The world of work has changed significantly over the past few years, and your business can now benefit hugely from making the most of the gig economy which today makes up an astonishing 30-40 per cent of the US workforce.

Contingent workers, which make up the gig economy, are now a key component of most large organizations workforce. 

These freelancers, contractors, temporary workers and consultants can help your business avoid skills shortages, acquire top talent, assess business needs on an ongoing basis, find fresh perspectives, improve efficiencies and cost-effectiveness of your hiring processes, build an agile workforce and much more.

However, despite the benefits, managing a contingent workforce comes with a number of challenges that are essential for your business to address. We’ve listed the four most common mistakes here and how they can be fixed.

1 - Fragmented processes

For many organizations, the contingent workforce management strategy is fragmented. HR, procurement teams and department managers all take control of their own non-temporary workers with no real company-wide strategy to how these workers should be engaged, managed or how much they should be paid.

This disjointed approach to contingent workforce management results in high spend, decreased visibility and inefficient processes that waste your company’s time and money.

This can be solved by either unifying your contingent workforce management in one company-wide approach - something a managed services provider (MSP) can help you achieve.

2 - Paying above fair market rates

A lack of visibility into your contingent workforce program will mean it’s likely that your company doesn’t have a clear picture of how much you actually spend on contingent labour. This lack of visibility leads to wasted money.

In fact, most organizations don’t even have a clear picture of fair market rates for each given category of worker.

By simply improving your management program and gaining better visibility into your current pay rates and the fair market rates for each category of worker, your company will be able to save a substantial amount of money on labour costs.

3 - Not seeking outsourced help

Managing a non-permanent workforce requires significant insight and visibility across your entire organization. It’s unlikely that your business has either the resources or expertise to do this successfully - and many companies make the huge mistake of not seeking outsourced help.

An MSP that specializes in contingent workforce advisory, such as HCMWorks, will provide expertise for your company’s overall external talent strategy.

This outsourced expert will ensure you have a centralized management strategy in place that reduces your costs, improves your efficiencies, increases your visibility and control over workers, prevents inconsistent and costly hiring techniques and ensure you get the right temporary workers within your organization in a timely manner.

4 - Choosing the wrong technology

This brings us to our last mistake that most businesses make - not selecting an appropriate vendor management system (VMS) to ensure that your contingent workforce management program is unified across your entire organization.

Unfortunately for most companies, as we discussed earlier, their contingent workforce management programs are fragmented across different departments - and the wrong technology can make this even worse. This results in inconsistent hiring practices, wasted administrative effort, higher risk of error, as well as wasted time and money.

Does this sound like your business? Don’t worry. HCMWorks is a technology-neutral MSP so we can help you select the most compatible VMS based on your company’s unique needs and specifications.

By implementing the right VMS, your contingent workforce management strategy will benefit from a unified approach that results in greater efficiencies, higher productivity, increased compliance, improved access to top talent and high cost savings.

Want to learn more about how working with HCMWorks can completely transform your organization’s contingent workforce management strategy? Contact our team of experts in Canada or the US today and find out how we can help.