Supervision

Business owners, customer service personnel, and pretty much every profession must manage and maintain many moving parts. Anyone managing a non-payroll workforce (contingent and gig workers, freelancers) has the same kind of challenge in keeping all the jugglables in the air. One burden with contingent workforce management is that there’s not an extensive body of knowledge for managing at scale, an area requiring those who have experienced supervision.

So Many Workers, So Little Time

A 2013 study predicted 24 million US workers by 2018. Fast forward to 2022 – at least 59 million US workers are part of the independent, gig economy, and contingent workforce!

This massive labor force change – heralded in by the pandemic – brought about myriad business challenges, one of them being the need to manage a rapidly changing workforce. Of course, many businesses greatly reduced their staff, or even shuttered the business, leading to even more professionals looking to work in different ways than before.

This change brought about the largest movement ever toward making the contingent workforce an unstoppable reality. While the contingent workforce has been around for quite some time, it is now embedded in business life, with many companies at some point in their lifetime hiring contingent workers.

Businesses have specific challenges when it comes to hiring contingent workers. These include:

• Recent and high-quality data regarding the right workers needed for the right projects
• Compliance with hiring these professionals to ensure that everyone is protected legally
• Visibility into the work performed by the non-payroll employees

The hiring team must have insight into all that composes the contingent population, such as who, where, how much, and the types of engagement. While it’s easier to hire by saying, “I will pay X amount; who can you get for me?”, it’s more efficient and effective in the long run for a business to look to those who have expertise in managing and leading a contingent workforce. Ad hoc hiring can tick some boxes and fulfill KPIs, but these don’t provide the real business value required. Without holistic insight into all that goes on in the business and the workday activities, an organization can set itself up for unsettling legal, compliance, and regulatory troubles.

A Way Forward

Businesses want the following:

1. Increased revenue
2. Lower costs
3. Improved product and service quality

Hiring the right people is among the top drivers of increased revenue. To lower costs, efficient business processes and enhanced productivity are top factors. And innovation is what brings better products and services.

Managed Service Providers (MSPs), particularly those who have innovated through the prior two years, have become an excellent source of providing solutions for contingent workforce needs. They have the requisite technology, management acumen, implementation skills, and personnel networking experience to help clients find the right contingent personnel. Some clients may not, at first, like the idea of trying a new avenue of hiring contingent workers, instead desiring to continue their typical historical processes. But the future of work requires one to, as Greg Jones, Datto’s EMEA region business development director, says: “Be that value add, look at how you can challenge the status quo within your clients’ businesses and just ask them some quite frank questions around their business processes.”

Trusted Advisors

MSPs with experience in contingent workforce leadership are more mature than a typical staffing company. They go beyond the transactional model of “paying X for Y” to developing a relationship with clients, finding the right professional for their project based on the true value of the work presented.

Contact us to start discovering the right talent for transforming your business.