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Smart companies have been making the transition to optimise their workforce—a timely move given the unprecedented changes in the business landscape. It has meant being prepared, agile, and flexible. In this dynamic environment, smart companies are embracing contingent workers to gain a competitive edge.
The rise of the contingent workforce is happening across the globe. In fact, projections reveal that the estimated value of contingent workforce will reach an impressive $465.2 billion by 2031. This shows the immense potential and impact of contingent workers on organisations around the world.
What’s the advantage of hiring contingent workers?
When we say contingent workers, they are independent contractors, consultants, freelancers, or simply any individual employed by your company on a non-permanent basis. Here are some of the benefits when hiring contingent workers for your organisation:
Enhancing the overall quality of your workforce
While traditionally viewed as solely a cost-saving option, businesses today see contingent workers as someone who brings unique perspective and expertise to the table, resulting in an enhanced workforce.
Contingent workers bring specialised skills and experience that may not be available within your internal workforce. As you leverage their expertise, you can address specific business challenges, drive innovation, and enhance the overall performance of your organisation.
Workforce agility and flexibility
In a rapidly evolving business landscape, the ability to upscale or downsize quickly is more important than ever. One big advantage of hiring contingent workers is that you can use them to upskill your business in a certain area of activity only or use them to plug gaps in your existing workforce. Or you could hire only the people you need to complete a specific project, be it local or cross-border.
Additionally, “going contingent” doesn’t require a wholesale transition from a traditional full-time employee model to contractors and consultants in one fell swoop. You can start small and gradually build from there, making it a perfect way to manage your workforce.
Increased efficiency
The flexible nature of contingent workers allows you to strategically allocate resources where they are most needed. This way, you can enhance efficiency, streamline operations, and achieve project objectives more effectively.
Diversified perspectives
Contingent workers often come from various backgrounds, industries, and experiences, bringing fresh perspectives to your organisation. This diversity of thought can foster creativity, foster a culture of innovation, and stimulate new ideas that contribute to your company’s growth and competitiveness.
Important things to consider when hiring contingent workers
But even though the benefits are many and the pathway there seems smooth, there are still a few important things to consider before you even start to hire your first contingent workers.
Be strategic
By taking a 360-degree view of your business and assessing your requirements in a considered manner, you can minimise disruption and the risks associated with contingent workers. Start hiring strategically to meet specific challenges, and you’ll not only gain valuable hands-on experience in managing contingent workers, but you’ll also be staging your transition towards using a contingent workforce; allowing you time to properly assess how it all fits into your future planning.
Focus on management
The benefits of hiring contingent workers can be great, but companies must find a way to successfully manage this new aspect of their business. As your contingent workforce grows, it becomes more difficult to manage. Contingent workers will have different contracts, different pay rates, and different pay schedules. And if any of your contingent workers are employed cross-border, then compliance can become a real and dangerous issue.
Once you have identified where a contingent workforce can slot into your business, you will need to create a clear management process for them. This plan will help you to organise all aspects of your new talent pool, from onboarding to payroll and offboarding, distinguishing between permanent and contingent workers, as well as tracking performance and cost metrics.
Without the proper and specialised management of contingent workers, companies can easily find themselves in a maze, wasting time and money on inefficient, and sometimes even illegal practices.
Utilise technology
Organising your contingent workers can be complex and time-consuming, and without the use of technology, it is almost impossible to prevent mistakes. And these mistakes can be costly, putting your company at risk. In addition, the extra work required could overwhelm your procurement or HR department.
Truth be told, technology is the core of any successful contingent workforce management program. Automation can be used for processes such as resume scanning, providing a database for company documents, and tracking the performance of your workers. It provides the support you need from the start to finish of your contingent workers’ engagement — from their acquisition and management to their payment. This makes a managing contingent workforce much easier and more integrated.
Bringing the management of your contingent workers into one centralised location or system can streamline administration, while an automated process will help cut out errors and mismatched payment and hiring tactics across your organisation; saving time and money. Having a centralised system also allows your team to have a consolidated view of your internal and external workforce, which can serve as a single source of truth and measure the effectiveness of your entire workforce.
Partner with an expert
In-the-know companies wanting to move quickly once they decide to ‘go contingent’ are increasingly turning to proven outsourced solutions by engaging with an experienced Managed Service Provider (MSP) like CXC.
Partnering with an MSP enables you to develop a centralised management strategy for your company’s contingent workforce management. An MSP will also ensure you have access to specialised technologies such as vendor management system (VMS) to support sourcing, acquisition, management and payment of your contingent workforce, all within one centralized database.
Choose a tailored contingent workforce plan that suits you
Whether you’re looking for a completely outsourced MSP solution or an unbundled modularised MSP plan, CXC offers flexibility to meet your unique needs that helps you achieve your contingent workforce management goals.
With CXC, you have a strategic partner with global knowledge and extensive experience across a wide range of contingent workforce operations, such as recruitment, compliance, payroll, onboarding, and training, etc. In addition, your organisation can benefit from specialised, robust technologies and strategies to successfully implement and manage every aspect of your contingent workforce operations with expert efficiency.
Get in touch with us today and see how CXC can support your organisation’s contingent workforce needs.
