What organizational skills gaps could contingent workers fill?

Contingent workers can fill the skills gaps within your organization, bringing flexibility and agility to the workforce. Doing so effectively requires visibility and alignment between your HR function, which defines the workforce plan, and procurement, which negotiates and contracts with vendors. A vendor management system (VMS) facilitates this, while providing you with the extended workforce data you need to acquire the right talent at the right time, for the right price.

What organizational needs can contingent workers meet?

No longer just temporary staff, contingent workers are increasingly a strategic asset. Non-employee workers now perform functions in companies at virtually every level and in nearly all roles, from expert consultants and IT specialists to drivers, warehouse operatives, and security staff. They help organizations do everything from fulfilling important seasonal tasks such as annual inventories to executing complex, non-recurring service projects.

For example, a pharmaceutical company could ask a staffing agency to source specialized medical research roles to complete a critical initiative. Or the company could contract directly with an organization to staff and perform an entire project under terms of a statement of work (SOW), with specific milestones and deliverables written into the contract.

The digital and global nature of work today means most knowledge-based roles can be performed remotely — from virtually anywhere in the world with a good internet connection. These arrangements can provide a significant cost benefit and enable organizations to access skills from a global pool of talent. In addition, according to Staffing Industry Analysts, remote staffing models provide an unprecedented level of operational elasticity – the ability to scale staffing up or down quickly.

How do you create and implement your workforce strategy?

By carefully mapping your organization's existing permanent and contingent skills, you can create a workforce optimization strategy that best meets your business needs.

Although many organizations have employee data through an HR information system (HRIS), contingent workers are often overlooked. This is because procurement and HR are working independently, and often in silos.

A conventional HRIS won't have the capabilities to manage both contingent worker and staffing vendor data – that takes a VMS. By combining and integrating the data from both your HRIS and VMS, you will have the visibility you need to implement your workforce optimization strategy.

How can you benefit from the flexibility of contingent workers?

With a workforce optimization strategy, your organization can systematically exploit the flexibility that contingent workers offer. For example, if a permanent role must be filled immediately but HR needs time to find exactly the right candidate, a contingent worker can step in to fill the gap temporarily. Or perhaps an interviewee isn’t quite right for one role but has other skills that are valuable to your organization. A system in which your HRIS and your VMS share data about applicants and openings gives you the visibility to build the agile workforce your business needs to respond to market challenges and opportunities.

How does better workforce visibility help you fill your skills gaps?

A VMS makes it simple to track and compare the performance of every kind of worker – contingent staff, independent contractors, consultants, outsourced service providers, high-volume shift workers, and even AI agents – to help you optimize your talent strategy.

By combining your current data with decades of anonymized contingent workforce data — from over 450 customers worldwide — Beeline VMS provides insights your HR and procurement teams can use to identify the right contingent talent and fill the critical skills gaps in your workforce. Download our free guide to see how it works.