Organisations often grapple with the complexities of access to skills, particularly in anticipating project needs and rapid talent deployment. In 2023, about 1 in 5 global financial services firms achieved less than half of their project goals, largely (40%) due to a lack of skilled talent, which has become increasingly evident over the last three years. Addressing this challenge, Outsized, the leading on-demand talent platform in the Middle East, Asia-Pacific, Africa, and Australia has announced the launch of 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. Some of our largest Clients co-created this proposition with us and we have seen successful adoption of more than four pre-vetted benches made for six different clients in four geographies. This has led to 8 projects using supplemental talent from our benches and helped Clients reduce time to project start by an average of 2 months per project, all within the beta testing period of 3 months.”
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.
Virtual Bench is prevalent not only in consulting firms but has also been effectively applied in various enterprises to meet fluctuating demands the rise of virtual benches marks a significant departure from the traditional staffing model. They offer a solution that aligns closely with organisational needs, providing curated, always-on capabilities with low fixed costs, and strategic adaptability in a rapidly changing business landscape. Firms can build increasingly diverse and broader pools of talent and build out their bench as an enterprise.
As Outsized continues to lead the way in enabling the on-demand talent market to thrive, Virtual Bench is set to become a cornerstone of the strategic workforce for forward-looking organisations.
