Alexandra Levit's Water Cooler Wisdom

Are You Managing Data Responsibly?

New AI-driven health tracking technologies are being used by organizations to curtail the spread of the coronavirus by monitoring and recording patrons’ and employees’ temperatures and locations to determine whether they may be a high-risk of spreading the disease. With many data-related privacy and ethical questions about this approach still unresolved, businesses looking to reopen in the new normal will have to grapple with whether or not to deploy these technologies and, if they do, how they should go about it.

Technology

At a June 2020 virtual conference about the COVID-influenced economy, futurist Benjamin Pring of IT services consultancy Cognizant spoke about the inevitable rise of surveillance technology by governments and businesses. Much like the aftermath of 9/11, the new security systems implemented during COVID-19 will most likely be here to stay, he said.

One example of the technology he was talking about comes from French "3D semantic camera" company Outsight, who has developed autonomous laser technology that uses factors like bare faces (i.e. without masks), higher-than-average body temperature and proximity to other people to identify “high spread risk” individuals within large crowds. Companies, like real estate management or security firms, can use this technology to streamline safety enforcement in an effort to keep transmission rates low.

And as the Washington Post reported in April 2020, if you enter the City Farmers Market in Atlanta or one of the Wynn Resorts hotels in Las Vegas, you can expect to be discreetly informed if you register as feverish — and may even be asked to leave.

Even in public places that operate on a smaller scale, business owners and managers are deploying thermal “healthcams.” Organizations like pharmacies, banks and restaurants are using solutions like Vivotek, which checks the number of people entering and exiting a facility. The smart camera and analytics system monitors lines and points of entry with more frequent social interaction. Other businesses are using social distancing wristbands that ring when two people stand less than six feet apart. Fitted with Bluetooth, the band tracks the wearer’s physical connection points in case the establishment later needs to track an infection.

Privacy

The biggest concern with this type of surveillance involves informed consent — the responsibility of the organization to make the appropriate efforts to communicate to those being tracked what data is being collected and how it is being processed. Some customers may be uncomfortable with automated systems routinely follow individuals through public places and record their data, and the bigger the crowd, the less likely it is that every customer will understand how they’re being monitored, and the implications of the surveillance.

For the rest of the article, head over to the AMEX Business site.

 

This Veteran's Day, Broader Your Diversity and Inclusion Strategy

According to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, as of June 2019, 200,000 service members transition from military to civilian life annually. In the last several years, the federal government has taken many steps to support them — including the Joining Forces Initiative in 2011, which called for companies to hire and train 1.5 million military veterans and their spouses, and the the Forever GI Bill passed in 2017, which ensures that student veterans can take advantage of the educational benefits they’ve earned at any point throughout their lives.

However, the transition to civilian employment may not always be an easy or successful process.

Per the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate among veterans has more than doubled year over year to almost 7 percent this year. And according to Gallup’s 2019 annual survey on employee engagement, a majority of all employees including veterans have jobs in which they are not engaged.

The lack of job security and satisfaction is a profound concern. In an October 2020 piece for Military Times, Leo James reported that more than 6,000 veterans take their lives every year.

In light of the escalating stress and financial pressure associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, this Veteran’s Day we need to do more than simply thank our former service members. Leaders can make their veteran employees feel included and valued by leveraging these specific strategies.

1. Address their military experience.

DeVry University’s Green Zone Elite training program offered several tips to increase leaders’ veteran sensitivity, and this one is at the top of the list.

Leaders should encourage veteran employees to discuss their military service in the context of the job.

“Take the time to understand and respect the transferable skills veterans bring to the table by virtue of their Military Occupational Specialty (MOS) and leadership skills informed by their rank,” DeVry recommends in a press release.

“In the workforce, I quickly advanced with the project management and leadership skills I learned during my time in the Navy,” said DeVry University alum Dan Fettig, a former enlisted sailor and current Navy Reserve Intelligence Officer and the T-TAURI Engagement & Capabilities Implementation Manager at Lockheed Martin Space.

“As I navigated my career, I have found there’s an opportunity for employers and fellow team members to learn more about how the military trains veterans with transferable skills and better understand how and why veterans operate the way we do," Fettig says.

2. Provide veterans with structure.

Although this is more difficult to do in pandemic times, we must remember that veteran employees are accustomed to a set workday, timely meetings and predetermined performance objectives. It may be necessary, especially when a veteran employee is new to the organization, for a manager to outline exactly what their days will look like and the precise expectations upon which they will be evaluated.

