Executive summary

If your company is actively managing its extended, non-employee workforce for competitive advantage, you are likely considering how to expand your contingent workforce (CW) program into more labor categories, more geographical areas, or both. This white paper describes some of the most important issues CW program managers should consider regarding these expansions, as well as recommendations based on the experiences of other companies that have managed similar situations.

In addition to an overview of CW program expansion questions and answers, this document offers a framework for evaluating your readiness for expansion and explains where expert insight can be found to ensure the successful execution of program expansions.

You will find information about the value the CW program expansion can provide, market drivers, and competitive considerations. Additionally, you will get tips on how to develop a business case and roadmap for expansion, along with best practices for avoiding potential pitfalls and ensuring program success.

This white paper offers suggestions about where to turn for advice in planning and implementing program expansions that will help you compete successfully in the ongoing war for talent and adapt effectively to today’s “New World of Work.”

Section 1: Introduction

How an expanded CW program delivers great value

Today, virtually every leading company (e.g., FORTUNE 500, Global 2000) uses non-employee workers to augment its labor force, and most have moved well beyond acceptance of this practice as a fact of business life. In today’s demand economy, companies recognize the strategic advantages of an extended workforce and embrace the opportunities that today’s new real-time talent engagement strategies can deliver.

To support the pace and complexity of on-demand talent, organizations rely on powerful non-employee workforce management solutions. These solutions not only automate tedious processes and increase efficiency but also provide workforce visibility and transform massive amounts of data into the knowledge and insight required for strategic business decisions.

Section 2: Market drivers

How to survive and thrive in the “New World of Work”

In recent years, a variety of academic papers and business publications have focused on what has come to be known as the “New World of Work,” a combination of business practices involving increased use of automation, globalization, and new talent management initiatives that are transforming the way work is done.

Organizations are placing greater emphasis on talent as a core differentiator. Heightened global competition has forced companies to become more agile, reflecting and anticipating rapid changes in industries, markets, and consumer behavior. As business speed increases, the ability to find, source, and engage talent quickly — on demand — is reshaping businesses’ understanding of their workforce and, particularly, the role of contingent talent in their business’s success.

An increasingly global talent market and the so-called gig economy, where online accessibility makes it easier than ever to engage talent on an as-required basis, are forcing businesses to adapt their talent engagement and management strategies. While new talent platforms and engagement processes provide access to a wider range of talent, they also introduce new levels of risk, including rogue spend, engaging unqualified or improperly vetted talent, misclassification of non-compliance with company policies, laws, or tax regulations, and risk of exposing company or personal data, networks, or facilities to malicious compromise or outright theft.

Top reasons to implement a VMS

Fortunately, just as management strategies are evolving to take advantage of more readily available contingent talent, the tools to control the sourcing and management of this talent are evolving, too.

VMSs, which were invented nearly 20 years ago to give businesses centralized, systematic control over staffing suppliers that were then the primary sources for contingent labor, have progressed dramatically. In addition to managing suppliers, today’s most advanced VMS solutions can help you source contractors via competitive bidding, negotiate statements of work, manage project milestones, and make contractually required progress payments.

With the right VMS, you can also source talent from both private and public talent pools, drastically reducing costs and the time to fill critical positions while maintaining complete and fully compliant control of vetting, onboarding, and offboarding procedures. This lets you gain the benefits of the gig economy without exposing your company to associated risks.

As your organization adapts to the increasingly competitive war for talent by adopting more innovative talent acquisition strategies, your CW program will play a vital role, but only if you are ready to adapt and expand your program to accommodate it.

New world of work

There are several things you need to consider before expanding your CW program globally. First among these is the fact that there is no homogeneous global contingent workforce and no single set of laws and regulations that controls all talent engagements. Despite the fact that talent is globally distributed and increasingly accessible, global program strategies must encompass localized program components that account for geographical variations in labor laws, tax structures, cultural norms, and market dynamics.

For this reason, most companies have discovered that a CW program developed for one country can rarely be exported to another country without some necessary localization, and it is typically more complicated to implement the program in other countries than in the country where you started. In other words, a one-size-fits-all approach to the world does not work.

