As the workforce evolves, so does the opportunity to harness the power of a blended approach. In this episode, author and researcher Sara Daw, MBA, joins us to discuss the increasingly relevant topic of the blended workforce. Sara discusses combining full-time employees with fractional, freelance, or contract team members to drive innovation, increase flexibility, and provide access to specialized expertise.
Chapters
00:00 … Intro
03:22 … Meet Sara
05:29 … A Blended Workforce
06:38 … Blended Workforce Advantages
12:15 … Blended Workforce to Boost Productivity
15:54 … Relationship over Resource
18:06 … Individual Benefits to Freelance
20:30 … Downside to Freelance
22:36 … Flexibility in Our Work Lives
23:55 … Making that Cultural Shift
26:40 … Ren Love’s Projects from the Past
29:31 … Misconceptions of the Blended Workforce
32:59 … Blended Team Miscommunications
34:30 … Collaboration on Blended Teams
36:39 … The Personal Connection on a Team
39:36 … The Evolving Blended Workforce
42:45 … Sara’s Book
43:51 … Contact Sara
45:04 … Closing
Intro
SARA DAW: So, we’re seeing more and more individuals work freelance fractional contract now. And I think it’s about creating control, creating freedom of choice in our lives, wanting more flexibility, be more in control of our schedules than perhaps in the employed world. So, I think it’s about taking back control in a lot of ways. It means that we can blend our way of working with something else that’s perhaps really important to us in our lives.
WENDY GROUNDS: Welcome to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers. I’m Wendy Grounds, and in the studio with me is Bill Yates. We want to take a moment to say thank you to our listeners who reach out to us. If you leave comments on our website or on social media, we love hearing from you. Please do get in touch, leave us a comment at Velociteach.com or on social media, and let us know what you like to hear more of, as well. So, if you have some suggestions of project managers who are doing amazing projects or topics that would be very helpful to you in your career, please let us know.
BILL YATES: Got a team needing top-notch training? Velociteach specializes in private group training, both on-site and virtual. Share your training goals with us, and we’ll craft the perfect plan for your team. Whether it’s exam prep, maintaining certification, or mastering the latest project management best practices, our live classes and expert instructors will fast-track your organization to success. Explore our private group training offerings at Velociteach.com today.
WENDY GROUNDS: Today we’re talking to Sara Daw. Sara is an accomplished entrepreneur, researcher, writer, speaker, and a recognized expert on the future of work. She’s made waves in the industry as one of the 2024 E2E Female 100 honorees and is passionate about reshaping the future of work for C-level talent and organizations. And in the conversation, we really apply a lot of that to project managers and to leading teams, as well.
BILL YATES: Yup.
WENDY GROUNDS: She’s the co-founder and group CEO of the CFO Centre and the Liberty Group, but also she’s the author of the groundbreaking book “Strategy and Leadership as Service: How the Access Economy Meets the C-Suite.”
BILL YATES: We have the chance to talk with Sara about one of the topics that she’s passionate about, and that is a blended workforce. This is a fascinating topic for project managers. I think we’ll be able to share some of the benefits of using a blended workforce, the benefits of the flexibility, the innovation, the fresh perspectives that maybe a fractional team member could bring, maybe from a different industry or with a particular expertise in an area that we need for this project, but we don’t know we need a full-time person in our organization.
So, she’s going to really help us focus on that because there are clear benefits, but there are also some things you have to think about, some considerations. And she talks about strategies for how to effectively use these fractional team members. I’m excited about diving into it. I think it’s going to be a challenge for some of the project managers who feel the need to do this, but they’re afraid. So, we’re going to give them some advice.
Meet Sara
WENDY GROUNDS: Yes. Hi Sara, welcome to Manage This.
SARA DAW: Thanks very much for having me. It’s really great to be with you here today.
WENDY GROUNDS: It’s lovely to be speaking to someone from the UK once again.
BILL YATES: Yes.
WENDY GROUNDS: We’re always excited to have an international flair to our conversation so we appreciate your time. Sara, tell me a bit about yourself. How did you get into researching and writing all about the future of work?
SARA DAW: Yes. Well, it started with living and working differently, you know, 20-plus years ago. So, I was a chartered accountant. I had worked in industry, done an MBA, and got to the point where I wanted to bring up my family and have a career. And I couldn’t work out how to do that in the corporate roles. So I set myself up as a part-time fractional CFO all those years ago. I met with the founder of what was the FD Center then. He’d set up a few years earlier. I joined him, and we went on and built our business. And really, it’s been amazing in that we sort of realized we were onto something. All these C-suite people came to us saying, you know, “We want to live and work differently.” And all these SMEs needed our skills.