3. Emphasize teamwork.

Most veterans have a finely-honed sense of camaraderie and are motivated by a shared purpose and strong relationships. Veterans should connect with their teams early and often, even if engagement is entirely remote.

If a leader has a choice between an individualized or team approach to a project, it’s more psychologically beneficial for many veterans to work alongside others.

Leaders can also boost veteran morale by helping them help others.

“Through our Veterans Employee Resource Group, we run campaigns to have our veterans refer other veterans,” Mike Thiel, a U.S. Navy veteran and talent acquisition manager at Micron Technology, said in an October 2020 Tech Republic conversation about helping military veterans transition into civilian jobs with the help of artificial intelligence.

“To give these opportunities to veterans who are very scared of transitioning, to be able to provide something for them, is huge,” Thiel said.

4. Use a retrospective lens.

According to DeVry, military veterans are accustomed to “After Action Reviews” that assess successes and opportunities for improvement.

Once a project or assignment is completed, civilian leaders can follow suit by hosting a reflection meeting to discuss the progress and outcomes. Postmortem meetings are good practice for everyone, but they may be doubly useful to veterans who may feel insecure about the differences between military and civilian employment.

5. Educate your workforce about stereotypes.

Civilian employees may view veterans in a certain light and may expect them to only be qualified for specific jobs and/or have specific personality traits and attributes.

Leaders are well-served to create training programs—or at least self-serve online information—that educate their workforces about veteran myths versus realities. Anti-bias initiatives targeted to other forms of discrimination should also include former service members.

6. Be mindful of mental health challenges.

In his Military Times piece, Leo James reported that since the start of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, funding for veterans' mental health care has increased fourfold from $2.5 billion to $10 billion a year. This is good news, but we must keep in mind that in the wake of the pandemic, everyone’s mental health needs will increase and veterans may be a particularly vulnerable population.

Leaders should check in frequently with veteran employees, ask about their general well-being, be on the lookout for warning signs of depression and anxiety (isolation, moodiness, changes in work performance, etc.) and provide helpful resources.

This Veterans Day, so many organizations have illustrated their commitment to former service members by hiring veterans in record numbers. Now, in conjunction with overall diversity and inclusion objectives, they must ensure their leaders are equipped to support this group in meaningful ways.

Please visit the original piece at American Express Business.

Superjobs Are the Roles of the Future

As companies begin to spin back up, leaders are looking to refill the roles they may have had to cut to survive. But many new roles won’t look like the old ones —organizations can structure their workforces to most effectively distribute labor between employees and automation through newly defined roles called “superjobs.”

According to Deloitte’s 2019 Global Human Capital Trends report, superjobs include components of traditional jobs to maximize the strengths of both humans and automated services. When thoughtfully deployed within an organization, superjobs can offload routine work to automaton to free up employees to focus on more strategic, revenue-oriented tasks.

"Calling for both hard and soft skills and cutting across typical departmental silos, superjobs require the flexibility to combine tasks and merge responsibilities as needed," the Deloitte report says.

While Deloitte's research on superjobs mainly focused on large enterprises, the concept is applicable to small and midsize businesses as well. No matter the size of your organization, superjobs can streamline operations in functions like supply chain management, accounting and marketing — really, wherever software exists to supplement human efforts. Indeed, Deloitte's research found that 41 percent of respondents are using automation extensively or across multiple functions. (The survey "polled nearly 10,000 respondents in 119 countries.")

To get started on this path, businesses must undertake an intelligent job design process, flatten their hierarchies to make room for flexible, self-managed teams and boost their arsenal of applied technology skills.

Intelligent Job Design 

Traditional roles are narrower in scope — the tasks an employee performs directly maps to what the employer outlined in the job description.

But automation and algorithms take over the routine and fixed aspects of work, business leaders can free their employees to use their critical thinking and feeling talents on tasks such as like data interpretation, problem solving, empathy, creativity and teamwork.

While you don’t have to throw out all your existing job descriptions, it’s worth looking at your workforce with a broader lens. Consider creating what Deloitte calls a “job canvas” — a more fluid and expansive way of examining the work you need done.

You can launch your canvas, which can be organized by team or individual, by thinking through the following questions:

• What core business problem does this team or individual need to solve?
• What should their outputs or deliverables be?
• What kind of supervision will the team or individual need to accomplish these objectives?
• What technologies can this team or individual use to augment their capabilities? Which tasks related to this business problem are best suited to people, and which should we automate?
• What learning processes can we put in place to target essential skill development for this team or individual?
• How will we measure this team or individual’s success?

