Enterprises can't always hire their way to the skills they need—not fast enough, anyway. According to MBO Partners' 2026 State of Independence report coming out soon, 79% of enterprises say independent professionals help them access specialized skills they cannot find internally.
MBO also estimates that 11.5 million U.S. independent professionals now serve businesses, a pool that has grown 55% since 2020. As more experienced professionals build independent careers, enterprises have a growing opportunity to tap into highly sought-after expertise on demand.
By making independent talent a core part of their workforce strategy, companies can quickly bring in the capabilities needed to move priority initiatives forward—without waiting months or years to build every skill set within their full-time workforce.
Here are four reasons enterprises are turning to independent talent for specialized skills:
1. Respond faster to changing business needs
A new initiative or unexpected challenge can create an immediate need for expertise that simply isn't available in-house yet. Independent talent closes that gap fast. Instead of turning every capability into a permanent headcount decision, companies can bring in experienced professionals for a specific project or period of growth, then scale that support as priorities evolve.
This flexibility matters most when specialized skills are scarce, competitive or moving quickly. Upwork found that 77% of business leaders say AI is increasing their need for specialized, fractional talent rather than traditional full-time roles. The workforce planning question shifts: instead of building fixed roles around long-term headcount, enterprises can focus on the capabilities they need right now.
2. Build teams with targeted expertise
Picture a company launching a new AI initiative. Its technology team knows the business, the customers, the internal systems—but lacks hands-on experience with this specific use case. Rather than stalling the initiative while that capability gets built internally, the company brings in an independent professional with the relevant expertise and keeps moving.
The same model works for a global expansion, a major project technology rollout or a specialized marketing campaign. Independent professionals plug into existing teams, offer targeted expertise, and help transfer knowledge to employees—often bringing fresh insight from working across different organizations along the way.
The result is a more intentional approach to workforce planning. Instead of asking "How many people do we need?", enterprises can ask "What capabilities will help us achieve this goal, and how do we access them?"
3. Improve your employee performance
Engaging independent talent is a way to expand what enterprises can achieve with the teams they already have. The key is deciding which capabilities are central to the business and need to be developed and retained internally—and which are a better fit for your external workforce. Our team at MBO Partners recommends maintaining core capabilities within the employee workforce while using independent talent to supplement skills needed for specific initiatives.
Think about it another way: Employees carry the institutional knowledge that keeps a business moving. Independent professionals add something just as valuable—specialized expertise and perspective gained across other organizations and industries. An internal team may know exactly how the business runs and what its customers need, while an independent professional may have already solved a similar challenge somewhere else.
Put together, those strengths sharpen decision-making and give employees access to knowledge that may not yet exist in-house.
This blended approach also builds in flexibility: enterprises keep a strong core workforce while adding specialized capability as priorities shift, without losing the continuity employees provide.
4. Bring in fresh perspectives and new ideas
An independent professional who has worked across a dozen organizations has seen a dozen ways to solve the same problem—a breadth of exposure that's hard to build inside a single company. For enterprises under pressure to adapt, that outside view can be a real advantage: a more efficient process, or maybe an approach that already delivered results elsewhere. Internal teams supply the customer knowledge and organizational context needed to make those ideas actually work.
That combination of internal context and external expertise is especially valuable as organizations adopt AI. Upwork’s 2026 skills data report found that demand for skills explicitly tied to applying AI in existing roles grew 109% year over year, which shows just how quickly capability needs can change.
Talent access also depends on being an enterprise that top independents want to work with. MBO’s State of Independence research shows that enterprises need to give independent professionals the same level of attention they give employee attraction and retention—through reliable communication, meaningful work and thoughtful integration into teams.
A more strategic approach to workforce planning
The question enterprises face is no longer "How do we hire enough employees to meet future demand?" It's "How do we make sure we can access the skills we need as priorities evolve?"
There's no single answer. The strongest workforce strategies combine developing employees, hiring full-time talent, and engaging independent professionals—each bringing distinct value toward the same goal: an organization that can move as fast as its priorities do.
Stay tuned for more insights from our 2026 State of Independence report! For more on MBO's workforce solutions, see our Enterprises page.
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