So off we went. That’s how it got going. And it got to, you know, about five or six years ago, and I wanted to really understand why this business model worked. So, we knew how it worked. We were doing it. We knew what it did. But we didn’t know why. I’m a bit of a learner. I went back to school, did a master’s with Oxford University and actually stayed in Paris to really just uncover what was going on. And that’s where I started to get into the access economy. It’s the likes of Spotify, Airbnb, those businesses where you access goods and services.
And that’s what this business model is. You access, you know, C-suite skills in for my business. You don’t own them. And you don’t employ them. So, there are many parallels, and psychological ownership is what I uncovered as being key to holding those relationships together for the long term. And I’ve just got really passionate about it and wanting to learn more. So, I’m actually about, well, I’ve just started to embark on a doctorate to go even deeper because I’m just fascinated by the whole psychology of it.
A Blended Workforce
WENDY GROUNDS: We appreciate your expertise. What we really want to talk about is a blended workforce. Could you first explain what we mean by a blended workforce and how it differs from a traditional workforce structure?
SARA DAW: Yeah, I think that’s a great place to start. So, a blended workforce is a strategic approach, I guess, where an organization combines full-time employees, so employed full-time individuals, with a wider workforce which could include all sorts of different workers like freelancers, contractors, gig workers, part-time workers, job sharers even. And that wider blended workforce is there to meet the business’s needs effectively over time. And I guess it involves integrating that traditional employee workforce that we’re probably all really used to and familiar with, with more of a non-traditional workforce to create a more flexible and diverse workforce that’s wider, that can adapt to changing demands, maximize productivity, that sort of thing. So be very flexible.
Blended Workforce Advantages
BILL YATES: That’s good. And I can think of our listeners because I’m in the same situation of thinking, “Okay, that sounds complicated. You’ve got to sell me on this. Why would I want to move forward with a blended workforce?” Tell me about the advantages that come with that.
SARA DAW: Yes. And you’re right. I think there is some complexity to it. So, I mean, I think that’s a very valid point, and we can dig into that as we go. It’s also got some advantages, like anything. I mean, there are pluses and minuses. And, you know, the key thing will be to manage that and make it to the advantage of the business, and the workers of the organization.
So, I think, if we look into the advantages to start off with, let’s go to those. I mean, a blended workforce enables an organization to make sure it always has the right specialist skill sets available quickly, on demand, and flexibly for what’s needed because then you can tap into that wider workforce that’s freelance or fractional and bring it in at the right time. And it means you always get the right skills doing the right part of the role.
And they may need this because it may be skills that an organization doesn’t need that often. Therefore, they haven’t built them into their employee base. Or it may be ones for challenges they’ve never seen before. So, they might need it in the future, but they just need to test that out. Or it may be that they need it on a cadence that fits temporarily.
So, if you take the fractional C-suite world, which is an example, entrepreneurial businesses are growing. They want to scale. They don’t need, don’t want, can’t afford – there’s a cost element there. And they can’t afford a full-time resource, but they still need the skill set as and when on an ongoing basis. So that’s a perfect example where you tap into a wider workforce.
Another one would be perhaps a larger organization where you’ve got a group CXO, say a group CMO, a group CFO, something like that. And they have got a long to-do list, and they’ve got a lot of skills they’ve got to cover, a lot of bases they’ve got to cover, and they just don’t have the bandwidth in skills or capacity to do that. So again, you can bring in the specialist. So obviously that’s one, you know, big advantage.
Another one that goes with that is the ability to scale up and down very quickly to meet demand needs, if you’ve got a wider workforce that are trained up that are on tap and available for you, and you just pay for when you’re using them. So obviously that’s a really neat move. It’s a variable cost solution. I think that’s another way for organizations to test new ways of working, to always make sure they’re on the right side of the profit margin line when they’re doing certain activities. So, if you’ve got quite a volatile market, you might want to use a wider workforce for that because then you’ve got a changeable resource base.
Agile talent strategies, I think, you know, speed in and speed out of these people. So I think that’s useful to have, given the changing world we’re in.
Another advantage is innovation. Okay? What I’m seeing more and more now is that organizations need to innovate. If you take the tech space, there are a lot of freelancers out there who are, you know, in the digital nomad space, say. The beauty of them is that they are being exposed to real-world problems day in, day out in that AI tech space at the moment.
So, they will be able to accumulate the skills to deal with these latest problems, which will be almost impossible for, I think, for a corporate in an employee structure to do. They’re just not set up. They’re not going to see those problems. And they’re not going to be able to accumulate those skills. And they’re not in a community where there’s those wider perspectives to exchange and to learn from.
