Part 1 of a 3 part blog series
We’ve been doing the rounds with our clients and networks, taking a gauge on company culture, and its role in the engagement and performance of contingent workers.
You see, it struck us that so few organisations factored their contingent workers into the company culture piece. They just didn’t see it. Typically, company culture is all about the effective attraction, engagement & management of employees. Full timers. The talent on the books. But contract workers? They’ve been noticeably absent in the strategy.
So we decided to workshop the significant impact a positive, INCLUSIVE and cohesive company culture can have on contingent workers. And we’re pleased to present some cracking ideas that will get YOU better bang from your contingent worker buck. This is the first of a three-part blog series.
You’re welcome.
So……what works?
Here are 3 tips you can take action on TODAY to influence your organisation’s culture and ensure you’re always appropriately engaging contingent workers, to be the top-quality, high-performers they truly are!
- Transparency: The undertaking of transparency in your corporate culture is a killer move for people engagement. This is kind of a known fact. The usual MO here is simply to focus on staff (employees) alone. But think about it: there’s information about your business that you’re sharing with your people, but not your contractors. Right? So your contractors hear about this ‘news’ via gossip channels & water cooler speculations. Don’t kid yourself if you think this doesn’t happen. It does. And as they’re not on staff, they’ll easily make assumptions about that information that could potentially be very damaging – simply because they don’t know the full story. So… consider including your contractors in SOME of the information about your business. You’ll be surprised at the respect & cut-through you’ll achieve.
The important caveat here is this: be judicious about the information you share, keeping in mind the ‘deemed employee’ risk. You can read more about that here.
- ‘Culture of Purpose’. Heard of it? Business leaders today are genuinely torn between creating a culture of engagement (where people are happy) and a culture of performance (where people MAY be happy, but the focus above all else is results). Hence, creating a positive engagement culture, and a process of performance management and talent enhancement, that is authentic, democratic and streamlined across both contract & full time talent, will pave the way for a great culture for ALL. “Strengths-based, engagement-focused, and performance-oriented”…is the way to go. Thanks to this article from Zenith Talent. Have a read.
- HR Processes: ensuring your contract talent are engaged and onboarded into the business just like your employees, will go a long way to fostering loyalty. Use your existing HR processes and strategies, duplicate and alter/scale back, to create the same for your contract workers. In this way, you’ll have a great strategic approach for your contract workers, that will TOTALLY make them feel like they’re part of the team. They won’t know that their engagement experience may be different to staff. Yet they’ll feel included and respected. It’s a good move.
BONUS TIP: Don’t forget to work towards total workforce harmony: there’s plenty of ways you can get your employees and contractors to work in perfect unison. Some great advice here.
In Part 2 of this blog series, we’ll take a look at the benefits to your organisation from taking an inclusive approach to company culture, when it comes to your contingent workers.
