I expect 2021 will be a banner year for the third-party services market. The main driver for the activities is pent-up demand from the COVID-19 pandemic, which shut down or postponed many projects. But companies now seek to buy digital and IT services from a different perspective – I call it practical digital at scale.
At Everest Group, we study a lot of forward-looking indicators, and we believe the service market prospects for next year are significant. In a recent blog, I talked about anticipating a robust market in the third-party services space in 2021. However, companies face a surplus of opportunities in the coming year at the same time as they face a scarcity of talent.
Over the past couple of years, the HR function has experienced drastic changes, particularly in the way employees work, learn, and communicate. The pace of change has been exponential, with enterprises pushing for digitalization. However, no one would have imagined that a single global event, the COVID-19 outbreak, would accelerate one of the greatest workplace transformations of our times.
Digitalization is crucial, as it will help companies enable their internal functions with collaboration and productivity tools for employees and improve operational efficiency with agile business continuity plans.
The acceleration can be credited to the urgency to support employees working remotely so the business can run as smoothly as possible and provide a superior employee experience amidst the panic and uncertainty. With businesses struggling to survive in the face of, what is likely, one of the harshest recessions to date, it’s vital to understand the changes that will be brought about by this global pandemic. These changes will be facilitated by newer technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), and automation, and force companies to rethink their existing structures and guidelines
Here’s a look at how HR needs to change to ensure a great work environment in the next normal:
Incorporate policy changes for the next normal: With the strain of the coronavirus confining everyone to their homes, companies across the globe have mandated or are encouraging employees to work from home. And this model is expected to stay. Even after the pandemic ends and employees return to their workplaces, remote work will continue to hold significant relevance as enterprises realize its cost-benefit and commit to finding other methods to support business continuity. To ensure its success, companies will have to develop processes and inculcate policies that enable flexible working – establishing guidelines for working remotely, managing employee productivity in physical and digital workspaces, and formulating guidance for managers handling a distributed workforce. Further, the use of digital workers and bots will increase, which will, in turn, result in an urgent need to develop policies regarding cybersecurity, auditing, and redefining instances of human intervention.
Ensure undisrupted workflow: With the new and restructured workforce, companies are also looking to digitize the workplace and automating various processes and workflows to increase efficiency. Thus, HR solutions for automated employee onboarding, automated helpdesk, and productivity tools, along with communication and collaboration tools, are gaining traction in the market. For instance, the adoption of Microsoft Teams and Zoom have dramatically increased, and the uptake will continue.
Utilize the power of virtual learning: Businesses that have typically relied on face-to-face/classroom learning will have to develop a proof of concept for learning using the latest online technologies. The remote working model and increased leverage of digital technologies will also increase the need to upskill and reskill the workforce. In light of COVID-19, enterprises have become extremely cautious with their spending and are seeking cost-effective solutions for their workforces, which adds to the appeal of remote learning. To derive maximum benefit, organizations will have to look not only for relevant skills and talent but also for tools to enable smart learning, as well as enter into partnerships with traditional and non-traditional learning organizations.
Focus on health and well-being: COVID-19 has brought the importance of employee well-being, which encompasses physical, mental, and emotional health, to the forefront. The HR wellness agenda for the future will have two facets: One, the employee side, which includes tools and policies that help employees plan their day-to-day activities, particularly when working remotely and have to deal with increased stress and added concerns of changing benefits ranging from health and hazard to leave policies; and, two, the operations side, which includes tools that track employee sentiment and help improve employee support, thereby ensuring better employee engagement.
Develop new talent acquisition and workforce management practices: Every process in the acquisition value chain will be overhauled to make it more efficient – from the use of AI and Machine Learning (ML) algorithms to source and screen candidates to the use of video interviewing tools to enable remote presence, and chatbots to ensure a superior candidate experience and engagement. Following the COVID-19 crisis, the job market is also set to undergo massive changes; while the demand for some jobs will increase, the overall job market will slow. Enterprises will need to conduct powerful workforce planning to ensure their access to the right talent, and strategically structure existing talent to ensure maximum engagement and productivity.
