SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 08, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Upwork, the largest global freelancing website, announced the launch of its Program Owner Experience for Upwork Enterprise clients. Announced at its second annual Work Without Limits Executive Summit, the new program provides companies with the resources and tools they need to drive flexible workforce adoption. The majority (59 percent) of companies are leveraging flexible teams including freelancers, temporary and agency workers, yet existing contingent models are no longer effective in meeting companies accelerating talent needs.
“Workforce transformation is the next critical stage of digital transformation and a requirement for companies competing for talent,” said Stephane Kasriel, CEO of Upwork. “While companies today spend $3.5 trillion on contingent labor, existing models are restrictive; constrained by geography, lack of transparency and prohibitive cost structures. We’re helping companies shift their contingent spend to a flexible workforce model that provides them with the visibility, access to talent and management capabilities they need to compete at a global scale.”
Technological innovations and increasing demand for service sophistication is driving companies to explore alternatives to traditional staffing. Fortune 500 enterprises such as GE, Samsung and Microsoft are embracing online talent platforms to access flexible, temporary talent around the world to increase the speed of innovation. While adoption of flexible staffing is on the rise, many companies lack the institutional knowledge and resources needed to support this new way of working.
The new Program Owner Experience takes Upwork’s Enterprise offering to new heights providing companies with the resources and tools they need to build, scale and measure the impact of their flexible talent program, while adding bottom-line value.
Program toolkit
The Upwork Enterprise portal offers program owners who are responsible for building flexible teams a robust toolkit to help assess an organization’s overall program effectiveness, including organizational adoption and ROI. The portal features:
- Performance metrics to enable program owners the ability to track and report on its flexible workforce adoption progress, which includes the number of registered and inactive users, while offering actions they can take to meet business goals.
- Tools and resources with tactical guidance to help administrators across the organization drive adoption and ensure program success. The tools and resources include training and consultations, marketing support, peer-to-peer guidance and best practices, and the ability to invite colleagues within the organization.
Insights and Trends
The new Insights and Trends page via the portal gives program owners access to key data to help them better understand how their program is performing against traditional staffing, identify gaps and compare with how other enterprise companies are using the platform. The Insights and Trends section provides:
- Talent data summary which includes details on how the company is leveraging the platform to engage talent, the average time-to-hire, fill rates and total spend.
- Program utilization monitoring to enable program owners the ability to easily review their company’s utilization data by category, hiring manager or freelancer within a given time period and share the data across the organization.
- Skills and project insights that enable program owners to educate users on the types of work that can be done on the platform utilizing data obtained on the average project costs per skill and available talent, and sample job posts.
- Enterprise trends, available through the Trends Page, offers program owners a view into how other enterprise customers are using the platform. The Trends page also provides program owners the latest insights on fast-growing skills, top categories and top countries to help ensure program success.
For more information about Upwork Enterprise visit: https://www.upwork.com/enterprise/.
About Upwork
Upwork is the largest global freelancing website. Upwork Enterprise combines technology and services, giving companies a single solution that makes it simple, quick and cost effective to access qualified freelance talent.
Twenty-eight percent of Fortune 500 companies and other notable companies utilize Upwork to find and engage freelancers, including organizations such as Airbnb, Dropbox, and Juniper Networks. The company is headquartered in Mountain View, Calif., with offices in San Francisco, Chicago and Oslo, Norway. For more information, visit our website at www.upwork.com, join us on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
Contact
Katie Evans
Upwork
press@upwork.com