Around a third of UK businesses say they find themselves short-staffed at least once per week. With an average of 4.9 weeks required to make a new hire, filling immediate gaps in the rota can feel like mission impossible, even during quieter periods.
When a shortfall hits during a surge of seasonal demand, the implications could be embarrassing at best (frustrating delays and disruption to customer service) and catastrophic (vital operations affected, increased risk of workplace accidents) at worst.
Contingent staffing is a lifeline for businesses looking to overcome staffing challenges. With the right contingent staffing technology, HR teams can hire faster, make smarter staffing decisions and optimise labour costs.
Here’s how.
1. Automation can speed up the standard time-to-hire window
One of the biggest benefits of contingent staffing technology is how much faster it makes the hiring process. Without a digital platform to manage the hiring process, you may be juggling a tangled web of spreadsheets, phone calls, and emails. It can be frustrating, chaotic and a huge drain on time, even if you’re dealing with just one agency or recruitment platform.
Online contingent staffing platforms provide fast access to pre-vetted candidates. Smart-matching algorithms and automated workflows identify the most suitable candidates quickly, shaving days or even weeks off your time-to-hire metric. That speed isn’t just convenient — it’s a competitive advantage in sectors like retail, logistics, and manufacturing, where demand can change overnight.
2. Reduced cost-per-hire and better spend visibility
Optimising your cost-to-hire requires accurate cost tracking across the whole of the recruitment cycle, from advertising costs to agency fees, onboarding to training.
Contingent staffing technology removes the guesswork sometimes associated with this calculation. Built-in rate card management and real-time dashboards allow you to track spending by supplier, department, role type, or location. You can quickly identify where costs are creeping up, and take corrective action before they snowball.
For large enterprises with hundreds or thousands of contingent hires, this level of spend control often throws the spotlight on unnecessary outgoings.
3. Improved visibility and oversight
It’s often said that ‘you can’t manage what you don’t measure’ but it’s not as easy as it sounds when you’re dealing with multiple vacancies, locations, vendors, and suppliers.
Contingent staffing technology doesn’t just gather data for key variables like candidate quality, agency response times, and fulfilment rates. It can also help you make sense of that information with detailed analytics, modelling, and pattern identification.
Want to know which suppliers are consistently underperforming? Curious whether a certain agency is charging above-market rates? Looking to understand why fulfilment is slow in a particular region? The right workforce management platform makes it quick and easy to find the answers.
4. Improved worker and supplier quality
Another key benefit of contingent staffing technology is the ability to assess and improve the quality of both workers and staffing partners. Feedback loops built into modern platforms allow hiring managers to rate temporary workers, while also providing supplier scorecards based on metrics like time-to-fill, quality of hire, and compliance.
Similarly, a Vendor Management System allows you to deep dive into supplier performance. Underperforming agencies can be quickly identified and supported to improve the quality of service offered or phased out, while high-performing agencies can be rewarded with more placements.
And reliable or skilled workers can be flagged as ‘preferred’ for future assignments, creating a personalised talent pool of temp workers who deliver consistent quality. This quality control is yet another advantage of hiring contingent workers through dedicated staffing technology.
5. Compliance and risk management
Recent updates to the Employment Rights Bill have placed increased regulatory pressure on employers in the UK. Workforce compliance is more complicated than ever, with variable tax regulations, reporting requirements and worker rights in play across different industries and geographic locations.
Non-compliance can lead to costly fines and reputational damage, yet ensuring all the boxes are ticked is a bigger challenge than ever before. The right workforce management tool can help here too, by alleviating the burden of compliance. From ensuring that all necessary documentation is captured and stored correctly to tracking hours worked, managing training and certification, and creating a comprehensive audit trail, contingent staffing technology can help you to minimise risk, save time, and stay compliant.
The benefits of faster, smarter hiring
Indeed Flex optimises your contingent workforce management by offering fast access to pre-vetted candidates. With all the tools you need to take control of costs, manage suppliers and tick off compliance tasks, it’s a sure-fire way to guarantee quicker, smarter recruitment. Request a demo today to find out more.