Use analytics to track workforce- and engagement-related data: As the workforce becomes increasingly (and literally) spread out, and as new ways of working emerge, HR leaders will have to keep track of their organizations’ pulses. Efficient data collection and mining tools will be key to understanding the nature of changes. Organizations will increasingly adopt tools that track how employees work, perform, collaborate, and feel to derive insights to improve operations and engagement. These tools, along with advanced AI capabilities, will also deliver actionable insights for more informed decision-making in a shorter time.
Keep employees motivated: With increasing instances of pay cuts and the uncertainty of the current situation, enterprises are looking for effective strategies to keep their employees engaged and motivated. Deploying a robust R&R solution that quickly recognizes and rewards valuable employees for their effort and commitment to work can help organizations mitigate some of the impacts of the ongoing pandemic and the slowdown, and as a result, boost employee morale.
Emphasize on financial wellness: With the increasing number of layoffs, instances of pay cuts, and market fluctuations, financial security is a significant concern for many employees. To curb these types of fears within the workforce, companies can provide employees with financial wellness options. Features such as budget management tools, financial coaching, and financial stress management tools, as well as the offer of paid leave, on-demand paychecks, and pre-paid cards, can help during these unprecedented and trying times.
Automate tasks, humanize processes: While HR must redesign processes to make them more efficient, it is far more important to keep the employee at the center of these processes rather than the function. This crisis is an opportunity to redesign around the central stakeholder – the employee.
These strategies will help enterprises survive in the new normal while keeping their employees engaged and satisfied, whether they develop them in-house or partner with service providers to deliver them.
Is your workplace future-ready? How do you see the HR strategies transforming? Share your inputs with Priyanka Mitra.
COVID-19 is truly turning out to be the black swan event of our lifetimes – it will have profound near- and long-term consequences on talent markets around the world. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) recently noted that COVID-19 could contract the global GDP by 3 percent in 2020, causing the GDPs of 170 countries to shrink and making it the steepest downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s. As discussed in our recent blog, Will COVID-19 Ease the Relentless War for Talent?, talent shortages will become even more acute and the supply-demand gap for emerging skills will further widen as companies undertake rapid digital transformation and adapt to the “next normal.”
Against this backdrop, some firms are seeing this time as an opportune time to acqui-hire – or acquire startups primarily for their talent.
We have been here before. Acqui-hiring tends to spike during and after economic crises. The early 2010s saw a flurry of acquisitions by Silicon Valley giants including Facebook, Google, and Microsoft, aimed at acquiring hot skills. We believe there will be a similar acqui-hiring surge in 2020, with multiples firms announcing plans to acquire emerging skills and accelerate their efforts to build niche capabilities.
Mark Zuckerberg once said, “Facebook has not once bought a company for the company itself. We buy companies to get excellent people.” This sentiment highlights the premium companies place on good talent. Companies acqui-hire to leverage multiple advantages such as access to highly-skilled talent, reduced time-to-hire and training efforts, developing niche capabilities, and launching a business model.
Facebook has plans to hire 10,000 additional FTEs in its product and engineering teams to tackle high utilization after the pandemic abates and to combat misinformation in advance of the U.S. presidential election in November. Amazon and Google are aggressively hiring product, design, and engineering talent. Apple CEO Tim Cook recently stated that the company plans to hire aggressively, just as it did after the 2008 financial crisis.
With multiple startups facing reduced valuations due to the economic downturn, it is highly likely that a significant chunk of this demand for talent will be addressed through focused acqui-hiring. Additionally, we expect leading Indian service provider players supporting global services delivery, like Infosys, TCS, and Wipro, to accelerate their acquisition efforts to gain strategic capabilities and grow business inorganically. And Walmart Labs has announced plans to hire over 3,000 FTEs for its India centers, aiming to strengthen its India COE by hiring new talent and acquiring relevant startups.
