3 ways the Onsiter VMS makes contingent workforce management easier

In order to maximize productivity and agility, many companies employ a contingent workforce as part of their human resource strategy. However, businesses that invest in an external workforce face several challenges that are unique to employing contingent workers. 

The most common challenge is finding the ideal contingent worker, then, there’s ensuring visibility and control of contingent labor costs. An the bigger your contingent workforce is, the more time consuming it is to manage them.

What is a contingent workforce? 

A contingent workforce consists of people who provide their skills and expertise but are not employees of the organization. 

Other common terms referring to these “non-employees” include an external workforce or an extended workforce. A contingent workforce enables businesses to access specific talent as needed, for as long as it is needed. In this way, companies are able to respond to changing business needs quickly while incurring fewer costs.

The people who make up a contingent workforce can consist of independent contractors,  freelancers, independent consultants, gig workers, and vendors.

Costly contingent workforce management practices

Most of the time, the responsibility for managing external workers is left to hiring managers or managed service providers. Different teams or departments would then use different means to manage contract workers – spreadsheets, emails, phone calls, and even random technology solutions. 

Ad hoc strategies may work when contingent teams are small. But even then, siloed management of contingent workers equals fragmented processes. As a result, external talent and workforce management become inefficient and ineffective. 

That’s where the Onsiter Vendor Management System – or Onsiter VMS – comes in. The Onsiter VMS provides businesses employing contingent labor with a simple, centralized, free-to-use tool to manage their contingent workforce management program.

How the Onsiter VMS makes contingent workforce management easier

The Onsiter VMS includes several features aimed at addressing common challenges associated with managing a contingent workforce. 

Besides providing a centralized system, the Onsiter VMS simplifies contingent labor management.  

From sourcing up to the offboarding process, we outline the ways the Onsiter VMS makes managing a contingent workforce easier.

1. Finding the right experts 

When it comes to talent acquisition for assignments and projects, companies often struggle to find the right contingent worker. Relevant skills and experience, availability, and pricing are among the factors that can complicate their search. 

The Onsiter marketplace has over 10,000 (and growing) IT and business independent consultant profiles across Europe. Candidates are shown in order of relevance to your assignment requirements, helping you save time in the sourcing stage.

If for one reason or another, you are unable to find your ideal professional in the marketplace, then you’ll find the Vendor Universe feature extremely useful. The Vendor Universe connects you with consulting firms that have the relevant experts. This feature aims to maximize the reach of your search and your chances of finding an independent contractor with the required skills, experience, and pricing. You’ll save lots of time and effort by not having to go to multiple websites and staffing firms to find your expert. 

2. Improving extended workforce cost-efficiency 

When departments and teams work independently to manage their contingent workers, figuring out exactly how much the company is spending on its contingent workforce program can be inaccurate. 

The Onsiter VMS removes costly fragmented reporting through its reporting tools. Your company will be able to view timesheets, expenses, and build reports that help you track contractor budgets to actual spending – all in one place. As a result, you’ll be better equipped to make optimal financial and operational decisions about your contingent workers at just a glance. 

3. Helping with admin work

Contingent workforce management-specific tasks include preparing contracts, creating an onboarding process, keeping track of hours worked, managing performance, processing invoices submitted by contingent workers, and offboarding. Users of the Onsiter VMS have access to tools for sourcing, onboarding, invoicing, timesheets, reporting, and offboarding contingent workers. 

Using these intuitive, easy-to-use tools, procurement and human resource teams will have more time for other tasks. 

Get started with the Onsiter VMS today

Create an account and start using the Onsiter VMS, or book a demo to get a personalized walkthrough of the platform.