A Contingent Workforce Management (CWM) partnership aims to support the timely and cost-effective deployment of high-quality contingent talent. This blog post provides an overview of the practical benefits associated with a CWM program, offering insights to help you build a compelling business case that gains the confidence of stakeholders.
Centralized Management
Contingent workers are often spread across various projects, departments, and locations, leading to decentralized management that can be both challenging and risky. CWM programs aim to consolidate workforce management practices, in turn delivering consistency, reducing administrative overhead, and minimizing errors. Leveraging the VMS for task automation, CWM providers establish a streamlined process that benefits hiring managers and candidates while expediting service delivery.
Enhanced Visibility
Your CWM partner will collect and analyze data related to talent spend, supplier performance, talent utilization, and more, providing essential insights into your organization’s contingent talent pool. They will also track metrics such as time-to-fill, turnover rate, quality of hire, and satisfaction levels for both employees and hiring managers. Additionally, CWM provides comprehensive visibility into the geographical distribution and worker classification of external talent, ensuring thorough oversight.
Access to Top-Tier Talent
When evaluating suppliers, CWM partners implement a rigorous tiering, scorecarding, and credentialing process. This ongoing evaluation identifies both high-volume and specialized suppliers that, given the CWM provider’s market expertise, are best suited to provide highly qualified talent to your organization. Your CWM provider may also focus on talent retention strategies, which are crucial for retaining high-quality contingent workers.
Workforce Scaling
CWM programs provide valuable flexibility to organizations. Through efficient hiring and onboarding processes, hiring manager support, and active supplier management, CWM providers expedite the recruitment of highly skilled contingent talent while ensuring that talent becomes productive sooner. As a result, organizations can swiftly scale their contingent workforce to meet hiring peaks or adapt to market fluctuations.
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DE&I)
CWM plays a pivotal role in advancing an organization's DE&I initiatives. Your CWM provider can foster connections with diverse suppliers, promote compliance with diversity regulations, and actively track relevant metrics to gauge progress. When CWM providers manage a company's supplier relationships, they ensure that these suppliers also uphold DE&I-focused principles.
Compliance Assurance
Ensuring adherence to rules, regulations, and industry standards is a top priority for CWM partners. A well-managed contingent workforce program can help mitigate legal and compliance risks associated with temporary labor, ensuring that workers are properly classified and paid in accordance with labor laws. Your CWM provider diligently tracks compliance within the VMS, monitors and reports on supplier and worker compliance, and maintains detailed records. Collaborating with HR, IT, legal, procurement, and other client teams when necessary, they ensure sound risk management practices.
Realized Cost Savings
CWM providers can help procurement teams achieve cost savings by reducing administrative overheads, negotiating favorable supplier rates, and optimizing sourcing strategies. Further, they leverage data-driven insights to guide informed decisions surrounding contingent labor spend. Your CWM provider may develop strategic objectives to include hard dollar, soft dollar, and cost-avoidance strategies. We’ll explore this further in our next chapter, which delves into the specifics of a CWM program's cost considerations.
Contingent Workforce Management allows companies to delegate the complexities of managing dispersed a contingent labor force. Each partnership is customized to accommodate the unique goals and concerns of the client, emphasizing flexibility. By adopting a CWM program, companies can reallocate their internal resources toward core business functions. This makes CWM a strategic choice for enhancing productivity, remaining competitive, and securing lasting success.