We are already seeing many acqui-hiring deals in 2020, a few of which we describe below. While not all were triggered by the COVID-19 aftermath, we expect the business and economic repercussions of the pandemic to accelerate this trend.
As these deals indicate, acqui-hiring presents a great value proposition for companies to access highly motivated ready talent, augment existing offerings, and develop new capabilities. It also proves lucrative for startups, especially those that might be struggling with funding during an economic downturn. We are already seeing early signs of funding scarcity, with industry analysts reporting that total startup funding in New York City is down 48 percent from year-ago levels since the lockdown started in mid-March.
Acqui-hiring can be a win-win for everyone. However, to ensure acqui-hiring success, companies must address critical factors beyond the usual legal and contractual due diligence.
To make acqui-hiring work, companies must:
The economic aftereffects of COVID-19 will surely create some paradoxes. While on one hand startups may be challenged and job markets ravaged, on the other hand this time could present an opportunity to re-strategize priorities, revitalize operating models, build capabilities, and acquire the right talent. We believe companies that proactively realign their workforce strategies and tactically utilize acqui-hiring will emerge stronger and more resilient.
Companies looking to acqui-hire as way to address emerging talent challenges must undertake the following steps to ensure effective outcomes:
We’d love to hear your thoughts on acqui-hiring as an effective talent acquisition strategy. Please share with us at: [email protected] or [email protected].
While some people in the global services industry think that large scale unemployment and the slowdown in growth due to the COVID-19 pandemic may reduce the talent demand-supply gap, we wholeheartedly disagree. Indeed, we believe that strategic workforce planning has become even more critical for the global services industry.
Here are four reasons why organizations need to accelerate their workforce initiatives right now.
A survey we conducted in early 2020 found that, even before the COVID-19 crisis, 86 percent of enterprises considered the talent shortage a key barrier to achieving business outcomes. This situation will further exacerbate. It’s true that the impending economic downturn could lead to even more unemployment and oversupply in the talent market. However, the available skills profiles may not necessarily match organizations’ current and future requirements, especially because highly skilled talent is expected to be retained even during downsizing. Increasing focus on automation and digital transformation will further widen the demand-supply gap for skills, making it difficult for organizations to source suitable skills internally or in the open market. The prevailing circumstances (e.g., the lockdown, financial distress, and health issues) may impact overall talent employability in the open market, further compounding the talent availability issue.
COVID-19 has accelerated digital transformation across organizations. It has not only reinforced the utility of tech-enabled platforms and advanced automation for seamless service delivery during mandatory Work-From-Home (WFH) protocols, but also enabled organizations to react to the evolving business environment and customer needs faster. The impending budget cliff and business model changes will further push organizations to prioritize digital transformation, which will have implications on the talent needed both to drive this change and to deliver services after transformation. Demand for emerging skills will spike even faster, again creating the need for reskilling, alternative talent models, and productivity enhancement. We are already seeing a spike in hiring by companies like Amazon and Google. Some firms are seeing this as an opportune time to acqui-hire – or acquire startups primarily for their talent. Leading global banks, healthcare firms, and manufacturing firms are rethinking their talent strategies.
COVID-19 has exposed key issues with enterprises’ and service providers’ existing locations strategy and Business Continuity Planning (BCP) approaches. Nearly three-quarters of enterprises that have offshore/nearshore GBS centers operate in only one location. Even enterprises with multiple GBS centers have a high concentration of talent in their largest center. Others have developed centers of excellence with large portions of their workforce for a specific function consolidated in a few locations. Less than 10 percent of GBS centers were truly prepared for a seamless WFH model. Companies will need to re-evaluate their redundancy matrices and location/portfolio mixes to achieve a more robust BCP. Some seemingly obvious responses to locations portfolio questions may not apply anymore.
