As McKinsey & Co.’s director of global HR, external workers, Wendy Person leads the development of an innovative new function in HR focused on external worker (EW) strategy. Her role involves developing all the component parts to managing a global MSP and VMS centrally across three EW Centers of Excellence (in Europe, Asia and the US), for a total talent approach to people and planning to enable a modern workforce.

Person’s prior work as a labor attorney and in corporate HR and external search ignited a passion for “finding innovative ways to source talent and push the limits of traditional hiring practices,” applying her expertise at Time Warner/America Online and The Coca-Cola Co., among others. She says her strategy emphasizes helping organizations be purposeful about the way external labor is utilized and take healthy risks that enhance the business.

Since joining McKinsey in October 2019, Person is proud to have helped establish a dedicated external worker function to enable a mixed workforce that is legally sound and supports a more holistic approach to talent, with the goal of making EWs a viable and high-impact part of the overall talent strategy.

As innovative companies realize that having a total talent strategy is a competitive advantage, Person sees the changing landscape opening the door to using different game plans for different types of work that needs to be done. For external workers, she says, it is important to segregate the types of work needed and apply an approach to that type of work that benefits the external worker and the company.