Orchestrating Workforce Ecosystems

Strategically Managing Work Across and Beyond Organizational Boundaries

by: Elizabeth J. Altman, David Kiron, Robin Jones, and Jeff Schwartz


Confronting the challenges of intentionally leading and coordinating workforce ecosystems — what we call orchestrating workforce ecosystems — is at the heart of this report. This issue is especially timely given the ongoing workforce shifts brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, shifting worker preferences, and the changing nature of work.

This year’s research shows that orchestrating a workforce ecosystem is a multifaceted effort that involves integration among many business functions. In mature legacy organizations in particular, we see companies changing basic management practices around how they access, engage, and develop workers; we see leaders adapting to a changing workforce where they have more contributors but less control. In some cases, we see upwards of 30%-50% of an organization composed of contingent workers, and organizations increasingly relying on third parties to deliver some of their most essential services. With laws preventing traditional performance management for contingent workers, and with companies increasingly relying on arms-length contracting for critical services, some leaders have limited management options with a large percentage of their workers.1 We see executives often struggling to deal with a range of cultural issues as well: How far should they go to include external contributors in existing corporate culture? To what extent do diversity, equity, and inclusion principles and practices apply to external workers?

Our research shows that companies that are most intentionally orchestrating their workforce ecosystems have five common characteristics. They are far more likely than other organizations to:

  • Closely coordinate cross-functional management of internal and external workers.
  • Hire and engage the internal and external talent they need.
  • Support managers seeking to hire external workers.
  • Have leadership that understands how to allocate work for internal and external contributors.
  • Align their workforce approach with their business strategy.

One thing our research makes clear: Leaders who view their workforce as an ecosystem structure tend to think differently about, and act differently toward, their workforce than leaders who view their workforce strictly in terms of hired (usually full-time) employees. What’s more, senior leaders and managers of functional areas report seeing the need and opportunities to work together in new ways.

About the Authors

Elizabeth J. Altman (@lizaltman) is an assistant professor of management at the Manning School of Business at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, and guest editor for the MIT Sloan Management Review Future of the Workforce Big Ideas research initiative. Altman has been a visiting scholar at Harvard Business School and visiting professor at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Her research focuses on business ecosystems, platform businesses, strategy, innovation, organizational change, and future-of-work topics.

David Kiron is the editorial director of MIT Sloan Management Review and program lead for its Big Ideas research initiatives. Previously, he was a senior researcher at Harvard Business School and a research associate at the Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University. He is coeditor of two books, Human Well-Being and Economic Goals (Island Press, 1997) and The Consumer Society (Island Press, 1997), and coauthor of more than 100 articles, research reports, and case studies.

Robin Jones is a principal at Deloitte Consulting LLP with more than 20 years of organization and workforce transformation consulting experience. At Deloitte, Jones leads markets and services for Workforce Transformation, where she advises senior executives on strategy and execution of large-scale future-of-work initiatives.

Jeff Schwartz is a senior adviser on the future of work and a retired senior principal at Deloitte Consulting LLP, where he was a cofounder and leader of the U.S. Future of Work practice. He is the vice president of Insights and Impact at Gloat, the world’s leader in talent marketplaces, and a visiting professor at Columbia Business School. He is the author of Work Disrupted (Wiley, 2021) and has been the global editor of Deloitte’s “Global Human Capital Trends Report” since its launch in 2011.

Contributors

Natasha Buckley, Michele Lee DeFilippo, Todd Fitz, Carolyn Ann Geason-Beissel, Susan Hogan, Jonathan Holdowsky, Jennifer Martin, Aditya Narayan, Nicole Nodi, Shubham Oza, Janet Parkinson, Saurabh Rijhwani, Negina Rood, Lauren Rosano, Allison Ryder, Brenna Sniderman, Barbara Spindel, and Peter Strutt

Data Analysis Team

David Levin, Satish Nelanuthula, and Srinivasarao Oguri

Advisory Panel

Lynda Gratton, professor of management practice, London Business School

Steve Hatfield, principal and global future of work leader, Deloitte Consulting LLP

Kate Kellogg, David J. McGrath Jr. Professor of Management and Innovation and professor of business administration, MIT Sloan School of Management

Daniel Rock, assistant professor of operations, information, and decisions, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania

Acknowledgments

We thank each of the following individuals, who were interviewed for this report:

Cathy Benko, board member, Nike

Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, chief innovation officer, ManpowerGroup

Kori Covrigaru, CEO, PlanOmatic

Roland Deiser, founder and chairman, Center for the Future of Organizations, Drucker School of Management, Claremont Graduate University

Paul Estes, chief community officer, Mural

Dyan Finkhousen, chief strategy officer, Open Assembly

Diane Gherson, senior lecturer, Harvard Business School

Robert Gibbs, mission support director, NASA

Markus Graf, vice president, HR, and global head of talent, Novartis

Dror Gurevich, CEO, Velocity Career Labs and Velocity Network Foundation

Mary Lacity, Walton Professor of Information Systems and director of the Blockchain Center of Excellence, Sam M. Walton College of Business, University of Arkansas

Susan Podlogar, chief human resources officer, MetLife

Andrew Saidy, vice president of global talent, Ubisoft

Michael Smith, CEO, Randstad Sourceright

Dave Ulrich, Rensis Likert Professor, Ross School of Business, University of Michigan and cofounder and principal, The RBL Group

Meredith Wellard, vice president of group learning, talent, and HR platforms, DHL

Jeroen Wels, executive vice president, human resources, Unilever

David Wengel, founder, iDatafy

Daidoji Yoshihisa, general leader, Human Resources Development Center, Lion

To cite this report, please use:

E.J. Altman, D. Kiron, R. Jones, and J. Schwartz, “Orchestrating Workforce Ecosystems: Strategically Managing Work Across and Beyond Organizational Boundaries,” MIT Sloan Management Review and Deloitte, May 2022.

MIT Sloan Management Review

At MIT Sloan Management Review (MIT SMR) we explore how leadership and management are transforming in a disruptive world. We help thoughtful leaders capture the exciting opportunities — and face down the challenges — created as technological, societal, and environmental forces reshape how organizations operate, compete, and create value.

MIT Sloan Management Review Big Ideas

MIT Sloan Management Review’s Big Ideas Initiatives develop innovative, original research on the issues transforming our fast-changing business environment. We conduct global surveys and in-depth interviews with front-line leaders working at a range of companies, from Silicon Valley startups to multinational organizations, to deepen our understanding of changing paradigms and their influence on how people work and lead.

Deloitte

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References

1. “Independent Contractor Status Under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA): Withdrawal,” Federal Register 86, no. 86 (May 6, 2021): 24303-24326

2. J. Berg, M. Aleksynska, V. De Stefano, et al., “Non-Standard Employment Around the World: Understanding Challenges, Shaping Prospects,” PDF file (Geneva: International Labour Organization, 2016), www.ilo.org; and D. Weil, “The Fissured Workplace: Why Work Became So Bad for So Many and What Can Be Done to Improve It” (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2014).

3. B. Stone, “Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire” (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2021), 228.

4. H.O. Gibson, “Essays on Operations Management: Setting Employees Up for Success” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard Business School, 2015); and H.O. Gibson, “T-Shaped Managers — One Size Does Not Fit All: Exploratory Study From the Military,” working paper 22-003, Harvard Business School, Cambridge, Massachusetts, July 2021.

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Kumar Venkatesan
This is a great piece of work with fantastic insights, survey results and facts. Kudos to the authors and MIT SMR Team.