The external workforce now encompasses 44 percent of labor spend, according to a recent study by SAP Fieldglass and Oxford Economics. These non-payroll workers are contractors, service providers, and essentially any version of someone providing services on behalf of a company while not being on that company’s traditional payroll.

There are numerous benefits to looking beyond the traditional employee model to get work done. External workers, also called contingent workers, are vital to spark innovation, compete for new business, and diversify the skillset of an organization. They broaden and deepen a company’s potential workforce output.

Capitalizing on these benefits is deeply important as the demand for unique skills continues to drive a highly competitive labor market. Organizations that can attract, retain, and utilize talent in its many diverse forms and sources will be particularly suited for the Digital Age.

Many companies are able to track and manage the spend on an external workforce, but they fall short on managing the people. Processes to recruit, train, onboard, track headcount, or see all workers within an org structure are often relegated to ad hoc spreadsheets, manual notes, and/or stuck in emails. This creates incredible inefficiencies, culture and process gaps, and limits the potential of an organization’s investment in their external workforce.

Answering Important External Workforce Questions

In a recent webinar Enable total workforce management with SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central and SAP Fieldglass, Rizing HCM experts Saif Anjary and Sarah Ullman address these business challenges and some potential solutions. The two have a combined three decades of experience in the HR and talent acquisition space.

Ullman noted during the webcast that in past roles, she struggled to find answer questions like, “How many external workers do we have?”

“As an HR professional, I was asked this question, and to answer it, I had to go ask the administrative assistants in each of the departments if they had any temporary labor,” she said. “The leadership of your organization needs to get a view of your total workforce, and that’s the challenge.”

With integrated Total Workforce Management, you can leverage data and processes between SAP Fieldglass and SAP SuccessFactors to get a complete picture of your workforce. Anjary details the positive impact of the integration further.

“(Total Workforce Management) will bring a streamlined process, having full data of your external workforce, managing all that workforce, and controlling spend,” he explained.

Highlighted Benefits of Total Workforce Management include:

  • Gain visibility into the entire workforce
  • Prequalify candidates
  • Report across systems
  • Ensure proper off and onboarding
  • Gain efficiencies end-to-end

Beyond just these benefits, Ullman and Anjary detail implementation best practices as well as advice for how to position the project for all involved stakeholders. Overall, they’ll walk you through how to identify your needs in managing the external workforce, then provide analysis on solutions that SAP SuccessFactors and SAP Fieldglass provide.

Listen to full webinar on enabling Total Workforce Management here.