Interested in deploying a workforce solutions program to manage your population of contingent workers? You’ve come to the right place! But regardless of whether you’re looking for an MSP, RPO, or ICC program, there are lots of things to prepare for prior to implementation.

To help your organization formulate a plan of attack before introducing your new strategic workforce solution, here are some items that you should be thinking about prior to adopting a labor management program.

Establish your goals and objectives

It is critical to understand the “why” before implementing a new workforce management approach. What would you like the program to accomplish? How can it enhance the success of your organization? In what ways will it support your internal staff? By gathering impactful data and generating insightful answers to these questions, you’ll enable your workforce solutions provider to design a solution that is tailor-made for your business’s specific needs.

Appoint points of contact and an executive sponsor

The success of your workforce solutions program—or lack thereof—will greatly hinge on the collective buy-in generated from your internal teams. By designating a point of contact who will work with your workforce solutions provider and handle all program-related matters, you’ll boost your odds of program prosperity tenfold. In addition, an executive sponsor can play a critical role in bridging the gap between your organization’s key stakeholders and the provider’s implementation and account teams. By nominating primary points of contact from your HR, TA, procurement, and finance departments—along with naming an executive sponsor for the program—you’ll ensure that your organization’s cumulative needs are spoken for.

Encourage internal responsiveness

During the implementation and discovery stages of any workforce solution, there will come periods of in-depth, Q&A-style conversations led by the workforce solutions provider. While some stakeholders within your organization will be undoubtedly hesitant to respond truthfully when faced with this onslaught of probing inquiries, understand that collective honesty will only strengthen your program in the long run. Make sure your teams are attending these discovery sessions and contributing appropriately. Ultimately, what your workforce solutions provider doesn’t know, they can’t solve for—so be candid during your conversations!

Set up a hiring manager user group

Experimentation is often key during the initial roll-out stages of any workforce solution. That’s why it’s important to grasp how your solution can be applied in a real-life scenario before program launch. By establishing a hiring manager user group, your organization will be able to work out the kinks in your program. These designated stakeholders can be helpful when validating processes, affirming company practices, and testing out recruiting technologies like VMS or ATS systems. As your hiring managers grow increasingly comfortable when learning how to use this new workforce solution, their overall performance will almost always show improvement.

Ensure a smooth and steady process

Your workforce provider will have a variety of milestones and deliverables that are designed to keep the program on-track and on-time during implementation. To avoid delays with your solution, be sure that your internal teams understand the importance of responsiveness. By providing prompt answers to the provider’s wide-ranging questions, the possibility of disruptions to the program roll-out will be diminished significantly.

Summary

Whether you’re an HR, TA, or procurement professional, you understand the challenges that come with managing a contingent labor program. That’s why workforce solutions can provide the perfect remedy to alleviate these time-consuming tasks from your daily work agenda. Upon honing in on the type of workforce program you’d like to deploy and choosing a proven provider to help you get there, your organization must prepare itself for all that is to come during the implementation period. By showing a willingness to work with your provider and help them develop a firm grasp of your talent and labor objectives, your organization will reap the benefits from a viable workforce solution—one that will improve the quality and efficiency of your contingent labor objectives.

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