Leverage Independent Talent to Help You Go Lean

Lean methodologies help maximize the use of resources, cut down on waste, and promote collaboration. With continuous improvement as its foundation, the lean approach fosters adaptability while maintaining quality.

Taking a lean approach to your workforce can improve agility, increase innovation, and enhance productivity.  It can also position your company to weather economic downturns and market changes.  Independent talent plays a significant part in moving in the direction of lean.

Enterprise Workforce Strategies that Support Lean Operations

Forward-thinking companies are increasingly taking a total talent management approach that includes contingent labor as well as employees. This promotes workforce agility and can be a great advantage when pursuing lean methodologies.  These enterprise-wide strategies can create an independent talent pool that complements in-house talent and augments worker capabilities.

Workforce Optimization

Independent talent can be of significant help in moving a team into a lean space. An optimized workforce—with strategically defined segments of independents and employees according to skill areas—can be designed to align with lean methodologies.

Direct Sourcing

A direct sourcing program, the source of independent talent in your optimized workforce, focuses on curating a vetted pool of professionals with high-value skill sets. Accessing needed talent through direct sourcing streamlines the process, saving resources and time. With high-value independent talent already onboarded as company contractors, managers can engage these workers quickly and without incurring the costs associated with staffing agencies.

Steps to Focus on at the Team Level

A lean approach can begin at the team level, with managers reorganizing roles and processes to support nimble performance. To optimize your team for lean, take these steps.

Streamline Your Team

Lean methodology starts with a lean team. In the context of maximizing resources and promoting collaboration, assess the roles and skills currently designated for your team. Eliminate any roles that aren’t necessary and redefine or combine roles according to skill areas.

Look for Optimum Slots for Independents

With roles reconfigured, determine which roles are best suited to independent professionals. These could be roles that have a limited or intermittent duration or that require high-value skillsets that only reside in the independent talent pool.

Tap into the Direct Sourcing Talent Pool

Having a clear understanding of the roles and skillsets you need in your independent contractors will help you connect with the best options in your direct sourcing program. Your talent acquisition team is a good partner to help make the right matches.

Foster Autonomy

Team operation with only high-level management oversight is a facet of lean methodology. Incorporate technologies that will allow your team to achieve goals on their own.  Allow members to make key decisions in the course of their work.

Leveraging independent talent is an important component of taking a lean approach to your operations. Optimizing your workforce, implementing a direct sourcing program, and effecting changes to teams that make the most of independents will pave the way to realizing the significant business benefits of lean methodologies.