Questions to Ask for Your Contingent Workforce Strategy

The contingent workforce – gig workers, contractors and other external talent – plays an essential part in the growth and success of an organization. All industries – from healthcare to IT, manufacturing to finance – rely on contingent workers to reach goals and drive cost savings. Regardless of the number of extended workers your company engages, migrating their distributed management into a single process can deliver real value. You will gain visibility into your total extended workforce, take control of costs, boost access to talent and enhance compliance.

Which is why organizations of all sizes, including small and mid-market companies, are engaging managed service provider (MSP) partners to help them develop their contingent workforce strategy. But not all MSPs are created equal. The right solution must be aligned to support your organization’s complex and evolving needs.

The process of deploying a right-fit approach starts with exploring three fundamentals to success:

• Understanding how an MSP program benefits companies that leverage contingent workers
• Matching the right MSP to meet your business needs
• Measuring your organizational readiness
  
  

What are the Benefits of an MSP for Contingent Workforce Management

Is working with a staffing MSP right for your business? Consider these four questions to determine how an MSP could impact your ability to deliver on your business goals.

1. Do you have the visibility you need to manage and track contingent workforce engagement?

Looking at both your processes and technology – do you have a true picture of all the activity associated with your extended workforce? Strong contingent workforce programs have the ability to benchmark and track the performance of all suppliers to make data-driven decisions that optimize costs and engage the highest quality resource quickly and effectively. An MSP partner makes these advantages possible with advanced workforce technology that can integrate with your current systems.

2. Do you have a standard approach to control flexible worker costs across the organization?

Whether you spend $5 million or $150 million a year on contingent workers, you are likely wasting a significant portion of that cost on higher-than-market rates. Consistent, rationalized contingent spend across the board yields savings that quickly yield results.

3. Does everyone in your organization leverage all available resources to make the best talent decisions?

An MSP applies technology and deep supplier networks to draw from all channels and deliver the right resources at the right cost. If managers only draw from their own supplier relationships, that access to the right workers may be lost.

4. Do you have the time and resources in-house to proactively identify risks and adjust your compliance strategy?

Worker classification, data protection and evolving employment law can present significant risks. An effective MSP offers the workforce expertise, regulatory knowledge and risk mitigation technology to help protect you from potential pitfalls.

Matching With the Right MSP

Once you’ve determined that engaging with a staffing MSP is the right approach for your company, the next step is choosing the right MSP to partner with, because as I mentioned earlier, not all MSPs are created equal.

To determine if a particular MSP partner is the right fit for your organization, you need to understand if the MSP’s capabilities align with your organization’s structure, market, timelines and expectations. Here are four core areas to consider.

Ramp-up time to value

An experienced MSP partner can scale implementation process to fit your organization size and scope. Rather than waiting on a long run-up to a broad enterprise solution, your stakeholders will be able to benefit from a scalable deployment supported by hands-on change management and education across key areas of process and technology. A solution that limits complexity for rapid deployment but allows for flexibility is ideal for many small to mid-sized organizations. Whether achieving a project goal, capturing and reducing costs or reducing cycle times, the right MSP should be measuring results and creating early wins to boost adoption as early as possible.

Flexible approach to technology

The systems that support great MSPs include both large enterprise vendor management systems (VMS) and flexible rapid-deployment solutions for more streamlined organizations. Likewise, advanced data and analytics solutions such as AGS’ Acumen® Intelligent Workforce Platform provide valuable insights to help optimize the performance of your contingent workforce strategy. Notably, the technology offers comparative analytics that internal systems cannot deliver. This includes intelligence based on program performance, as well as valuable benchmarking data from the broader client base to provide context and inform decisions on contingent workforce strategy.

Ability to evolve

Your contingent workforce requirements will constantly evolve. Whether you add more suppliers, departments or locations to your program or branch out to different types of workers and skills, your MSP should grow with you. Ensure not only that your chosen MSP partner has the ability (and willingness) to evolve alongside you but is consistently investing in capabilities to meet the future needs of the workforce.

Is Now the Right Time for an MSP?

There is no perfect time for change. However, postponing developing a contingent workforce strategy could be a hinderance to your company’s growth. Here are a few scenarios where having an MSP would have immediate impact:

• You currently do not have unified management of contingent workers. Distributed management of as few as 100 contingent workers can cost an organization millions of dollars in billing inconsistencies alone. Add the impact of unfilled assignments and compliance risks to the mix, and the need for a strategic approach becomes more urgent. A unified approach to contingent workforce management will bring cost savings.
• Finding talent is challenging and unpredictable. Many companies are increasingly dependent on contingent workers for both high-volume labor demands and business-critical or niche talent needs. An established MSP partner can expand your access to all types of skills, experiences and creative sourcing strategies.
• You don’t have visibility into contingent labor spend and management. If your organization’s visibility into your extended workforce and your suppliers are limited by siloed engagement through individual managers or departments, it is possible to create an enterprise view with minimal disruption by partnering with an MSP. The result is a new level of efficiency and the agility to grow and change your workforce capability over time.
• You can’t support business as usual, nor plan for the future. The ability to access contingent workforce data, make comparisons and create context is essential. Comparative analytics provide vital intelligence for driving informed strategies, fixing processes, avoiding detrimental decisions or identifying small adjustments that can have a large positive impact.
  
  

Move Your Contingent Workforce Strategy Forward

When you take an in-depth look at your workforce goals and the needs of your business, with the above questions in mind, you may find that you are positioned to benefit from a partnership with an MSP. Consider what your company can gain from greater visibility into your contingent workforce, opening access to talent, controlling costs and improving compliance across the globe. Now could be the time to explore your options and transform your workforce strategy.

This post was originally published in April 2021. It was updated in February 2025.