CWS 3.0: June 25, 2014

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Get on the same page for program success

Suppliers and buyers of contingent labor can be said to view the world of contingent labor in very different ways, neither of which is entirely correct and can be frustrating. I liken this to cognitive dissonance, a term for the discomfort one feels when discovering that your beliefs don’t match up with reality — something that I think many buyers and suppliers of contingent workers experience.

Value. It all boils down to value: How it’s determined and what of value either party believes it can bring to the other versus what the other really wants. And it’s not just the buyers and suppliers who are not on the same page. Sometimes, the contingent workforce manager is not on the same page as senior leadership. And that can be very frustrating for all involved.

In my 15 years in a procurement role, I cannot tell you how often a supplier would pitch a value proposition to me that wasn’t relevant to senior leadership. For example, trying to sell process-related efficiencies (soft savings) when our senior leadership’s sole focus was on budgetary reductions (hard savings). It’s not that process-related savings are unimportant — they can bring very real and significant value to any program or initiative, and the CW manager knows this. But process efficiency just doesn’t create the same compelling vision for many executives that would drive them to support a critical enterprise initiative, so they need to be convinced.

This is not news to many CW managers. But the problem needs to be solved in order for the field of contingent workforce management to make it to the next level of strategic corporate contributor. Nowhere is this more evident than when we consider total talent management — an emerging model of talent or workforce management that includes an organization’s management of traditional workers as well as contingents. Basically, total talent management elevates the role of contingent labor management to the strategic level and creates a total vision that optimizes the way companies can use all the human resources at their disposal. Properly executed, a well-crafted total talent management strategy can create a true competitive advantage that can meet spikes in demand as well as reductions, balance labor costs and workforce agility. The trouble is that far too often, the story of these very real benefits often fall on deaf ears when compared with the bottom line message that most senior-level executives seek. It is this dissonance that limits suppliers’ ability to grow and contingent workforce managers’ ability to innovate.

Both buyers and suppliers need to be able to clearly articulate how a future-focused program can deliver benefits that are just as real as cost savings. Not just in a theory or in marketing collateral but in very real terms that confront this dissonance head on. Until then, contingent workforce management will continue to be a merely strategic solution relegated to solving tactical problems.