and business needs and all of the different factors around macroeconomic and otherwise, right, change so quickly, and companies need to pivot, they'll very quickly identify new skill sets they need that they don't have internally or that their teams don't have the way they need or in the volumes that they need. And so supplementing for those skills that are either missing or not at the levels or volumes that you need on your internal teams is one of the biggest reasons we see contingent workers being used as of late.

Zipper: Yeah. And just I'm wondering, and this is just kind of off the cuff here, but thinking about, as I mentioned earlier, the great resignation and some of those types of things [like?] remote work, that have impacted the workforce, have you seen those people leaving the organization sort of converting to contingent workers, especially people in their later years where they've just decided, "I've had enough of this sort of day-to-day. I'm going to leave the organization. But I'm going to continue to work for them on some sort of contingent or freelance basis," right?

Kiley: Yeah, and I do think that we are seeing that quite a bit more. And in my program, we do see our contingent workers as a talent strategy. It's absolutely a channel for talent into our FTE roles. And so that becomes a very critical then larger talent channel for our talent acquisition team. And oftentimes, if we see roles that we're not able to fill with FTE or maybe not as quickly as we need, sometimes the contingent worker can be an activating function where you can find someone quicker and get them in. And then you figure out that they're fantastic, and you would like to, in fact, maintain those services for an ongoing nature and can sort of "convert them," as we would say in the industry or hire them as an FTE.

Zipper: Yeah. Yeah. One of the things I find interesting, and you mentioned talent strategy there, which is really key. I think this workforce has typically not been managed or sort of facilitated by the HR function, right? And there seems to be a little bit of a sea change there because this part of the workforce, and especially now as we're reaching, on average, 50%, it's contributing a significant amount of the output for the organization. So it seems to me like HR is going to need to play a bigger role. I mean, this is a strategic move for HR, right?

Kiley: Absolutely. And I think as we've seen with some of the factors you've mentioned over the last several years with remote work, with skills gaps, I think this becomes more and more important as the workers' drivers are going to continue to change. And the things that motivate them or attract them to a company are going to change. And so it becomes very strategically important to identify what you can do to ensure that those workers are going to be appealed to, right? That your offering, your company is going to be appealing to them from a contract position, whether it's remote work, whether it's allowing them to use skills that they have or do work that they want to do. There's a lot of different factors that come into play when a worker is considering the opportunities that are available to them. And so I think that if any company who wants a contingent worker engaged isn't thinking about it strategically and how they can attract and retain that talent, even though it's not a full-time employee, you're going to have a harder time filling those skill sets and getting those workers to come into your organization and stay for the duration of the assignment that you need them for.

Zipper: Yeah, Stevenson, I was looking at the data and I was kind of shocked to see that the third or one of the top responses in the question around where this part of the organization or where these individuals are being managed was no one or some sort of shared ownership. Did that surprise you?

Stevenson: No, but only because I came from HR. So I knew that it was often the case that contingent workers were kind of treated as a separate entity, right? Still to this day, HR is not the most commonly sort of used department for overseeing contingent work. It's second, regardless of whether that's an S&B in market or enterprise level of number of employees. They're usually sort of handled through the business unit or through operations, although there is certainly a rise in the number of HR departments that oversee them. And that is going to be a sort of big opportunity, let's say, for HR rather than challenge, because there are some unique aspects to these workers. But as Kiley was saying, if your goal is—regardless of your goal, right? Whether it's to address that skills gap or to convert them into full-time employees, you need to make sure that they have a sort of unified employee experience, right? They shouldn't feel different. They shouldn't be handled differently, regardless of what your sort of goal is if you were trying to think of this strategically. So yeah, it is still, I guess, a little shocking to find out, if you don't know, that there isn't really a plan in place for many organizations for the use of these workers. And that's really a shame, but like I said, a big opportunity here to really create value for your organization.

