Many jobs have been lost because of the economic uncertainty created by the pandemic.
Several factors contributed to employee layoffs, including transportation restrictions, lack of infrastructural availability, supply chain interruptions, and business slow-down.
Despite disrupting our usual routines, a crisis of such magnitude can also accelerate preexisting trends. In this case, it brought to the top drawers of HR leaders the contingent workforce. Furthermore, it exposed workers to non-conventional working arrangements for the first time. Covid-19 did not give birth to this arrangement, it merely shifted the organizations’ focus on this model as a response to the pandemic’s economic impact.
The pre-hire ecosystem includes a large number of up-and-coming players, and technology is making it easier for people to connect with employment based on a deeper understanding of skills and matching them with available job opportunities. Contingent workers will continue to be used by organizations as they look to maintain flexibility in workforce management post-COVID-19. They will also consider exploring and expanding newer job models seen during the pandemic, such as talent sharing and pay per time worked.
Companies have experimented with and found varying degrees of success from the work-from-home model, depending on the industry space they occupy. The innovations and investments in digital infrastructure and advanced collaboration tools have increased their confidence in the process.
Even though some may view this as exploitative, contingent work, in reality, has expanded employment opportunities for the laid-off population and offered flexibility for those with in-demand skills.
A contingent workforce makes any business more adaptable to crisis especially when it needs to increase existing resources to meet a sudden jump in demand or fill critical capability gaps. Contingent recruitment organizations will also need to prepare for the additional challenges they are likely to face, in the wake of this Covid crisis. An agency’s success may be determined by selecting candidates carefully and not taking shortcuts in their background screening or onboarding process.
Companies will also need to gear up and invest in comprehensive testing and hygiene practices to protect on-premises workers and the people they interact with.
To support a resilient, contingent workforce, many recruiting strategies are being reimagined. Employees and employers are co-creating tools that streamline, simplify and modernize the application, verification, and documentation processes and provide digitized convenience to both the potential candidates and head-hunters. Though managing a hybrid workforce has its own set of challenges for HR, the advantages outweigh them manifold. The key tactic is in setting up well-defined processes to handle both contingent and full-time employees, irrespective of work location – remote or onsite.
The efforts made at the agency end are even more significant in this space of providing need-based workers. The risk is higher and hence the approach needs to be different. Digitizing and integrating background verification – be it identity, experience or documents in increasingly gaining traction in this industry. Aggregating and creating databases for future references and maybe even a sharing model could lead to a higher quality of candidates and more importantly reducing incidents of hiring someone who can cause legal damages to the company.
Many organizations have a laundry list of checks to be ticked off as part of screening. As an additional step staffing companies are including their own screening parameters to safeguard client’s interests and safety. These can include records of a sex offense, financial fraud, document fudging, or unsatisfactory previous work performance.
The new workplace arrangement of remote-working has added another skillset that contingent workers will need to be screened for – can they collaborate digitally and work with less supervision?
At times the client does not specifically ask for such checks but engaging with a professional hiring agency brings to the table, the added benefits of having these parameters also taken care of.
The right technological platforms allow agencies to manage the funnel of applicants and client demand seamlessly. It can be a game-changer for both the agency and the client when they can create profiles by being transparent about requisite qualifications and compensations. The potential hires can check and apply directly, with empowerment, usually available in conventional labor markets. A win-win where a steady flow of talent pool builds up.
Purposeful cross staffing is an effective way to ride the imbalance caused by skill scarcity in one area and redundancy in another. A windfall gain for the employees will be their upskilling and broadened perspectives within the business line. Overall this will spell growth for both the organization and its workers.
The way forward for contingent hirers is to provide a comprehensive, sustainable, and targeted recruiting practice focused on engaging and empowering the candidates. At an organizational level, the future is in finding the right balance between the operational roadmap and focus on people and culture.