Because you are now looking at your workforce at a higher level, you will likely find that your superjobs (or superteams) cross departmental fault lines of HR, IT, finance, sales, etc. Integrating data-driven insights with human intuition will be a central component of all superjobs. Depending on your business, your superjobs might include:

• a “customer experience architect,” who uses sentiment analysis to create stronger real-time engagement;
• a “case synthesizer,” who examines legal precedents mined by an algorithm and handpicks the most impactful ones; or
• a “supply chain effectiveness analyst,” who uses performance data to make recommendations that balance both cost and sustainability.

For more on superjobs, check out the full article on the AMEX Business site.

Becoming a Remote-First Organization

Companies looking to improve their work-from-home (WFH) productivity may want to adopt some of the principles of distributed work.

The most evolved version of work from home, distributed work refers to operations that are remote-first rather than office planned. Companies like WordPress and Zapier have been 100 percent distributed for years, with all of their employees — from their executives to HR to sales and marketing — working from their homes and offices around the globe.

Having entered this situation so suddenly, it's no surprise that many business owners have been winging WFH. But given that working from home and distributed workforces will continue even as we emerge from COVID-19, business owners can use the pandemic as a catalyst to permanently transform work for the better. According to a March 2020 Gartner survey of 317 CFOs, "74 percent of respondents said they will move at least 5 percent of their previously on-site workforce to permanently remote positions post-COVID 19."

Being strategic about distributed work demands a wider lens. Now is the time for businesses to adopt some of the principles of distributed to prepare for a remote-friendly future.

1. Get comfortable with managing remote teams.

To fully realize the benefit of distributed work, small-business owners must get away from a strong preference for employees to work onsite and use company space and equipment at scheduled times. If you only allow remote work in an emergency, you won't have the necessary infrastructure in place to support fully distributed work, and employee access will likely be slow and clunky. 

Being comfortable with distributed work requires trusting your employees. You can cultivate trust by stepping up communication and letting your people know you support them and are giving them the freedom to do their jobs when and how they feel it is most appropriate and effective. 

Boost your comfort level by tracking the productivity of WFH employees during the pandemic. You don't have to use software to record their every keystroke or micromanage their daily tasks — it's more about having a concrete idea of whether employees are achieving their goals as efficiently at home as they did in the office.

When it comes time to ease restrictions, seek employee feedback about an onsite schedule that makes sense. By using a survey tool or individual interviews to collect this information on a broad scale, you may find that some employees are more comfortable with returning to the workplace than others. This can help guide your decision regarding how distributed your post-COVID organization will be.

2. Embrace asynchronous work.

Accepting that closings will be long term, many companies have simply moved in-person activities online. Tools like Microsoft Teams, Zoom and Google Hangouts facilitate real-time meetings. Employees can access share drives, email and company applications remotely, but everyone is largely working the same hours whether they have distractions (e.g. children doing eLearning) or not.

On a recent podcast, Automattic CEO and WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg shared a secret for effective distributed work: a move from synchronous (everyone performs work tasks at the same time) to asynchronous processes (employees work on their own time). For instance, a synchronous process might require people to travel, sit in a meeting room and provide immediate reactions to an idea. An asynchronous process might involve presenting an issue via instant message, prompting team members to think through it in detail and then respond within a predetermined deadline.  

Organizations can shift to asynchronous processes by first evaluating whether set business hours are necessary, and if so, for whom (e.g. customer service staff). Consider how you might change your performance model to evaluate employees on the quality of their contributions rather than the time it took to produce them. For example, an agile performance management system relies on continuous feedback to establish, accomplish and reconfigure goals that align with business needs, and employees are measured on their progress against these goals in real time. 

When you stop relying on synchrony, you have the freedom to source talent across the globe. Think about assembling teams based not on who is geographically proximal, but who is best for the job. This way, you can move operations forward 24 hours a day as employees "pass the baton" to overseas colleagues.

For the rest of the post, head over to the AMEX Business site.

How to Build Relationships with Generation Z

 Generation Z, defined as those born 1996-2012, is a diverse and cosmopolitan group of young people that may be inexperienced, but appreciates unique opportunities to contribute. What else do we know about them, and what can we do to better connect with Gen Z?

