The War for Talent is over. Talent won (and is still winning). The way we work is experiencing a significant shift. The conventional notion of a multi-decade career with one employer is being replaced by short-term, dynamic engagements that workers can complete from anywhere. From Fortune 100 multi-national corporations to governments to startups and family businesses, organizations from Victoria to Venice to Vijayawada are rethinking the traditional “learn a craft and then work until you retire” contract between educational institutions, employers, and workers. Inefficient, overpriced middlemen are being replaced with software and flexible talent markets governed by algorithms. The highly centralized hierarchies of the past are being replaced by decentralized networks, such as the Cooperative Talent Cloud.

Even as unemployment rates tick up, highly skilled professionals and flexibility-seeking widget-makers want to work and don’t always want a job. Needless to say, before us is an opportunity to reinvent why, how, when, and for whom work happens by investing in the cooperative enterprise model and co-creating a cooperative talent cloud with the right partners and interest groups.

How we got here

Evolving talent needs and expectations

Various factors are driving the need to change how we hire, develop, offboard, and redeploy workers from permanent jobs and temporary gigs. Disruptions stem from short-term engagements, market-driven evaluations, and algorithmic platforms like LinkedIn. Decentralized networks are challenging conventional systems due to rapid changes in work and necessary skills, making traditional job descriptions and recruitment cycles outdated and ineffective. Further, there is a lack of technical specialists and dynamic, resilient leaders to lead this transformation, which current educational systems are not producing quickly enough to mitigate talent gaps and skill mismatches.

Josh Berin’s simple and effective analysis of current and emerging skilled talent availability underscores how there just aren’t enough workers to fill today’s talent needs:

CEOs and CFOs are operating in what we call the “Industrial Age” – hire to grow, then lay people off when things slow down.

Well today, as we enter 2024, all that is different. We have to “hoard our talent,” invest in productivity, and redevelop and redeploy people for growth.

We live in a world of 3.8% unemployment rate, labor shortages in almost every role, an increasingly empowered workforce, and a steady drumbeat of employee demands: demands for pay raises, flexibility, autonomy, and benefits. More than 20% of all US employees change jobs each year (2.3% per month), and almost half these changes are into new industries.

Heather McGowan articulates the need to reimagine the relationships between learning, working, and longevity:

Not long ago in the long arc of human history we created life blocks of education, work, and retirement. We created work as separate from life when we left our agrarian era. We created retirement as a concept after toiling away in endless work and we created education when we needed specifically trained humans to create a deployable workforce. Now the velocity of change, driven by exponential growth in technology and our hyper-connected and interdependent global economy, we must rethink those life blocks, by turning them 90 degrees, while we rethink how we move through them. Our current systems of work, learning, retirement, and social safety nets are inadequate for this reality.

Here is how the life blocks highlighted by Bersin and McGowan are overlapping for modern workers. The new emerging model (the “new normal”) is compounded by skilled workers being even more elusive.

We need to rethink traditional life blocks because we are lifelong learners who are continuously upskilling in the flow of work; learning doesn’t stop at the end of high school or a masters degree. This “new normal” is characterized by industries overlapping, which requires transforming learning and development, from K-12 and post-secondary schools to organizational training programs, into skills-based programs that empower employees seeking varied experiences over their careers. The implications include a focus on high-retention models, human-centered leadership, and the importance of understanding worker needs and desires, with career growth and empowerment taking precedence.

In response to these shifts, companies are urged to embrace talent marketplaces, skills-based development, and learning in the flow of work. CEOs are called upon to adopt an “employee activation” approach, emphasizing listening to the workforce and delegating decision-making authority to workers so that problem-solving and innovation can unfold as close to the client/member as possible. The historical constructs of education, work, and retirement are challenged by this approach, with a call to rethink and adapt these life blocks to align with the current reality shaped by technological acceleration and global interdependence.

The External Talent Cloud

HBR’s John Winsor and Jin H. Palk’s exploration of “The External Talent Cloud” highlights the impact of the Great Resignation and the surging demand for technical and highly-skilled jobs, projecting a potential global talent shortage of 85 million jobs by 2030, equating to an $8.5 trillion productivity deficit. According to Winsor and Palk, the open-talent model involves accessing a global pool of highly skilled freelancers through digital platforms, resulting in faster, more cost-effective, and efficient work processes. Many organizations are getting started with simple pilot programs that bring experts on to projects to complete a few technical tasks, upskill junior employees in the flow of work, and leave procedures and feedback that enable sustainment of the work after they move on. Implementing an Human Resources and Finance system, like Workday or Oracle, or transitioning data to the cloud are examples of potential short-term pilot programs.