So, I think these digital nomad individuals, they don’t want to be employed. They want to stay in that space. So, I think corporates are going to have to engage with them. But it’s a great way for corporates to innovate by tapping into that skill set, innovating with those people. And then perhaps when they’ve worked something out, bringing it in-house in a more stable structure. I think that’s another really good reason to build up a wider workforce.
BILL YATES: Yeah. You’ve hit on so many key advantages, a lot of benefits there. And I like that last one a lot. I think of it’s like small risks that a project manager, project leader can take. To your point, I can benefit by bringing in someone who has a diverse skill set, a different exposure, perhaps different industries they’ve worked in. And they’ve had to address this problem or face this new technology in those environments. And now they can bring a fresh perspective and bring innovation to the problem that we’re trying to solve with our project.
But I’m not hiring them on full-time. So, I don’t have this long, whatever, recruiting, onboarding process, all this stuff. You know, I’m just using this contractor for a very specific need. And we kind of try it out and see, is this something that we identify as an organization? Okay, this is a skill or a knowledge base that we need to develop and have in-house going, you know, moving forward.
So, I like that a lot. I like the idea of the diversity and the innovation coming together through, reaching out to outside resources that are just fractional, that are just going to be there for a specific purpose for a specific time.
Blended Workforce to Boost Productivity
Talk a little bit more about productivity, too. As I think about project managers, again, there’s a benefit of productivity with this; but there are positives and negatives. I have to bring somebody up to speed quickly on what my project’s doing and what our goals are. But man, if I can get effective at that, then I can boost our productivity because I have that person who has a different experience, who may bring innovation and new ideas to my team. So, what have you seen in terms of productivity and how the blended workforce can help or boost productivity?
SARA DAW: Yeah, that’s a great question. So, a good way to approach that is still to think of these individuals that an organization’s going to engage with. The key thing is to still build a relationship with them because then obviously you bring them into your organization for a project to start with, the first project. And there is always obviously going to be that element of upskill and learning on the job, which you’re going to have to go through, whether it’s an employee full-time in-house, or whether it’s wider workforce. There’s that first cut of that.
The key thing then, though, I think, to be productive on subsequent related projects without having the full-time cost is to maintain a relationship with that team or wider workforce. Because then they know your organization. They know the way you work; you know the way they work. And then that learning piece is so much easier every time, but you’re not paying for the downtime in between.
And I think that is the ultimate way of using the wider workforce. They are part of your workforce. I think that’s the mindset shift. This isn’t a transaction anymore. They’re not a body that just does a volume of work. They are individuals. We need to build an emotional relationship with them. We need to invest for them to know our culture and the way we work and for us to get to know them. And then they’re available. But you’ve got that beauty of the variable cost the whole time. So, I think that really enhances the productivity piece.
I guess the other side of it is, which is related to that, not directly, but related, is their network. So those people are going to have a much bigger network in tune with the type of work you’re giving them in the first place. They are going to be able to bring in more quickly, probably, than a corporate will be able to find themselves, the next person they need or the next skill set they need or other resources through their network because these people have to be well-connected to work in this sort of freelancer environment.
So again, that cuts down speed to market, I think, in finding the right resources. And also, you can use the people that are in your wider workforce to help bring on and get the others up to speed every time.
So, I think there’s lots of sort of smart ways of working with a wider workforce. You know, my experience of working going down the full-time employed route and the big commitment piece is, if you get it wrong, it’s very, very expensive and very, very time-consuming. You’re talking two years’ sometimes worth of time and money, and not going very far sometimes. I mean, it’s crazy. So, I feel that, you know, this could be a really good alternative if we can – and I think the issue with organizations is we like to own things. So, we feel a little bit vulnerable about engaging with this wider workforce.
Relationship over Resource
BILL YATES: That’s so interesting. I’m just thinking of the phrase “Try before you buy.”
SARA DAW: Think, yeah.
BILL YATES: It just will lend itself to that. And your point about relationships is so important. It’s important for project managers to not look at this as a resource. You know, like, okay, well, I have to rent equipment, and I have to buy materials. And, yeah, I’m going to go get some contractors. No, no, no. This is a part of the team, and we’ll talk more about that. But that’s such a vital…
SARA DAW: Yeah.
BILL YATES: …point you’re making. And I’ve had the similar experience when I’ve found contractors who are participating in specific parts of projects that build that trust with me and with the team. Those are the people that I’m going to ask, you know, when I need another contractor or I need someone who can do something a little bit different on the project. Yeah, that’s who I go to because, to your point, they have to network for survival, you know, to grow their own business, and they’re going to know people. So why would I not go there? I trust them. They get our business. They understand how our team works. That’s the perfect resource to go ask, hey, you know, do you know someone who can do this particular technology and help with that?
