Insights from the Morgan McKinley Ireland Quarterly Employment Monitor allow Una Herlihy, Co-founder and chief Matchmaker at The Indie List, to reflect on how flexible talent models can address current workforce challenges.
At The Indie List, our mission has always been to level the playing field for freelancers and challenge the conventional structures that often put talented independents on the back foot.
Over the last 5 years, I’ve witnessed firsthand the rollercoaster of workplace trends that have defined recent years.
We’ve been reading about – and experiencing – the Great Resignation, The Great Reconsideration, Quiet Quitting, and Loud Layoffs.
Now, the recent findings from Morgan McKinley Ireland’s Quarterly Employment Monitor have revealed yet another trend, “Quiet Redundancies”, sweeping through the professional employment landscape.
What’s next? The Great Ghosting? Hush-Hush Halving? The Great Disillusionment? Whatever clever name emerges, the reality remains that the traditional employment landscape is shifting beneath our feet as companies increasingly opt not to renew contracts, merge roles, and not replace departing staff as part of their operational strategy.
For permanent employees, contract workers and traditional recruitment agencies, this isn’t just a trend—it’s a ticking time bomb!
But let’s not catastrophise too much …. there is a twist: while old models continue to struggle, visionary businesses are sprinting toward a radical reimagining of work itself.
The Innovation Paradox
The corporate conundrum facing business leaders today is how to deliver more with less, because let’s face it, slashing headcount doesn’t necessarily decrease the workload.
This is a classic innovation paradox at work.
Just when businesses desperately need fresh thinking and agile responses, they’re dismantling the teams capable of delivering it.
It’s like removing your oxygen tank to swim faster underwater – it’s an illogical trade-off!
The Business Talent Group’s 2025 High-End Independent Talent Report puts this in stark perspective: a staggering 95% of executives admit they’ll struggle to secure the right combination of skills, capacity, and expertise over the next three to five years.
Yet the work tsunami keeps coming—products still need developing, campaigns need executing, relationships need maintaining, and new opportunities won’t politely wait for headcount approvals.
The Flexible Talent Advantage
So while many traditional employers who are resistant to change are busy rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic, forward thinking organisations are moving in a different direction, towards a blended talent model that incorporates freelance talent activated exactly when and where business demands require it.
According to Business Talent Group’s latest research, this isn’t just a fringe movement; it’s a full-scale shift, with demand for interim leaders skyrocketing 310% since 2020.
The appeal is clear when you consider the transformative advantages:
1. Scalability: Expand and contract your team like breathing—inhale talent for growth periods, exhale costs during quieter times. No golden handcuffs, no awkward goodbye parties.
2. Specialised Expertise: Need a TikTok strategist today, a brand positioning expert tomorrow, and a marketing automation specialist next week? Done.
Access specialised talent that would be impossible to justify as full-time hires, especially for one-off projects or specific problems to be solved.
3. Cost Control: Transform fixed headcount into variable expenses that align with business needs. Your finance team will be amazed when budgets flex with business priorities rather than being locked into salaries.
4. Agility: While your competitors are still writing job descriptions, you’ve already deployed top talent and seized the day.
In today’s fast-changing business landscape, speed isn’t just an advantage—it’s the difference between relevance and irrelevance.
This model offers something fresh that acknowledges economic realities while preserving access to critical skills and capabilities.
By tapping into networks of independent professionals, businesses can maintain agility and executional quality, which is the holy grail in uncertain times.
Embracing a New Model for Uncertain Times
Let’s be brutally honest: the corporate playbook of quiet redundancies might temporarily stop the bleeding on the balance sheet, but at what cost to your innovation capacity, competitive edge, not to mention the mental health of your already stretched team?
The data speaks volumes.
Business Talent Group reports that requests for strategic planning experts have surged by nearly a third year on year, while demand for AI and machine learning specialists has increased by 46% and 35% of all M&A projects now rely on interim/fractional specialists to manage these highly complex (and frequent) organisational transformations.
The writing isn’t just on the wall. It’s flashing in neon lights.
The employer-employee relationship is being rewired right in front of our eyes and those clinging to outdated models are likely to soon find themselves wondering how their nimbler competitors are consistently delivering better work with seemingly fewer resources.
The answer?
They’ve abandoned rigid talent structures for something far more powerful: a rich diversity of perspectives, specialist skills, innovative thinking and cost efficiency that only a flexible talent model can deliver.
Times may be uncertain, but what’s becoming increasingly clear is that traditional talent models need to evolve.
The future appears to favour organisations that combine their existing strengths with the agility to tap into the extraordinary human potential that exists beyond traditional employment boundaries.
The question isn’t whether this shift is happening.
It’s whether you’ll be leading the posse or scrambling to catch up.
