Freelance Workforce Operations
Introduction
Managing a fast-moving organization is more challenging than ever. External market changes, digital transformation, and competition for talent, are just a few factors that can make or break a company’s success. For multi-brand organizations, there is an added layer of complexity, requiring unique solutions and technology to meet the needs of each brand under the corporate umbrella.
Deloitte research estimates that large companies spend up to 30 percent of their procurement budget on contingent workers. In some industries, the figure can be even higher. As contingent workers become a growing component of your total workforce and procurement spend, you’ll need a flexible, easy-to adopt solution to help you lower costs, manage compliance and ensure each brand and business entity has access to the contingent talent it needs for growth.
Unique Challenges for M+A and Multi-entity organizations
Multi-brand organizations manage a complex and inter-connected business model, often balancing the need for distinct brand identities with the goal of leveraging its collective capability to meet client needs. As a result, each brand and entity often has its own leadership team, culture, and operating practices. When it comes to managing the contingent workforce, each brand may follow different practices for finding, hiring, and managing talent. For example, where one brand may have an HR team that sources and hires freelancers, another brand may follow a more decentralized process where hiring managers directly engage their own freelancers as needed.
Just as each brand possesses its own identity and workforce management practices, it also needs innovative tools that flex to the brand’s unique approval processes, communication style, and ways of working with external workers. Unfortunately, many people management systems and staffing agencies aren’t set up that way. Many offer a “one-size-fits-all” solution that tries to centralize workflows and approvals without recognizing the differences in how each brand identifies, hires, and manages contingent talent. Instead, it’s essential to have a solution that simplifies contingent workforce management for each brand and the parent organization.
5 steps to optimize your freelance workforce operations with Worksome
An effective contingent workforce management solution aligns people, processes, and technology, so they can all work together in connecting teams with freelancer and contractor talent. Worksome helps multi-brand organizations accomplish this goal with smart technology that supports the needs of each entity while also providing the parent organization with the visibility required for smooth operations.
Create a workforce strategy that aligns with your operating model
Whether your organization shares freelancers across brands or has instances where brands compete for talent, your processes and systems must support how you want to operate. Worksome offers the flexibility to serve both enterprise and brand-specific needs. Built-in platform permissions give each brand and talent acquisition team the flexibility to set parameters for who can create and edit jobs, hire contractors, and approve invoices and payments.Additionally, messaging tools enable seamless communication when brands or functions want to collaborate on freelancer hiring.At the enterprise level, Worksome offers full visibility into your external workforce, providing:
De-centralized sourcing model
Centralized sourcing model
Enable seamless internal collaboration across stakeholder groups
A recent MIT Sloan Management Review and Deloitte study has found that complex organizations must orchestrate a diverse workforce ecosystem of employees, long-term contractors, freelancers, and other service providers. And to manage these contributors effectively, internal functions—HR, Procurement, Finance, Legal, and others—must work together to ensure the organization sources, contracts, and pays all contributors in alignment with applicable law and internal policies. For example, HR and talent acquisition professionals must have tools
for finding and hiring freelancers with the necessary skills and experience; the procurement team needs tools for making timely and accurate payments in every country where freelancers are based; and the finance team needs access to dashboards and reporting to analyze contractor costs. Worksome brings all of this functionality into a single system, enabling collaboration between
functional groups, whether at the enterprise or brand leadership level. In a single platform, Worksome helps hiring managers, HR, and other functions do the following:
Get visibility and control of your freelance workforce, then optimize
Instead of reinventing the wheel and placing an ad every time there’s a need for a new freelancer, brands can access a curated talent pool in the Worksome platform. And unlike solutions that merely serve as a repository of freelancer profiles, some of which may be outdated, Worksome allows you to organize profiles so you can see who is available for work in real time. It also offers a skill tagging feature, which makes it easy for HR and hiring managers to identify contractors with the desired skills, build a group of favorite freelancers and consultants, and share talent across offices, teams, and brands.
Flexible workforce ecosystem
Create market agility and scale with a flexible workforce
As brands reorganize, consolidate, and make acquisitions, your need for contingent talent will likely fluctuate. However, chances are, your external workforce will only grow larger over time. According to an Intuit report, 80% of large corporations plan to increase their use of contingent workers in the coming years. To help you manage organizational structure changes as they occur, Worksome offers customizable solutions to match your evolving needs.
For example, as brands merge or join your portfolio, you can easily move freelancers within Worksome to different brands or subsidiaries. You can also add or change customized language in freelancer contracts according to brand-specific requirements. Worksome also scales in alignment with your other enterprise systems. The platform enables custom and API integrations with any of the following systems:
Get internal buy-in and ensure smooth adoption
Like any worthwhile change, rolling out a new contingent workforce program requires a successful launch and plenty of education and training for new users across all your brands and business entities. Worksome Accelerate provides a comprehensive, hands-on implementation that helps contingent program managers, HR, Procurement, hiring managers, and other users adopt Worksome’s tools with ease. Features include:
