Today’s workforce is constantly changing, especially with the mass exit of the Baby Boomers and the younger generation’s growing preference for contingent employment. In some ways, this can benefit your organization as you probably already use contingent workers, ranging from consultants and independent contractors to freelancers and temporary resources.

However, this can also create challenges for your organization. Contingent labor can often be directed by multiple hiring managers who are likely spread out across various departments and locations and each with their own hiring processes. This separation can lead to inconsistency and variability in the quality of candidate hires as well as create compliance risk and unproductive hiring processes. In addition, managing and operating numerous vendors mitigates your organization’s buying power and increases the chance of overpayment as billing and timesheet accuracy become disorganized.

A top-tier VMS or Talent Procurement solution can help mitigate these challenges, especially in identity and tenure management. One of the biggest challenges organizations face today is their reticence to collect a full Social Security number for contingent labor due to the decentralized nature of the hiring process. This makes it hard to cross-reference personal information. Proper VMS solutions act as a central repository those human resources personnel can use to sync data from across the organization. It also helps to standardize the data collection process, prompting users for information and helping mitigate duplicate records, while ensuring supplier adherence to company policy and establishing a basis for effective auditing.

In terms of tenure management, more companies are realizing the need for a consistent policy regarding length of time workers can retain their contingent worker status – renewed focus stems from a tighter regulatory environment where companies that misclassify workers may have to pay back wages as well as lost overtime pay and benefits. Without controls in place, managers and suppliers are biased toward extending tenure. VMS technology can help mitigate this risk by documenting the process and providing visibility across different departments. This way, you can successfully evaluate enterprise wide performance and verify that internal compliance goals are met.

Published on:

Monday, March 29, 2021