Total Workforce Visibility

It is important for organizations to be able to take a holistic view of their entire blended (full-time and contingent) workforce on a single dashboard in real time. As contingent workers represent a greater percentage of the overall company headcount, the ability to track the entire workforce has become extremely difficult. This “gap” also opens organizations up to a multitude of risks including:
• data security breaches;
• worker misclassification;
• compliance with company policies and/or local, national and international laws; and
• general workforce management concerns.

Additionally, it severely limits the business’ ability to make informed decisions that affect profitability. According to the “2017 Workforce Compliance Report” published by WorkMarket, the contracted labor population accounts for 20-60 percent of the workforce at half of the 200 companies surveyed. Yet, approximately 23 percent of the company leaders surveyed do not know how many contractors they have and approximately 20 percent do not have easy access to contractor data.

Companies need to be able to quickly and easily understand the geographical location of their workers, what classification of workers they have, and what level of access they have (to infrastructure, like buildings and IT systems). They should also be able to understand the financial impact of each worker to the business and how the organization is effectively utilizing its workforce. Without this information, an organization could be susceptible to multiple detrimental situations. In order to help bridge this gap, organizations should consider taking three steps to ensure total talent workforce visibility:

Step 1: Partner with a Managed Services Provider (MSP). By partnering with a MSP and a Vendor Management System (VMS), companies are able to see clear budget breakdowns, and gain regular headcount reporting. This visibility and transparency significantly enhances contingent workforce management and reduces risk.

Step 2: Ensure the MSP has a strong compliance team. Their teams of experts work with suppliers to ensure candidates have the necessary compliance documents and audit each credential and certification prior to engagement. An MSP partner, such as PRO Unlimited, can provide business validation services to mitigate risk of non- employee misclassification.

Step 3: Challenge the MSP on analytics. The amount of data available now is staggering and assuming the first two steps were successfully completed, the organization should have plenty of data to use. However, having access to data is not the same as using the data to drive actionable intelligence. At PRO, they have deployed a Total Talent Solution to look at the holistic workforce (full-time employees, and all non-employee types), which is provided meaningful business intelligence to their clients.
They are able to answer a variety of questions with this data such as:

• Where are my workers? How many do we have in a given location?
• What vendors are we using?
• Are we compliant with local/national and international laws?
• Who is onsite and has access?
• Are we in compliance with company policies and procedures?
• Are we sourcing effectively?
• Where should we source for a resource and how should we set up the engagement?
• When should I start sourcing for a position?
• What is impacting talent acquisition and retention?
• Do we need to manage overtime and expenses differently?

Some leading-edge organizations are already utilizing this approach to great benefit. The war for talent is fierce and the list of financial and other risks for businesses continues to grow. Companies that elect to partner with an expert in this space will have a decided advantage knowing they that they are effectively managing their workforce and mitigating risk.

—Dustin Burgess, Vice President of Strategy, Analytics and Metrics at PRO Unlimited