SARA DAW: Absolutely. Yeah. I think ultimately, you know, if you can get to that with a wider workforce, you really are in a really great place because then you’ve got the best of everything. Haven’t you got that flexibility. It’s on demand. And you’ve got inbuilt knowledge within those individuals who are loyal. They’re loyal. They don’t, they just don’t happen to be working with you all the time. And that’s okay.
I was actually, before speaking to you today, I was actually thinking, I was looking at my direct report team. It’s about 50/50 of employed full-time and freelancer fractional. And when I look at the way I work with them, I can’t tell the difference. I can’t tell the difference between them. And for me, that says it all in that they are there. They’re there when they need to be. They work really brilliantly together. I treat them as one team. They’re not different in my mind.
Now, I’ve had the benefit of building our business from the ground up in that way. I think it’s harder for some organizations to shift from a more traditional approach.
Individual Benefits to Freelance
WENDY GROUNDS: How does this benefit the individuals?
SARA DAW: Yes. It’s a choice. So, we’re seeing more and more individuals work freelance fractional contract now. And I think it’s about creating control, creating freedom of choice in our lives, wanting more flexibility, be more in control of our schedules than perhaps in the employed world. So, I think it’s about taking back control in a lot of ways. It means that we can blend our way of working with something else that’s perhaps really important to us in our lives.
You know, and often I find I’ve got sort of personas, the people that want to do this type of work. And there’s, you know, there’s the freedom seeker, someone who’s looking for more meaning and purpose in their life, and they want to do the one thing they really like doing more of the time and have more meaning and purpose in their work on their terms. You know, there’s the mini entrepreneur, someone who perhaps has got a small side hustle that they want to pursue in an entrepreneurial space, but they also want to freelance and contract alongside of that.
So, there’s all sorts of different drivers. It could be the, you know, I call them the work care balancer. So that perhaps someone who wants to care for family members, elderly family members or other members of the family. There’s obviously those who want to care for their children. The benefits are that you know, we get to choose when we work and how we work, and we can design our working life around that.
And I think we also get to choose who, who we want to work with. You know, you don’t always get it right first time. But over time I think you can build up a really good picture of where do you fit? Who are the right people? And I think then when you are working with your various different businesses it’s – it’s a real pleasure. You’re in your swim lane, and you’re – you’re doing it in flexible terms.
Now, that doesn’t mean being selfish. That means about giving as well to the relationship. Because ultimately, if the business you’re working with doesn’t get what they want, it’s not going to work. But when you’re in there working, and it’s meaningful, and you really like the people, you’re going to give and make it work, and you’re going to flex. And both sides flex because it’s a relationship. So, I think those are all the upsides.
Downsides to Freelance
There are downsides, like anything. I mean, it’s a different way of living and working. You’ve got to get going. You’ve got to learn how to find these businesses to work with in the first place, and networking. And sometimes, you know, you’ve got to have some money behind you to spend the time to build up in the first place. A key thing I think is making sure you’ve got your family behind you if you’re going to switch to this way of working because I’ve heard of people being asked by their family, you know, when are you going to get a proper job again? And that sort of isn’t very helpful.
BILL YATES: Yeah. When are you going to go back to work? Yeah, yeah.
SARA DAW: Yeah, yeah.
BILL YATES: But I so appreciate these examples you’re bringing up, like you said, the work-care balance…
SARA DAW: Yeah.
BILL YATES: …and work-life balance. And I think for project leaders, for team leaders, just being aware of that and building up a level of trust with the team so that, if you have a full-time team member today and, you know, okay, this person, they have a parent who needs more and more care or attention at home. And they’ve been mentioning that to me, and they’re even thinking about, you know, finishing an apartment in the basement and moving the parent in with them, that kind of thing.
Why not start the conversation? You know, typical work week is considered “40 hours.” I’m just going to put that in air quotes. Why not start that conversation with the team member and say, “Hey, is this stressing you out too much? I see that you’re trying to care for a parent, as well.”
Or it could be some other situation, a health situation or whatever. You know, what would be ideal for you? How many hours a week? And does that work for the role that you’re in, or should we move you into a different role? You know, just having the conversation. There’s no promises there. It’s just, let’s have a conversation, and we’ll see where it goes.
Then the team leader can go ask for permission or run that by those managers that they need to within the organization. So, you know, even beyond the contractor, but just thinking of a full-time team member who just – there’s a different stage of life here. And could we make it more flexible so that they can really pursue and do the things that they need to do? So, I appreciate you bringing that up.
