The impact of blended workforce software and how to measure it

The world of work has changed. To meet the demands of a constantly shifting marketplace, sixty-nine percent of companies now rely on a blended workforce of employees, contractors, and vendors.

This on-demand access to talent offers the flexibility to scale with minimal investment as well as fill labor and skill gaps. The challenge is, using disjointed systems to manage a complex talent mix makes it difficult to see project statuses and ensure good results.

Blended workforce software is designed to help companies streamline their entire workforce management process and leverage the unique advantages of their on-demand workforce. Let’s explore some ways software can help you engage talent, manage projects, and increase client satisfaction.

The Impact of Blended Workforce Software

Communicate Clearly

The immediate impact that many companies notice after implementing a blended workforce software platform is an improved ability to communicate with W-2 employees, contract workers, and vendors throughout the entire organization.

Centralizing your communications makes it easier to assign tasks, receive real-time updates from the field, and document every detail of even the most complex projects.

Efficiently Dispatch Work

To ensure fast on-site arrival and service times, coordinating projects from one centralized system helps you quickly dispatch tasks to your entire pool of employees and contractors. You can choose to automatically assign projects to available salaried staff first, and then reroute work orders to contract technicians to fill coverage or skill gaps.

Manage Contractor Spend

Rather than juggle multiple payment processes for employees and contractors, blended workforce software provides a single tool to manage contracts and paperwork, prepare tax forms, and automatically disburse payments to technicians in your vendor network by assigning preset values for different types of workers.

Quickly Source Labor

Find Talent Fast

Sourcing talent through job sites and vendor lists can be one of the most challenging aspects of managing a blended workforce. Especially when you need to fill skill gaps, overcome geographic coverage limitations, and satisfy complex job requirements under intense deadlines.

Fully integrated software platforms allow you to access an online labor marketplace. Rather than getting bogged down with endless searches, you’ll be able to locate W2 and contractor talent across the globe and filter your results by quality score, experience, location, skills, certifications, and other attributes.

Organize Talent Pools

With the ability to organize a go-to team of W2 employees and contract technicians into customized groups, talent pools give you instant visibility into your workforce capacity and coverage gaps. You can then route projects to previously vetted and approved service providers based on their location, skills, relationship, responsiveness, and other key criteria.

View Contractor Ratings

To help you identify the best candidates and ensure the highest level of service for your clients, some software platforms offer access to ratings and reviews, as well as searchable criteria like quality score, the number of work orders completed, and even recent background checks and drug tests.

Easily Manage Projects

Eliminate Duplicate Data Entry

Using multiple systems to manage a blended workforce often means re-entering the same data again and again, increasing the time and expense required to complete a project.

The right software streamlines that process by integrating seamlessly with your existing systems, allowing you to create projects, assign field technicians, schedule W2 employees, make payments, and analyze results—all without duplicate data entry.

See Work Order Status

By monitoring every element of a project in one system, you’ll have a birds-eye view of every work order. Dispatchers and project managers can distribute tasks between W2 employees and contractors, track progress in real-time, view photo uploads, identify at-risk work orders, and manage every aspect of a project from one screen.

Gain Pricing Insights

Reporting tools provide full visibility into labor costs and regional pricing differences, helping you accurately track expenditures, identify opportunities for growth and cost savings, adjust bids based on historical data, and negotiate fees.

Measure Impact

Meet Service Level Agreements (SLAs)

An essential metric to track is your company’s ability to consistently meet SLAs.

The right software should help you provide greater value to clients by making it easier to leverage a flexible workforce and engage high quality, competitively priced work across a broad range of skills and locations.

Reduce Labor Churn

Another key consideration is your ability to retain your best employees and contractors.

According to a recent study by Intuit, more than forty percent of U.S. workers will be freelancers by 2020. As more people join the gig economy, it’s critical that your blended workforce software helps you provide clear communication, flexibility, and fast payments that highly-qualified technicians expect.

Make Clients Happy

The ultimate test of blended workforce software is its impact on client satisfaction.

Does it enhance your ability to deliver high-quality work, seamless communication, and detailed tracking that make your clients happy? Does it help you expand your workforce capacity and provide a wide range of skills- and location-based services that clients require?

Managing a blended workforce doesn’t have to be complicated. With the right tools, companies can easily leverage on-demand talent to deliver the highest possible level of service to their clients.