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Faced with the costly strategy of hiring permanent employees, many wise businesses opt for a contingent workforce approach. It provides these companies the flexibility they need to stay nimble in an increasingly competitive business world. At the same time, effective contingent workforce management allows businesses to be more efficient and ultimately save money.
Reaching these optimal levels of workforce efficiency becomes easier when partnering with a managed service provider in staffing. These staffing MSPs offer significant benefits to businesses wanting to leverage the benefits inherent in employing contingent talent. Temporary workers help companies maintain high productivity levels without the extra expenses of a risk-prone staffing process.
Ultimately, proactive workforce management plays a critical role in the success of many modern companies. Let’s take a closer look at why partnering with an MSP for your temporary staffing needs makes perfect sense. We cover the challenges of the contingent staffing approach and the myriad benefits gained by adopting this strategy.
Understanding the Challenges of Contingent Workforce Management
Simply stated, a contingent workforce comprises the temporary employees used by any business. They include extra staff needed to complete an important project or handle the busiest times of the year. After the work is completed, the temp employees just move onto their next gig. This approach to employment helps companies better manage their staffing spend.
However, managing a contingent workforce becomes difficult for businesses with small or non-existent HR teams. Your business might have to deal with multiple talent vendors or problems with temporary worker classification. Companies with multiple branches also need to handle a variety of regulations and tax laws.
Finding a top-shelf staffing MSP as a partner allows your managers to focus on running the business. You let the experts deal with finding great talent, handling their pay, and managing regulatory compliance. This approach also provides your company with the cost certainty it needs for a healthier bottom line.
What are the Benefits of Using MSPs for Strategic Workforce Management?
Understanding the advantages gained by using a staffing MSP helps you make an informed decision on a provider. Here is an overview of these benefits to use when researching different MSPs in temporary staffing. Leverage this knowledge to ensure your MSP partner offers the services allowing you to take advantage of these benefits.
MSPs Reduce Contingent Labor Hiring Cycles
Staffing MSPs makes the contingent workforce staffing process much more efficient. As noted above, hiring temporary workers becomes difficult for an undersized HR team. They might spend an inordinate amount of resources only to result in making the wrong hire. Ultimately, their time is better spent managing the concerns of your company’s permanent employees.
The best managed staffing service providers boast a well-honed and efficient staffing process. This helps their business clients reduce their contingent labor hiring cycles, resulting in a more cost-effective process. Companies ultimately employ a more talented contingent workforce at a fraction of the cost.
MSPs Optimize Contingent Workforce Management Processes
In addition to a more efficient hiring process, a staffing MSP improves the processes related to contingent workforce management. This especially helps when considering the myriad tax and regulatory compliance issues discussed earlier. Partnering with experts in temporary staffing ensures your business avoids any fines or penalties for being out of compliance.
Other workforce management processes increase efficiency when partnering with a managed staffing provider. Your MSP ensures the talent provided to your business receives regular training, keeping their skills up to date. Their ability to proactively manage your contingent talent pool provides access to experienced professionals as quickly as possible.
MSPs Provide Cost Savings
The significant cost savings gained by partnering with a staffing MSP also deserve a mention. We already talked about how any staffing process remains expensive and fraught with risk. This is especially the case if you need to onboard a large number of temporary workers for a critical project. If this effort results in failure, all those expenses become sunk costs.
In addition to reducing the risk of the hiring process, staffing MSPs provide clients with cost savings and certainty. Your business pays a simple fee as opposed to salaries and benefits for these new workers. It makes your staffing budgets more predictable, helping your company plan for future growth.
MSPs Offer Access to World-Class Staffing Technology
Recent technology innovations, like AI and machine learning, make the modern staffing process more efficient and effective. In fact, state of the art applicant tracking systems leverage AI-powered screening to filter our underqualified candidates. Generative AI chatbots, ala ChatGPT, even handle initial communication with job applicants.
When partnering with a forward-thinking managed staffing provider, your company benefits from their high-tech approach. You gain these advantages without your business having to invest in the technology itself. This remains another important consideration when vetting potential staffing MSP partners.
What Services Do MSPs Offer for Contingent Workforce Staffing?
Now, let’s analyze the typical services provided by staffing MSPs to their clients. Once again, this helps your understanding of contingent workforce management, providing useful insights when vetting potential providers. Also, take into account your overworked HR team trying to perform these same duties.
Use these services as criteria when rating the different staffing MSPs on your business’s short list. After all, a data-driven approach works best for many important decisions. As a result, expect to make the right choice between contingent workforce management providers.
Vendor Management
The most experienced managed staffing providers generally boast a robust collection of talent vendors. Consider when your company quickly needs a specialized professional to close a skills gap on a critical project. Working with a staffing MSP using a variety of vendors ensures you onboard that talent faster than ever before.
Having a partner for talent vendor management ensures your company need not worry about contract negotiations. Once again, it illustrates a major benefit of using a staffing MSP: letting you focus on running your business. It helps modern businesses reduce the complexity of their staffing process.
Candidate Sourcing
Related to that last point, top staffing MSPs provide the ability to source the right candidate for your business. When you need to add talent, your managed staffing provider finds candidates matching your job requirements. They then work with their talent vendors to source, recruit, and screen these professionals.
As the partnership grows over time, they better understand your company culture as well as your ideal candidate profile. It ensures they always place someone making a great fit on your team, becoming productive as quickly as possible. All told, it’s another reason why building a long-term relationship with a staffing provider benefits your business.
Onboarding
A well-considered onboarding process also matters in ensuring new hires quickly fit in with your team. This “golden rule” applies to both permanent employees as well as the business’s contingent workforce. Since the temporary worker is typically the employee of the staffing MSP, they manage this onboarding process.
Of course, any onboarding process includes background checks, drug screenings, and various paperwork. Don’t forget about the tax and regulatory compliance issues mentioned earlier, especially if your business spans multiple locations. Your staffing MSP partner handles all these tasks, once again letting your HR team focus on your own employees.
Time and Attendance Tracking
Note that time and attendance tracking are also handled by the managed staffing service provider. Having them deal with this critical task reduces the workload of your own company’s HR team. If issues with absenteeism or tardiness arise, expect your staffing MSP to manage these problems without any productivity loss.
Performance tracking is another area where leveraging state of the art HR technology benefits the MSP and their clients. These modern systems provide the reporting you need to ensure your contingent workforce performs at a high efficiency. Be sure to closely vet each potential partner’s abilities in this area before deciding on a contingent staffing provider.
Billing and Invoicing
Billing and invoicing remain other time-consuming tasks typically handled by your company’s overburdened HR team. When managing a contingent workforce internally, these duties become even more complex, especially considering workers from multiple talent suppliers. Including those previously discussed tax and regulatory issues takes this complexity to another level.
Thankfully, a top-rank managed staffing provider handles all the necessary billing and invoicing related to your contingent workforce. They consolidate all the separate invoices from different talent suppliers into one bill for your company to pay. This greatly reduces complexity while helping your company better track its staffing expenses for both contingent workers and employees.
Partner with a Top Staffing MSP for Effective Contingent Workforce Management
You now understand the many benefits of using a staffing MSP for your contingent workforce management needs. Now it comes time to find a provider to become a long-term partner.
When searching for an exceptional managed service provider in staffing, look no further than Anserteam. One of Texas’s top MSPs for temporary staffing, we provide your business with the talent it needs for success. Contact us to discuss your specific contingent workforce needs!