Flexibility in Our Work Lives
SARA DAW: I mean, flexibility is the one thing that comes up time and time again with all the workforce, the traditional and obviously the contract. That’s what people want more than anything, flexibility in their work lives. I actually think the employed route has got a lot to learn from the contract world around flexibility. And that’s when I said I don’t know the difference between my team who’s, if I was looking at it, you know, from afar, and I didn’t know their setups, and I couldn’t tell because the way I’ve always approached the work in our organization is measure the outputs, not the inputs.
So, get people you trust, give them the direction, and then leave them to it and give them the support. I don’t really mind if they don’t work on a Wednesday, but they work all day Sunday. I don’t mind, if that doesn’t affect anyone else. And that’s sort of how the contractors can work at times.
Now, I mean, that’s a bit extreme. And if anyone’s listening to that in the traditional world, they might be a bit aghast at that. But I’m just laboring the point. The point is, I think, you know, if we can, if we’ve got the right team, and we trust them, and we’re all clear on the direction and the outputs, then I think what helps people get meaning in their work is to be able to craft it themselves and design how they deliver it.
BILL YATES: Right.
Making that Cultural Shift
WENDY GROUNDS: What you’re talking about really is a cultural shift in the organization.
SARA DAW: Yeah.
WENDY GROUNDS: How do you encourage organizations, or even a project team, to make that shift?
SARA DAW: Yeah. Do you know what? I think it starts with the leader. Well, and ultimately the leader of the whole organization; isn’t it. Because it has to be a culture, and the culture jet comes from the leader generally. So, for me, if leaders, you know, I’m a big fan of more sort of decentralized leadership.
And as I said, the reason why I sort of fell into it is that the organization I’ve built, we never employed anyone. So, we couldn’t go to command and control even if we wanted to because no one would take any notice of that. So, we had moved to an inspiration, leadership by inspiration, and setting direction and treating everyone as grownups and high trust.
And sometimes it didn’t work out. Sometimes we, you know, we definitely didn’t have the right people sometimes in the organization. Occasionally that happens. But generally, I found that it was around, if you gave the trust, you got it back. But it is a leap of faith. And I think actually it requires work on the part of the leader to be able to be that vulnerable and to sort of give space and let go to a degree. Because the opposite of trust is control; right? So, the opposite is that we’re controlling and nailing everything to the floor. That’s terribly sort of time-consuming and energy-sapping. But I understand why some organizations are in that area, in that route. So, I think it’s a leadership skill set, to be honest.
BILL YATES: That’s so funny you talk about trust versus control. I remember years ago when I was doing a lot of heavy traveling with a consulting role that I was in. And I was in a hotel. I’m not going to say the name of the chain. It was a low-cost chain. We’ll just leave it at that. And I remember their strategy was they’d had too many remote controls that had disappeared from the room that are for the television. So, their answer was to bolt the remote control to a little bedside table. So, you’re going to have to go to extreme measures to steal that thing.
SARA DAW: Yeah, you have to take the table with you.
BILL YATES: Yeah, yeah. I rebel against control naturally. So, then I found myself just picking up that bedside table and moving it wherever I needed to, wherever I was going to watch the television, that’s where I put the table. But yeah, I think sometimes that’s how I see leaders. They’re bolting things down that just don’t make any sense. Hello.
So why are we doing these extreme measures? We need to have that sense of trust. We need to understand the needs of both sides, you know, both the organization, what do they need, and what do the individuals need, and find a happy place there, find that balance.
Ren Love’s Projects from the Past
REN LOVE: Ren Love here with a glimpse into Projects of the Past; where we take a look at historical projects through the modern lens.
The historical project we’ll be delving into today has become a symbol for the country of India itself: the Taj Mahal. The Taj Mahal, a name of Urdu origin meaning “Crown Palace,” stands as a testament to undying love and unmatched craftsmanship. It was commissioned by Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan in 1631 to commemorate his beloved wife, who had passed away during childbirth.
The Taj Mahal isn’t just the one iconic building, it’s actually a complex made up of five elements: the main gateway, a large garden, a mosque, a companion building to the mosque, and the mausoleum.
Primarily crafted from Makrana marble, the Taj Mahal is adorned with stone inlays that incorporate many semi-precious stones like lapis, jade, & lazuli. The calligraphy along the entrances to the mausoleum is both intricate and deliberate with the lettering increasing in size according it’s relative distance from the viewer – ensuring a uniform appearance from the terrace.
