4 Things to Keep in Mind When Managing a Global Contingent Workforce

Implementing an effective contingent workforce management program that gives your business visibility and control over its contingent workers and staffing agencies is time consuming and complex, but that becomes even more difficult when your company’s contingent workforce is distributed around the globe.

Global contingent workforce staffing requires different currencies, the use of a large number of staffing agencies, a focus on workers with different skill sets and the alignment of hiring managers. 

When organizations don’t set up successful contingent workforce management programs for their global contingent workforce with standardized and repeatable processes, hiring managers pay staffing agencies their own rates and engage workers on their own terms. 

The result is a complete lack of visibility and control, leading to inconsistent hiring practices, rogue spend that impacts the company’s bottom line, wasted time as teams struggle to find information or complete processes productivity, and no insight into how both contingent workers and staffing agencies are performing. 

Organizations are left with no idea how their contingent workforce is impacting their business, both in terms of spend and workforce quality. 

With that in mind, in this blog we list the top four things that businesses need to keep in mind when managing a global contingent workforce. 

A global contingent workforce with no strategic program in place will lead to a lack of control and visibility that results in high spend (that can’t be seen by your business) and poor workforce quality. Hiring managers will pay different rates to staffing agencies and engage contingent workers on their own terms, and they’ll save this information across spreadsheets, emails and other databases that make it impossible for your organization to gain a clear view of what’s happening. 

By building a highly-strategic and centralized program, your business can ensure that all hiring managers are working from the same hymn sheet. The implementation of a vendor management system allows your business to store all contingent worker information in one centralized location, ensuring that your hiring managers follow standardized processes and allowing your organization to gain performance metrics that show how much you are spending and how your staffing agencies are performing. 

Managing a contingent workforce is time-consuming, complex and requires knowledge of the contingent category. Building a program becomes even more complex when contingent workers are based all over the world. This requires a huge amount of information, a large number of vendors, and compliance with different regulations. 

If your business doesn’t have the resources, time and expertise to manage an effective global contingent workforce program in-house, then outsourcing to a specialist can bring immediate ROI. A managed services provider (MSP) will implement a highly-strategic global contingent workforce program for your business, taking on the responsibility of all processes.

Employment regulations are different across different countries, states and even cities. When managing a contingent workforce, it’s critical that your business understands and complies with the regional regulations in the locations that you are hiring contingent workers. 

To do this, your organization needs to implement a global contingent workforce program that allows you to both track and classify workers. You’ll need to set up standardized and repeatable processes for each of the different regions you operate, ensuring your hiring managers don’t misclassify your contingent workers 

Your business doesn’t want to waste money by overpaying for contingent workers, but at the same time you need to pay staffing agencies competitive rates to ensure you get the talent you need. With a global workforce, it’s important that you pay competitive rates in the local markets that you are operating. 

When hiring contingent workers in a location for the first time, take the time to do some market research to ensure you are paying staffing agencies competitive rates. This will ensure your business is acquiring top talent without wasting money. 

Interested in learning more about how you can better manage a global contingent workforce? Contact Contrax today. Our team of contingent workforce management specialists would love to help.