WORKSHIFTER - Dispatches from the New Executive Frontier

News On Women features Linda Stewart 

Linda Stewart, Chief Executive Officer of Epoch Workforce, has always understood that having the right people in the right place is the only way to ensure strong business results. She believes it is even more important today because of the convergence of four significant marketplace factors in this new economy: the pressure to deliver better business results and manage fixed costs; the growing demand for leadership talent as 77M baby-boomers begin to exit the workforce; the requirement to remain globally competitive when life cycles for products and services has decreased from an average of 5 years to less than 14 months; and the emergence of accomplished professionals and executives seeking alternatives to traditional employment.

In response to this, Linda, who is a former Executive Vice President of Fidelity Investments, created a business to help companies meet these challenges in a cost effective way and help accomplished executives find great project based work. Her business, EPOCH Workforce, a talent broker of sorts, was built around a new way to deploy and manage talent; one that helps companies solve specific business problems or accelerate critical initiatives with experienced "done it before" talent. This new workforce model, while relatively new in the US, has been practiced in Europe for decades. It represents the intersection of three well known and mature businesses, Executive Recruiting, Consulting, and Temporary Staffing of high level professionals. While this model makes great business sense for companies, it is also an attractive model for professionals including women, and EPOCH has engaged many who have established independent practices in significant project based work. The staffing industry analyst group predicts that by 2020, over 20% of the total workforce will be made up of independent contractors and EPOCH seeks to be the thought leader in this market and the "go to" organization for companies seeking the best talent in the marketplace today.

To read this directly from their website, go to http://www.newsonwomen.com/.

The Unicorn Group and Epoch Workforce form strategic partnership

Organization provides interim business management for early stage companies 

Washington, DC (April 22, 2010) - The Unicorn Group is proud to announce that Boston, MA based interim workforce solutions firm Epoch Workforce have formed a partnership.  The companies will leverage each others' resources to expand market share.

Epoch provides project based resources for companies and individuals alike.  The company specializes in helping start ups businesses, acting as a business concierge.  Epoch's professionals are available to clients on a project basis rather than full time.  This model helps drive business results while also keeping down fixed costs.  Epoch provides solutions for clients that are expert, independent and progressive.

"I am really looking forward to working closely with John and his Unicorn executives," says Linda Stewart, CEO and Founder of Epoch.  "We both have services for clients that compliment each other and we both feel strongly about helping our clients succeed with accomplished professionals that can drive business results and lower fixed costs.  We know that our combined efforts can bring a value added service to the marketplace."

John Aggrey, Chairman and CEO of the Unicorn Group is excited to work with Epoch as well.  "Epoch is a company with a growing reputation for providing interim professional and executive resources for companies.  I am looking forward to working with Linda and her team.  They provide to our clients, a needed resource as a crucial step in the pre-funding phase when the need for a full service executive search firm is often premature."

The Unicorn Group is expanding as well.  Over the next year, the company will be adding more business development people which will help to grow their business.  "When companies come to Unicorn, they are looking for us to provide services that will give them their best return on investment," said Aggrey.  "It is my job to be out there looking for the right people who can help provide that return for those companies."

About The Unicorn Group

The management of The Unicorn Group brings over 50 years of collective experience and has spent over 20 years developing a process of Executive Relationship Marketing (ERM) patterned after the Asian principles of Guanxi (pronounced Guan-chee). With a personal network of over 2,400 senior executives in the United States and around the world, we screen the technology landscape to identify hard to find, best-of-breed, early stage business solutions and present them to relevant decision-makers in targeted industry verticals across corporate America to create efficiencies and optimize productivity.  For more information, please visit http://www.useunicorn.com/ or contact CEO John Aggrey at 202-460-1150 or jwaggrey@useunicorn.com.

About EPOCH Workforce

Epoch provides business solutions for workforce management in the new economy.  For more information on how EPOCH's Business Solutions for Workforce Management can benefit your organization, please contact Linda Stewart at 617-440-3092 or e-mail us at lstewart@epochworkforce.com.

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White House Senior Advisor Valerie Jarrett sent out an email today asking what steps do we think government should take to help American businesses spur job creation in preparation for his speech at tomorrow's Business Roundtable event. It is their hope that a dialogue is started about how to spur job growth. I've pasted Linda Stewart's response below.

"As a result of the market correction, businesses are forever changed.  They are not hiring today because they are afraid to take on all the fixed costs associated with traditionally employing people and building up their high fixed cost infrastructure again.  However, after maintaining very lean organizations for almost two years, they recognize that they now need to move forward and get things done and they don't have the human capital to do it.  As a result of their reluctance to traditionally hire, companies should be allowed and encouraged to bring people in on a temporary or a project basis.  This will put hundreds of thousands of people back to work and will help companies more effectively manage their fixed costs.  Their labor costs will become variable and they will be much more willing to spend the dollars when they know that they can "turn it off" if market conditions or business results deteriorate in any way.  With labor costs being an average of over 80% of total fixed costs, being able to be more responsive to changes in market conditions creates a much more flexible and manageable workforce. In addition, it will give people, currently unemployed, access to jobs, (albeit a bit more unstable than traditional employment). It will still, however, provide them an income stream that doesn't exist today, to help rebuild the economy.  Let's face it, the fundamental relationship between people and organizations has changed.  It used to be that in exchange for loyalty, you got employment security.  In today's highly competitive global economy, organizations need to deploy and utilize talent very differently. Companies can no longer guarantee employment and people cannot give them complete loyalty. Instead, people give companies their time and skills in exchange for compensation for doing specific work for specific periods of time.  A permanent temporary workforce is going to be a vital part of our new economy moving forward and could effectively stimulate the economy very rapidly. I would welcome the opportunity to speak more about this with anyone.  Jobs need to be redefined.  This is the beginning of a new an important period in the history of jobs and the workforce."