A 2017-18 survey by the Bureau of Labor Statistics revealed that nearly 30 percent of the American workforce could work remotely. The extended lockdown in the near term and a high utilization, once the COVID-19 crisis has abated, will likely make WFH an integral component of the overall service delivery model. This change will have significant talent implications – motivation, employee engagement, performance metrics, reporting metrics, communication protocols, and collaboration – which organizations will need to proactively address to optimize productivity and enhance output.
COVID-19 has precipitated a fundamental shift in the way we work. There are underlying opportunities for enterprises and service providers that proactively adapt to the new normal. We believe there are four immediate steps that enterprises must take:
We’d love to hear your thoughts on how the COVID-19 pandemic is impacting talent strategies. Please share with us at: [email protected], [email protected], or [email protected].
For years, financial institutions have struggled to attract and retain quality anti-financial crime (AFC) talent, which remains a compliance program’s most vital asset. And the situation is only getting worse. Why? First, both the importance and application of anti-money laundering (AML) and fraud risk management are increasing. Second, the requirements and expectations of regulators are snowballing. And third, demand for AFC talent is skyrocketing while unemployment remains low. It’s a perfect storm.
Perhaps most importantly, the AFC workforce must now be able to work with artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies. Financial institutions that can’t adapt their workforce to the demands of this new augmented human intelligence era simply won’t survive. Knowing what talent to look for – and how to attract, manage, and retain it – is key.
In the past, whenever new compliance initiatives or regulations arose, banks tended to staff up operational teams to address them. Now banks realize that hiring operational staff isn’t enough. Instead, solving for the underlying problem – be it “Know Your Customer” remediation, reducing incidences of fraud, or ensuring better AML compliance – is the answer.
To do this, banks are breaking up their talent pyramid into tasks. Those tasks that are manual and repetitive (and therefore subject to a high degree of automation) sit at the bottom of the talent pyramid. And those requiring a high degree of judgment that can be handled only by skilled employees sit at the top. As a result, talent must now be “bilingual,” possessing not only the domain and operational expertise to drive judgments but also the technology expertise to help automate repetitive, mundane tasks.
If a bank has bilingual workers, it’s not letting them go, so finding such talent at scale through hiring practices alone is unlikely. Instead, the challenge is to identify skilled workers from either a domain or technology background and train them to develop the skills they lack.
One solution is partnering with universities. For example, recognizing that ready talent is not necessarily available in the marketplace, some service providers partner with universities to identify suitable individuals for entry-level positions and then train staff in those positions on AFC fundamentals.
At the same time, the half-life of professional skills is decreasing at an alarming pace. Regulations and technology are constantly changing, so talent agility is key. Organizations must create an environment of innovation, training, and enabling people to do their jobs faster and better, including enabling them with access to the right tools, be they bots or data libraries.
Firms are increasingly using techniques such as micro learning, which breaks information into bite-sized pieces, and spaced learning, which identifies the right moment for intervention so that trainees retain more information. Gamification is another technique that makes learning fun and increases retention. Through a combination of these approaches, firms can train employees and develop talent much more efficiently.
Today’s banks are losing employees not only to other banks, but also to techfin firms. Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google are all making forays into banking, and they’re always on the lookout for people who can help their engineering teams understand the financial payments and risk disciplines. To retain talent, it’s important to drive workers’ aspirations.
Keeping employees engaged is essential to retention. Engagement can be accomplished through creative challenges and contests that instill sustainable change and help employees use their skills beyond their day-to-day work.
When it comes to AFC talent, it’s a battlefield out there. To learn more about how financial institutions can attract, manage, and motivate AFC talent to achieve the best balance between human and technical intelligence, check out the webinar I recently conducted with Genpact on this topic.
Numerous locations in the Middle East and Africa (MEA) are emerging as upcoming destinations for global services delivery. Several multinational companies have set up their centers in the MEA region to deliver services to Europe and North America, and tech giants including Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Uber are leveraging it for global services delivery.
What’s the appeal?