Zipper: Yeah, I mean, there's some logic, right? A lot of times this is procurement, right? So it's running through procurement because they're managing the buy, right, and then finance from a financial perspective. So they're not going on your direct payroll. So you're not seeing those numbers every day. But I mean, to me, it's like this huge talent pool, Kiley, as you were just saying. And I want to have—I'd like to know the talent profile of these people because we may be able to leverage their capabilities elsewhere when we start to think about—I mean, there are just not enough resources to solve our problems with moving our employees around the workforce. We've got to have broader access. And why not take advantage of the people that are doing work for us already, many of whom know our business really well because they've been working here for quite some time on different projects? So in some cases, they may know the business better than some employees because they've had that access. So yeah, it just seems like we're missing out potentially on a talent pool that could serve a lot of purposes for the organization.

Kiley: I agree. And I think as we move into this new world of skills and really focusing on skills instead of job titles and sort of career trajectory or whatever that view is, I think this is an area where your contingent workforce can really be an activating function and really accelerate the work that your company is doing because they have a broad set of skills. And to your point, if you can look at that across the organization and identify the areas where those skills overlap with your needs, there's an opportunity to not only engage those workers, but identify opportunities to redeploy them into other projects while they're here when they're done with their first project or identify opportunities for them to get hired into an FTE role that utilizes or needs the skills that they have. So I think there's a huge opportunity here. And I agree with you that a lot of times companies will look at their contingent workforce as sort of a number in a seat or an asset, if you will. And certainly, they are important assets to any organization, but there's so much more than that to be seen with contingent workers.

Zipper: Yeah. And I think there's opportunity there for innovation, right? Because while your employees aren't innovative or have the opportunity to support innovation in the organization, but sometimes when it's that outside force, outside looking in, right? It's not in the weeds and doesn't have sort of the day-to-day—I don't know, they're not bogged down by the day-to-day administration of the organization. There's an opportunity for them to help drive some of that innovation, innovative thinking, and support other people in the organization as well.

Kiley: Totally agree. And these are individuals who clearly want to be part of your organization, right? We talked about a little bit the motivating factors of the workers. But when they're willing to come and do work for you as a contingent worker, that's quite a statement about your company and their willingness to come and give their skills, right, and in a role where they're not an employee, which is a little bit of a different—as we've said, a little bit of a different sort of game than being an employee in terms of the roles and responsibilities and the way that you're engaged. And so I see the contingent workforce as a very motivated, very skilled, important, and in some cases, many cases, critical component of an overall workforce. So I do think that when we talk about the importance of HR in terms of either influencing it or managing it or even owning it in some cases, that becomes really important towards being able to get the maximum return on those investments while also creating really good experiences for those workers, which will directly impact anybody's talent brand. Whether they're having a good or a bad experience at your company, whether they're an employee or not, your talent brand is on the line there. So I do think that HR, whether they want to or not, in many cases, should have a vested interest in this workforce and how it's managed on a day-to-day basis.

Stevenson: I couldn't agree more. And I think that you mentioned the talent brand, but also your organization's brand, very often, the contingent workers are your frontline workers, are the ones directly interacting with customers. That's not uncommon at all. And so their experience is going to directly affect the customer experience. They're going to have that same amount of access to knowledge or feeling of acceptance or whatever it is that's driving their motivations and their ability to satisfy customer demands. And it's just so critical and so important that they are able to both be taken care of in their sort of emotional and sort of needs as an individual, but also how they can find out what they need to know, the training they need to have, and any of the other access to information they can then use to satisfy whatever questions or concerns or needs of the customer, so.

