Contingent labor management refers to the recruiting, hiring, managing, evaluating, and potentially firing of procurement solutions or workforce management services. A vast majority, 90%, of all firms utilize some type of freelance or contracted talent. This type of hiring has become a much more popular system in recent years as the personality of the workforce has changed.

It used to be you got a career-type job and for the most part that’s where you planned to be for the next 20+ years. That just simply isn’t the case anymore. More and more people are taking advantage of the freedom and maneuverability that comes with working under contingent labor management. In fact, most who do so (66%) are working in a full-time capacity anyway. Here are three areas to consider when planning for successful contingent labor management.

1.) Quality Hire/Recruitment: No matter what business or industry you’re in the first step is to set yourself up for success. The best way to do that is by ensuring the quality of hires is up to the standards you have for a particular job. On average U.S. employers take 25 working days to fill a vacant position. While it’s good to take the necessary time to vet your prospective workers, that’s a lot of time to be spending that could be spent in other ways to help your business. Third party companies or outsourcing of these tasks can help simplify the process by taking care of the entire process, or doing the heavy lifting for you and giving you the ability to simply pick out of a pool of qualified candidates.


2.) Proper Organization: Even with the best workers in the world you’re still going to need the right organization structure to ensure everyone is working in a complimentary fashion. One of the strategies a lot of companies are shifting towards is a more horizontal, or flat-style management structure. Essentially this mean eliminating most or all of the middle-management positions and streamlining the process. Sometimes with too many people involved along the way it ends up becoming inefficient and there could be multiple people to report to, which makes communication more difficult.


3.) Regular Evaluation: The final and perhaps most important step is the ongoing process of performance evaluation. Once you get the right people and set them up for success it’s important to keep track of them and make sure they’re meeting, or exceeding expectations. This way you’ll know who the first to go will be if there’s ever layoffs to be made and who should be up for the next promotion.

Every business or company is only as good as the people they have working for them. If you’re outsourcing work to contingent or freelance employees it’s important to follow these strategies.