Many business leaders find themselves in a tricky spot. You need specialized skills for a project, but hiring a full-time employee isn’t practical. This is where contingent workforce management comes into play, offering a solution.
This approach gives companies the ability to rapidly adjust their workforce based on current needs. It allows for flexibility and access to specialized skills without the long-term commitment of hiring permanent employees.
But how do you handle this temporary team? How is contingent workforce management properly done so it doesn’t turn into a headache? After years in this industry, I will go over the core pieces.
Table Of Contents:
- What is Contingent Workforce Management?
- Key Elements of Effective Management
- Strategic Planning for Contingent Workforce Management
- Conclusion
What is Contingent Workforce Management?
This approach goes beyond simply hiring temporary staff. It covers every step involved. This includes finding the talent, integrating them into existing processes, and managing their contributions.
It also has many other items that must be accounted for. We’re talking proper classification, managing legal agreements, tracking work performance, and a host of details for the HR team and procurement functions.
The Strategic Importance of a Contingent Workforce
Companies today deal with projects that vary greatly. Sometimes projects pop up, and it is something you haven’t dealt with before, so no one on the team has the relevant experience. With contingent talent, you get quick access to experienced independent contractors.
Think about seasonal demand or one-off projects requiring knowledge workers. Contingent workforce management allows businesses to scale their team up or down. A study showed approximately one-third of U.S. workers are non-permanent employees.
Common Challenges
Finding skilled individuals is challenging, with one survey reporting up to $1.3 trillion of contingent workforce management services each year. Misclassification can result in fines, back taxes, and potential lawsuits for the hiring manager.
Maintaining data safe with transient staff can be hard. Keeping data secure, getting devices back at project end, and blocking remote access are crucial business process considerations.
Key Elements of Effective Management
The whole contingent workforce program will need planning. This part needs more time dedicated, or else headaches pop up as problems show themselves down the line.
Defining Your Goals and Objectives
Be specific about what you want to achieve with your workforce strategy. Set goals up front, or things fall apart.
Consider a situation. If an external worker doesn’t know about deliverables and deadlines, they can’t give what is needed. A detailed document before work begins keeps gig workers performing in a similar fashion.
Streamlined Communication
Think about setting regular check-ins, through daily emails, quick phone calls, weekly meetings, and using the same methods for employee collaboration. Treating temporary hires like full-time employees can make for smooth working operations. Set agency workers up with company email accounts.
Contingent workforce members may need tools for getting feedback or talking with team leads. Without guidance, how can anyone learn to be their best on the project?
Optimized Onboarding
Imagine you hire an app development group for a new initiative, where work has to begin quick to get market traction before another company comes along. Giving contingent hires the information needed sets you on your way.
Training materials should focus on how people are expected to contribute to their assigned roles. Documents about things, that can include using a content management system, security requirements, etc., should also be included. Also direct sourcing details if that applies.
Collaboration Across Teams
Regular team meetings can let temporary team members learn more about what full-time members are working on. Working together can produce new, more original approaches. Bringing these parts together enhances contingent workforce solutions operations.
Performance Evaluation
Regular assessments allow leaders to catch if someone is underperforming. Regular discussions allows a chance to see a team’s growth. With it all workers see opportunities where they need to focus, including the job role of each person.
Feedback should address their tasks and goals, with suggestions to achieve deliverables. The temporary workers or team has to understand expectations, so share this when starting a new project. Be sure to review the worker experience for any issues.
Legal and Regulatory Requirements
A worker could have benefits given, as one that would classify a person as full-time instead of contingent. Make sure everyone gets put into the proper category. Consider using a services provider if help is needed.
Legal considerations might come with laws for remote or hybrid work situations. Labor laws might dictate payments for remote and traditional, office situations. Having a global contingent team opens you up to local rules you might not know about and create a risk management issue.
Technology-Driven Solutions
Contingent workforce management solutions come packed with a range of technology. It lets companies see where improvements can be made for contingent hires. Some vendors specialize in data-centered approaches and offer workforce solutions.
Modern tech provides solutions to streamline a range of hiring functions. It can be hard if there are many workers engaged, especially as companies get bigger.
Vendor Management Systems (VMS)
A vendor management system (VMS) can become the backbone of strategic workforce strategies. A good VMS handles everything: requesting help, bringing someone onto a team, seeing what everyone is up to, to offboarding, and all the analytics you’ll want. The user experience should also be clean and intuitive.
VMS options support integrating a company’s own existing systems. These provide automation for managing contingent talent and keeping data consistent. An advisor report can give even greater context.
Here are ways a VMS can enhance operations:
| Benefit | Description |
|---|---|
| Sourcing Efficiency | Quickly access talent from a network of pre-screened talent, reducing time-to-hire. |
| Cost Savings | Improve negotiations with vendors and optimize pay rates using data insights for maximum cost savings. |
| Risk Mitigation | Properly classify workers and automate compliance tasks to ensure workers are properly accounted for. |
| Data-Driven Analytics | Use performance management data to refine strategies, helping drive greater results and workforce efficiency. |
| Time and Attendance Tracking | Make tracking worker hours, timesheets, and payments simple and convenient for everyone including time workers. |
Managed Service Providers (MSP)
Managed Service Providers are a key part of managing the contingent members. An MSP solution can make it much more streamlined.
These providers give networks of pre-screened temporary staff, ready to take action. This can cover management duties. A recent SIA report gives proof for what’s going on in this supply chain market.
An managed service provider could handle administrative duties to reduce time HR and purchasing teams. This can result in improvements with supplier management and supplier diversity.
Leveraging Technology for Growth
Cloud solutions can help you to grow rapidly when demand changes. As markets continue evolving, using cloud providers helps provide workforce flexibility.
There are various workforce management tasks made for cloud solutions, such as payroll, expenses, invoicing, or project management software. Organizations benefit from having more flexible tools. It can improve areas such as services procurement.
Strategic Planning for Contingent Workforce Management
Proper planning helps the management and success for those workers.
Building a Comprehensive Strategy
This includes integrating plans for managing this segment of staff. You must create contingent workforce strategy plans before you get a new external group. Plans have to reflect needs and the best approaches that will work for your workforce program.
Set specific guidelines. Outline needs, expected outputs, and a plan for communicating, with schedules and frequency. Share how contingent groups are viewed, so other employees learn more about treating them.
You may choose to present it through presentations at an annual meeting or training seminar. Organizations typically find having an action plan before employing contingent workers to be extremely helpful. All planning helps give a positive experience.
Building Strong Vendor Relationships
Think of providers like business partners. Relationships depend on providing feedback on experiences you have, letting others learn where improvements should be prioritized. Look for feedback within talent pools.
This two-way street fosters continued value and improved partnerships. It should all result in effective contingent workforce management.
Conclusion
In wrapping things up, contingent workforce management involves many parts. When done correctly, it results in huge wins for everyone, especially for specific work short-term projects in life sciences and professional services.
Getting skilled talent fast provides opportunity to grow more in an organization. Companies rely on contingent staffing to reach various goals.
However, making sure things go well, with detailed contingent workforce strategy, a clear roadmap, with processes helps a company move successfully. Remember, workforce management solutions provide tools to streamline finding top performers for key project goals for the public sector. Having a winning contingent workforce can be a game changer.
