WORKSHIFTER - Dispatches from the New Executive Frontier

This week's cover story in Business Week focuses on the shift in how companies are utilize their temporary workforce. "Right on up to the C-suite, more jobs will be freelance and temporary" write the authors, Peter Coy, Michelle Conlin and Moira Herbst. "The idea that any job is permanent has been well proven not to be true." The authors write that we can expect to see the perma-temp workforce dominate temporary staffing for the next 5-10 years. "Companies that seized on the recession as an opportunity to make drastic organizational changes for greater efficiency and flexibility aren't likely to reverse those changes once the economy begins growing again, says David H. Autor, a labor economist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. And companies that turned labor into a just-in-time, flexible factor of production won't return to an old-fashioned job-for-life arrangement. For the last 10 years, I and others have been saying that these trends aren't just for a fringe workforce but increasingly are for the mainstream," says Sara Horowitz, founder and executive director of the Freelancers Union, a 130,000-member advocacy group for contract workers. "This recession has shown us that the future is here."

So why write about the temporary workforce here? Because last month's The Economist and this week's Business Week are discussing the use of interim executives at the C-level, "leadership-on-demand" if you will. For those who relish working on projects and engagements with the flexibility to accept only those opportunities that are a great fit, your time is here. For clients, highly qualified, well respected executives are now available to work on an interim basis, talent that would not have been available for consulting, interim and project work in the past, allowing organizations to benefit from outstanding resources on a variable basis.  Epoch has so far experienced a 75% increase in opportunities in the first quarter compared to this time last year, and as the economy improves, we expect requests to grow significantly.  The time has come to consider "leadership-on-demand" as both a viable and effective option for business. 

To read Business Week's cover story, click here: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_03/b4163032935448.htm?chan=magazine+channel_top+stories