The importance of creating an external talent cloud, which is the realization of organizations around the world continually hiring, onboarding, and offboarding a global pool of talent from a democratized digital platform that is governed its community of members, enables companies to navigate this transformative shift without needing to rely on cumbersome hiring processes or static workforces. Through the external talent cloud, time outside of work is maximized through learning, which aligns with McGowan’s model above, especially when learning opportunities for workers are integrated into the platform based on workers’ upskilling needs.

One of the case studies Winsor and Palk discuss is Braintrust, a user-owned and blockchain-driven community of over 300,000 tech worker-members (not owners) who live in more than 100 countries. Braintrust offers expert-led learning and its academy provides certifications and badges, which reflects the emerging practice of skills-based learning and micro-credentialling (as opposed to degree-based learning).

But what if platforms like Braintrust were governed and owned by its worker-members?

Platform cooperativism

Platform cooperativism represents a departure from the one-directional, exploitative practices of the sharing economy and talent networks that exist today. A great thought-exercise is to imagine how Twitter, Uber, and ChatGPT would be different (or the same) if they were owned and governed by their workers, not just shareholders.

In the traditional sharing economy, corporations like DoorDash and Airbnb generate profits by acting as platform-owning-middlemen, relying on gig workers to drive, ride, complete menial tasks, and generate content, which has disrupted consumer economics in many ways – convenience is enhanced for consumers, goods and services are cheaper, employment is more precarious for workers. Platform cooperativism envisions a more humane alternative to this model where workers collectively own and govern digital platforms (e.g. developers own the platform they’re building and food delivery riders own the platform and benefit from its scale). This approach challenges the concentration of ownership, fostering peer-to-peer services and highlighting the potential of cooperatives in shaping the future of work.

The platform cooperativism concept, introduced by Trebor Scholz, proposes that workers use platform technologies to establish democratically owned enterprises. Worker-owned platforms lead to more equitable value distribution, higher pay, and increased algorithmic transparency for everyone participating in (and ideally benefitting from) the platform. Unlike relying on major corporations to reform, Scholz argues that worker cooperatives provide a more sustainable and dignified alternative to today’s models. In a future where an international network of diverse cooperatives, supported by governments worldwide, enables democracy and the well-being of workers and communities, everyone benefits from access to such a platform.

Where talent solutions are headed

The cooperative talent cloud

Distributed talent networks, some of which are controlled by workers and enabled by democratizing technologies like blockchain, are disrupting conventional and costly extractive talent models today. They are also displacing costly middlemen who connect talent with opportunities (sorry high-priced consultants and overwhelmed career centres!). The Cooperative Talent Cloud, which is a concept that builds on the idea of distributed talent networks and platform services offered by “the external talent cloud”, aligns the employee ownership, collective governance and digital access of platform cooperativism with timely, adaptive, and personalized talent solutions that meets the emerging and future needs of modern workers and employers.

From my perspective, the key differentiators of the cooperative talent cloud compared to talent platforms and distributed talent networks like Braintrust are that platform co-ops possess worker-ownership, and every member has a say, even if it’s one vote, in the enterprise’s governance.

Many cooperatives also align their purpose and operating model with the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) frameworks, and are also certified B-Corps – such alignments reflect cooperatives’ commitment to putting people, planet, and prosperity above profits.

As member-owners of The Cooperative Talent Cloud, workers co-create the rules of engagement for the enterprise, which could mean selecting clients or gigs (or, more likely, the framework for doing so), as well as how to grant credentials, badges, and/or skills-verifications within the community. What I love about The Cooperative Talent Cloud is that it allows smaller businesses, like urban delivery services or photo-sharing platforms, to hire specialized talent, such as data architects or prompt engineers, for complex tech tasks. It benefits both workers and clients by creating economies of scale.

Several cooperative platforms and/or talent clouds exist today and, with a bit of tinkering, such models could evolve into more cooperative enterprises.

Braintrust

When I read Pak and Winsor’s exploration of the External Talent Cloud, Braintrust stood out as the enterprise that most resembled a cooperative, or at least employee-owned, enterprise.

