In the ongoing war for talent, employee experience has become top of mind for a lot of companies. And while businesses have traditionally focused their employee experience efforts on their full-time populations, they have often neglected their contingent worker counterparts.
But organizations that aren’t prioritizing the worker experience for all talent could suffer detrimental consequences, including a lack of engagement from the extended workforce, reduced redeployment rates, losing out on top talent to competitors and more. So what barriers do businesses need to overcome to provide a better experience for workers?
Barriers To Providing A Top Worker Experience
If contingent workforce management is siloed and spread across different teams, this can make it challenging to establish a holistic positive worker experience, especially as it can exclude workers from the programs the rest of the workforce participates in. This is one of the reasons centralizing program ownership for the extended workforce is critical. While there are indeed some instances where full-time and contingent workers must be treated differently due to co-employment risk, they should still be prioritized similarly and provided equally fulfilling experiences, if possible.
Be sure to include human resources or talent acquisition in developing that unified workforce strategy, since they are the experts in the candidate and worker experience. (Learn more about candidate experience as an attractor for talent in our infographic .)
Breaking the barriers between both groups is essential to building a successful global talent strategy.
It’s also important to note the legal distinctions between full-time and contingent talent when it comes to compliance and regulations. If you aren’t centrally managing your total talent program and are concerned about worker classifications, partnering with an employer of record (EOR) vendor can help alleviate that by:
- Taking on tax liability
- Handling comprehensive payroll
- Providing industry-leading benefits
- Doing onboarding and offboarding
- Helping with global hiring efforts to ensure compliance with local laws, and more.
(Discover five key questions to consider when choosing an EOR in our blog ).
Enhancing The Experience For Both Full-Time And Contingent Talent
Providing a great worker experience for both full-time employees (FTE) and extended talent depends on knowing how they differ and understanding what contingent talent values. Engaging in employee listening can help to establish these factors and lay the foundation of an effective worker experience strategy, and is a top practice most tied to diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) excellence. For example, compared to their full-time counterparts, contingent talent values flexibility and autonomy . Extended workers are also less likely to have access to subsidized health insurance and face more challenges in securing childcare and housing. While it may not be possible to assist workers in all of these areas, it is important to be aware of their priorities so you can better support them.
Having the right tech also can’t be understated for worker experience. Utilizing an integrated technology platform to streamline the worker lifecycle touchpoints—from hiring to onboarding to, in some cases, managing entitlements and pay and even offering on-demand pay—will provide a consistent and positive experience for that worker, and even have a positive effect on the employer brand .
Giving workers learning and development opportunities is also key for creating positive worker experiences. These can include ongoing training and support for professional development that will foster their growth and empower them to progress in their careers. Offering a coach, mentor or manager to help guide them and be available as a resource will also go a long way in ensuring they feel supported.
Strengthening Diversity, Equity And Inclusion (DE&I) Efforts Across The Organization
Providing all talent with a positive worker experience will strengthen your ongoing DE&I efforts as well. Having a worker experience process that includes everyone at the organization is key to creating an inclusive and equitable professional environment. Steps that companies can take to do this include:
- Introducing new workers during team meetings
- Providing an onboarding coach
- Giving recognition for accomplishments
- Two-way feedback between managers and teams, and more.
Creating positive experiences like these results in having engaged employees that feel connected to the business and will go above and beyond to meet objectives.
Establishing a world-class worker experience for everyone, including your extended workforce, may seem challenging at first, but with the right expertise and partnerships it can become a key differentiator and talent magnet for your company.
Learn more and unlock the full power of your extended workforce when you download our white paper .