Organizations across industries face a common challenge. They need specialized skills, faster execution, and greater flexibility, while traditional hiring models often struggle to keep pace. In this conversation, VirgilHR CEO and Founder Jocelyn King speaks with Tony Buffum, Co-Founder of Human Cloud, about how workforce strategy is evolving and why HR leaders should reconsider how they define talent, structure work, and design their organizations. Their discussion connects three issues shaping the flexible talent economy: changing workforce preferences, outcome-based work design, and the governance required to engage talent responsibly.
The Workforce Has Already Changed
Independent work is no longer a niche trend. Upwork’s 2026 workforce research reports that 39% of U.S. workers freelance, while 38% of skilled knowledge workers operate as freelancers or independent professionals. More professionals are choosing to work as freelancers, consultants, independent contractors, and on-demand specialists; for some, that path begins immediately after graduation, while others leave established corporate careers in pursuit of greater autonomy and flexibility.
This shift is economically significant as well as cultural. Upwork’s Future Workforce Index found that skilled U.S. freelancers generated $1.5 trillion in earnings in 2024. King and Buffum emphasize that talent is moving toward greater flexibility and more options for bringing skills to market. For employers, that movement creates access to expertise that may once have been unavailable, difficult to recruit, or too costly to retain full time, and makes a workforce strategy focused exclusively on full-time hiring increasingly limiting.
Compliance Tip: Organizations engaging independent contractors should establish clear worker-classification processes and regularly review applicable state and local requirements, which can vary significantly by jurisdiction.
Stop Hiring for Jobs. Start Solving Problems.
This broader shift raises a practical question: how should organizations define what they need? Rather than beginning with a job description, leaders should start by asking:
What does success look like, and which outcomes will define it?
This outcome-first mindset marks a significant departure from conventional hiring. When turnover creates a gap, organizations often try to replace the departing employee with someone who has a nearly identical profile, but that default can obscure more effective solutions. By defining desired outcomes first, leaders can identify the work that must be completed and the capabilities required to deliver it.
Compliance Tip: Before outsourcing work, document the project scope, deliverables, and expected outcomes. Clear expectations support sound engagement practices and can help reduce classification risk.
Deconstruct Work Before Reconstructing It
That outcome-first mindset translates into a practical method for workforce transformation. Instead of treating a role as a fixed position held by one person, organizations can deconstruct the work into three components:
- Desired outcomes
- Required tasks
- Necessary skills
With those elements defined, leaders can determine the most effective way to source the talent or technology needed. Consider a difficult-to-fill role that appears to require an MBA and extensive industry experience. Once the work is analyzed, however, the organization may find that success depends on a more focused set of capabilities: research, data analysis, spreadsheet management, and reporting.
For example, an organization can source those capabilities through remote freelance talent and potentially fill the need in three weeks instead of the 10 to 12 weeks often required for a traditional search. In this hypothetical scenario, the model could reduce recruiting and labor costs by approximately 25%, maintain quality through a 95% accuracy rate and positive stakeholder feedback, and improve productivity by 20% through faster delivery and increased team capacity. These figures are illustrative, but the lesson for HR leaders is straightforward: many workforce challenges are, at their core, work-design challenges.
Compliance Tip: Ensure contractor agreements define project-based work and specific deliverables rather than responsibilities that closely resemble an employment relationship, particularly in long-term engagements.
Flexibility Creates New Opportunities for Innovation
This process can also reveal opportunities beyond staffing. By deconstructing a role and assigning specialists to discrete tasks, a team can identify repetitive work suitable for automation and engage expertise, such as robotic process automation, only where it is needed. That broader view can produce efficiencies a traditional hiring process might not surface.
The principle is simple. When organizations focus on outcomes rather than traditional staffing structures, they expand the range of viable solutions. That principle is becoming increasingly relevant as AI changes skill requirements: 77% of business leaders surveyed by Upwork said AI is increasing their need for fractional talent with specialized skills. Depending on the outcome, the right solution may involve:
- Full-time employees
- Freelance specialists
- Automation
- A combination of all three
The goal is not to replace employees. It is to align resources with business outcomes.
Compliance Tip: When introducing automation or AI-enabled workflows, assess the effects on job responsibilities, documentation requirements, data governance, and applicable employment policies.
The Biggest Barrier Is Not Technology
Technology and talent platforms, however, are only part of the equation. Mindset often remains the primary barrier to change. Many hiring managers have spent years filling roles in familiar ways and naturally return to those methods when a new need arises, while organizations willing to challenge those assumptions can improve speed, control costs, access specialized skills, and strengthen agility.
โWhen you think about how work gets done differently and resource it differently, it opens up a ton of different possibilities.โ
Tony Buffum
The central takeaway is that rethinking how work gets done and how it is resourced opens new possibilities. The organizations best positioned to adapt are those willing to test new workforce models while maintaining clear governance and compliance safeguards.
Compliance Tip: Establish internal guidelines for engaging contingent workers, including approval procedures, onboarding standards, classification reviews, access controls, and contract-management requirements.
Make Compliance Part of the Strategy
Any flexible workforce strategy also needs guardrails to remain sustainable. Worker classification is one of HR leaders’ most persistent concerns, and requirements can differ across states, municipalities, and countries. That complexity makes disciplined governance and ongoing monitoring essential, not an administrative afterthought.
A strong partner ecosystem can help. Organizations benefit from trusted specialists in compliance, classification, and workforce administration, allowing HR teams to focus on strategic workforce decisions while drawing on the expertise needed to navigate legal and regulatory complexity.
Compliance Tip: Work with qualified compliance partners and review contractor-engagement practices regularly to confirm alignment with evolving federal, state, local, and, where applicable, international requirements.
Designing the Workforce of the Future
Taken together, these ideas present the future of work not as a binary choice between employees and freelancers, but as a strategic discipline that aligns skills, resources, technology, and talent models with business outcomes. Organizations that adopt this approach can respond faster to market shifts, access specialized expertise when needed, and build more resilient workforce structures.
As workforce expectations evolve, HR leaders have an opportunity to move beyond traditional headcount planning and design work for greater flexibility, effectiveness, and sustainability. The organizations that succeed may not be those with the largest teams, but those best able to match talent and technology to outcomes, wherever that talent resides.
About VirgilHR Perspectives
VirgilHR Perspectives brings together conversations with leading HR practitioners, workforce experts, and compliance professionals to explore the trends shaping the future of work.