Understanding managed service provider benefits is crucial for organisations aiming to stay agile and meet business objectives. This is especially true as they engage more temporary and contract workers to supplement their workforce.
Phil Nott—Senior Director, Strategic Growth
For instance, in the UK, the strong demand for temporary workers in 2023 capped a prosperous period of two and a half years. Although the growth rate was comparatively modest, it marked the strongest YoY performance. With today’s market downturn and ongoing talent shortages, many organisations now favour contract workers over permanent staff.
As employers scramble to source and onboard new contingent workers, hiring managers are increasingly pressured to recruit and onboard quickly.
Many managers feel overwhelmed and under-supported. They struggle to keep track of and hire contingent staff while attempting to build cohesive and productive teams in a hybrid work environment.
In many cases, managers are frustrated over the lack of resources and support in their hiring process. 70% of HR leaders say managers are overwhelmed by increased hiring and onboarding responsibilities. They cite the absence of support and adequate training as the main reasons.
In the new world of work, companies need access to the right partners, tools and resources to keep ahead in the evolving candidate marketplace. With a strategy and hiring support, managers can make informed hiring decisions based on current business needs and forecasted demand.
Investing in a Managed Service Provider (MSP) programme is one way to alleviate hiring manager burnout. With an MSP, you have a dedicated team of advisory consultants and supplier partners who manage and facilitate candidate sourcing, supplier management, risk avoidance, regulatory compliance and onboarding.
Once the logistics of hiring and onboarding external labour are off your hiring managers’ plate, they are free to focus on business-critical activities. The more managers understand how their teams interact and the skills and resources needed to get the job done, the easier it will be to hire the best talent.
Here are just a few of the additional hiring manager benefits of a Managed Services Provider (MSP) programme:
A central repository or VMS allows for organising and automating communications channels. This collaborative tool will save your hiring managers time by freeing up space in their inboxes. It will also allow them to quickly track candidate status in the hiring process.
Candidates are matched with open requisitions and quickly shortlisted for manager review. This saves hiring managers hours of resume review and interview scheduling time, decreasing the overall hiring time. All document gathering, pre-screening of candidates, and interview schedules are coordinated and executed by the MSP.
Measuring time-to-hire is critical and understanding its contributing factors is essential to help reduce this metric and onboard candidates quicker in a competitive hiring environment.
Pontoon recently consulted with a global Financial Services client to understand what drove their time-to-hire and ultimately contributed to candidate drop-outs. By analysing their background screening processes and providing insight into corporate compliance benchmarks, we decreased their time-to-hire by five working days.
Sourcing and recruiting the right mix of contingent talent is essential. With an MSP, a network of experienced supplier partners does all the legwork in searching for and onboarding talent. The MSP liaises with suppliers and hiring managers to develop programme strategy and evaluate performance.
You must invest in your supply chain and understand how valuable they are to the success of your programme. Ultimately, your suppliers carry your EVP out into the marketplace when attracting new candidates. By building relationships and sharing insights with your supply chain, they can represent your organisation successfully in the candidate market.
It’s time to level up your hiring manager’s knowledge through insights and analytics that empower them to make informed hiring decisions. To accomplish this, MSPs provide access and training on reading and understanding market data and candidate analytics. With this knowledge, hiring managers can stop guessing and start predicting future business needs.
Given the market’s scarcity of data/analytic skills, I question whether hiring managers have the right tools to determine what or how they need to hire. There are many factors to consider, such as candidate availability, location strategy, competitor hiring, etc., all of which will impact how quickly you can hire.
Accessing data in an easy-to-consume and interpretable manner along with a clear story is critical to real-time decision-making. Using data-driven insights and prescriptive/predictive analytics, you can better understand your hiring options, channels, cost, and location. Your hiring managers will know where talent exists in the market, the cost of that talent, and how you stack up against your competition.
Your hiring managers have a voice that needs to be heard. Likewise, your candidates’ (successful and unsuccessful) and supplier opinions matter. Obtaining feedback on worker performance directly from your hiring managers gives them a voice in shaping the future state of contingent labour within the organisation, a benefit that helps develop and retain high-performing managers.
Additionally, constructive feedback helps to initiate the future evolution of your MSP programme. Understanding experience, challenges and ‘niggles’ helps the MSP team refine programme processes, driving further efficiencies in recruiting contingent workers.
I’ve always been taught that feedback is a gift. You need to obtain the feedback in such a way that it’s not seen as a burden or cumbersome. Take the feedback, and qualify it further if you need to, but ultimately you have to understand it so you can act.
The Adecco Group’s collection of HR solutions and staffing brands offers a wide range of benefits to Pontoon’s MSP clients. This is especially true when providing recruitment support for hiring contingent labour globally. By leveraging the expertise and resources of the group with Adecco, LHH, and Akkodis, Pontoon can offer a unified MSP governance and delivery model that consolidates all services under one contract. This streamlined approach simplifies the process for our clients and ensures consistent quality and efficiency throughout the candidate journey.
Pontoon’s MSP can tap into a vast network of partnerships and assets that the Adecco Group offers. Our clients benefit from access to a broader pool of qualified candidates, specialised legal and industry knowledge, and innovative talent acquisition strategies from various subject matter experts.
Collaborating with Adecco, a global staffing leader, ensures our customers have a trusted partner in workforce solutions. Adecco’s cultural and strategic alignment with Pontoon enhances our ability to add value and enrich workers’ professional lives.
For example, Pontoon activated the Adecco Group ecosystem to optimise an airline customer’s supply base, implement skill-based hiring, and leverage third-party talent assessment platforms. Despite initial challenges, we achieved all KPIs and SLAs, reduced cycle times, and quickly hired against the 400 open positions.
An MSP drives significant value by freeing up hiring manager time, alleviating risk, providing insight, and improving candidate experience. To win in today’s talent market, employers need a flexible, scalable solution customised to meet their business objectives. By embracing Managed Service Provider benefits, organisations can gain a strategic advantage.
Are you ready to take your contingent labor recruitment to the next level? Join forces with Pontoon and the Adecco Group to realise a world of benefits and added value. Together, we can transform your workforce management strategy and ensure you stay ahead in the competitive talent landscape.
