How to Rapidly Scale Your Contingent Workforce in Short Notice

Whether your business experiences seasonal demand or you work with client’s on a project-by-project basis that changes significantly from month- to- month, to maximize profitability you need to build a highly-scalable and agile workforce.

But it’s certainly not easy building an agile business. Not only do you need to utilize the growing number of contingent workers, you also need to build a highly-strategic contingent workforce management program that manages externally-sourced workers effectively. 

In this blog we take a look at why it’s important that your business is able to rapidly scale its contingent workforce, along with some tips on how you can build a strategic program that better positions you to do just that.

Why businesses need to be able to scale their contingent workforce in the current market

The vast majority of businesses that experience seasonal demand or bring in new projects simply aren’t set up properly to scale their workforce rapidly. One minute their business is operating seamlessly, the next they are in desperate need of workers. 

To meet this increase in demand, organizations need to focus on supplementing their existing employee workforce with a highly-scalable and well-managed contingent workforce.

Instead of scrambling to engage staffing agencies and source contingent workers at the last minute, businesses need to build a contingent workforce management program that allows them to proactively scale up during times of increased demand - without losing visibility into spend or workforce quality.

When companies are in a position to scale their contingent workforce rapidly, they’ll be able to drive up their profitability during peak seasons or when new projects are brought on. 

Tips to help better scale and manage your contingent workforce

The best way to access temporary talent quickly is to build a contingent workforce management program that focuses on engaging talent quickly, cost-effectively, and compliantly. To ensure ROI, it’s crucial that you do this strategically. 

You can do this internally by implementing a Vendor Management System (VMS) or you can outsource the management of your contingent workforce program to a Managed Services Provider (MSP) or MSP Lite program. Either way, a successful contingent workforce management strategy will give you visibility and control over your externally-sourced workers, allowing you better achieve your workforce requirements under short notice. 

If you don’t want to solely rely on staffing agencies to fulfill your workforce requirements under short notice, it’s possible to build a direct sourcing program. This would see your business build a list of known talent that can be hired by your organizations when needed. 

Direct sourcing relies on internally building talent pools of contingent workers who have already been vetted by your organization and have proven experience within the roles that they can fill. This means they can be engaged and sourced under short notice.

It does take some time to build a direct sourcing strategy, so if you are in urgent need to scale your workforce then this might not be the best option. 

Most organizations don’t have the resources, time or contingent expertise to plan and implement an entire contingent workforce management program, and some businesses may not even need to. For organizations that need to utilize contingent workers to scale rapidly, but don’t need a complex contingent workforce program, an outsourced expert that focuses on project recruitment might be the best route. 

Here at Contrax, for example, we have a Project Recruitment program where we help organizations with a team of dedicated recruiters and handpicked staffing agencies to rapidly parachute workers into the business to fulfill their workforce needs.

We help businesses fulfill increasing customer demand during peak seasons or newly-signed projects, in rapid time.

Want to learn more? Get in touch with Contrax today. Our team of contingent workforce management experts would love to help you build a strategy that empowers your business to become more agile.