To keep up with the increasing need to stay flexible, a growing number of organizations today are sourcing contingent workers to augment their existing full-time employees and meet their workforce requirements.
In fact, research from Ardent Partners shows that 41.5 percent of the average enterprise’s total workforce is considered non-employee - and that’s probably even higher today.
The contingent workforce is increasingly attractive to both small businesses and large enterprises. It gives them the opportunity to increase business flexibility, access specialized skills, improve talent acquisition, and engage workers on a project-by-project basis as-and-when they are needed - all while saving money.
While the benefits are great. There are, however, challenges that come with managing a contingent workforce.
Organizations that engage the contingent workforce, but don’t build strategic contingent workforce management programs to manage externally-sourced workers and staffing agencies will no doubt be suffering from hidden risks and rogue costs that are directly impacting their ability to improve candidate quality and save money.
Gaining visibility and control of your contingent workforce
So, what exactly can organizations do to regain visibility and control over their contingent workforce? Thankfully, there are a number of both internal methods and outsourced programs that can help you better manage your contingent workforce program and staffing agency processes.
To help you do just that, we’ve listed the most common methods used to reduce risk and better achieve your workforce goals.
A Managed Service Provider (MSP) model is the practice of outsourcing the responsibility of a company’s entire non-employee workforce management to a third-party provider with expertise in contingent workforce and staffing agency management.
In an MSP arrangement, the outsourced company will be responsible for all things related to the contingent workforce, from setting up the program, interacting with vendors, hiring contingent workers, onboarding, offboarding, billing and much more. What aspects of the program that are managed by the MSP can typically be customized by the client.
An MSP aims to alleviate the burden of contingent workforce management from a company’s plate, taking the entire tactical work on so that the client can focus on the strategic, high-value work that drives real value to their business.
An MSP Lite program is a step down from the complexities of a full MSP program. Instead, companies engage an MSP Lite program provider, who will then work with their own network of pre-approved staffing agencies to fulfill the workforce requirements of the company.
With an MSP Lite program, outsourced experts still manage the entire externally-sourced workforce program on behalf of their clients, but without the process flows, customized solution and full implementation of an MSP program.
Essentially, rather than paying an MSP to manage the entire contingent workforce program, companies simply carve out a piece of business for the MSP Lite provider who then assumes responsibility for supplying staffing.
A Vendor Management System (VMS) is a platform that allows businesses to facilitate, automate and centralize all of the processes and data associated with managing staffing agencies and externally-sourced workers.
By acting as a system of record for a company’s entire contingent workforce program, a VMS gives companies the ability to manage processes such as maintaining vendor relationships, measuring staffing agency performance, sourcing workers, and making payments all on one company-wide piece of software.
With all contingent workforce information stored in one centralized place, a VMS gives organizations complete visibility and control over their contingent workforce.
Don’t need help with the ongoing management of your contingent workforce, but need assistance with ramping your workforce up for seasonal or peak demand? A project recruitment model may be the best solution for you.
By working with a project recruitment expert, your organization will be able to access high-quality workers in a short period of time. In this model the outsourced project recruitment firm will parachute workers into an organization for the required time period to help businesses fulfill their workforce needs.
Do you need help from an industry expert?
Contrax is a vendor and technology-neutral contingent workforce expert, with a range of solutions to help organizations better manage their contingent workforce programs and strategically manage their staffing agencies.
We provide the expertise, technology and processes you need to gain complete visibility and control over your workforce, and, in turn, improve candidate quality, reduce costs, speed up hiring times, enhance vendor and process control, as well as mitigate misclassification risks.
We do that with our full range of outsourced services, from MSP models, MSP Lite programs, VMS technologies and advisory services.
Whatever your business needs, we’re here to make sure you get the workforce you deserve! Contact us today and we’ll help you find your ideal solution for effective contingent workforce management.
