The tendency by many organizations in the recession was to reduce head count but maintain the same responsibilities, now with a smaller workforce. The surviving employees were now saddled with responsibilities that did not match their talents, strengths or passions. They feel overwhelmed, underappreciated and undervalued. This disengages your best employees. And, as recent surveys indicate, these same employees are now unhappy with their work and indicate that as times improve, they will look to change jobs.

So consider this. Look at the roles and responsibilities in the organization that must be done by the core, fulltime staff. Then determine all other roles and responsibilities that can be hosted by flexible free agents – outsourced by people who are as talented about the particular role as your full time employees are in their roles. Flexible free agents are those who do a particular task for many companies – on a part-time basis. Think of flexible free agents as the half step between a fulltime employee and an entrepreneur. Many have been laid off from their roles and have strung several part-time, task-specific roles together to invent a new job. This creates a new and valuable type of contract employee in today’s workplace.

So, back to your workplace. Some roles are so core to the business that it is important to have them staffed by fulltime employees. Some roles can be done on a part-time or temporary basis by someone who is exceptional at the task (flexible free agents). This way, free agents are hired only when needed, do not incur additional overhead, and are extremely productive. This allows the full time employee to stay more focused on their critical responsibilities – those that drive greater customer loyalty, drive greater results or increase efficiencies.

Here are two examples:

Surveying customers is a critical responsibility of every organization; it is important that your organization always know what your customers think and feel. Though critical, it can easily be outsourced to survey organizations or to flexible free agents who specialize in this work for your industry. You need the information; you don’t need to gather the information.

Creating an employee handbook, a company intranet, or a company newsletter are all tasks that improve the quality of the work life but can be easily outsourced to allow your talented fulltime employees to stay focused on customer service and profit-generating tasks.

So what are the fixed roles for your organization? What roles can be flexible? You don’t need to hire full time employees for every role. Hire fulltime when the role requires it. Otherwise, use flexible free agents.

Please forward this to someone who can benefit from it, and contact me to help introduce how to maximize your employees’ performance.