They are city dwellers who stay put

Not only is Generation Z more ethnically and racially diverse than prior generations, but members reside in heterogeneous environments as well.  According to a late 2018 study by Pew Social Trends, Gen Z-ers overwhelmingly reside in metropolitan as opposed to rural areas. Only 13 percent of post-Millennials are in rural areas, compared with 18 percent of Millennials, 23 percent of Gen X-ers, and 36 percent of early Boomers at the same ages.

They are less likely, however, to move. Only about 11 percent of Gen Z-ers had a different address from a year earlier, compared with 17 percent of Millennials and 20 percent of Gen X-ers and Boomers at the same ages. Companies that want to learn how to reach Gen Z as employees or customers should integrate into the nearest metropolitan community by offering free learning and social opportunities.

They lack concrete work experience

Per the Pew report, Gen Z-ers are entering adulthood with less experience in the labor market than prior generations. Only one-in-five 15- to 17-year-olds in 2018 (19 percent) worked at all during the prior calendar year, compared with 30 percent of Millennials and 48 percent of Boomers at the same ages. A little more than half of Gen Z-ers were employed during the prior calendar year. 

I’m fond of saying that one can learn transferable workplace skills like sales, marketing, client relations, and finance in any job – even in retail or fast food. The trouble is, fewer Gen Z-ers are taking these positions as teens, and therefore enter the professional world less prepared to succeed. As a workforce futurist, I believe Gen Z-ers are less gainfully employed because they are spending more time in school and prefer to balance their time doing meaningful activities. Therefore, strategizing how to connect with Generation Z should include designing part-time or internship opportunities that expose them to the business and introduce essential skills.

For more where this came from, check out the full piece at AMEX Business.

Emphasizing Cognitive Diversity: Can It Be Taught?

A few years ago, I worked with The Billie Jean King Leadership Initiative (BJKLI) and The Deloitte University Leadership Center for Inclusion on a survey that sought to provide modern context around the notions of diversity and inclusion. Among other things, the research asked nearly 4,000 global professionals of all levels, ages, genders, races, ethnicities, and sexual orientations how they define these terms.

It might not come as a surprise that most baby boomers and even X-ers (read: the chronologically older people in the workforce today) think representation and assimilation when they consider the notion of diversity. Millennials tend to view it a bit differently, though. For them, workplace diversity and inclusion go beyond ensuring that people of all genders, races, ethnicities, religions, and sexual orientations are welcomed into the organization.

While this form of diversity is obviously important and essential, millennials also value the respect and consideration given to employees as individuals with different backgrounds and perspectives. This is referred to as cognitive diversity, and it means that employees can come to work and share their ideas, philosophies, and contributions as their complete selves – without fear of negative consequences.

Over the last few years, the workplace in general has improved when it comes to fostering cognitive diversity. I think we have the millennials to thank for that, because they now comprise a majority of the global workforce and are entering leadership positions – and disrupting them – and average of ten years earlier than members of prior generations. That being said, it’s not unusual to hear someone like a young, transgender, first generation American raised in a rural environment say they feel misunderstood and ignored in a big city corporation because “apparently I don’t have the background, experience or tenure to be taken seriously.”

Fortunately, though, not only can cognitive diversity be taught, but it can be systematically integrated into an organization’s culture. The first step is to educate baby boomer and Gen X-er leaders about cognitive diversity and its benefits. Once leaders fully understand why it’s good for business to be as inclusive as possible, they can acknowledge the limitations of hierarchies and minimize barriers to communication and engagement.

Rather than making critical decisions in a vacuum, leaders should take care to include voices and votes that are truly representative of the employee population. This is especially important when it comes to innovation, as many of the freshest ideas come from unexpected places. They should establish cross-functional pilot projects or committees that seek to improve business outcomes through diverse collaboration, and finally, they should put online and offline feedback mechanisms in place so all employees feel comfortable and encouraged sharing real-time thoughts.

Of course, if you’re working for a company that hasn’t mastered hiring diverse employees in the first place, you can’t put the cart before the horse. First and foremost, you must continue your work to ensure you have a population from which to solicit cognitively diverse perspectives.

Did you miss our webinar on the next generation of diversity and inclusion? Catch the replay and let us know what you think!

 

2020 Best Practices in Workforce Management

The global workforce today is anything but static. Both HR professionals and individual managers must continuously adjust employment configurations in response to evolving business conditions and increase their applied technology skills – meaning they understand how to leverage available software to manage their workforces more efficiently. At the same time, 21^st century business developments have mandated a focus on a more sophisticated employee experience that provides meaningful interaction for all types of hires at all stages of the employment lifecycle.

