4 Ways to Gain Control of Your Contingent Workforce Spend

A large number of organizations are now making use of contingent workers to access hot skills and achieve workforce targets, yet many are struggling from hidden costs and inefficiencies within their program. In this blog we take a look at why contingent workforce spend can be challenging to manage, and dive into the four key ways your business can improve visibility and gain control of its contingent workforce management spend.

To achieve true ROI and optimize their contingent workforce program, leaders must prioritize cost savings and cost avoidance - but how can they gain full control over contingent workforce spend?

Contingent workforce spend can be complex

Managing a contingent workforce and the vendors associated with it is actually a highly-complex task. That’s because any non-employee workforce management program requires a huge amount of data to manage both contingent workers and the vendors used to engage them.

The main issue here is that the vast majority of organizations with smaller contingent workforce budgets are using time-consuming, manual methods to manage their non-employee workforce - such as spreadsheets, in-house databases and Share-point-like websites.

When manual methods are used, your business loses visibility into its contingent workforce and rogue spend will start to invisibly affect the bottom line of your business.

4 ways to gain control of your contingent workforce spend

With the above challenges in mind, we've listed four tips below that can help your organization regain control of its non-employee workforce spend.

#1 - Use a vendor management system to gain visibility into your non-employee workforce

Gaining control of your contingent workforce spend comes hand-in-hand with visibility. Without knowing where you can optimize and improve your non-employee workforce program, and without having true visibility into what you are spending, it’s impossible to gain control of program spend.

To gain complete visibility into your organization’s contingent workforce management program, and to create a centralized strategy for all departments, it’s crucial you use a Vendor Management System (VMS).

A VMS is a cloud or web-based platform that allows you to consolidate your vendors and manage each step of your non-employee workforce in one automated and centralized database.

The result of using a vendor management system? Your company will gain complete visibility into its entire contingent workforce management program, giving you the metrics and insights you need to make program improvements and reduce rogue spend that directly impacts your business’s bottom line.

#2 - Review and standardize vendor rates across your entire organization

One of the main issues that organizations suffer from when it comes to contingent workforce management is fragmented processes. When manual management methods are used, it typically leads to a decentralized approach to sourcing, engaging and managing non-employee workers.

This means different hiring managers across your organization are likely paying different rates across vendors, resulting in your organization overpaying for its non-employee workers.

To fix this issue, use a vendor management system to analyze, centralize and standardize vendor rates across your entire organization. By establishing a standardized rate, you will ensure that every hiring manager within your organization is paying a company-determined rate.

#3 - Consolidate your contingent workforce budget

To achieve your workforce targets, it’s likely your organization has set aside a specific budget that should be used to achieve non-employee workforce goals. To fully understand how your workforce objectives are performing, you should have processes in place that allow you to easily track your overall budget and how much has been spent.

Transparency into your contingent workforce financial data will ensure your organization has complete visibility and control over program spend and performance.

#4 - Measure and track vendor performance

Your contingent workforce program can help your business bring costs down as well as access hot skills that are difficult to find, but this is only effective if your organization is partnering with the right staffing agencies for your specific requirements. Partnering with the wrong agency, and failing to gain visibility into their performance, will lead to ineffective hires and rogue spend.

To resolve these issues, make sure your contingent workforce management program is consistently monitoring and tracking vendor performance. Clear visibility and consolidation of vendors will provide unique insights into key vendor KPIs such as time-to-fill, turnover, time-to-submit and many others.

Learn more about the Benefits of a VMS to manage Contingent Workforce Spend

Download a copy of our free VMS Buyers Guide

Additional Reading

Everything You Need to Know about VMS Cost Savings | Guide

Conexis VMS Case Study

Case Study: How a Manufacturer Cut Costs by 27% and No Shows by 80% with Conexis VMS

The Conexis VMS Difference

Conexis VMS is an award-winning vendor management system built for organizations that want the power of enterprise software without the complexity or cost.

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