Why large companies need a central contractor hub

Most big companies use a large number of contractors and temporary staff. For example, at any point in time, a typical FTSE 100 company can easily be using a 1,000 plus contractors. These contractors are usually spread out across a variety of business units, performing a wide range of roles and often located in different countries.

The spread and variety of companies’ contractor usage means that often companies will not have accurate information on their contractor workforce. The causes of this lack of information are varied and can include departments using different IT systems, non-aligned contracting processes or differing recruitment strategies. The end result is that companies often don’t have basic information about their business, such as how many contractors or temps are working for them. In general, a lack of contractor related information leads to three different types of business problem.

• Lack of workforce planning information: Not having baseline data on your company’s contractor and temp population results in management lacking the information necessary to plan for the future (How can you plan your journey when you don’t know where you’re starting from?). This means that any workforce changes which the company attempts are less likely to succeed.
• Not obtaining best value: Not having a central store of information on contract and temporary assignments usually results in the business not getting value for money from its workforce expenditure. Recruitment agencies may be charging differing rates for the same type of contract resource and the business won’t be benefiting from the economics of scale available from sharing knowledge and workload.
• No contractor quality controls: If an organisation does not have a central database recording how contractors perform during assignments, then there is nothing to stop contractors, performing poorly while working for one department, being “let go”, and then being rehired by a different department within the same company. Similarly, without a central performance database, companies can’t benefit from systemically reusing contractors who perform well.

In relation to these issues the key question is how can companies obtain accurate timely information on their usage of contractors and temporary staff?

One answer is to implement a central contractor hub which is used across departments and holds key information about contractor assignments, performance and skills. This is the service that the Resourcing Circle software tool (www.resourcingcircle.com) is designed to provide. The specific benefits of using Resourcing Circle are:

• Resourcing Circle provides easy to use processes for capturing information on contractor assignments and on their skills and performance. This provides companies with the information they need to manage their contractor and temporary staff workforce.
• The Resourcing Circle software is designed to be able to work within organisations that use a range of different IT systems and resourcing processes. This enables the software to be quickly rolled out with a minimum of disruption.
• One potential obstacle to the introduction of a central contractor hub is resistance from Resourcing Managers within the business units. Resourcing Circle helps to overcome this by providing the individual business units with useful functionality such as the ability to search the company wide resource pool to find highly rated contractors. This enables business unit Resourcing Managers to buy into and benefit from the roll out the Resourcing Circle software.
• As Resourcing Circle is an internet based tool it enables contractors to access and update their skills information even after they’ve finished working for your organisation. This means that companies can continue to have access to up to date versions of contractors’ CVs even years after they’ve finished working for their organisation.

If you would like to know more about the Resourcing Circle software please visit www.resourcingcircle.com.