Visiting the KronosWorks annual customer conference to promote The Workforce Institute’s new book, “Being Present: A Practical Guide for Transforming the Employee Experience of Your Frontline Workforce,” I dug more deeply into the specific mechanics of the 2020 hourly workforce and devised these considerations for frontline managers.

Administrative Automation

Timekeeping and scheduling are perhaps the most obvious uses of hourly workforce automation. A target software solution should facilitate tracking, managing, and optimizing employee time (including hours worked, absences, employee preferences such as desired location, job type, and hours, and skills/certifications needed to do the job). Similarly, a scheduling component can improve your ability to forecast accurately, distribute your labor more effectively and minimize mistakes due to human error. Administrative automation can streamline your payroll process to ensure timely and accurate payments, file the appropriate taxes, and minimize compliance risk. It can also simplify your compensation management for greater visibility and governance and help you keep up with Affordable Care Act (ACA) compliance with enhanced benefits administration, reporting, and auditing.

Advanced Analytics and Machine Learning

When analytics capability is organically present in your workforce management solution (as opposed to layering a different solution on top of it), it’s easier and faster to collect consistent and reliable data, create insightful visualizations, and measure progress on goals that matter to the business. And, workforce management software is getting smarter all the time, examining your data through a variety of lenses and making original and proactive recommendations based on what’s happening right now as well as your employees’ preferences.

Systems Integration

While there are certainly enough HR technology vendors to cobble together any sort of configuration you want, I feel it’s essential that a workforce management software integrate closely with all the data sources that feed into and influence it. Therefore, it makes sense that the best solution is housed in the cloud, able to plug into your existing technology infrastructure and use open APIs to extend platform functionality.

Employee Experience Management

Speaking of integrated functionality, your employees will have a more intuitive, less confusing experience if your solution facilitates a consistent process of engagement through recruitment, onboarding, workforce management, learning, payroll, and performance. The talent acquisition piece, including application and candidate relationship management, interview scheduling, offer delivery and negotiation, and pre-start communication is particularly critical since it’s potential hires first glimpse into the tech-savviness of your organization and can absolutely mean the difference between securing the best talent and losing it to a competitor.

Managing a frontline workforce in the 2020s may be a challenge unlike any you’ve faced before, but the good news is, the right tools can reduce the complexity, reduce time to productivity, and help retain the strongest workers longer.

Agile Feedback is the New Performance Review

Many of us remember the days when we only talked about professional development during a once-a-year performance review conversation with our managers. We may have made development plans and set goals, but these were usually lost in the crush of immediate business priorities. And, by the time we got around to discussing them again, they were outdated and irrelevant.

Fortunately, many organizations have, in recent years, moved from the annual performance management model to bi-annual or even monthly models. This increase in frequently certainly benefits the process, but can we take it even further? Can we make learning and performance dialogue even more fluid and agile and therefore more useful considering the pace of change in our organizations and industries?

The Rise of Open and Continuous Dialogue

Today’s most comprehensive HRMS offer the ability for managers and employees to deliver real-time guidance and feedback as soon as an issue presents itself. This type of exchange is far more helpful for growth and engagement because it’s directly relevant to a current project or challenge. Typically, any employee can submit feedback to another regardless of level or reporting structure, so it’s an equal-opportunity endeavor that’s less biased and less restrictive.

Agile feedback systems provide an important mechanism for coaching and collaboration, and in boosting manager awareness of problems sooner rather than later, they aid in retention as well. They also alert leaders when there may be a new skills gap that needs to be addressed. For instance, if a manager sees results that indicate that a group of employees isn’t using a new technology as intended, they can get involved right away, collect more information about the disconnect, and ultimately determine if additional background or training is necessary.

For more where this came from, head over to the SilkRoad blog.

The Evolution of Recruiting from 2009-2019

In 2008, I published a book with ATD Press called Success for Hire. Since then, I’ve followed the field closely and for this article, wanted to consider some of the major recruiting changes that have taken place over the last decade.

The “Black Hole of HR” is No More

When I entered this field, I advised candidates never to blindly submit a resume to a job board or an applicant tracking system (ATS). At the time, doing so was often a guarantee that no human eyes would ever rest on your materials. Today, however, ATS are far more sophisticated in sorting and funneling resumes to the appropriate decision-makers, and whether the news is good or not, candidates are more likely to hear it. And, the job boards that still exist are no longer “boards” persay, but rather matching platforms offering a suite of helpful services to both job seekers and recruiters find one another.