Kiley: Couldn't agree more. And I think we've seen some interesting shifts and trends in this area, particularly in the last five or so years, where when I started in this space of contingent workforce program management, we were very—it wasn't nearly as inclusive as it was today, right? We had policies, "You can't come to this and you can't do that, and here's all the things that you're not included in." And I see most of my peers, and we're having a lot of really interesting conversations in the last couple of years around how do we shift that and do this a little bit better, right? And what are the things that make sense, to your point, Stevenson, so that we can support the individual and the human aspect of the workers that are here. And so how do we shift into a slightly more or greatly more, in many cases, inclusive sort of set of policies and guidelines for managers so that we're not just bringing folks in, having them do the work, sending them home, and then never engaging with them, never having them come to the happy hour that you're having, or go hear the cool speaker that's coming to talk about how AI is going to impact your industry or whatever kind of event or meeting or situation you might have in your company. I think a lot of times contingent workers have been a little bit excluded and outside of those activities, and I think there's a lot of rethinking around that. I'm seeing this particularly in programs where the program is owned by HR, and looking and saying, "Where can we loosen this a little bit and include folks more without sort of getting ourselves into an area where we feel like it's too much or it might be risky or anything like that?"

Zipper: Yeah, I think that's a really great point. And I'm seeing the same thing. I mean, the employee experience has become much broader in terms of the coverage. And you're absolutely right. These people are representing your organization, whether they're getting a paycheck from a W-2 or they're getting a 1099, right? So we need to think about how we manage that workforce and that labor and how we take advantage of the skills that they bring to the table and the way that they help us drive the business. So as I'm thinking about all this, I mean, one of the things I know that's been a struggle from an HR perspective has been, how do I even know who all these people are? What does this mean, Stevenson, for HR tech, right? Because there are solutions out there to this problem. And I don't know if a lot of people are familiar with those solutions or aware of what some of those solutions can do from an HR perspective.

Stevenson: Yeah, yeah, exactly. I feel like we'd be remiss if we didn't mention some of the technology that lays behind this, and that's the thing. Just as we are sort of advancing and evolving in how we treat or think of our contingent workforce, we also need to think about what is the technology behind that and how is that adapting - that word again, right? - and evolving as part of that. And I think that there's just a number of ways that these systems can go that you wouldn't even think of. Often, I would say some technology is just sort of focused on compliance, but we can see from the research that if you are just focusing on compliance, you are not really moving the needle both in terms of how you're viewed as an HR function. We've got the data showing that, but also these sort of business outcomes, right? So you mentioned innovation, for instance. We see that those organizations that take a more strategic view and use these tools are more likely to have greater innovation within their organization.

Stevenson: I think it was on a 5-point scale. Just compliance was 3. 1, but it was up to a 3.7 when contingent workers were managed and supported strategically using these tools. And being able to do things like analyze just the data and getting real-time updates on where those gaps are, those skills gaps are and where they can go through to manage your sort of supplier network. Because as Kiley said, there's tons of different types of contingent workers, all of whom may be coming from different areas. And you need to be able to not just maintain good relationships with the workers, but also with that network, right? To be able to quickly address these skills gaps as they come up. You had also mentioned AI, right? So if you're there and you're going, "We need to know about AI," how quickly can we get someone in with these skills, and you don't have that ability to kind of go through your network quickly using some tech. What are you going to do? Start calling around? You need to be able to have some tech to be able to quickly identify how and where you can address those skills gaps.

Kiley: And if I can just add on to that as a practitioner, I find that the technology, any technology that you're using in this space will allow you to have things like compliance, which is certainly important, become table stakes. And those become the sort of easy, foundational pieces of a program to just have repeating at scale. And so the system becomes a set of really valuable data that you can then use to be more strategic in the running of your program. Where am I missing gaps? Where do we have outliers in terms of pricing or time to fill? Who are the managers that are using or the departments that are using contingent workers? And then how do we ensure that we've got those right skills on tap, ready to go for them? And where do we need to build a better set of either suppliers or skill availability or geographies? And so I feel like without that technology, you spend a lot of time just managing the real basic pieces of a program, and it doesn't necessarily give you the opportunity to be quite as strategic or to have the data that you need to make actionable decisions around how to shift and evolve and adapt your program as your business grows and changes and adapts.

