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New year, newer implications for Contingent Workforce Management


The year 2018 was an intriguing one for the contingent workforce industry as it saw some unusually big developments. First and foremost were the acquisitions of WorkMarket by ADP and DCR Workforce by Coupa. These acquisitions relate to the two most important areas concerning contingent workforce industry – Total Talent Acquisition (TTA) and Services Procurement respectively.

The second major development was on the demographic front where the total number of job openings in the United States surpassed the number of unemployed people. This development is expected to result in increase demand for contingent workers which are already being leveraged extensively by businesses. 

Digital transformation was another theme which played out consistently and continuously in the contingent workforce space in 2018 and was more prominent than previous years and is expected to become mainstream in 2019. While increased activity in the contingent workforce industry is encouraging, enterprises, the users of this contingent workforce, need to understand what these developments mean for them. In this blog, I discuss some of the implications of these interesting developments and how they are expected to play out in 2019

Weaving contingent workforce strategy into the total talent strategy: As the leverage of contingent workforce increases and it becomes an integral part of the overall workforce, enterprises will have to be deliberate about the use of contingent labor, instead of just using it on an ad-hoc basis. This entails figuring out the what (purpose of using contingent worker), the who (type of contingent worker suitable for the need – temp vs. IC vs. services procurement) needed, and the how (sourcing of contingent worker – staffing supplier vs. direct sourcing). The success of such an exercise requires involvement of all relevant stakeholders including business heads, HR professionals, and procurement leads

Focusing on contingent talent attraction and engagement: With greater number of contingent workers being leveraged for high skilled roles, there is increasing talent shortage for contingent talent as well. To add on to this, these highly skilled contingent workers are becoming more selective about who they want to work with. As a result, going forward, just relying on staffing suppliers to source relevant contingent talent won’t be enough. Enterprises will have to attract these candidates through a strong employer brand. Once they have attracted these candidates, enterprises will have to focus on engaging these workers through better onboarding, ongoing training, etc. to make sure that they return for future assignments

Seeking to retain contingent workers: Traditionally, contingent workers were leveraged either as temporary replacement of permanent worker or for meeting increased demand as result of seasonal variations. However, in the current business environment, as enterprises use contingent workers for strategic work streams, engaging them is not enough. Enterprises need to work on retaining these contingent workers as they possess crucial business knowledge which is not only important for the current work stream but also essential for future projects

Reducing services procurement complexity: Services procurement is an area which has been a pain point for businesses due to its unorganized nature and ad-hoc way in which these services are sourced and managed. Contingent workforce and procurement organizations, till now, have not been able to devise a solution to manage the complexity associated with procurement of services. However, enterprises can expect considerable third party help in 2019 to reduce this complexity, both in terms of technology (Beeline, Fieldglass and Coupa offering services procurement-oriented technology solutions) and the requisite category expertise (specialized offerings by MSPs)

Managing the onslaught of digital technologies: Digital transformation is the buzz word across different industries and contingent workforce industry is also seeing its fair share of disruption through these technologies. While leverage of these digital technologies does offer tangible benefits across the contingent worker acquisition value chain, most enterprises impulsively board this bandwagon of digital transformation. Before jumping right in, they need to understand the true nature of these technologies, benefits of these technologies for them, interplay of these technologies with existing systems and the underlying process redesign needed for making these technologies a success

I expect 2019 to be the year which will bring some long-sought answers to a broad range of themes playing out in the contingent workforce space. Look out for my upcoming blogs as I explore other interesting areas in the contingent workforce space

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