Contingent Workforce Institute

By Kanitaa R K, A few weeks into one implementation, the biggest frustration wasn't the strategy—it was the new process. Hiring managers who were used to calling their preferred supplier now had to work through a centralized program, and the feedback was immediate: "This is slowing us down." From the buyer's seat, that's expected. Centralization almost always creates a temporary dip in speed while people adjust. The mistake is trying to eliminate that dip too quickly. When organizations optimize for speed too early, they often recreate the fragmentation they were trying to solve. Short-term friction is part of building long-term visibility, consistency, and compliance. Our Strategic Advisory Board is delivering on moving Ideas into Actions. for more information on engaging our board of advisors. https://lnkd.in/gbHHHjsz

The next workforce divide may not be technical vs non-technical. by Bryan Peña It may be: AI-fluent vs AI-dependent. There is a difference. AI fluency means understanding: • how to structure prompts • how to validate outputs • how to apply contextual judgment • how to combine human expertise with machine capability AI dependency means outsourcing thinking entirely. The future advantage probably belongs to workers who can collaborate with AI without surrendering judgment to it. Because the highest-value work may increasingly become: Knowing when the machine is wrong. Our Strategic Advisory Board is delivering on moving Ideas into Actions. for more information on engaging our board of advisors. https://lnkd.in/gbHHHjsz

The real shift: mindset, not technology by John Healy The hardest part of AI adoption isn’t the tech. It’s unlearning how we’re used to working. Most teams I meet are still wired for: • Certainty before action • ROI before experimentation • Clear plans before movement That breaks quickly in this space. What I’ve seen work instead: Small experiments. Fast cycles. Constant adjustment. And importantly, new ways to measure progress: Old: → Hours → Utilization → Inputs New: → Outputs per cycle → Speed to insight → Iteration velocity This is uncomfortable, especially for leadership. You’re making decisions without full information. But that’s the shift: From needing to know → learning by doing. The teams that embrace this don’t necessarily start smarter. They just learn faster. And over a few months, that gap becomes very real. Our Strategic Advisory Board is delivering on moving Ideas into Actions. for more information on engaging our board of advisors. https://lnkd.in/gbHHHjsz

Skills-Based Hiring (Foundation) by Ray Culver Everyone says they’re moving to skills-based hiring. Very few actually are. Replacing job titles with “skills” isn’t transformation. It’s relabeling. The real shift is operational: How you validate, map, and redeploy skills across the business. Most organizations stop at taxonomy. Leaders build infrastructure. Skills only matter if they change decisions. Our Strategic Advisory Board is delivering on moving Ideas into Actions. for more information on engaging our board of advisors. https://lnkd.in/gbHHHjsz

The AI Paradox in Hiring by Kanita Brown I was in a hiring discussion where the team was considering moving interviews back to in-person — to prevent candidates from using AI during the process. At the same time, this organization is actively encouraging employees to use AI in how they deliver work. That disconnect is everywhere right now. In another conversation, a candidate was flagged as “too polished.” The assumption was that the responses felt assisted. But the real issue is that we’re still evaluating against a standard that no longer reflects how work gets done. Most hiring processes were designed to assess unaided performance. But that’s not how work happens anymore. So instead of redefining what performance looks like, we try to control the environment. The question isn’t whether candidates use AI. It’s whether we know how to evaluate capability in an AI-enabled workflow. That’s a dynamic we’re actively unpacking at the Contingent Workforce Institute. Our Strategic Advisory Board is delivering on moving Ideas into Actions. for more information on engaging our board of advisors. https://lnkd.in/gbHHHjsz

AI Readiness vs AI Capability by Bryan Peña Everyone is talking about how fast AI models are improving. Very few are talking about how slowly organizations change. That distinction matters. AI capability is accelerating exponentially. Organizational readiness is not. Most companies are still trying to solve: • governance • security • workflow integration • employee adoption Very few have redesigned how work actually gets done. The real disruption will not happen when AI becomes capable. It will happen when organizations finally learn how to operationalize that capability at scale. And we are much earlier in that process than most people think. Our Strategic Advisory Board is delivering on moving Ideas into Actions. for more information on engaging our board of advisors. https://lnkd.in/gbHHHjsz

Agentic AI (Foundation) by Ray Culver, CCWP Agentic AI sounds impressive in a demo. In practice, most organizations aren’t ready for it. Autonomous recruiting agents don’t fail because of the model. They fail because the underlying process is broken. If workflows are fragmented and data is inconsistent, AI just scales the chaos. Before deploying “digital teammates,” ask: Can a human execute this process end-to-end without friction? If not, fix that first. AI doesn’t create leverage. It exposes where you don’t have it. Our Strategic Advisory Board is delivering on moving Ideas into Actions. for more information on engaging our board of advisors. https://lnkd.in/gbHHHjsz

Base Truth before anything else by John Healy I’ve now worked with enough companies on AI to see the same mistake repeat: They start with tools and policies. They skip what I think of as Base Truth. Before you scale anything—agents, copilots, workflows—you need to answer: → What is true in your organization? → Where does that truth live? → Who owns it when systems disagree? Because here’s what actually happens without it: Different teams use different data. AI outputs start to conflict. Confidence erodes faster than capability grows. This isn’t a governance checkbox. It’s infrastructure. The companies making real progress treat truth as something engineered, not assumed. If you get this right, everything else compounds. If you don’t, you’ll spend months debugging outputs instead of creating value. I always start clients here. There’s a reason. Our Strategic Advisory Board is delivering on moving Ideas into Actions. for more information on engaging our board of advisors. https://lnkd.in/gbHHHjsz

According to Kanita Brown, About three weeks into a rollout, the narrative usually flips. Not because the program failed. Because the complaints got louder. “This is slowing us down.” “The old way worked better.” I’ve seen leadership teams mistake that moment for a signal to rethink the strategy. It’s not. From the buyer’s seat, that spike in resistance is predictable. You’ve introduced structure where there was no visibility or oversight. What you’re hearing isn’t always a process problem. It’s a reaction to change. The risk is responding too quickly. When you start loosening controls in that window, you don’t improve the model. You dilute it before it has time to stabilize. The first 90 days aren’t about making everyone comfortable. They’re about holding the line long enough to see what actually needs to change. That distinction is what determines whether a program matures or quietly unravels. Our Strategic Advisory Board is delivering on moving Ideas into Actions. for more information on engaging our board of advisors. https://lnkd.in/gbHHHjsz

Trust is like capital; it compounds quietly but delivers massive impact. When customers, employees, and partners trust you: Sales cycles shorten Retention improves Mistakes become recoverable Organizations that invest in building trust don’t just grow; they create a sustainable, competitive advantage. How is your organization fostering trust internally and externally? Our Strategic Advisory Board is delivering on moving Ideas into Actions. For more information on engaging our board of advisors. https://lnkd.in/gbHHHjsz #WorkforceStrategy #ContingentWorkforce #FutureOfWork #HumanCapital