With that in mind, it is particularly important for you to analyze and understand which geographical locations (countries, regions, etc.) and spend categories are most important to your business. With a thorough understanding of these issues, you will be equipped to set priorities based on where you see the greatest risk or determine that the system will provide the most benefit.

Why it pays “to think global, act local”

While setting your priorities, it is important to keep the big picture in mind and not limit your thinking too narrowly. Focusing only on what can be accomplished in the short term may result in a program model that will not support further expansions in the future.

A better solution is to develop a global strategy based on common goals across your organization, and then tailor each local program based on local market conditions, customs, and labor regulations. The result will be a more flexible and agile program that provides global visibility and continuity.

Culture and global expansions

In addition to the tangible differences between countries and regions — languages, laws, tax structures, and more — there are other differences that must be considered. Many of these are cultural in nature and may exert a strong influence on whether your expansion succeeds.

Change management is one example. In some cultures, change is generally only driven from the top down, so it is critical to establish top management’s support from the beginning. In other cultures, innovation is traditionally driven from the bottom up. To ensure effective adoption of your program, you will need to understand how this process works in the cultures involved and develop your change management and training plans accordingly in order to ensure success.

Expert guides always available

Remember: you don’t have to do this alone. It is prudent to engage a guide for insight and planning, which are critical to your success. Once again, your VMS technology provider and your MSP, if you have one, can be very valuable since they have been here before.

They can provide you with a host of advisory resources — from in-country localization experts to managers who have run programs of their own, as well as professionals who have managed expansions very similar to yours. They will be very willing to lend their expertise.

These experts will not only give you vital technical advice. They can also help you sell your program, by providing assistance you will need to make your business case and develop the all-important what’s-in-it-for-me messaging to gain the advocacy of key stakeholders you will need to move your program forward.

Determine where you can make the greatest impact

To make the business case for global expansion, you need to show how it will deliver a significant — and rapid — return on investment (ROI). While your needs may indicate potential ROI in many areas, the best practice is to focus on your largest business demand: generally, countries or regions with the highest usage or need for contingent labor, or countries targeted for rapid growth.

Look for similarities with what you are already doing in your domestic program, similarities in cultural dynamics, and similarities in legal and regulatory rules of engagement. While certain aspects of your program must inevitably be adapted to fit local requirements, implementation will be faster and less complicated if localization needs can be minimized.

How ready is your program?

While you assess your company’s global contingent workforce priorities, you must also evaluate whether your program is ready to address your expansion needs. As mentioned earlier, Brightfield Strategies has developed a multi-dimensional tool to assist in this evaluation.

The CW Program Maturity Assessment Model helps you determine the degree to which your organization’s contingent workforce program capabilities are Comprehensive, Strategic, Governed, Measurable, and Sustainable. Their framework lets you evaluate your organization’s internal practices using five levels of maturity ranging from Informal & Decentralized (Level I) to Competitive Differentiator (Level V). (See chart below.)

According to the model’s creator, these levels are designed to focus on the existence of key program attributes, but not on the overall performance of those attributes. Note that while geographic coverage is one of the components of the Comprehensive attribute, it is only one of 15 such components of the attributes overall. You must evaluate how well your CW program is managed in all of your countries and regions — and, particularly, in your home market — to determine your program’s maturity and readiness to expand geographically or by adding new labor categories.

Engage stakeholders for information and support

Engaging contacts from key functional areas (human resources, procurement, sourcing, IT, hiring managers, finance, legal, security), key business units, and key geographies serves a dual purpose. Since each function has a stake in the outcome, these contacts can provide you with the data and insight you need to plan your expansion. They can also provide vital support once your expansion is underway.

By involving local stakeholders early in your planning process, you can determine these stakeholders’ pain points, the value your proposed expansion can provide, and any concerns stakeholders may have about the changes an expansion will require. It’s not enough to understand how your processes currently work. It is important to know what doesn’t work, and why. A thorough discovery process that incorporates the individual concerns of all functional areas will not only help you set priorities; it will also help you recruit supporters for your expansion among stakeholders throughout your organization.