The construction was a colossal undertaking, utilizing over 20,000 workers from India, Persia, and the Ottoman Empire, and Europe. A massive brick scaffolding, mirroring the tomb’s future structure, was built, along with an almost 10-mile-high earthen ramp. This ramp was used by teams of oxen, and even elephants, to deliver the materials to the workers – who then used pulley systems to move the large blocks of marble into place.
Completed in 1653, after 22 years of construction, the Taj Mahal’s total cost was estimated at 5 million rupees at the time which is equivalent to approximately 78 million USD in today’s money.
So, was this project a success?
Absolutely. It is recognized as one of the greatest architectural achievements of Indo-Islamic architecture, is visited by up to 5 million people annually, was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1983, and was included in the list of the New 7 Wonders of the World in 2007.
The Taj Mahal hasn’t remained untouched by history, however. Political and environmental factors have taken their toll, leaving the complex in a state of disrepair. Most recently, air pollution from nearby foundries has marred its marble facade, prompting a research and restoration project in 1998.
Thanks for joining me for a look into Projects of the Past – I’m Ren Love. See ya next time.
Misconceptions of the Blended Workforce
BILL YATES: I’m really interested in talking about misconceptions. What are some common misconceptions that leaders have about the blended workforces that we’re talking about?
SARA DAW: Yes, I think that’s an interesting one. Because I feel that – I think most people think that they only do work, not important work, the wider workforce. So, the important stuff’s done by employees. Everything else we’ll let the wider workforce do because that’s less sort of risky. Whereas I actually think that we’re going to have to get onboard with that balance changing because, as I just said earlier, there’s a lot of people out there with the skills we need in our organizations, and they’re only available in the freelance market.
So therefore, we need to understand that these people can do important work. And we also need to think of them not as temporary. They might work with us, you know, in temporary slots of time or bouts of time. But actually, if we have a long-term connection with them and a relationship with them, then that’s only, I think, going to be a good thing for the organization, as I said before, around being able to tap into them as and when.
I think that the employed and self-employed can’t work well together would be another misconception, or that we’re very different. And I think, you know, we have to go to a place where we think of them as one team. I think to do that there’s quite a bit of education required. Like why are we adopting as an organization these different strategies? Why have we got a wide workforce? What was the benefit? What can we learn from each other? How can we work together?
So, I think there’s a lot of things that we should be able to do to prepare the organization for us to be one team and explain why it’s good for us all to learn from each other and to have that flexibility. And that, yes, the self-employed aren’t there all the time.
But I also think, now that COVID has been and gone, thank goodness, what it did do for us was it blurred the lines around the obvious differences between, you know, the freelance and the employed market because in the hybrid model, not everyone, if we’re operating that, not everyone’s in the office all the time either. So that does also help for us to feel like we’re all one team.
Those are some of the misconceptions really about the importance of work, the fact that we can’t work together. I think we can. And I think another misconception is that they aren’t a secure resource. I think if you get the relationship right, they can be very secure because, if it works for them, and it works for the organization, it can last a very long time. I mean, we’ve got relationships with our client base 15 years. That’s way past some of the employment relationships.
The other thing I think which is different between the employed and the freelance is, when we bring employed people in, and we put them into our system, we can take them for granted to some extent. And actually, we might do an appraisal with them once a year or something like that. But the self-employed or the freelance market, because we’re paying every time they show up, I think we hold them accountable more. I think we measure it more.
And actually, I think that’s quite healthy because we’ve got to make sure what we’re doing is valuable. I think we should be doing more of that with our employee base, as well, as a more of a level playing field. So, I think there’s things both ways that we can learn from each environment and each type of worker.
Blended Team Miscommunications
BILL YATES: I completely agree. One of the misconceptions that I’ve seen has been, I think the root cause is poor communication. So, you may have full-time team members who are thinking, okay, these fractional or part-time team members, they’re being paid more, or they’re being celebrated more, or they have access to people at the company that I don’t have access.
SARA DAW: Yeah.
BILL YATES: Because of the role that they’re in, or the technology they’re working with. That to me is a leadership issue for sure. You know, every team member should be treated the same. And if you as a leader, if you’re picking up on, okay, the full-time team members are grumbling a bit, thinking these part-time team members are getting paid a lot more than they are, or they have some other benefit that we don’t have kind of thing, you need to address that.
SARA DAW: Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. And that’s about explaining how these two setups work, the security of the supply and the risk that the freelancers take. You know, if they’re not working, they’re not being paid. They don’t get holiday pay, all those sorts of benefits, all that sort of stuff. So, I think it’s just about making sure that we’re really clear as an organization that we’ve got different setups. They bring different things. But we can actually work as one culture.