Zipper: Yeah. And one more integration for HCM, but I think it's a critical one because again, from a talent management perspective, this is a pool of individuals that we need to understand what their capabilities are. And so I don't want to have to evaluate the data from my talent management system and then go figure out where I've got 500 other people that are working for my organization and what their capabilities are. How do I sort of bring those things together so that I've got more control over? And I think that's part of the reason why HR hasn't owned this in large part up to this point. Kiley, do you have some examples of organizations where you're seeing this done really well? You don't have to mention the names unless you feel comfortable. But I'm curious if you've been working with anybody who's doing this really well and maybe what some of the key metrics or key points were for them in terms of how they're making this work and really taking advantage of and leveraging this workforce.

Kiley: I think there's a lot of great examples out in the marketplace of companies doing this well. I think if you're looking for an example of folks that are best taking advantage of this workforce and taking advantage in a good way in terms of utilizing the skills and being inclusive, I feel like the tech companies in the Bay Area in particular have been sort of leading the charge on this shift over into HR, having more responsibility for the contingent workforce. And I think that—I've always run programs that [sat?] in HR, so I have to admit to being a little bit biased. And I've always had a very close relationship with my procurement partners. So I don't want to denigrate them owning a program either. It can sit in either place, but that partnership is super critical. So I feel like the programs that I've seen do this the best, both in my experience and when I'm talking to my peers, are where you have that close partnership, right? Where everybody who has a vested interest, and that is finance, that is procurement, that is IT, and that is HR, has a vested interest in this workforce and ensuring that they're on site compliantly being seen by the right teams in terms of their skill sets so that we can make sure that everybody has access to talent that is available, that's where you're seeing the most success. The specific examples are probably not as important as the, I think, fundamental themes that we see, which is nobody can run a contingent workforce successfully in a silo. It just doesn't happen very well when you're doing that. So that cross-functional partnership becomes, I think, the critical piece of teams doing this well. If you can partner with your talent acquisition team, right, whether you sit in HR or procurement, to identify some of those skills and to do some of the exercises around, well, what are the roles that are going to be opening up next year, right? And where do I have contingent workers with those skill sets where we can make some really quick and easy connections? What a great way to get that skill set into your organization quickly, right, and already ready to go much quicker than an external hire. So I feel like that cross-functional piece is often missed, and that's where you're going to see the most successful contingent workforce programs in terms of truly seeing that talent and leveraging it.

Zipper: Yeah, I think that's really a great point for just about anything we're doing at HR because so much of what HR does is contingent upon things that are happening in the rest of the business, and they're supporting the business. So having those relationships and that level of partnership and collaboration with the other areas in the organization, to me, it's key. You can't be successful without that.

Kiley: Agree. And I think we're also seeing—the conversation in the contingent workforce industry for about the last 10, 15 years has been, how do we get to something that looks much more like total talent planning or total talent management than where we have historically been? So instead of having an individual manager plugging an individual hole, how do we actually look across the organization in a strategic way and in a future-looking way? I mean, you have to start with, "What do I have today?" And that's where the technology comes in, right? Like, "Where are my workers? What are they doing? What are we doing here with them?" But that's your first step on that journey towards shifting into that total talent planning, total talent management. Companies will use different terms for this. I think that this journey has been largely theoretical in the last 10 years. And I think we are just now, really, in the last 18 months to two years, starting to see those first steps, which requires a technology, to inching towards being able to actually do total talent planning, total talent management, regardless of whether it's an employee or a contingent worker. And I think that's going to be the sweet spot for so many organizations, because then they're not separating these planning functions. They're planning one set of workers, but not planning the other, and so bringing that together, I think is going to be really critical to organizations as talent pools tighten, as skills become less available, as workers become more selective. I think there's really going to have to be a shift in that space in particular.

Zipper: Yeah. And I think HR leaders need to be making the business case, if you will, to the executive team that this is what needs to happen. This is how we're going to develop and grow the workforce and ensure we have the resources we need to take the organization forward. Yeah, it's a great point. So as I think about this, and I think that's a great idea, one of the things is thinking about how you start to create those partnerships and those relationships. Is there one other thing that you might leave the audience with today that as they consider how to effectively manage and start to use contingent labor as part of their talent pool, do you have some suggestions or some thoughts for them on things that they could do tomorrow to start to help them move towards that goal?

