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Contingent Workforce (CW) Program Game Changers

These forward-thinking contingent workforce management professionals are evolving the global world of contingent work through their innovation, determination, and ability to change the game.

2024 CW Program Game Changers

Lisa Chenevert Williams

Corporate Contract Labor Strategy Director | Dow

honoree profile

With a decades-long career at Dow spanning disciplines as diverse as operations, supply chain, IT and procurement, Lisa Chenevert Williams was presented with a unique challenge by the company’s board of directors and executive leadership team. In 2021, she was tasked with leading a cross functional team in developing the material science multinational’s first-ever enterprise-wide strategy for contract labor.

“We needed a strategy and a framework that looked at the entire investment holistically, starting with a strategy supported by governance and policy and then understanding the people, data, and technology we’d need for implementation,” Williams explains. The program, which included contingent workers as part of the contract labor portfolio, represented half of Dow’s workforce — around 35,000 employees — and several billion dollars of spend annually.

How did Williams approach the challenge? “We started with the end in mind, knowing it was a huge opportunity to have a strategy for managing this critical part of our workforce,” she says. Williams assembled a team of leaders from HR, operations, procurement, IT, finance, and integrated supply chain. They formed a governance council of decision-makers to represent the enterprise and engaged MSP, VMS and consulting partners.

With the foundational strategy drafted and formalized through to 2027, the initiative is now in its implementation phase. “Here we are in 2024, living that plan — and it hasn’t changed,” Williams explains. She describes the initiative as a timely “transformation to skills-based labor management” at Dow. “We have to be here in this moment and make this strategy a part of our workforce fabric. If we all get smarter about how we use contract labor, everyone wins.”