But there’s a lot of communication education. You go into that too quickly or without that, then you can definitely get those difficulties around, well, you know, they come and go as they want or whatever it might be. You’ve really got to sort of set that out, I think.
Collaboration on Blended Teams
WENDY GROUNDS: So, project managers who have a blended team like this, what are some practical strategies that they could use just to foster that collaboration in their teams?
SARA DAW: Yes. I mean, I think, well, obviously there’s that education and communication piece. I think, if we’ve got a mixed model, a blended workforce, why is that? What are the benefits to everyone? And really set that out so everyone’s clear. You know, we know why we’re working this way. Then it’s around the task in hand, I think, one team, one direction, and treating everyone equally around how they are treated within that team. And that we need to be flexible to make things work for both parties so that we’re, you know, we have meetings when everyone’s available, all that sort of thing.
After that, I think it’s the emotional connection with the whole team that works. So, I talk a lot in the work I do around the C‑suite access economy, that to make that work we need something called “psychological ownership.” That is not something that we just need for freelancers. Everyone needs it. It’s the whole workforce. Because it’s about the individuals feeling psychologically part of the team, the organization, and that they own their work, and it’s meaningful for them.
So, I think getting that emotional connection with the whole team I think is really important. I mean, psychological ownership, there needs to be a value exchange. It needs to work for everyone involved. We need to have a community we feel part of. You know, we’re social beings. We want to have a place, have a home. So having that team feeling and that we’re here for each other I think is really important.
And also, the project, the team needs to add something to our identity. It needs to give us something, you know, by being part of this team, I’m a specialist. I’m getting to further my skills here, that sort of thing. And then the ways to build the ownership piece, the psychological tie would be things like, I call it “control.” What I mean by that is being accessible, available, and approachable for each other in that team.
The Personal Connection on a Team
It’s also intimacy. So, I think team managers, team leaders who create space for their team members to get to know each other in more than the work capacity. So, what is it? What is your backstory? What have you got going on at home? Hanging out together, learning a bit about each other, I think that really binds people and gives understanding. And then psychological safety is another big player here.
I mean, I think group settings need to be psychologically safe to be high performance. And that’s about, you know, obviously not fearing negative consequences for anything that you might say or do. So, I feel, you know, the leaders need to create that safety. And then the last piece is doing things together, co-creation, which your project team will do because then you’re invested, you’re invested in each other, invested in the task. But those are all things to do whoever your workforce is.
BILL YATES: Yeah, these are powerful. I’m thinking of so many – I think it was David McClelland I think is the psychologist’s name that talks about three needs that we have in the workplace.
SARA DAW: Yeah.
BILL YATES: And the biggest is, you know, we have to feel like we belong, we belong to a team. And I think about a recent conversation we had in this room with Clint Padgett, and he talked about – he is adamant that, with his team, whether you know, you have team members that are spread all over the globe, whether they’re full-time on the team or part-time, part of the organization or just fractional employees or team members, he is adamant about bringing them all together at the beginning of a project.
To your point, you know, let’s all come together as a team. Let’s get to know each other at a personal level. And then we know we’re going to benefit throughout the life of that project because we’ve had that personal connection. We’re not just, you know, little blocks on a Zoom or Teams meeting. We’ve actually spent time face to face, and now we’re set up to really do well together and care for each other throughout the life of this project. You trigger a lot of thoughts with that. I agree with everything you’re saying there about building a healthy team right from the start.
SARA DAW: Yeah. And the remote piece is interesting there because I expect a lot of teams do a lot of work remotely and virtually. And I think that getting together physically, if you possibly can, or and if you can’t, definitely virtually, but for a purpose other than the work, though, is really important. So, it’s deliberate collaboration.
I worked with a remote team, you know, and we have a remote team globally ever since we started. And so, we were so deliberate about our get-togethers. We put them in the diary. We committed to them. And then when we got together, we made sure they were really valuable and useful around relationship-building. Yeah, might do fun things together, but it was very deliberate. And I think if you can, you know, design that in, it will, as you say, as you just said, it will really reap the benefits for the relationship between the team going forward. It’s huge.
The Evolving Blended Workforce
WENDY GROUNDS: Looking ahead, how do you see the blended workforce evolving?
SARA DAW: Yeah. I really think that this is going to be the future of work going forward. I really do. And I think there’s a lot more of this. And it’s still not mainstream at the moment, but I feel going forward the roles are fragmenting. So, the roles with the big impressive titles, obviously we’re still going to have some, but I think there’s a lot going forward where roles are going to fragment into work tasks and activities, some done by humans, and some done by humans with machines and automation.
