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Below is our recent interview with Miles Everson, Chief Executive Officer at MBO Partners:
Q: Miles, can you provide our readers with a brief introduction to MBO Partners?
A: MBO Partners is a direct sourcing platform that makes it easy for enterprises and high end independent professionals to do business together. We enable enterprises to engage with top independent talent, scale their growing independent workforce on our platform, and to further optimize their workforce strategy through a series of technology-driven programs that enable enterprises to get strategic clarity on how best to leverage independents in a way that works for their human capital strategy as well as their bottom line.
We have a more than 30-year history, and have engaged hundreds of thousands of independents during this time frame. We also work directly with top independent professionals to help them start, run, and grow their businesses, supporting the more than 72 million American independent workers by offering a system to build and run their businesses.
Q: Any highlights on your latest announcement?
A: We recently announced the first available data on how independents think about and use generative AI, in comparison to the traditional workforce. We found that more than one-third of independent workers are already using Gen AI in their work, and of those who do not, 62% plan to do so in the next two years.
Broadly, independents are more bullish on AI than their traditionally employed counterparts, with less fear that it will take their jobs, and more positive sentiment that they can leverage these tools to their advantage. This is not surprising; independents are generally early adopters of new technology.
For enterprises, this means that any enterprise that doesn’t incorporate AI effectively into not just their business process—but also their hiring and upskilling strategy—will dramatically shrink their competitive footprint.
Q: Who is your ideal client, and why?
A: Our ideal client is a large enterprise that is in full agreement that the workforce of today will not look or feel like the workforce of tomorrow. They are strategically evaluating the best way to solve business challenges, drive profitability, and maintain a competitive advantage. We work across industries and across borders, but our most successful clients understand that they need more than a full-time, traditionally employed workforce to solve problems, and instead turn to MBO to help them create an optimized program that blends high-value independent talent, a full-time core, and even offshore labor to strategically bind together in new and ever-changing ways to meet business demand.
Q: What can we expect from MBO Partners in the next 6 months? What are your plans?
A: We are pleased to have many growth opportunities on the horizon – 2024 will show significant advancements in our matching and sourcing technology as well as service offerings, positioning MBO as a true ‘source of talent’ for enterprises as well as a leader in management and delivery of independent workforce programs.
Despite the significant advances and scaling of new technologies and the mainstream fear mongering of what it will do to jobs, we have a human capital scarcity condition in the US workforce, which will continue for decades. We plan to help our clients source the human capital where and how the human capital wants to meet them. That is more and more workers want to be independent contractors and want to meet on talent platforms like MBO.
Q: What is the best thing about MBO Partners that people might not know about?
A: We are the only technology platform on the market with active service lines dedicated to both ensuring independent satisfaction through talent engagement as well as enterprise workforce success. Since our founding nearly 30 years ago, we have been dedicated to giving independents the control and freedom to do the work they love the way they want, and this ethos permeates every decision we make as an enterprise.
Additionally, we are the country’s largest researcher of the independent workforce. Our State of Independence in America, entering its 14th year this fall, is the longest-running and deepest dive in primary research into the size, sentiments, and future trends impacting the independent workforce in the country. What does this mean? We know independents better than anyone else, and are best positioned, both from a technology and a knowledge standpoint, to advise enterprises on how to lead the next way of working forward.
