Dear Colleagues,
I have been recently asked by a major publishing company to edit another book on talent management – please see the background below:
We would like to take a closer look at the white-collar workforce (perhaps, the professional service employees, e.g., consultants, etc.) who work on a project basis, without tying themselves with traditional employer-employee relationships. Latest research in this area shows that the labor force, especially in the professional services market, seems to be splitting into two parts – traditional employees (those with salaries, benefits, regulated work hours, etc.) and non-traditional (contingent) employees who are not employed full-time due to other priorities they have in life. The main premise, upon which we are grounding our arguments, is that these "freelancers" possess a tremendous amount of knowledge, skills, and abilities, and that if the firms that employ them on a project basis wish to retain their expertise in the long run, they must reconsider their retention strategies. That is because these professionals value other retention factors in comparison to more "traditional" employees – for instance, they enjoy their freedom, independence, autonomy in decision making, etc., over job security, benefits, pleasant work atmosphere, etc. Besides retention, we can also take a look at such important HRM issues as compensation, organizational culture integration, customer relations, etc., pertaining to these non-traditional employees.
At this point, I would like to begin with some sort of market research and ask those of you working in this area to inform me about your possible interest in contributing. Please also feel free to share any ideas that you might have in regards to this upcoming book.
As a preliminary consideration, I am thinking of making this publication suitable to both academics involved in teaching, consulting, and executive education, and practitioners who want to use talent management techniques developed by leading scholars in this area of knowledge.
Looking forward to your reply,
Vlad Vaiman
P.S. Please reply to my work e-mail at vlad@ru.is