Global Challenges to Contingent Workers
Projections call for a substantial increase in the use of independent contractors and contingent labor on a global basis, which will require HR leaders to translate their domestic best practices to a variety of nations that have rules that vary from country to country. By Tom Starner The trend of employers using contingent labor -- freelancers, project workers, etc. -- has been steadily growing during the past
15 to
20 years, as organizations seek ways to reduce costs and find the right mix of full-time or part-time employees and contractors. Naturally, there were some challenges along the way -- mainly ensuring quality of candidates, creating efficient hiring processes, and legal compliance in the hiring process -- and employers quickly discovered that managing a contingent workforce took serious planning and effort. Now, many employers are facing a new and growing challenge: doing it all over again on a global level. While there are certainly best practices and lessons learned from the past, experts say, enlisting and managing contingent talent globally adds complexity and a new set of challenges. It doesn't surprise me when I sit in front of a CFO and he or she says they have no idea who these workers are, what they are doing, and if they are making things more or less efficient, says San Francisco-based Dana Shaw, vice president at the Global MSP Center of Excellence for TAPFIN, ManpowerGroup's North American managed-service provider subsidiary. Mostly, they want to know if their non-domestic contingent workforce is delivering value, she says. Among the global difficulties are labor laws that differ from country to country, various levels of economic maturity across those markets and different availability of talent and resources, depending on the geographic area. You need an MSP [managed-service provider] with solutions for each country, says Kip Wright, vice president and managing director at TAPFIN in Houston. As economics have driven the global economy, especially within the last five years, he says employers who want to expand globally are pushing harder on the MSP space, which, in turn, has been managing the contingent labor market for clients in a more sophisticated way -- primarily by taking advantage of technology's parallel growth. It really is about thinking globally and acting locally, Shaw says. The U.S. is the more mature market because it started more than a decade ago. Most of these companies are multinational, but U.S.-based, and they wonder, 'Why can't we do it?' Our industry didn't reach out fast enough, but we are catching up fast, she says. And that's a good thing, Shaw says, because research data indicates that global MSP spending within the next five years will double in the Asia Pacific region and nearly double in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Sacramento, Calif.-based Teresa Creech, executive vice president of Randstad Managed Services, a workforce management provider headquartered in Boston, says that, on the macro level, employers need to keep an eye on economic cycles in the various countries where they may be operating in order to build a flexible strategy around the use of permanent versus temporary workers. Of course, she says, many employers were caught having an imbalance on the domestic side by being heavily staffed with full-time employees, so when the recession hit, the result was mass layoffs. Many employers did not do well during the recession, and this new reality will help them with global use of contingent workers, she says. They now see how a more balanced mix of variable versus fixed talent could have been a smarter strategy. Wright notes that, since the recession of 2008 officially ended, three of four jobs created were in the temporary staffing services industry. Creech says HR leaders need to keep an eye on global economic and job cycles, which may be different from one country or region of the world to another (e.g., the U.S. job market might be experiencing one situation while the job situation in a company's key overseas markets might be experiencing something quite different). Keeping an eye on those various conditions and creating a flexible multinational strategy will allow employers to ensure they have the right level of talent in place, she says. On the micro side, Creech says, issues such as taxes, temporary-worker rules, benefits, legal compliance, etc., naturally will vary from country to country, so once employers have sourced the right talent, they also need to stay on top of those issues -- with the help of their staffing vendors. The trend in the broader staffing space
20 years ago was more in the role of transactional gap filling, but now the need in staffing is to play a role as an adviser as well, she says. In the UK, for example, there could be new regulations enacted, but no subject-matter expertise in-house to manage those changes within a contingent workforce, she says. The contingent-workforce concept has been around many years, but the big challenge today has to do with employers asking for a contingent program around the world, Creech says. Wright notes that U.S. companies have extensive experience in using managed-service providers domestically and have seen the creation of many best practices related to a contingent workforce. Many of these U.S. companies ... saw how well it worked, and now they want to put this into other markets, he says. 管理新知 您可能感兴趣的文章 【达人教你写总结】今年，我准备这么写年度总结！
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