The way we work is broken. Companies know they are only as valuable as their talent: the people who build the products, drive the processes, and imagine the innovations changing the world. Yet those same companies rarely give talent control over how they work or are rewarded for their work. They rely on extracting value but don’t return it equally to those who create it. When times are good, shareholders reap the benefits. When times are bad, workers take the hit. We have accepted this, simply because most didn’t have the power to demand better.

Braintrust doesn’t operate as a cooperative enterprise. They employ on-chain proposals to modify various aspects of the network, such as fees, regulations, and procedures. Their goal is to become increasingly decentralized with the support of the community and on-chain voting. Quadratic voting allows individuals to show the importance they place on an issue by purchasing additional votes, with each subsequent vote costing more, ensuring fair voting and mitigating problems with majority dominance and vote trading. But voters don’t own the platform.

To change, the voting would need to be member-based, with each member-owner having a voting stake in the enterprise. The existing model also might be repurposed to facilitate investor-access, which is an emerging (and slighting polarizing) practice in cooperatives that aspire to blend shareholder interests with member-control. Finally, platforms like Braintrust might explore tiered or multi-participant governance models in which certain members, such as worker-owners or founders, could have more ownership and/or voting shares than clients (e.g. consumers of the Cloud’s services) or investors.

Coop Exchange

Founded by emerging-celebrity-cooperator and my good pal, Stephen Gill, Coop Exchange is building a global network of cooperative stock exchanges with the purpose of raising capital and trading financial instruments rooted in the cooperative sector and guided by its values and principles. This platform enables institutions – and, subject to regulatory approval, individuals – to invest in cooperative financial instruments. It is designed to uphold cooperative values and principles, ensuring investments align with these ideals while safeguarding coops against liquidity risk, which can be a barrier transformation for credit unions and other cooperative enterprises that rely on raising capital through or based on member deposits. Coop Exchange argues that “together, we’re turning capital into a force for good – where capital empowers people, rather than people empowering capital”.

As an existing cooperative platform, Coop Exchange would be a perfect incubator of The Cooperative Talent Cloud (perhaps a pilot program called The Talent Exchange, Stephen) because it is, as described above, a platform cooperative that already possesses a global network of cooperatives and cooperators who would benefit from the demand-for and supply-of highly skilled talent – workers could own the Talent Cloud within Coop Exchange’s existing governance model. If Coop Exchange is already matching stock exchanges with funding partners than, with some tinkering, the algorithm could evolve to match talent with skill and knowledge gaps, too.

Obran Cooperative

Obran Cooperative is a unique worker co-op that lets members work together flexibly. The co-op has different levels of collaboration, from individual members to groups that serve customers with products and services. It also has shared service units that support members and companies.

A key feature is how members can join and lead teams that form service units. These units are self-forming and contract-based, offering various services to any company within or outside the co-op. This way, talent is used where it’s needed the most, which reflects many elements of the External Talent Cloud as outlined by Pak and Winsor.

Decision-making is also shared among members. The co-op’s Board of Directors is elected by worker-owners, regardless of their company or unit. They set the co-op’s strategy and monitor leaders. Each company and group also has its own board and coordinator to set their goals. This ensures that power and resources are close to the customer, while staying true to the co-op’s mission.

Obran would make an excellent incubator for The Cooperative Talent Cloud because it is already functioning a lot like a talent cloud. For example, its talent assets are grouped in “service units”, at least one of which provides talent solutions not unlike a temp agency, that meet a variety of market needs from healthcare to technology implementation. Grouping existing service units or building new ones made up of diversely-global, multi-skilled, in-demand worker-owners could be a next step for Obran. Another option could be for Obran to launch an Academy like Braintrust’s, which would pay its member-owners to develop new skills while they are off projects or finished gigs. Obran is uniquely positioned to pilot a program that enables this continuous flow of cooperative talent into organizations around the world that are seeking to fill critical skill-gaps or disrupt their calcifying workforces.

Conclusions

By implementing pilot programs modeled after Obran’s service units or Braintrust’s distributed talent solutions, The Cooperative Talent Cloud model can test the efficacy of how flexible, skill-based talent solutions can meet the diverse and evolving market needs. This will enable co-ops to leverage their unique governance structures to foster innovation, empower members (especially workers who own the platform they’re building and supporting), and fill critical skill gaps, ultimately transforming the way we work.