As the number of employers plan to increase their use of contingent workers over the coming years, so does the importance of implementing an effective contingent workforce program that gives your business visibility and control over its non-employee workforce.
According to a new study, as covered on Staffing Hub, the average company reported that contingent labor accounts for 28 percent of their workforce, with nearly seven in 10 (67 percent) expecting their use of contingent labor to increase in the next 18 months.
The study found that the majority of organizations (82 percent) had contingent workforces that were at least 50 percent made up of “skilled” non-employee workers. The tops reasons for using contingent labor were to:
Only 14 percent of organizations reported using contingent workers to save money.
Are you managing your contingent workforce program effectively?
However, despite the growth of contingent workforce staffing among organizations and their reasons for using non-employee workers, businesses also stated that this workforce category comes with a range of challenges.
The top pain points for organizations when it comes to the contingent workforce include:
To avoid these pain points, as well as mitigate the risks that come with a contingent workforce (such as rogue spend, lack of visibility into staffing agency performance and non-standardized processes across your company), it’s critical to implement a highly-strategic contingent workforce management program.
With that in mind, we’ve listed a few tips here that can help your organization ensure it’s managing its contingent workforce correctly.
✔️ Build a company-wide programHiring contingent workers with no strategic program in place will lead to huge amounts of wasted money for your business. Hiring managers will all pay different rates to staffing agencies, and your company will have no idea how much is being spent and how staffing agencies are performing. A strategic, and centralized, program, will ensure every hiring manager is working from the same hymn sheet to help your business achieve its goals.
✔️ Use contingent workforce technologyThe implementation of a vendor management system will allow your organization to centralize contingent workforce data and automate time-consuming processes. By doing so, you’ll be able to save money, improve program efficiency and ensure you are recording the information you need to prove that you are complying with local and national employment regulations.
✔️ Break down silos between HR and procurementContingent workforce doesn’t need to be a HR or procurement focus. In fact, by harnessing the skills of both departments through collaboration and communication, your business can improve its contingent workforce visibility, better analyze data and gain complete control over its program. HR can use its knowledge of engagement and retention to improve how you re-engage contingent workers, while procurement can focus on cost and risk. A contingent workforce program should be a company-wide shared goal that focuses on filling skills gaps with high-quality workers in a cost-effective manner.
✔️ Partner with a contingent workforce management specialistWhile a contingent workforce program can be managed in-house with the help of a vendor management system, it’s also incredibly time consuming and complex. If you don’t get it right, your program will be rampant with issues such as rogue spend, poor contingent workforce quality and below-par staffing agency partnerships.
Working with a third-party that specializes in the contingent category, whether it’s a fully implemented managed service provider (MSP) program or a less intense vendor consolidation play, will give you the expertise you need to manage your contingent workforce program successfully.
Interested in learning more? Get in touch with the Contrax team today.
