Hiring techniques are changing rapidly. To acquire talented workers your company must continue to evolve and innovate how you attract, engage and retain contingent workers.

Companies are having to rethink their recruitment strategies in order to source the best independent talent. In most cases, businesses are outsourcing their hiring strategies to managed services providers (MSPs) in a bid to create innovative contingent workforce management programs.

While some MSPs come with strategic hiring limitations that prevent your organization from achieving its workforce goals, other MSPs (such as HCMWorks) are using innovative new strategies to hire talented workers.

One of these strategies is direct sourcing, but what actually is direct sourcing and how will it benefit your company’s contingent workforce program?

What is direct sourcing?

Direct sourcing is the process in which a company leverages its own candidate pool - made up of former employees, retirees, job candidates and former contractors - to engage as contract workers instead of sourcing through a staffing company.

These workers are engaged, managed and paid by an outsourced MSP, which is tasked with ensuring their proper classifications.

What are the benefits of direct sourcing?

Direct sourcing is about creating direct access to the contingent labour market by building a private talent pool to source from. This access to contingent talent can bring your organization a wide range of benefits. We’ve listed the top four here:

1 - Create deeper relationships with contingent workers

Contingent work gives contractors the privilege of choosing which organizations they work with. To access talented and qualified workers, it’s important that your company positions itself as an ‘employer of choice’.

By creating a private talent pool that allows you to attract and repeatedly engage independent talent, you’ll be able to build deeper relationships with the non-permanent workers you trust. Not only will this encourage them to work for your company time and time again, they’ll also let their peers know that you’re a fantastic employer to work for.

2 - Significant time and cost savings

Working with staffing vendors will bring a wide range of advantages for your business, including helping you fill gaps in your workforce with talented and highly-qualified contingent workers.

The addition of direct sourcing, however, can significantly reduce hiring time and costs. Having a pool of engaged workers will shorten the time it takes to fill a temporary position, cut down transactions costs and allow you to hire the exact worker you need since you’ve worked with them before and know exactly what they offer your business.

3 - Smoother onboarding

Onboarding can be a time-consuming process. You need to bring new workers up to speed, explain what they need to do to succeed at their job, introduce them to your company culture and give them enough time to ease into their role.

Direct sourcing makes onboarding a far smoother process. Workers that exist in your direct sourcing talent pool will already be familiar with your company and will have, more than likely, have already worked with you previously. They’ll be able to slot right into your company on short notice, helping you to hit workforce targets immediately.

4 - Reduce rogue spend

While the contingent workforce isn’t new, most organizations still struggle with its management. That’s because contingent workforce management is complex. It takes an expert team and various technologies to implement - and most companies simply don’t have the resources to succeed.

In most companies, hiring of contingent workers falls to a mix of procurement, HR teams and department managers. This leads to fractious hiring techniques and rogue spend that your company hasn’t accounted for.

Through direct sourcing your organization will establish a consistent approach to sourcing, hiring and managing contingent workers - removing the chance of rogue spend and inefficient practices.

Want to find out how HCMWorks can implement a contingent workforce management strategy that makes use of innovative techniques such as direct sourcing to ensure your business meets workforce targets? Contact our team of experts today.