Since the pandemic, organizations around the world are working on extending their workforce with an active emphasis on procuring contingent labor. However, many companies are facing challenges while treading into this new territory. Companies with already established contingent programs are also having trouble attracting the workers as the gig workforce demands increase.

Don’t Underestimate It

Most companies tend to undermine the importance of engagement, experience, and value when dealing with contingent staff. They often forget that hiring a bad employee even for a shorter duration ultimately affects the company’s reputation and quality of work. Not only that a bad experience also results in badmouthing which ultimately puts a dent on the company’s reputation.

To avoid any of this, you must handle the contingent staffing strategically. Like you do with a permanent workforce. This starts by giving the gig workers due respect, value, and attention throughout.

Tips to Engage Contingent Talent

Now that you know it’s important to engage with contingent talent, the next step is to understand contingent workers’ inhibition and devising your engagement strategies accordingly. Below we have jotted down few areas of concerns that gig workers are specific about. And tips on how you can solve it.

1.    Be Transparent

Today’s candidates want to make informed decisions and transparency is a must for them.

A lot of time what candidates are offered and what candidates get differ vastly. This is why candidates often brood over several questions and apprehensions before making the final decision to ensure they don’t end up making the wrong decision.

Most companies live under a misconception that transparency in the case of contingent workers revolves only around money. On the contrary, transparency in the case of temporary staff spills over to a large range. Such as,

What are the job responsibilities?

How long will be the contract?

What would be the compensation structure?

What will be the working hours?

Will they be given additional benefits?

What are the contingent labor policies, practices, and methods?

What is the provision of project extensions?

 

Transparency during the application processing is also important to delivering a quality candidate experience. This means you must not keep the candidates hanging for an answer. If their profile is being evaluated or they have low chances of selection or you don’t have any clarification as yet, in any case, let them know the current status.

2. Deploy Technology for Immersive Candidate Experience

More often than not, candidates are running behind recruiters to know their application status, details about the contract, feedback, and more.

And most companies fail to deliver a satisfying experience at this stage. Therefore, if you want to work on improving candidate experience, this is a critical experience to take care of.

To start, deploy the right recruiting tools at different points of contact to eliminate the tedious and confusing manual work from the recruiting process. Offer smart options instead.

For example, employ the Applicant Tracking System (ATS) for candidates to create their online profiles, apply to jobs and track their applications. Integrate the ATS app with CRM to allows recruiters to facilitate omnichannel communication with involved recruiters from any platform. Eliminate the lengthy forms with resume upload and autofill options.

Take your technology usage a notch higher and start using tools that utilize AI and automation. These include chatbots, resume screening tools, virtual interview tools, analytics, and other related applications that constantly utilize data to improve communication and updates.

Be involved at every step of the way to stay engaged with the candidates.

3. Onboarding

69% of employees are more likely to stay with an employer for three years if they experience great onboarding. Effective onboarding is just as important for the gig workers as it is for the permanent staff. After all, anyone working for you wants to feel welcomed and valued irrespective of how long they serve.

Some of the mistakes that companies often do and must avoid is,

·  Failing to make temp staff welcomed

Offering a warm welcome to the contingent staff makes them feel part of the company. If you are not conducting a proper onboarding, it signals that you consider contingent staff as outsiders and unimportant to the company. This strategy is wrong on multiple levels. You wouldn’t want to start a new association on the wrong foot.

Therefore, ensure to build a structured onboarding program for the contingent staff as well. Make them feel welcomed and part of the company and introduce them to all the team members they are going to work with. Provide them an induction program so that they know what’s lying ahead and don’t live in limbo.

·  Setting unrealistic deadlines

When it comes to temp workers, companies become a lot stricter with deadlines since they’re investing money and have a time constraint. But that doesn’t mean you should set unrealistic deadlines and bombard them with work.

Stress directly hampers the worker’s performance and runs the pressure of burnout. It directly impacts work quality, which can spiral further down to escalations, project extensions, or other issues. Therefore, if you want a return on your investment, remain realistic with deadlines and deal with the temp staff humanly.

·   Not providing dedicated support

One of the most common mistakes companies makes while working with the contingent staff is not providing adequate information and support. They want workers to jump straight to work and provide them the deliverables without inducting them with the required information. Leaving them on their own is not the right approach.

Here, you must remember to assign a mentor to every new contingent worker who can guide the worker with the work and company. Give them the project and company training. Also, don’t let them run behind you for every smallest of work. Provide them required access to files, folders, and other information that is critical to their job. Be proactive with the onboarding process.

Read More: Here’s Everything You Need to Know About Contingent Staffing

Conclusion

It’s high time that you start taking your gig workforce seriously. Because as we progress through the pandemic economy, dependency on the gig workforce is certain to increase. And if you don’t have the right strategies in place, you will be missing out on a major chunk of the workforce that is not only needed at this hour but also the best economical and productive solution to many workforce challenges.

In 2018, it was estimated that by 2023, 52% of the workforce will have worked or will be working independently. Today, it is estimated that the gig economy already contributes more than $1 trillion to the U.S. economy. Therefore, if you already have a gig workforce in place or planning to have one soon, getting your gig workforce strategies right is inevitable.