Flexible Workforce ™
Transition W-2 employees to contractors smoothly and effectively.
There's a New Way to Have Contractors, and it's not 1099.
You can have W-2 employment without in-house W-2 employment.
Engage a firm—an employer of record that doesn't interfere with direct relationships with your team; one that shields you from misclassification claims, but allows all parties the flexibility of contract work.
We Learned Something from the Pandemic
The coronavirus wasn’t the cause but merely the trigger that accelerated a process already underway—not just of revolutionizing work but of changing the nature of work relationships.
"The alignment between employee desire and employer needs is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to change the moribund employment landscape. The next step: transitioning these workers into independent contractors."
Joe Mullings, founder and CEO of The Mullings Group. Source: CNBC
Employee Desire and Employer Needs are Finally Aligned
Strong teams want strong relationships with great companies, but also freedom, flexibility, and work that's based on clear requirements, rather than a culture of fit, close supervision, and time at desk.
Remote Work is Just the Beginning
Virtualized workplace relationships have become the new normal for all functions of an organization that don’t actually require a physical presence.
The Next Logical Step is Transitioning Employees into Contract Relationships
Shifting a W-2 workforce to more closely mirror the flexibility inherent in client-vendor relationships is fraught with issues organizations haven’t yet solved, but which largely require the simplicity of utilizing a third party corporate entity for accountability, liability, and maintenance of the contractual agreement.
Q: Will Our Employees Adapt to the Change?
Initiating a Transformation
Where to start, and how it works.
Begin With the Low Hanging Fruit
Most organizations will start with one division, a handful of departments, or a particular set of previously localized functions. Wherever remote work has permitted still acceptable levels of productivity or even increased effectiveness with lower overhead, transformation has effectively already begun. Where work is getting done with less supervision and monitoring of time at desk, absent on-site management, a more independent, self-directed workforce is already implied. It’s only necessary to utilize that momentum to finish the implied transformation.
Define Your Core Team
Part of this is asking who embodies your core expertise/leadership and who are practitioners that support the mission. Everyone has a different slider. In-house W-2 employment is most appropriate where: 1) there is no alternative to a professional’s physical presence (i.e. where the traditional office or facility is truly essential as in some manufacturing functions), 2) instant availability is required for operations (as in front-line retail operations), and 3) certain pivotal roles where leadership must be arranged on the basis of exclusivity. Other functions are opportunities for shifting to an outcome-oriented, contingent, or contract-based relationship.
Q: Can We Transform Gradually?
Gradually but Steadily Introduce the "New Normal" as a Tool for Economic Growth
This is an unprecedented opportunity NOT to return to undesirable ‘normalcy’ based on s factory template that has contributed to traditional employment but also stymied organizations' competitive and creative potential since the invention of assembly-line production. Instead, with so much productivity lost managing the 'politics' of the traditional office, shift the focus to rapid economic growth by building on top of any recent efforts at virtualization with flexible teams engaged in more agile work relationships around clearly defined missions and goals.
Let Enterprising Employees Inject Momentum into the Opportunity
Far from rebelling against a workplace culture that isn’t centered around commuting, reporting to a desk, time in the office, and workplace fit, employees have largely spoken: “Don’t put us back into a traditional work environment if we don’t have to go.’ This implies that consistent work around meaningful goals can replace guaranteed employment tied to W-2 status.
Q: Come On, We've Tried Outsourcing
We're a professional services vendor, not an agency.
Changes to contract, any evolution to the relationship, when or how you end it or engage in another one, is entirely between YOU and your people. We enable efficient relationships between you and your people, but you and your people set the terms.
Inspire Company Leaders to Acknowledge the Company Learning and Cultural Shift
Organizations, instead of finding their workforce failing to perform outside a traditional workplace or without moment-by-moment supervision, are now seeing enthusiastic support for virtualizing the work relationship itself.
The Impact is Significant, But the Actual Process Changes Are Straightforward
Most organizations already deal with multiple vendors, relying on consistency of outcome delivery and quality of work product. The success of the 2020 experiment in remote work, in which most of the business culture participated, implies similar success transitioning what is essentially a payroll designation to a flexible workforce model that more closely mirrors a vendor/client relationship.
Q: Can We Handle Evolution of This Magnitude?
Immense Company Overhead Can be Liberated By Treating Employment as a Variable Rather than Permanent Asset
In a flexible workforce™, W-2 employment is reserved for certain critical functions, while on-demand relationships become the norm for the company's broader talent network.
The Result is an Extraordinary Competitive Advantage and Preparation for Uncertainty
Organization leaders and investors are free to pursue new opportunities with fewer roadblocks to evolving, ongoing support of more precise talent requirements, greater resilience to shifts in marketplace demand, and smoother ability to respond to the emergence of disruptors.
Q: Are the Benefits for the Company's Future Worth it?
TWO WAYS TO BEGIN THE TRANSFORMATION
Start With a Project
Experience business agility at the diamond
tipped point of moving current goals to "done".
Start with the Workforce
Make your company or division cost-effective,
ready for any uncertainty, and responsive to change.
Let's Have a Conversation
FAS would like to meet with the leaders and/or investors driving your organization to unparalleled prosperity in a new era of work. Let’s get a Zoom meeting with your key stakeholders and place your goals at the pinnacle of your operational structure.
Alternately, we can work with one leader and perform a Workforce Flexibility™ Assessment to identify the components of your organization or division ripe for the next step in practical evolution, plan and most importantly execute on bringing that transformation into being.
THE EXTRAORDINARY ADVANTAGE OF A FLEXIBLE WORKFORCE
We’re interested in companies who want to BE the next disruptors in their industries by putting their talented professionals on a new footing for sustainable growth in the coming decades, able to thrive in uncertainty and succeed on the vision of company founders.
