By 2020, more than 40% of the workforce will be made up of part-timers. Here’s what you need to know to keep up with the turning tide.

According to a recently released study from Emergent Research and Intuit, by the time we hit the year 2020, contingent workers – i.e. individuals classified as freelancers, temps, part-time workers, and independent contractors who work on “on demand” projects rather than as full time employees – will surpass 40 percent of the workforce.

Today’s contingent worker isn’t necessarily someone who can’t get a full time job, and so shifts into freelance or contract work as a backup plan. Quite often, a contingent worker is both highly skilled and eminently employable – but for a variety of reasons, finds it enjoyable, practical or more profitable to fly solo.

Or, it may indeed be the case that a contingent worker cannot find a suitable full-time job in their local labour market because there’s a surplus of supply, or because their industry is going through transition in how it conducts business from a more programme-based model to one that is more project-focused (the legal field is among the best examples of this structural shift).

Still, even if working “on demand” is their Plan B, the fact remains that many of today’s contingent workers are trained, skilled, experienced, knowledgeable, and ready to make an immediate contribution at a high level.   

Overcoming Obstacles

However, despite the significant size and influence of the contingent workforce, many organisations are still grappling and grasping to how the model works. The effort and intent is there, but the execution and results are a work in progress.

To overcome these obstacles and maximize the relationship for everyone involved, here are 7 best practices for managing contingent (external) workers:

1. Use Advanced Resource Management Tools

Mountains of spreadsheets and emails don’t cut it for managing internal employees – let alone for external workers, who need to connect and disconnect to projects rapidly and successfully. Organisations need advanced resource management tools to build high-performance teams composed of both internal and external workers, and to access real-time insights into individual and group workloads and tasks. Using these tools to easily and quickly re-allocate resources within and across projects is also vital for achieving milestones, meeting deadlines, and achieving business objectives.

2. Put Collaboration in the Context of Work

“Collaboration for the sake of collaboration,” and aimless discussions that chase emergent activity streams are where project performance and productivity goes to die. Redefine collaboration by using technology that automatically connects informal, unstructured conversations to structured work items and objects. Enable internal and external workers to easily use discussions to link relevant items – ultimately creating realistic and contextual conversations around projects, tasks, files and so on.

3. Centralize Communications

It’s challenging enough for internal teams to find documents, meeting minutes, notes, emails, and other important or critical pieces of information. But when external workers are added to the mix, project progress can grind to a screeching, panic-inducing halt. Avoid this trauma by centralizing communications with a cloud-based work management platform – one that is accessible by smartphones as well as computers and laptops, so that all workers can efficiently stay in the loop and extend the work journey between devices.

4. Enable Visibility & Transparency

External workers, just like their internal counterparts, should never have to guess how their contribution fits into the bigger picture. Enabling 360-degree visibility and transparency helps everyone know where they fit into the bigger picture and, just as importantly, how changes or progress (or lack thereof) in certain stages of a project may impact their own tasks.  

5. Streamline Workflows    

External workers don’t just want to hit the ground running and make an immediate contribution – they have to, because they’re not compensated in the same way as internal employees (i.e. they’re usually paid on an hourly basis, or flat-fee for a defined scope of work). As such, it’s very important to streamline workflows by using customized business rules and automated actions. Excess administration for external workers isn’t just an annoyance: it can rapidly erase the business value they get from the relationship.

6. Automate Time Tracking, Invoicing and Payment

While internal employees may not always be thrilled with their level of compensation, they (usually) don’t lie awake in bed at night wondering if they’ll be paid every two weeks. External workers face a different reality, and unless they’re working through a 3rd party agency, they have to function as their own accounts receivable department. It’s both important and appreciated to automate time tracking, invoicing and payment, so that external employees can enjoy the same comfort and confidence as their internal counterparts.  

7. Foster a Culture of Inclusion  

Embrace external workers as legitimate and valued team members – because that’s exactly what they are! Not only will this inspire them to exceed expectations, but it will allow the organization to benefit from their wealth of knowledge capital, which can be mined to drive improvements and innovations.

The Bottom Line

The work landscape is changing as more skilled contingent workers arrive on the scene. For some organizations, integrating these skilled external workers with their internal teams, processes and workflows will continue to be a difficult obstacle to overcome. But for other organizations – those that adjust existing processes, embrace new paradigms, and use the right enterprise-grade work management solution – it will be a productive and profitable opportunity to optimize.

Following these practices will help establish your organization among the latter, and send it far ahead of the pack.

Lava Protocols is an authorised partner of Clarizen

Source: Clarizen.com