How to Successfully Manage a Contingent Workforce
Contingent workforces also tend to be more difficult to manage, likely due to their unique nature of work. In order to maximize productivity and reach success with these relationships, contingent workers need to be managed effectively, and here are some ways to achieve just that:
Establish a Scope of Work
While internal employees tend to fill their schedules by identifying and completing different projects that are included in their job description, contingent workers generally only complete the tasks that are directly assigned to them, often due to lower authority and information. Contingent workers aren’t present in internal meetings, they don’t know what has to be done, and they can’t understand the necessary nuances.
In order to keep them productive, you have to provide contingent workers with a clear scope of work, including an overview of their main goals, the results you expect of them, and any preferences they should follow. Aim to provide as many details as possible for higher chances of success.
Assign Team Responsibilities
Another common issue that contingent workers might face is receiving opposing information from the clients and the managers they work with. This problem usually happens when different sides of management can’t communicate effectively and end up sending mixed signals to employees.
To prevent this from happening, it might be wise to make one person on your core team responsible for contingent workforce management. This should involve aspects like setting expectations, monitoring results, establishing efficient practices, and identifying potential new projects.
Having a designated manager can help to ease some of the burden of organizing a contingent workforce, while ensuring everyone meets their performance goals and generates an ROI (return on investment).
Leverage Employee Surveys
From accelerating the recruitment process to gathering valuable employee feedback, surveys are a common tool used in workforce management that can come with a number of benefits. As long as you include the right questions, surveys can indicate a need for additional training and development, highlight common challenges and setbacks, allow the voices of your employees to be heard, and even reveal your employer brand.
And with technological advancements, creating surveys is quite easy as well. All you have to do is use an online free survey maker to create the right solution. Offering useful tools, custom themes, a responsive layout, and even pre-written questions, such a useful solution will enable you to create the best surveys quickly and easily.
Consult a Professional EoR
As contingent workforces can be quite challenging to manage effectively at times, especially when working with a global workforce, additional help can often come in handy. For that reason, many businesses decide to hire a professional employer of record (EoR) to aid them throughout this process.
Effectively, this is an organization that takes over the administrative and legal process related to staff employment, which can include setting up benefits, resolving tax issues, producing expense reports, simplifying the payroll, etc. As a result, businesses can save some necessary time and money when working with an EoR, thus making workforce management a simpler and more streamlined process.
Prioritize Good Communication
It’s no secret that communication breakdowns are another common issue when working with contingent workforces. And while excluding these workers from certain communication channels due to privacy issues might be understandable, keep in mind that they have to be informed on anything that might affect their work directly.
The more limits you place on internal communications, the more difficult it will be to convey necessary information proactively. The manager responsible for contingent workers should also take on this responsibility, ensuring they have access to necessary information such as project updates, deadlines and goal changes, new policies, and project progress feedback. Efficient communication ensures collective success.
Foster Strong Relationships
Many companies tend to hire contingent workers in order to avoid the commitment and costs of recruiting and onboarding regular employees. But even though they might be a flexible and affordable solution, you should still make efforts to foster a good relationship with your contingent workers.
Even if you just need certain services temporarily, you can never know when the need for that service will arise again, or when similar projects will need to be updated. In those instances, it will be much easier and more effective to work with the same people rather than entirely new contingent workers. That is why building strong relationships with good workers is key.
Opt for Managed Services
If the prospect of managing a contingent workforce effectively seems daunting, bear in mind that you can always hire additional help. While an EoR might be able to help you with the administrative aspects of management, specialized managed services can support you in different ways.
For instance, these professionals can aid in offloading new projects smoothly, provide coaching and training solutions, offer virtual assistant services, and even implement effective monitoring software. Although it might come at a slightly higher cost, this type of service can handle all the necessary logistics for you, ensuring productivity and efficiency as a result.
Manage a Contingent Workforce
Due to the nature of their roles, contingent workers can often be difficult and time-consuming to manage. But just by implementing a few wise practices mentioned above, you can easily create a more organized and efficient workforce, and secure success.