Social Facilitates Passive Recruitment

Remember the days when recruitment processes happened in a very specific order – employer posts job, candidates apply, employer decides who to interview?  The rise of social media, especially sites like LinkedIn, has enabled employers and candidates to engage in a mutual selection process that often begins with the recruiter scoping out the skillsets and recommendations of and reaching out to people who aren’t looking for work. Passive candidates are also more likely to be spotted by recruiters via their participation in online communities, hosted events, and skills showcases.

Artificially Intelligent Software Mitigates Bias

Unconscious bias has always tarnished recruitment efforts. While most employers didn’t mean to discriminate against a candidate because of their gender, race, ethnicity, or sexual orientation, this often happened at the subconscious level. Now, though, some intelligent software programs remove resume details – such as names, photos, and education – that might lead to biased assessments. Others help recruiters word job descriptions in a certain way, and combat interview selection bias via structured conversational prompts and real-time video assessments of interviewer speech and body language.

The Total Employee Experience Starts with Candidates

Once, employers held all the cards and had all the power. If your company had a website or was in the news, you were golden. But in 2019, recruiters must work hard to convince top talent to invest their careers with an organization. To start, organizations must have a consistent, reputable, transparent, and compelling employer brand, and they then must showcase that brand through a carefully orchestrated hiring process that makes individual candidates feel respected, valued, and cared for. And – that process must transition into preboarding and onboarding experiences that make new hires feel good about their decisions prepare them to contribute right away.

If you’re interested in recruitment and didn’t catch last week’s webinar with SilkRoad client Sonepar, grab the replay here and let us know what you think!

Talent Assembly as Recruitment 2.0

For most of recruiting’s history, in some ways all jobs were created equal. If your organization needed a human worker, you solicited qualified candidates to work full-time, onsite at your location, with the expectation that they’d be there for the foreseeable future.

Traditional employees still exist, of course. But due to a combination of demographic shifts and technology advances, the recruitment role has become exponentially more complicated.

I’ve talked about the rise of the gig economy for a while, but new surveys keep supporting its growth. For instance, a 2018 NPR study found 1 in 5 jobs in America is held by a contract worker and predicted that within a decade, contractors and freelancers will make up half of the workforce. 

This shift means that instead of relying on traditional employees to perform most organizational responsibilities, most companies are moving to a hybrid approach that includes temporary, contract, and virtual employees, as well as consultants and subject matter experts. And recruiters, still housed mostly within the HR function, are being called upon to quickly construct teams in response to immediate business priorities.

Rapid talent assembly, which fits perfectly into the agile operations model embraced by many forward-thinking organizations, has many benefits. You can source talent when and where you need it, and it doesn’t matter that the best person for the job doesn’t live near your New York headquarters. When a project is finished, you don’t have to continue paying the employee. You don’t need a crystal ball requiring next year’s staffing requirements, and you don’t have to spend your profits on unnecessary overhead and benefits.

But how do you do talent assembly exactly? In my new book about the future of work, Humanity Works, I discuss an example of a network set up by an individual organization for the express purpose of talent assembly. The Washington Post Talent Network, which is part social network and part job board, was designed to give Post editors an easy way to solicit and hire external writers for blogs, breaking news, and long features across a variety of departments.

The system includes freelancer profiles, detailing professional experience and including work samples; story pitching, allowing freelancers to tailor ideas for specific departments and editorial initiatives; assignment posting, letting freelancers consider stories the Post would like to pursue; and location tracking, ensuring editors know freelancers’ primary work locations for quick deployment of breaking news.

If you don’t have or can’t build a network of your own, several excellent sites can help with your sourcing, including:

Freelancer.com: After acquiring vWorker and Scriptlance, this is the world’s biggest global outsourcing resource.

Upwork: When oDesk.com and Elance.com merged, Upwork was the result. Like Freelancer.com, the employer support and service are terrific and the site takes only a small cut for matched projects.

Guru.com: Going beyond the more typical freelancer occupations, this site matches subject matter experts with employers.

TopTal: If you need skilled software development talent, TopTal employs a rigorous screening system and matches the top 3 percent of tech applicants with short and long-term employer projects.

If you’d like to learn more about why recruitment is such a critical part of your overall talent strategy, join me and SilkRoad client Sonepar for a free webinar tomorrow, September 17^th at 2PM EST.