There’s been a consistent increase in the pool of entry-level talent and experienced professionals with domain-specific skills. Egypt is the leader in the region; due to various government measures to improve education quality and a significant rise in contact center operations in multiple languages, including English, French, and Arabic, the country posted an enormous 35 percent increase in the headcount for global services exports in 2018.
There’s also been a considerable rise in R&D centers and Centers of Excellence (COEs), where talented professionals with relevant and often advanced technological skill sets work to develop state-of-the-art solutions.
Because there’s a relatively large population base, limited jobs, and high unemployment rates throughout much of the region – for example, South Africa is at 27 percent and Nigeria is at 23 percent – organizations can procure talent easily and train the workers as per their specific business needs.
Some of the countries in the MEA region offer highly attractive cost arbitrage compared to source geographies. For example, Egypt, Nigeria, and Kenya come in at 70-80 percent less (although Nigeria and Kenya are primarily leveraged to serve domestic markets), and South Africa (for non-voice F&A) and Morocco (for voice-based services) offer cost savings of 40-60 percent over source geographies.
Proximity with various European countries is a big selling point of many African locations. For example, because Morocco offers both cultural and geographical proximity to France and Spain, companies are increasingly leveraging it for French and Spanish voice-based business process services. Because the English language was introduced by British colonists, and because there’s shared cultural affinity, South Africa is becoming a popular destination for voice-based services delivery for U.K. companies. Additionally, because most African countries share similar time zones with Europe, delivery and client teams are able to collaborate in real time, thereby, optimizing work in both the geographies.
The map below highlights key locations leveraged by global enterprises and service providers for global services delivery. While the emerging locations house 20,000 to 100,000 FTEs across global services, nascent locations employ less than 20,000 FTEs in this space.
For a detailed view of each of these locations, please read our latest Location Spotlight reports. Each report analyzes the individual country’s global sourcing profile, key opportunities, drivers, challenges, talent and skills availability, financial attractiveness, and environment risks.
Developed economies around the world (with the exception of Spain’s) are facing generational low levels of unemployment. While that’s good news for workers, it’s a serious talent deficit problem for employers. How bad is it?
In 2018, the number of unemployed persons per job opening in the U.S. fell below the benchmark of one. In plain speak, that means there are more job openings out there than the number of relevant available people to fill them.
And the Beveridge curve tells essentially the same story in Europe.
Against this backdrop, I was very interested in hearing what solutions and ideas were presented at NTT DATA’s “Captaining the Talent” Summit in Lisbon last month. (Full disclosure – NTT DATA arranged my travel for the event.) The event featured a range of speakers from all walks of life – from the former captain of New Zealand’s national rugby union team to British perfumer Jo Malone to TED Speaker and eminent neuroscientist Mariano Sigman.
The common thread among all the sessions was the question on every senior executive and leader’s mind: how to navigate the choppy waters in a talent-deficit world.
What we face today is a talent deficit of a unique nature. In the mature markets, there isn’t enough talent to go around, while the future of work in a global technology environment brings a significant reskilling/upskilling challenge for traditional offshore/nearshore geographies. The common underpinning theme is the irrevocable shift in the profile of people that work in this environment. Talent is changing across the life cycle – from sourcing to retention to relevance – requiring a rethink of traditional talent management practices. How we respond is going to create an irrevocable difference in the future of work.
Long gone are the days of selecting offshore/nearshore service delivery locations with a regional/local interpretation of demand, a focus on cost savings, and an emphasis on service delivery in and of itself. Today, it is evolving to include a global view of demand, an increasing focus on talent quality and capacity for innovation, and the involvement of group-level strategy at its core.
So, which locations will help enterprises fulfill their requirements? Where can they place a long-term bet for a sustainable strategy that provides a competitive edge against their competitors?
Everest Group’s viewpoint, “2019 Locations Predictions: Follow the Talent,” reveals location-specific forecasts that can guide organizations on how to transform their global delivery location strategies.
