In today’s dynamic business environment, it is essential to have a total talent management strategy that integrates full-time staff, contingent workers and external partners into one approach.
Unifying workforce management can improve the experience of workers, increase project efficiency and help organizations adapt to market changes. This requires systems and processes to provide uniform experiences both for workers and hiring managers, while recognizing necessary classification differences.
Why contingent workers are more important than ever
In this approach, contingent workers are playing an increasingly important role. These flexible workers are now used by organizations to fill in skill gaps and complete projects. This strategic shift allows businesses to meet changing customer demands, while also controlling costs and gaining an advantage over their competitors.
TotalJobs’ research shows that temporary hires in the UK will increase by in 2024 . This indicates that employers across industries are prioritizing skills-based recruitment in order to compete in the job market.
Only when contingent workers are properly integrated into the company’s culture and processes from day 1, can these benefits be realized. Total talent management ensures holistic onboarding, retention and training, including permanent employees, temporary workers and service partners.
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While complementary, “total talent and workforce management” focuses on skills and career development while “total workforce and talent management” covers the hiring process.
The challenges of creating a unified strategy
In order to implement a total talent management strategy that is successful, organizations must overcome several obstacles. These obstacles can hinder them from fully realizing all the benefits associated with an integrated workforce. It is vital that companies who want to maximize the potential of diverse talent types understand and address these challenges.
Breaking departmental silos Companies should align their service procurement, HR, and talent acquisition departments on a single strategy. This will remove walls between departments that are involved in hiring and onboarding.
Connecting technology systems: Many organizations maintain separate systems, such as vendor management systems for contingent workers and human resource information systems for permanent employees. These divisions in technology create data environments with disconnected information that prevent informed decisions about the entire workforce.
Data protection and compliance: Typical projects may involve a mixture of permanent staff, independent contractors and service providers. To ensure appropriate and secure access to data, it is important that IT systems are designed with carefully tailored protocols.
It is important to ensure compliance within a team of multi-talented internal and external employees. Data security is not the only risk that companies face. They also have to deal with taxation rules, and misclassification of workers which can lead to significant penalties.
To prevent data breaches, businesses must have contractual protection that documents the access control for all types of staff.
How to manage service procurement efficiently
During onboarding and access control, service procurement requires special care. This is because the cost of external resources may be up to three or four times that of contingent staff.
The wrong person is often assigned to oversee service procurement. The traditional managed service providers that excel at managing contingent workforces focus on the supply chain of staffing and recruiting agencies.
Service procurement is a different skill set than HR management. MSPs might not have the expertise needed to fill operational gaps in the companies with which they work. We can see that MSPs are currently investing heavily to increase their capabilities.
A long-term dependence on the same service providers without comparing alternative options can also lead to excessive spending. Before onboarding external staff, the Statement of Work must clearly define requirements and permissions for data access.
Partnership with experts in workforce management
As international hiring increases and artificial intelligence plays a greater role in the processes, organizations require expert support to implement effective total talent management.
When managing diverse employee types, partnering with a provider of workforce and payroll management can reduce the burden placed on HR and management. These partnerships can:
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Improve visibility of workforce spending, types, roles and skills diversity as well as global data privacy laws
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Guideline for smooth onboarding and Training
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Help all employees understand the company’s processes and culture
Employer-of-record (EOR), and agent-of record (AOR), services combine worker classification, benefits management, payroll, and onboarding into a comprehensive system.
Building Success through Integration
No organization can succeed in isolation, just as no department within an enterprise can. To achieve long-term objectives, it is essential to have complete visibility across all systems for staffing, recruiting, and project management.
Unifying all types of workers under one talent-management strategy allows companies to build more flexible and skilled teams that are ready to face tomorrow’s challenges.
