Manage Your Non-Employee Workforce with These Four Important Lessons
Procurious and Beeline recently launched their inaugural report Out of the Shadows: Procurement’s Opportunity to Shine a Light on Contingent Labour. Beeline has put together some of their key takeaways – read on!
At your organisation, does it ever feel as if you are surrounded by contractors, consultants and freelancers? If you feel that way, it’s likely because it’s the truth: last year, 45% of an enterprise’s workforce were considered contractors, and by 2025, this number will tip over 50%. The contingent workforce (also known as non-employee workers) have become a vital piece of every organisation’s puzzle, enabling organisations to consolidate, focus their strengths, and work more efficiently to protect their profitability.
Compounding the already rapid growth in non-employees was the pandemic. This phenomenon fundamentally altered the future use of non-employee workers, weaving them inextricably into the fabric of modern work. If businesses weren’t taking notice of the trend before, COVID-19 forced them to do so.
Working alongside and best managing non-employees is now an essential skill for all procurement professionals. Here are four key takeaways all businesses should consider to make this ‘new normal’ work for them:
Make data-driven workforce decisions
In just a matter of weeks during 2020, businesses had to adjust to a life of working remotely, and, for some, at a distance. To do this effectively, managers were forced to review all their projects, work practices, and resources. But that was just the beginning.
Beyond identifying each employee and contingent worker, they needed to understand the worker’s location, which workers were assigned to which project, the equipment and networks each needed to access, and the systems each one had been given permission to use. Keeping track of this in a large organisation is virtually impossible without the right tools to hand – but without this information, managing your non-employee workforce is a bit like playing chess with a blindfold.
Take the time to understand your hiring needs
The pandemic forced business leaders to make decisions at breakneck speed. But it also proved that we do have the ability to adapt, overhaul strategies, and work in new ways, even under the most adverse circumstances.
After an initial reduction in spending on contingent workers, a report by Beeline found that a third (32%) of US companies did indeed replace full-time staff with non-employees.
Now, as we head into a post-coronavirus world, businesses are looking to return to their full capacity. And this means hiring needs are set to change yet again, likely with more contingent staff replacing full-time employees.
Agility is a great competitive advantage
In times of crisis, flexibility, and agility are competitive differentiators. Contingent workforces enable businesses to operate with the agility they need to navigate uncertainty – turning negative circumstances into positive outcomes.
In good times, flexibility can allow your business to benefit from a relentless focus on your core competencies – in other words, doing what you do best.
In times of uncertainty, you can look to a contingent workforce as a means of risk mitigation, enabling you to streamline, grow, or adapt – cutting costs in times of hardship, and then cost-effectively reinstating resources when you are able to do so.
This poses a series of questions regarding optimal workforce composition. What is the right balance between employees and contingent staff? Which assignments are most cost-effectively filled by temporary staff and which by milestone-based contractors? Are we spending more than our targeted bill rates to fill certain positions? These questions can all be answered with an extended workforce platform.
Workforce optimisation should always remain a priority
Optimising your workforce is impossible without the right analysis tools at your disposal. You need to consider the optimum mix of contingent staff and employees to be able to respond quickly and flexibly to uncertainty. To do this, you need real, live data on projects, resources, vendors, and talent. You cannot do this with a spreadsheet.
To adapt and be agile, you need to leverage all the resources you have available: service providers, strategic partners, and technology providers. So, when change happens, you can adapt quickly, effectively, and successfully.
Vendors like Beeline help you work with your closest strategic partners to proactively manage the non-employee contingent talent and resources you have at your disposal. Beeline can help you discover important insights about your extended workforce, giving you unprecedented visibility into your team’s current and potential performance.
With the pandemic catalysing an upheaval in the relationships between partners, contingent workers, and business, it has also spurred a search for new, more fruitful ways to work and tackle the challenges that remain ahead.
Want to learn more? Together, Procurious and Beeline launched ‘Out of the Shadows: Procurement’s Opportunity to Shine a Light on Contingent Labour’. You can download this excellent report here.