As companies look for large-scale rebalancing and consolidation/right-sizing to fewer centers, the primary focus of a location strategy will be talent quality and availability. Asia has the largest talent pool with varied skillsets for IT, digital, Engineering and R&D (ER&D), and BPS service delivery.
India – India will continue to progress in the next three to five years, driven by growth in the digital and ER&D functions, as well as the increase in the availability of depth and breadth of talent. Cities such as Hyderabad and Pune will experience the highest traction due to increasing demand for complex IT and high-end R&D work from the technology and BFSI giants.
The Philippines – The Philippines will continue its dominance as one of the largest voice-BPS markets, and will also experience growth in IT services, accentuated by a faster rotation into digital such as customer analytics and social media-driven services. We expect increased traction in locations beyond Manila, such as Iloilo, Quezon, Taguig, and Davao, given their attractive cost proposition and untapped talent pools.
Malaysia – Malaysia will continue to grow, especially in the multilingual BPS, banking-BPS, and digital sectors, due to the increasing demand from Southeast Asian markets and global BFSI majors.
As companies consolidate their portfolios, and as technology and design thinking-based approaches blur the boundaries between IT and BPS, cross-functional collaboration will become critical to achieving digitalization and faster time-to-market. The EMEA region provides an ecosystem that enables companies to tap into talent that can multi-task, and is more suited for cross-functional center setups.
Poland – Poland will overtake Canada to become the third largest location in the world for BPS delivery, given its expansion of multi-functional delivery centers across various verticals and its strong government support. Cities such as Krakow, Warsaw, and Wroclaw will see traction in high-end IT services, with players setting up digital innovation hubs, including blockchain, cryptocurrencies, and AI.
Ireland – Ireland will experience the fastest growth in the region due to strong government support, well-developed infrastructure, and the increasing trend across global majors to shift their headquarters away from the United Kingdom because of Brexit uncertainties. Beyond Dublin, we also expect higher BPS growth in tier-2/3 locations such as Cork, Limerick, and Galway.
Israel – Israel will witness a significant uptick in next-generation IT services including big data, cybersecurity, cloud, and IoT, driven by a focus on research and close collaboration between academia and industry.
The rise of reshoring amidst the protectionist policies adopted by leading source geographies, including the United States, is driving companies to scrutinize and consolidate their service delivery portfolios. The Americas region is becoming a preferred choice for firms, given the ease of coordination with onshore teams, better alignment/training, and customer intimacy.
Costa Rica – Costa Rica will experience an increase in center set-up activity, although the typical scale of operations might decline due to the focus on delivering agile transformation and automation solutions to support North American operations.
Jamaica – Jamaica will see accelerated growth, especially in the BPS segment, on the back of availability of a large English-speaking talent pool and dedicated government investments to enhance the business environment.
Canada – Canada will also witness accelerated growth, particularly due to high government investments in attracting foreign investors, and especially in the IT and digital services space. Uncertainty around U.S. government policies will further drive enterprises to expand beyond existing U.S. delivery centers, especially Canada.
In today’s complex, and often volatile, environment, a tightly defined and carefully crafted location strategy is increasingly critical to enterprises’ long-term success. For more details on Everest Group’s Predictions for Global Services Delivery Locations, please see our viewpoint, “2019 Locations Predictions: Follow the Talent” or contact Parul Jain or Anish Agarwal directly.
The need to change is coming to the HR world, and it’s happening quickly. It will necessitate substantial changes in the HR mind-set, the way HR groups are organized, the supporting technology and the amount of resources invested in HR. What is driving this incredibly changing universe of HR? And what does it mean for the future of enterprise HR and for third-party HR service providers?
Rapidly changing workforce demographics, coupled with imminent talent deficits, has shifted the HR spotlight to the employee experience rather than an enterprise-facing experience. Thus, it’s now necessary for companies to take a direct-to-consumer approach (the “consumer” being an existing or potential employee).
Read more in my blog on Forbes
©2023 Everest Global, Inc. Privacy Notice Terms of Use Do Not Sell My Information
"*" indicates required fields