Kiley: I do think there's a couple of foundational pieces that companies need to have in place to be able to do some of the other things we've talked about today, right? You can't be strategic if you don't have data measuring what you've got today, right? So I think having a technology is really important. I also think that there's an opportunity for companies to recognize that there is a skill set here in terms of knowledge and practice in terms of managing a contingent workforce. We'll often see people build contingent workforce programs and just look around at who they have in their departments and ask them to learn about this and then build a Gen-1 program, and that's possible. I've seen it done. It's really hard on the person who's actually doing the building and the company. So I think there's an opportunity there for a company to think really and be really thoughtful about having the right people in the right roles to manage that and then going and having the right technology brought in. And now you're starting to build a cohesive set of program governance and program metrics. And from that, you can build anything you need with your contingent workforce. But you have to have some of those foundational pieces in order for the program to really be able to grow and evolve and to know what direction it needs to go in to effectively support the business needs.

Zipper: Yeah, I think that's a great point. Stevenson, anything to add to that?

Stevenson: Well, just that one thing, I loved what you said, Kiley, the right people at the right place, because that's the mantra of strategic workforce management, right? Right people at the right place at the right time. And it's just that mindset shift of going like, "This is my total workforce. That's that total talent management, total workforce management. If you're going to be the right people at the right place, the right time, that's not just your full-time employees. That's everyone," right? And that's how you get all these different advantages. I mentioned innovation. We see increases, again. Not a correlation, just saying that those organizations that have a more strategic view and usage of their contingent workers see increases in market share, profitability, customer satisfaction, which we touched on earlier. So this is part of what you need to help your organization succeed, right? Or HR should not just be in their little silo, as you were saying, Zipper, right? That's a challenge for HR just in general to have these partnerships across the organization. And just like that, your contingent workers shouldn't just be in a little silo over here. They should be partnering throughout.

Zipper: Yeah, no, all great points. I think there's a lot of opportunity here for organizations to think about how they can leverage this workforce and maybe some who haven't even thought about how they might leverage contingent workers to drive their business. For some people, I think it can be a little scary, especially for smaller businesses who don't know all the legal ins and outs of having contingent workers or gig workers or contract workers. So there's a lot to learn there. I think we could probably do a whole other podcast just on the legal and compliance areas around this workforce. But that is all the time we have for today. I want to thank Kiley and Stevenson for joining me today. It's been a great conversation. Thank you guys so much.

Kiley: Thank you so much for having us.

Stevenson: Can I plug the paper?--

Zipper: Sure, yeah.

Stevenson: Because it's sort of that, if you got Shakespeare, Proust and then whatever handsome genius wrote this, it's called contingent workforce management, the key to an adaptive HR strategy. And it has a lot of the topics that we talked about today, and we can actually see some of the numbers, so.

Zipper: When is that out, Stevenson? Is it out already or?

Stevenson: It is out now. 

Zipper: Where can I download it?

Stevenson: It's free. Yeah, you can download it. If you just type in, yeah, "The key to an adaptive HR strategy," it's on the Workday site, but should be able to google it.

Zipper: All right, we'll put a link with the podcast. When we send out the podcast, we'll put a link. Yeah. Yeah.

Stevenson: Well, there we go. Put it in the show notes. You can read it to your kids at night. It's enjoyable.

Zipper: Oh, yeah, that'll be exciting. They'll sleep so well. Excellent. Well, thank you guys. Thanks to our producer, Method Media and our marketing team who do a fantastic job of putting this all together and getting it out to you, our audience, and thank you for tuning in. That's all the time we have today for this episode of HR, We Have a Problem. If you enjoyed this episode, you can subscribe to it on your favorite podcast app. If you have a minute, we'd love to get a review or hear from you. Maybe you have some topics that you'd like to hear about. So we'd love to be able to cover those topics. You can also drop us a line or schedule a chat on the website. We will be back in two weeks with another episode of HR, We Have a Problem. Thanks, everybody.