So, I feel that’s where the unbundling is going to increase. There’s going to be more of that. That plays very heavily into the fractional freelance contracting world, which is all well and good. And I think the future is going to be with the individuals who are masters at their tasks. So, you can always get the specialist to deliver, which is, you know, on point. You’re going to get the specialist for every task, and the individual is going to get flexibility in all that we talked about before. However, I think there’ll be a core of employees and then perhaps gig workers, freelancers, contractors around it, the wider workforce.
The key thing I think is we’ve still got to hold all that together. So, we still need to emotionally invest with the relationships. I think that’s key. I actually think there’s going to be more types of organizations that pop up that are going to sort of look after the communities of the freelancers. Because the one thing I do see with a lot of independent freelancers out in the market is they need a tribe. They need belonging. They need their place of belonging to share, to learn, to best practice – their sort of people. So, I feel there’s going to be more communities or organizers, not employers popping up to support that freelance community.
And I think they serve quite a good purpose because the other employers, the employers who’ve still got their employee base, the bigger corporates who need to engage with these freelancers, I think they can use these organizers to make sure that they are fit for purpose, you know, they’ve got the skills. They’re not going to leave them in the lurch for the next job if something more interesting comes along. I think they can really serve a purpose for the corporates. Otherwise, the corporates have got to do all that themselves. They’ve got to create their own internal vetting process, et cetera, for all of that. And some might want to do it; but others, others may not.
I feel that’s where the future’s going. Obviously, that’s my opinion. But yeah, that’s where I…
BILL YATES: I see that need, as well. Like you say, the gig workers need a tribe. And most of them are creating that on their own, but it’s a bit of an effort. And wouldn’t they…
SARA DAW: Yeah.
BILL YATES: …benefit from that? So yeah, I can definitely see that.
SARA DAW: Also, for the corporates, if you think about it, if they’ve got a need of, you know, a certain type of freelancer in volume, rather than them having to hold lots of individual relationships with individuals, it will help for them to have another organization to go to, to deliver that for them. It’ll just be easier for them to manage, as well. So, on a bigger scale, I think that will help.
BILL YATES: Yeah, mm-hmm.
Sara’s Book
WENDY GROUNDS: Now, you’ve also published a book, “Strategy and Leadership as Service: How the Access Economy Meets the C-Suite.” Won’t you tell our audience a bit about that book?
SARA DAW: Yes. So that book is about the thought leadership of this new way of living and working. The way we can access these C-suite skills instead of employing them, and how it can work for organizations for the long term, and how it can work for the C-suite professionals that want to live and work this way. It goes into a lot of detail in why, how this business model hangs together, the concepts underpinning it.
And I like to call it the Spotify of the C-suite, really. You know, instead of owning CDs, we access them. Well, instead of owning and employing C-suite people, we access their skills.
It gives a lot of information to budding or existing fractional C-suite professionals on, you know, how to build their portfolios, how to invest in the skills, and what skills they need for long-term relationships. And probably very useful for all sorts of freelance and fractional individuals really. And then obviously for the organizations, as well, how to get the best out of the wider workforce.
Contact Sara
WENDY GROUNDS: How can our audience get in touch with you if they want to find out more about what you do?
SARA DAW: Okay. They can connect with me on LinkedIn, Sara Daw. They can also look at my website, SaraDaw.com; and also, the CFO Center, which is the CFO business that we work with. Yeah, I’d love to be connected with anyone. Anyone who’s interested in the space, please connect because, you know, I think it’s great to converse and hear different perspectives from everyone.
BILL YATES: Sara, we so appreciate what you’ve shared with us. Thank you for your time today. I know for our project leaders we’re constantly thinking about how to get the best resources on our project. How do we get the skill set that we need? And, you know, a common frustration I hear is, “Well, I don’t have that skill set in my organization.” Okay. You’ve made compelling reasons for the benefits of looking for those gig workers as fractional workers. And those benefits, they’re strong enough that should compel leaders to think outside the box and look for those opportunities to bring people in and just make their projects more successful. So, thank you for opening our eyes to that.
SARA DAW: Thanks very much for having me. I really enjoyed it. Thank you.
Closing
WENDY GROUNDS: That’s it for us here on Manage This. Thank you so much for joining us today. You can visit us at Velociteach.com, where you can subscribe to this podcast and see a complete transcript of the show. You’ve also earned your free PDUs by listening to this podcast. To claim them, go to Velociteach.com. Choose Manage This Podcast from the top of the page. There you’ll find a button that says Claim PDUs, and you just click through those steps. Until next time, stay curious, stay inspired, and keep tuning in to Manage This.
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