All Posts By

Chris Koens

Chris is the President & COO of FlexTal. He brings 20+ years of experience in Customer Success, UI/UX, design, and marketing - including time within start-ups, agencies, and enterprise orgs. Chris has also served as a University adjunct professor in Advertising & Public Relations for several years.

Chris Koens
In Leadership, The Back Burner

Energy is in the Making, Not the Made

digital illustration of a treasure map with a gray X and a dotted green line to get to the X. It depicts how energy is in the making, not just the destination. The image is a light blue map on a field of dark blue.

The Creative Mornings theme for May was Create, and the local speaker was Giovannie Dixon – LA-born Jamaican-American artist, muralist, and about as self-taught as it gets. The early morning chat took place at Ignite Sparked by BBB in downtown Phoenix – comfortable, bright, built for entrepreneurs and the people who think like them. It’s the kind of place that makes you want to get busy immediately. Maybe start a podcast. Enter the co-working vs cubicle debate. Question business “truths” more this week than you did last week.

That last one turned out to be more relevant than I expected.

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Chris Koens
In Contingent Workforce, Hiring Strategy, Strategy & Business, The Back Burner

Does Their Cup Runneth Over?

a photograph of an office break room with a nearly empty coffee pot on the counter. The break room looks shabby and unattractive, highlighting that the team is at capacity.

I’m betting there is a pot of coffee in your break room right now.

Maybe it is fresh. Maybe it has been sitting on the burner since before the morning standup and some well-intentioned co-worker keeps meaning to make a new pot but the day keeps happening. Either way, it’s there. It’s always there. Because that is what coffee does – it’s reliable. It fuels the team; it absorbs whatever the morning throws at it – but it also gets burned sometimes and overflows other times. Frequently, it just ends up empty.

Your core team is that coffee. Not because they grind – although I’m sure they do – but because they’re there. They’re showing up day after day.

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Chris Koens
In Hiring Strategy, The Back Burner

Chill. We’ve Been in Your Corner – You Just Didn’t Know It.

The word "Chill." Written in a handwriting font in white on a blue field.

There’s a specific kind of exhaustion that sets in at week five of any project that was planned – and budgeted – for three. It’s not dramatic. It doesn’t announce itself. It just settles in quietly – in the fourth rescheduled deadline, the apologetic client email you draft and redraft, the Sunday afternoon you spend doing the work that Friday afternoon was supposed to hold. You’re not failing. You’re just running a marathon that started as a sprint, but kept getting longer while you continued running it – and doing it without the freelance talent support that could have made all the difference.

Most people push through. They redistribute the load, lean into the team, ask too much of the people who can least afford to give more, and eventually deliver something that’s good enough but not what it was supposed to be. Then they take a breath, declare it a win, and quietly file the whole experience under “that was rough” – without ever stopping to ask why it had to be rough in the first place.

That question, “why?” is worth asking. Because the answer, almost every time, is the same: there wasn’t enough flexible talent support in the room when the walls started closing in.

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Chris Koens
In Leadership, The Back Burner

Before the Phoenix Rises, There Are Embers

a photograph of ashes and embers, the embers form the word "EMBER"

A quick introduction before we dive in to discuss the Creative Mornings Phoenix event – I’m Chris, part of the leadership team at FlexTal. If you’ve visited our blog before, you know our content typically lives in the world of workforce strategy, flexible talent, and the future of how companies get work done. All important stuff. But our digital team has been nudging me for a while, asking me to take over the feed every now and then and share something a little more personal – so welcome to The Back Burner, where I’ll surface the ideas, observations, and occasional rabbit holes that don’t always make it into the main feed. Personal ramblings from someone who has spent 25+ years working as a freelancer, but who’s also logged his fair share of time in corporate cubicles.

So here I am. Fair warning: these posts may occasionally involve things like corporate events and musings about workforce solutions, but more than likely I’ll end up in rabbit-holes on ideas that have little or nothing to do with staffing models or hiring decisions – think of this space as a blank canvas to have you join in on the conversations I have with myself when I’m stuck in the desert, bumper-to-bumper, on I-10 during my commute.

This is one of those.

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Chris Koens
In Strategy & Business, The Future of Work

Hiring is Broken. Here’s How to Fix It

You know the drill. You meticulously craft the perfect job description and moments after you publish it to your favorite “now hiring” website your inbox becomes a battlefield of résumés, cover letters, and LinkedIn connection requests. You brace yourself for the impending onslaught of great candidates and start to dig in. The first one looks promising — until you open it and see an uber-generic, copy-paste cover letter starting with the disappointingly non-specific “To whom it may concern…” The next applicant boasts “exceptional attention to detial” (yes, spelled exactly like that). Others list “breathing” and “social media posting” as skills. There’s even a group of submissions that claim to be “fast learners” while admitting to no experience related to the job description.

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Chris Koens
In Leadership, Strategy & Business, The Future of Work

How To Leverage Flexible Talent To Avoid Leadership Fatigue Or Burnout

Graphical representation of three light blue matches in a row; the first has no flame, the second has flame, the third and rightmost has only smoke.

In today’s fast-paced business world, people get stressed and exhausted. It’s no longer just a case of the Mondays; burnout is a common challenge that affects both leaders and employees. In most workplaces, people find constant pressure to deliver results, meet deadlines, and stay ahead of the competition. This work-related stress can significantly affect employees, even the most experienced business leaders. To avoid burnout, many in the workforce reach for the most common magic potion: caffeine. However, there is another, more powerful solution. No, not a double shot of espresso. This other business secret weapon can help you and your team avoid burnout while simultaneously revolutionizing your operations: freelancers.

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Chris Koens
In Leadership, Strategy & Business, The Future of Work

The Human Connection: Building Strong Relationships with Freelancers and Full-Time Employees

graphic of 4 human figures (represented by head and shoulders in a circle). Three employees are similarly blue, one is orange. All four are connected by intersecting lines.

Let’s be honest; over the last decade, the workplace has changed. It’s not simply that executives no longer rely on Blackberry or Palm; the whole landscape has experienced significant transformation. Gone are the days when cubicle-laden offices and 9-to-5 jobs were the only options. With the rise of the gig economy, flexible talent and remote workers have become an integral part of a global workforce. However, building solid relationships with freelancers and full-time employees remains essential for successful businesses despite physical distance and differing work arrangements.

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Chris Koens
In Leadership, Lifestyle, Strategy & Business, The Future of Work

Expect Employees To Hustle

graphic depicting a stylization of the words "side hustle, 2023"

With prices for everyday items on the rise and most Americans facing the tightening of their belts, people are searching for creative ways to increase their income. After exhaustingly checking the sofa cushions for coins, many people have turned to gig work to help make ends meet. As a result, the gig economy has rapidly transformed the traditional workforce, with more and more individuals seeking freelance work to supplement their income. In fact, a recent study found that nearly half of American workers have a side hustle and are participating in the gig economy in some capacity.

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