PeopleScout’s annual Client Forum took place last month in Orlando, FL. We appreciate our clients and partners who took the time to join us to explore topics surrounding the changing world of work. Our time at the forum allowed us to share ideas, gain value insights and enjoy a great opportunity to network. The goal of the forum was to help attendees walk away with actionable ideas for driving escalating value in their organizations. Our keynote speakers and roundtable facilitators armed our attendees with content that is relevant and applicable to take back and consider implementing at their organizations.
Gary Bragar, HR Outsourcing Research Director at NelsonHall, shared an excellent recap of our event on the NelsonHall blog. I encourage you to read the post for Bragar’s take on three areas where PeopleScout is preparing for the changing world of work: global expansion, offering total workforce solutions and an enhanced technology offering.
I’m eager to share an overview of this year’s event. Stay tuned over the next few weeks as we look deeper into the topics discussed at the forum, including the future of work, diversity and inclusion, employer branding and Total Workforce Solutions.
Keynote: Talent Solutions for the Changing World of Work
Taryn Owen, President of PeopleScout, and Patrick Beharelle, President and COO of TrueBlue, kicked things off by diving into the changing world of work and sharing how PeopleScout is prepared to respond to industry trends.
From robot bartenders that can mix cocktails and make small talk to driverless car technology that will disrupt many of the 4.4 million long-haul, cab and bus driver jobs, major shifts are happening in the way we do business. Add that to the changing candidate experience, and you’ll see how recruitment must evolve to appeal to candidates as consumers. For example, according to CareerBuilder, candidates are using 16 different resources – including social networks – to research a company before applying!
We are facing a new landscape for talent acquisition due to the rise of the gig economy, increased access to global talent and changing candidate expectations. Beharelle lead us through a discussion of three forces that are disrupting the talent landscape:
- Technology is disrupting the workforce on a scale never seen before
- Globalization is changing how we access the workforce
- Evolving social preferences are transforming how we attract talent
What is PeopleScout doing to stay ahead of the disruption? Owen shared how PeopleScout is innovating for the future of talent. Over the past year, PeopleScout has focused on many initiatives, including integrating HRX, an Australian RPO provider, into the PeopleScout brand by becoming PeopleScout in APAC. We also completed our acquisition of the AON RPO business just more than a year ago, bringing a wealth of knowledge, leadership expertise and robust operational procedures to PeopleScout. With the AON acquisition, we opened five new offices in four countries: Gurgaon, India, Krakow, Poland, Toronto and Montreal in Canada and Charlotte, NC in the U.S.
Most recently, we migrated our MSP division from our sister company Staff Management | SMX to PeopleScout. The integration of MSP services allows us to offer Total Workforce Solutions, creating synergies across our people, processes and technologies and providing our clients more access to expanded expertise across the talent spectrum.
As we look forward to 2017 and beyond, our top priorities center around:
- The continued expansion of our global footprint to ensure that we leverage talent where it exists
- Further evolving our total talent solutions offering to make sure we bring the best talent to our clients, regardless of worker type
- Launching our new technology platform that will provide a competitive advantage for each of our clients in this disrupted talent landscape
We look forward to sharing more with you about our technology roadmap in the coming months.
Keynote: The Future of Work
Author and futurist Jacob Morgan shared ways to challenge the status quo and embrace creativity to attract and retain top talent during his engaging keynote presentation. Morgan focused on three things he believes make organizations a top place to work: culture, technology and physical space.
Culture, Morgan says, makes up 40% of an employee’s overall experience with a company. Although it makes up the largest percentage, it also is the hardest piece of the puzzle for many companies because it’s not tangible. Technology, which includes the systems and tools employees use every day to get their job done, makes up 30% of employee experience. Finally, physical space also makes up 30% of employee experience, and is made up of the actual physical space employees perform their work in, whether it’s a cubical, open floor plan, or a hybrid mix. Understanding, evaluating and investing in these three areas will help organizations win the war for talent.
Keynote: The Disney Approach to Employee Engagement
Carmen Garcia, lead facilitator at the Disney Institute, talked about Disney’s approach to employee engagement and shared how to foster a culture of leadership and service. Garcia shared insights on how Disney created a culture that helps their employees, or cast members, become the best ambassadors of their brand.
One tactic Garcia shared was Disney’s decision to “over-manage” parts of their employee experience. While some may have a negative view of that term, she explained that it means Disney has an intentional thought process behind everything they do; it is designed with a purpose in mind. Throughout the presentation, it was clear that Disney’s focus on over-managing their culture creates high-quality results throughout the entire organization.
Keynote: Industry Disruption and Leadership
Patty McCord, a workplace innovator and leadership consultant, lead a discussion on industry disruption and how to reconsider the idea of best practices. She shared her approach to creating winning teams by changing our assumptions about employees, talent and transformation. McCord ended her presentation by asking the audience to try one new thing and throw away one old thing to see what happens when you challenge the status quo.
Roundtable: Diversity & Inclusion
Dr. Arin Reeves facilitated roundtable sessions on diversity and inclusion. Questions from participants ranged from how to create a balanced strategy to how to integrate diversity and inclusion into a contingent labor practice. A key takeaway she shared is the idea that “the more you retain, the more you attract.” Inclusion programs are essential for retaining diverse hires. The best way to show people that they can be successful in your organization is to have an example of that in place, like diverse employees in leadership roles. Additionally, it’s more cost-effective to focus on retention rather than managing high levels of attrition among diverse employees.
Find out key takeaways from the roundtable in this video:
Roundtable: Employee Engagement
Jacob Morgan facilitated roundtable sessions on employee engagement, encouraging attendees to share challenges they were experiencing or examples of how they dealt with tough situations. One key learning was the lack of effectiveness of annual engagement surveys and reviews. Morgan and roundtable attendees agreed that there were issues with annual reviews. The primary challenge is that they are not frequent enough; results take too long to receive and analyze and many factors can skew the results. Ideas to replace annual surveys include internal social media tools that encourage employees to give feedback daily and engagement surveys conducted on individual teams.
Hear the key takeaways from his roundtable in this video:
Roundtable: Employer Branding
Stacy Zapar facilitated roundtable sessions on employer branding. Zapar discussed where the industry is going in the next three to five years and what organizations can do to prepare for it now. She also shared where companies have room to improve and what they can do to differentiate themselves. Attendees also discussed the importance of giving your employees a voice through social media, videos, blogging and more. Giving employees a voice allows companies to leverage their most connected people as brand ambassadors.
Learn more of the key takeaways in this video:
Roundtable: Total Workforce Solutions
Dana Shaw-Arimoto facilitated roundtable sessions on Total Workforce Solutions. Shaw-Arimoto shared information on the current landscape of Total Workforce Solutions and factors that go into creating an integrated talent strategy. She suggested asking three key questions before starting down a path to a total talent strategy:
- What is your current state?
- Where do you want to be?
- How do you get started?
Attendees shared where they are on the journey towards total talent management and what they are most looking forward to from a total workforce solution, which included competitive advantage, stability and becoming more proactive.
Find out other key takeaways in this video:
Evening Reception
The Client Forum wrapped up with a fun and exciting evening event at Epcot. Dinner at the Living Seas Salon in Epcot followed by a front row seat at the Illuminations Reflections of Earth fireworks show made for great networking and conversation. Our evening was capped off with an exclusive ride on Soarin’.
Thank you again to our clients, keynote speakers and roundtable hosts who made this year’s event so rewarding. We look forward to sharing more insights from the forum over the next few weeks!
