Total talent solutions is an approach that manages permanent employees, fixed term contractors, and contingent or project based workers as a single coordinated workforce rather than three disconnected processes. Oxwana provides this for businesses that hire across multiple worker types and want one partner with a complete picture of cost, supply, and risk.
Most organisations manage their workforce in silos. Permanent hiring sits with HR. Contractors are arranged by procurement or by individual managers. Project labour is sourced through whoever happens to have a contact. Each channel has its own cost, its own suppliers, and its own data, and almost nobody has a single view of the whole. Total talent solutions closes that gap.
Who this is for
This approach suits a specific kind of business. If you employ a permanent core, bring in contractors for peaks, and stand up project teams for fixed periods, you are already running a total talent model. The only question is whether anyone is managing it as one thing. Industrial groups, engineering and construction businesses, and resource operators almost always fall into this category, because the nature of project work means the workforce expands and contracts and changes shape constantly.
Consider an operator moving a project from feasibility into construction and then into steady state operations. The feasibility phase needs a small number of specialists, often on contract. Construction needs a large, temporary, multidisciplinary team. Operations needs a stable permanent workforce. Each phase has a different talent profile, a different cost structure, and a different risk. Managing these as three unrelated exercises is how budgets drift and key roles go unfilled at the worst possible moment.
What Oxwana manages
We take responsibility for the full talent supply across all worker types. Permanent recruitment through our search and embedded capability. Contract and contingent labour through managed supplier arrangements. Project workforce planning aligned to the phase your operation is in. The point is not simply to fill each requirement but to give you one coordinated function with a single line of sight on what you are spending, where the supply risks are, and how the shape of the workforce needs to change as the business changes.
The data advantage
When all worker types run through one function, you gain something most organisations never have: clean, comparable data across the entire workforce. You can see the true cost of a contractor against a permanent hire over time. You can spot where you are repeatedly paying premium rates for skills you should be building in house. You can plan the next phase of a project with real numbers rather than guesswork. That visibility is often worth more than the efficiency savings on any single hire.
Built on sector knowledge
Total talent solutions only works when the partner understands the work. Knowing the difference between the roles needed on a greenfield construction project and those needed once a plant is operational is not generic recruitment knowledge. It comes from working in these sectors. Oxwana's model is built on exactly that depth.
How this connects to our other services
A total talent engagement frequently incorporates RPO for the permanent hiring component and Embedded and Fractional Teams where a phase needs senior recruitment capacity for a defined period. Talent Advisory usually comes first, to model the workforce across the project lifecycle before any hiring begins. This approach is most common in Mining and Resources, Construction and Infrastructure, and Manufacturing and Engineering.
Frequently asked questions
What does total talent solutions mean?
Total talent solutions is the practice of managing permanent, contract, and contingent workers as a single coordinated workforce under one function, rather than handling each worker type through a separate, disconnected process.
Which businesses benefit most from a total talent model?
Businesses with a permanent core, contractor peaks, and project based teams benefit most. This is typical of industrial, engineering, construction, and resource operators whose workforce expands and contracts across project phases.
What is the main advantage over managing workforce types separately?
A single coordinated function gives clean, comparable data across all worker types, which reveals true costs, supply risks, and where skills should be built in house rather than bought repeatedly at premium rates.