Epoch has been talking about the evolution of the executive and the "new way to work" for a few years now. My colleague, Linda Stewart, once had an epiphany in a meeting back in 2007 - it struck her that the evolution of the independent executive is beginning to mirror both the movie and sports industries. Further, we started to see that as business embraced a new model of working with executives who possess deep expertise and experience, their efficiencies and expertise accelerated business results.  Linda partnered with Julie Sue Auslander to create yesterday's FAST COMPANY blog; you can read it below or online at: http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/julie-sue-auslander/company-you-keep/big-screen-ballpark-board-room.

FC Expert Blog

From the Big Screen to the Ballpark to the Board Room

BY FC Expert Blogger Julie Sue AuslanderMon Dec 21, 2009 at 4:00 PM This blog is written by a member of our expert blogging community and expresses that expert's views alone.

Fashions and hairstyles have traditionally been the biggest trends coming out of Hollywood. But, the way people now work there is another trend that businesses should become more familiar with. Years ago, Hollywood moguls controlled everything and employed everyone; an unsustainable model because of its high fixed costs. Hollywood soon saw the development of the talent agent, someone brokering the people and the studios, matching individuals' talents with studio requirements on an as needed basis.

And then, once that system matured and to more effectively manage the business of moviemaking, Hollywood innovated a new model that uses free agent teams, a talent deployment and utilization strategy that allows the studios to be more flexible, agile, competitive and cost effective. Thomas Malone describes this trend as a shift from "command and control thinking to coordinate and cultivate."  This had a major impact on the way people work. Today, rather than traditionally employing large groups of people, project teams are common in the film industry. A producer, a director, actors, cinematographers and others come together for the purpose of making one movie and then disband and regroup in different combinations to make others. A new team is then put together and people with the required skills are brought together to execute in the most efficient and effective way. 

Another major industry to follow Hollywood's lead was professional sports. For years, players were owned by the franchises. Slowly but surely, the highly accomplished and most desirable people in sports began to be represented by talent agents. These agents act as brokers between the best athletes and the sports teams that need their talents to fill specific requirements for specific time periods.

Why shouldn't the corporate world begin to embrace this model as an efficient and effective way to manage businesses?  Agents, such as epochworkforce.com, can now help companies engage the talent they need to solve specific business problems or accelerate critical initiatives. It is an idea whose time has come to the boardroom for three primary reasons:

• Businesses can gain access to deep knowledge and expertise-with done it before resources
• All associated costs are variable rather than fixed -no recruiting, benefits or severance costs
• Independent professionals and executives are goal oriented and have no political agenda-giving business leaders the objective feedback they need to make great business decisions.

Accomplished professionals and executives in unprecedented numbers are seeking alternatives to traditional employment. The "independently employed" workforce is emerging. These are people who choose to continue to leverage their valuable skills but act as free agents. They are engaging with companies in projects where they can capitalize on their valuable expertise for limited time periods or for specific project needs. Self employed workers increased significantly over the last few years and consulting is the most desirable option for work according to research done by Merrill Lynch.

The days of a company taking care of you and your family are long gone; the 90's changed all that. As Daniel Pink so articulately states, "It used to be that the bargain between employee and employer was that the employee gave loyalty and the employer gave security...the bargain is now that the individual gives talent and the organization provides opportunities."  That is a fundamental and significant change in the relationship. This fundamental change is going to create a need for talent agents to represent executives and accomplished professionals with valuable skills in what will be a fiercely competitive marketplace. Peter Cappelli, Director of the Center for Human Resources at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania says "It's much more like an open market; you need intermediaries in the middle to help the markets operate. And the intermediaries are the people who can help match workers to jobs."  According to Linda Stewart, CEO of EPOCH Workforce, this is a model that has been practiced extensively in Europe and Asia for decades. As a result of these economic times, when companies need to continue to drive results but must learn to manage their fixed costs, of which employment is the largest component, it just makes good business sense to engage people in project oriented work rather than employ them.

To take full advantage of the growing independently employed market, companies must learn to trust accomplished free agents with important strategic and tactical assignments. Operationally, they must learn to assemble the right team for each task and then disband it, confident that executive talent will be available for future projects. By engaging accomplished professionals and executives they need for limited time and variable costs, forward thinking companies can increase their business agility, manage risks, reduce costs and drive business results.