Build a smarter contingent workforce program to effectively manage your workers, reach your hiring goals and meet your organisational needs.
Introduction
Managing a contingent workforce effectively is a challenge that many organisations find difficult. The contingent workforce ebbs and flows quickly and the responsibility for contractors, freelancers and temporary workers often lies in different places. Consequently, the fragmented nature of the contingent workforce often means that organisations find it hard to bring it together under one function with the expertise and resource needed to manage it effectively. This is where a Managed Service Provider can fill the gap.
The contingent workforce
The modern workforce is changing rapidly. More and more workers are prioritising flexibility and choice over traditional career progression and structure. As a result, this shift is one of the key reasons behind the global growth in the contingent workforce. Additionally, many professionals, in many roles, across various roles and sectors, are seeing more opportunities to build their career around temporary project work, contracting and/or freelancing.
Accessing this growing contingent workforce has many benefits for organisations too. It increases their capability to respond to market change in a more agile way, bringing in additional resource and specialist expertise quickly, when and where they need it. But there are risks with growing a contingent workforce too. Is the workforce fully compliant? Are they classified correctly? Are rates of pay in line with market value and are there hidden agency costs? Is the infrastructure there to support them, so that they are onboarded and engaged, paid on time and managed properly?
What does a smarter contingent workforce program look like?
The ability to manage a fast-changing contingent workforce is critical for organisations – but it can also be challenging and there are risks if your contingent workers are not managed effectively. Partnering with a Managed Service Provider helps organisations to manage the complexities around contingent labour – controlling the costs, mitigating the risks and ensuring an inclusive approach to building the integrated workforce.
There are 3 main types of contingent workforce program that a Managed Service Provider can deliver:
Vendor Neutral
Your organisation retains responsibility for staffing and for relationships with agencies. Your MSP will provide the technology (and, if required, consult on the hiring/onboarding process, and additional support), to help manage those agencies, which can:
» Ensure transparency in the talent supply chain
» Provide visibility over rates of pay and agency costs
» Harmonise invoicing
» Standardise contracts
Master Vendor
Your Managed Service Provider assumes the responsibility for staffing, as well as for the process and technology that underpins the hiring experience. The MSP then makes the decision around whether they fill openings directly themselves or use the agency supply chain/PSL, which can make:
» Relationship management less complex
» Processes simpler and time-to-hire faster
» Costs more predictable and budgeting easier
Hybrid Program
In the hybrid model, the MSP provides the process and technology to underpin the hiring experience; and provides staffing services in defined skill areas or locations. This gives the client the expertise of an MSP partnership, along with the flexibility to use other suppliers where they need to. This can:
» Help with more specialist recruitment assignments
» Ensure rates stay competitive
» Create more complexity around relationship-management
What is the right model for your organisation?
The key question for organisations to ask themselves is: how effective are we at reaching and engaging with talent? The global contingent workforce is evolving at a rapid pace. Talent communities are becoming more visible and moving more quickly. Consequently, organisations need a solution that can change and adapt as market conditions or business plans change.
Whichever model suits, the challenge now for the majority of organisations is to build a direct-to-talent channel that helps them to drive down cost, reach new talent and build stronger contingent talent pools for the future. Whether you choose a vendor-neutral model, or your MSP operates as a Master Vendor, you should look to your MSP to support your TA team in building a direct-to-talent strategy, helping to reduce the reliance on agencies and drive stronger brand awareness around your contingent worker proposition.
Conclusion
The challenge that organisations and their Managed Service Providers face is that the 3 variations of contingent workforce program have not changed significantly. Yet, the contingent labour market is undergoing a significant transformation from the talent perspective. The mindset of contingent workers is changing. How they engage with organisations is changing. What they do and why is changing. If the solutions available remain the same, what do organisations do to respond, improve and set themselves apart? How does their Managed Service Provider help?
Innovation around branding, attraction and communication will help to grow and establish a direct-to-talent channel. How organisations position themselves, talk about their culture and bring contingent workers into a more integrated, blended workforce is important. And when the market for talent is competitive, you need to cut through with creative thinking.
Secondly, for many organisations, their contingent workforce program is now only part of a more complex talent ecosystem and calls for a different, more strategic approach to talent acquisition. The natural next step for those organisations that need a total talent approach is to ask more of their existing Managed Service Provider – and to ask whether they can apply their MSP skills right across the talent challenge:
- Can they deliver branding and attraction services, to cut through creatively?
- Can they provide agile RPO services, for spikes in requirement?
- Can they advise on technology and process improvement?
- Can they deliver market and candidate insights, data analysis and campaign metrics?
Too many MSPs are still too traditional. And while clients may be asking more, not every provider has the range of services, the strategic capability and the depth of expertise to deliver.
If you would like to learn more about choosing the right contingent workforce program for you, get in touch with us.
