GEC NEWS WIREOrganizations struggle with accessing skills for projects, especially in predicting needs and deploying talent quickly. In 2023, 20% of global financial services firms fell short of over half their project goals, mainly due to a shortage of skilled talent, a trend seen over the past three years. To tackle this issue, Outsized, the top on-demand talent platform in the Middle East, Asia-Pacific, Africa, and Australia, has introduced its Virtual Bench product.
Traditionally, the concept of a “bench” refers to a pool of employees in a consulting firm not currently assigned to client projects, but available for deployment as needed. Maintaining a surplus of staff to handle unpredictable client needs can result in high fixed costs, with many employees being paid full-time salaries when not actively engaged in projects. This model is not only costly but also rigid, often forcing project leaders to assemble teams based on available skill sets rather than the best fit for specific tasks, potentially compromising client results.
With the rise of hybrid workforces and the growing number of highly skilled independent professionals, Virtual Bench aims to revolutionise how companies approach and manage their talent resources. Through it, employers have an always-on access to the skills areas they need, without the fixed costs associated with a corresponding pool of employees.
A pioneering initiative in its regions, the Virtual Bench allows consulting firms and businesses to easily create, request, and share pools of pre-vetted, high-quality, enterprise-grade on-demand, independent talent. Virtual Bench aligns skills with specific project needs, ensuring the expertise matches and ultimately optimising hiring budgets. It simplifies decision-making by evaluating talent based on their skills and experiences. By encouraging bench members to continuously update and enhance their skill sets, it ensures a workforce that’s future-ready, competitive, and in tune with evolving industry trends. This approach aids businesses in staying flexible and responsive to changing market dynamics. Outsized, keeps the bench engaged, ensuring that there are always enough professionals available with the skill in demand.
Azeem Zainulbhai, Co-founder and Chief Product Officer at Outsized, commented: “At Outsized, our solution to the traditional bench came from closely understanding our clients’ needs. By creating an insights database, we identified recurring talent patterns based on the capabilities they were ramping up and down and realised the potential of on-demand talent pools. This led to the launch of Virtual Bench, enabling clients to transition from a fixed bench to an agile model, quickly accessing fresh and pre-vetted pool of independent talent with the necessary skills for each project.”
The Virtual Bench model’s flexibility allows project leaders to curate capabilities that perfectly fit any capacity gaps in their projects, ensuring well-aligned teams that deliver superior results, leading to project extensions and more work. This agile model supports strategic workforce planning in a dynamic business environment, combining permanent workers and independent talent.
