Are you working with a contingent workforce management partner? Are they the right partner for your business? Not sure? Then read on…
But first, picture this scenario…
Your business is moving forward with a blended workforce. One comprised of full-time employees, contractors, freelancers, contingent workers and SOW’s.
You’ve recognised the value of contingent and tenure-limited workers for sustaining an agile, responsive business model. But you know it’s not going to be easy to strategically and successfully manage and optimise these workers.
Well then. It’s time you found yourself a credible, reliable and proven contingent workforce management partner to work with your business.
You see, if you choose to forge ahead without a contingent workforce management partner, you’re placing your organisation at risk. And not just any risk. We’re talking – potentially – risk of terminal proportions. These risks include…
- Financial: by paying over market rates for your contingent workers
- Statutory: by inadvertently breaching tax, workplace and other statutory laws that apply to contingent workers
- Reputation: if things go wrong with your contingent talent, the fallout can be treacherous
- Worker misclassification: by engaging a worker (or workers) under the wrong type of contract
- Loss of company knowledge and IP: when contingent talent exit your business with sensitive, confidential or commercially private information
- Poor onboarding: without getting your contingent talent started with a strong footing, your investment in them may be vastly undercapitalised
… and there are others.
So today, I’ve provided a suite of insights for your consideration. These insights will help your business, if you’re at the stage of wanting to engage a contingent workforce management company, but you may not be clear on how to go about it, or the key selection criteria to consider.
Although the contingent workforce segment is growing in importance and its size, many organisations may not be skilled at managing it effectively. Major challenges include the lack of an integrated workforce management strategy, ad hoc (and at times high-risk) managerial behaviour, poor data management, and inadequate technology.
Read on for more…
The Basics
Your contingent workforce management partner needs to offer you:
- Payroll of your contingent workforce. Payroll that’s accurate, timely, with marginal (if any) errors
- An industry Best Practice contingent workforce management program
- Achieve minimal time-to-productivity for your contingent workers
- Work with you to achieve your business goals, through the delivery of a strategically aligned contingent workforce management program
Proven Track Record
Your contingent workforce management partner needs to have proven time in the field:
- They’ve managed contingent workers through most economic cycles
- They’ve helped companies like yours to navigate the ebb and flow of market forces
- They’ve helped companies like yours achieve workforce agility and scale
- They’ve helped employers in a cross-section of industries, so they can advise you on sector nuances
- They can answer almost any question about the many circumstances that can arise in taking on contingent workers
- They can provide proof, via referring you to speak with existing and past clients
Dedicated Risk & Compliance Staff
Your contingent workforce management partner ideally has:
- In-house talent dedicated to maintaining legislative compliance for your contingent workforce
- Access to legal advice on changes to the relevant laws
- People who can audit your contingent workforce program and advise on risk mitigation strategies
- Consistency in advice and guidance as your needs change and as legislation changes
- People that will enable your business to indemnify ATO and co-employment risks
Technology Enabled
Depending on the size of your continent workforce, your partner in managing them must be able to:
- Provide a technology solution (enterprise or third party) that offers full visibility of your entire contingent workforce population
- Provide online portals which reduce manual processes and processing errors
- Increase automation of your contingent workforce program
- Evolve with market influences, so your technology is always leading-edge
Onboarding with Precision
Your contingent workforce management partner must offer key deliverables for the onboarding of your workers:
- Clear processes to mitigate risk of taking on contingent workers
- A roadmap to fast productivity, establishing expectations of role
- Clear understanding of the chain of command, business culture and team
- An auditable technology system that captures all worker contract and personal information
- A personalised approach in line with your business ethos, using all relevant means of communication (email, text, phone, video)
Dedicated Account Service Team
Your contingent workforce management partner must be able to:
- Provide you with a team leader and support (depending on your workforce size) for both strategic and day-to-day oversight of your contingent workers
- Manage contracts of your contingent workers: start dates, end dates, notification periods
- Guide your contingent workers through a strategic onboarding and offboarding process with minimal friction or business interruption
- Support rate negotiation processes with all relevant parties, for contract extensions
Vendor Neutrality
Your contingent workforce management partner must be able to:
- Engage and manage all contingent workers in your business, irrespective of source
- Be willing to collaborate with third party talent suppliers to benefit the strategic outcomes from your contingent workforce
- Manage the requirements around RPO payroll (as relevant to your business)
Reporting & Invoicing
Your contingent workforce management partner must be able to:
- Provide accurate, consistent and regular reporting on the performance costs and performance benchmarks of your contingent workers
- Provide predictive analyses on future contingent talent costs
- Offer a streamlined invoicing process with detailed and accurate spend data
- Provide automated receipting
Cost Savings
Your contingent workforce management partner must add commercial value to your business by:
- Reducing your contingent workforce costs, via rate regulation, contract management and strategic program oversight
- Regulating pay rates across all categories of contingent workers
- Standardising rates of all your third-party talent suppliers
- Assist with the growth of a directly-sourced talent pool, reducing your reliance on agency suppliers
Worker Health & Safety
Your contingent workforce management partner must be able to:
- Ensure the provision of optimum health and safety standards is provided to all contingent workers
- Undertake risk assessments and reporting by work site for all job categories relating to contingent workers
As one of the world’s leading providers of contingent worker management solutions, CXC is well positioned to optimise all elements of your contingent workforce strategy. With operations in more than 50 countries across five continents and decades of experience, we can assist with every aspect of your program.
If you would like to find out more about how we can help please contact us here.
