Over the past few months, we've heard from a number of CXR members who've recently taken on contingent workforce as part of their TA remit. Enough that we thought it was worth getting those leaders together to compare notes.
A dozen leaders showed up to that first call and the conversation made clear this is definitely a topic worth some Community exploration. There is something unique about the specific experience of coming to this work from a TA background, inside organizations where the ownership is shifting, and wanting a space for the kind of candid, real-time peer exchange that CXR is built around.
What came up in the conversation
The organizations on the call were at genuinely different stages, which made for a richer discussion. Some have been at this for a while and had concrete results to share - significant reductions in agency spend, vendor consolidation, and hard-won lessons about governance and compliance. Others are earlier in the process and working through what ownership even looks like in their context.
A few areas generated the most conversation:
- Data visibility keeps coming up as a foundational challenge. It's hard to manage a contingent population you don't have full visibility into and more than one leader discovered gaps they hadn't anticipated.
- The centralization question is live for most of these organizations in some form. Whether that means bringing management in-house, restructuring how contract labor is governed, or figuring out how TA fits into a broader workforce ecosystem there's no settled answer, and the group's varied experiences made for useful perspective.
- The MSP model is being reconsidered in a number of places. Some leaders are pulling work back in-house. Others are staying the course. The conversation around tradeoffs was one of the more substantive parts of the call.
There was also an immediate appetite for shared resources: templates, frameworks, process documents. We are building up our library around this topic - starting with the recording from this spring conversation - and have also created Contingent Workforce as a “topic of interest” that you can now add to your profile.
What's next
The group asked for a regular cadence and we're happy to support that. If contingent workforce has landed on your plate - or you see it coming - this is a good conversation to join. >>June 18th, 1pm Central: Contingent Workforce Community Update