Having contingent workers on staff is no doubt advantageous to your company—you get workforce flexibility, you get to reduce fixed payroll costs, and you get to bridge your current skills gap with qualified workers. However, these benefits do not come without their fair share of issues as well. Most notably, management. It isn’t easy to manage contingent workers. You cannot manage them in the same way as you manage your permanent employees. And as your non-permanent workers start to take up a bigger percentage of your total workforce, you’ll have larger risks and expenses to worry about.

If your contingent management processes are disjointed, fragmented, and disorganized, you’re going to waste time, reduce efficiency, make errors, duplicate efforts, and increase liabilities. And this all leads to reduced profits. Instead, what you need is a total workforce management system to source, schedule, monitor, manage, and pay your contingent workers efficiently. A workforce management system can do wonders for your contingent workforce’s productivity and your bottom line. Here are some of the benefits you’ll receive.

Drive Performance

It is impossible to effectively understand your contingent workforce’s performance level without the use of technology. A contingent workforce management system can help you determine the true effectiveness of your non-permanent workers by tracking and measuring their performance with metrics and data. With the right intelligence, you can then improve quality, drive productivity, and increase operational efficiency. You can ensure that you have the right contingent workers with the right skills and experience on the projects that need them most.

By optimizing your contingent workforce’s performance, you can resolve challenges and ensure that you are getting quality work for the price you pay, before it’s too late. A workforce management system will allow you to gain visibility, so you can make smarter and more informed decisions when it comes to your hiring, managing, and scheduling your contingent workers.

Reduce Risks

One of the biggest issues that comes with employing contingent workers is the increased compliance risk you inevitably face. You must be very careful in the way you classify, hire, manage, schedule, and pay your contingent workforce or you may face fines and penalties for worker misclassification. Although there is no fool-proof way to prevent misclassification, a workforce management system can help you reduce your risks.

Reduce Costs

Most organizations have increased their use of the contingent workforce as an integral part of their business strategies, mostly in order to reduce overhead expenses. But there are many costs associated with the contingent workforce, and if you are not careful, you could be reducing your value for your dollar by not managing those costs.

Poor management efforts can lead to costly administrative errors during the payroll process or scheduling, wasted time from manual work, and fines, penalties, and lawsuits from non-compliance. Additionally, low productivity caused by a poorly managed workforce will also add to your expenses.

A workforce management system enables you to significant reduce your risk of costly errors. Thanks to automation, you’ll no longer have to worry about human error, which will lead to cost savings. Plus, as mentioned above, the system can help you increase productivity and reduce your risks of non-compliance, which are two very expensive hidden costs of hiring contingent workers.

Streamline Operations

With a total contingent workforce management system, you’ll have one central hub for all aspects of the management process. All procedures, like payroll, HR, and scheduling, will be connected for a greater flow of communication. No more miscommunications or confusion. The more streamlined you can make your operations, the more effective your processes and procedures can be. You’ll have a totally optimized contingent workforce.