The contingent workforce is growing, and these workers now make up a significant proportion of labour - across all sectors. With around 40% of today’s US workers belonging to this workforce, it’s more than likely that your business already hires its own pool of contingent workers - but are you managing them right?

The contingent workforce comes with a plethora of benefits, such as increased workforce agility, access to talent and specialized skills, and reduced costs for both short and long-term projects, but it also comes with its own set of unique challenges. 

In fact, it’s possible that if you don’t have a business-wide strategy to successfully manage your contingent workers, you could actually be losing money and increasing liability and risk.

Contingent workers are often managed by separate departments that use fragmented processes, inconsistent hiring techniques, and offer different remuneration. This all leads to extra administration effort, wasted time, a higher risk of error and, ultimately, higher costs.

The good news? All of this can be avoided by implementing an informed and effective management strategy. HCMWorks has some tips:

Reshape your administration

Many companies fall into the trap of allowing each separate department to manage the contingent workers that fall under their management. However, an effective contingent workforce management program is one that is centralized in one place.

This prevents duplications, administration errors and dysfunctional tactics across your organization. This means that important aspects of managing your workforce, such as payment and compliance, will be administered seamlessly. As a result, you will be able to save time and reduce costs.

Outsource your management to an MSP

The contingent workforce, which is made up of contractors, freelancers and consultants, has its own complex needs and therefore can be difficult to understand. For that reason, workers that fall under this category need specialized management and a particular expertise.

The best way to ensure your program is run with the latest knowledge of government requirements, and market conditions, is to outsource the management of your contract workers to a managed service provider (MSP), importantly, one which is vendor neutral and will not favour particular staffing firms over others.

An MSP that specializes in contingent workforce management will evaluate, redesign and streamline your current management program. This optimized process will minimize the cost associated with talent sourcing, payment and compliance, and help you to provide a better environment as well as a more enjoyable experience for your contingent workers.

An outsourced MSP will oversee the management of:

• Job request management.
• On-boarding.
• Training.
• Contract management.
• Compliance management.
• Client management.
• Payment.
• Off-boarding.

Make sure your process is automated

Manual processes are a sure way to get things wrong, and that wastes both time and money. Thankfully, new technology is improving the way we manage the contingent workforce and has allowed for an automated approach.

A vendor management system (VMS) is a cloud-based application that works as a central hub to manage your contingent workers. It contains your contingent workers’ personal contracts, expenses, time logs, performance reviews and allows for the complete management of your external workers.

This automated tool will help maximize productivity, decrease compliance risks and streamline your operations. The ability to track deliverables will not only help your business measure performance, but also help you plan for future goals.

Placing the right workers where and when you need them most is essential for growth, but until your maximize your management efficiencies you could be wasting money and possibly even driving top talent to competitor firms.

When managed properly, contingent workers will give your company access to your industry’s best talent, fresh perspectives, a more diverse workforce and reduced costs, but until you implement a company-wide strategy all of these benefits could be falling short.

Need help managing your contingent workers? Contact HCMWorks today.