(Today’s guest post is by Jim Brozny, Fieldglass’ account services director.)

I recently co-presented with one of our customers, Jon Kesman of Reed Elsevier, at the ISM Conference in Dallas. This large annual event, which is geared toward supply chain management professionals, covered a myriad of topics, and our presentation was part of the Services Procurement track.

During our session, Jon shared Reed Elsevier’s contingent workforce program journey (case study available here). Jon has worked hard to establish a well-run, results-oriented program within the framework of Reed Elsevier’s corporate culture. I see Jon and his team’s willingness to engage early and often with their stakeholders as a major key to the company’s successful program. For Reed Elsevier, stakeholders included everyone from HR, finance, legal and IT to the hiring managers and the C-suite.

Engaging all these groups is the first step in a carefully thought-out program plan. Having the support of these folks to enable proper change management is step two. Kicking off your program planning and implementation in this way will always be the fastest and most effective way to achieve results, proven when Jon and his team launched the program in the US, and then again a few years later in the UK. Gareth Druce, professional services director for Reed Elsevier, shared in detail how the company was able to successfully expand the program into the UK during a webinar last month.

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Welcome to the weekly news roundup! Below are the top stories we’ve read or shared this week affecting our industry.

Monday: A whooping 60 MILLION people will be freelancers, contractors or temps. Are you an employer without a strategy to take advantage of this growing workforce? Check out these tips. (Recruiter)

Monday: A rise in temps isn’t news, but it may be surprising to you how many retirees are among the contingent population. Temp work can be particularly attractive to older workers, since they often have access to Medicare and a lack of benefits isn’t a deal breaker. (MarketWatch)

Monday: Not all freelancers work from the neighborhood coffee shop. Find out about some of the common places contractors go to get the job done. (CBS News)

Wednesday: Thinking of taking your program global but not sure where to start? Staffing Industry Analysts’ Advisory Group has compiled a list of questions you should ask, based on feedback from some of the top global contingent workforce experts. (CWS 3.0)

Wednesday: If you think that the workforce is shaped by each different generation of workers, this article may make you think again. (Workforce)

Have a great weekend, everyone!

Welcome to the weekly news roundup! Below are the top stories we’ve read or shared this week affecting our industry.

Tuesday: As an Illinois Technology Association member, we appreciate all the work the ITA does to help promote and grow the Chicago tech community. Read here about their new focus on larger firms. (Crain’s Chicago Business)

Wednesday: By 2016, almost 80% of the workforce will be comprised of millennials. This study explains their work habits and needs, but points out one consistency between this group and non-millennials alike – everyone wants more flexible work hours and the ability to work remotely. (Talent Management)

Wednesday: Just another example of how fine the line is between the various worker types. Learn what to do when your consultants don’t quality as independent contractors but still insist on being treated as such. (Collabrus)

Wednesday: Today’s modern job seekers don’t respond to outdated recruiter tactics. Take a peek inside how it all works and learn how to recruit the best workers. (CWS 3.0)

Thursday: Just for fun… we all know what it’s like to be tied to technology. This article outlines 21 bad habits – and why we should break them. (CIO)

Have a great weekend, everyone!

(Today’s guest post is by Sara Sullivan, Fieldglass’ director of sales engineers.)

Although organizations have built a successful business case for a VMS and understand basic functionalities, they struggle to understand the differentiators that separate one provider from another. Any VMS worth its salt is capable of handling job requisition creation, the timesheet approval process and basic reporting functionality, among other things. But how do organizations uncover the unique features and functionality that truly set one provider apart from the rest?

The product demonstration is the opportunity for VMS providers to showcase the user interface and walk through functionality that will help lower costs, improve efficiency, increase quality and ensure compliance. Our new whitepaper, Essential Questions to Ask During a Product Demonstration for a VMS, can help you hone in on the topics you should cover and the specific questions you should ask. We also provide a scorecard template to help you prioritize the functionality most important to your organization.

Here are some additional tips for getting the most out of your product demonstration with a VMS provider:

• Know what to expect: Whether you’ve gone through the RFP process or not, the product demonstration is the first opportunity to see the interface and walk through job requisition creation, candidate vetting, work orders, timesheet approvals, reporting, social capabilities, administration and global expertise. Map out what you’d like to see beforehand and whenever possible, provide that roadmap to the VMS provider.

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(Today’s guest post is by Arjun Dutt, Business Intelligence Solutions. This is the first post in a new weekly series, called Measuring Up.)

It’s the start of a new quarter and for many companies, that means it’s time to gear up for quarterly business reviews. As is common in these reviews, there is a large emphasis on metrics – be it measuring efficiency, supplier performance or cost savings – that are often defined with VMS and MSP providers as Service Level Agreements (SLAs). Each quarter, your partners report back to you, highlighting how those SLAs have been reached.

A large majority of VMS and MSP buyers have come to the realization that metrics around SLAs only serve as indicators of basic program health; they fall short on offering any value outside of designating a pass/fail grade. After these reviews, program sponsors are still left to wonder: how do we leverage our data to improve programs?

Regardless of a program’s size or maturity, companies overlook a few important data points that could lead to program improvement. These three examples include such metrics and how customers benefited from taking a closer look.

1. Hiring manager decision-making. The most common measure of efficiency is “time-to-fill”, or cycle time – but companies don’t often look beyond the overall number. One customer recently indicated that hiring managers were unhappy with the high cycle time and wanted suppliers to submit candidates faster. After a review of their data over the past six months, we determined that the supplier response time only accounted for 8-10 percent of the total cycle time, leaving 85 percent of the entire process in the hands of the hiring managers to review candidates, conduct interviews and make decisions. As a result, the customer worked with us to make the review and hiring process easier and more efficient. This led directly to an improvement in another program metric – hiring manager satisfaction.

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A few weeks ago, we talked about how hiring managers adopt programs more easily when they have a technology to guide them through processes. Because they have a multitude of other projects and responsibilities on their plates, they don’t want to be burdened with a VMS that doesn’t guide them through tasks such as creating job requisitions and approving timesheets. So once the application is implemented, it’s important to get feedback about the program consistently – whether it’s good or bad – to ensure you’re not missing the opportunity to make improvements to your program or provide additional training.

One easy way to solicit feedback is through a survey. The survey can include questions about users’ familiarity with particular features and functionality in the application as well as questions about their satisfaction with program support. After a few months of use, hiring managers will undoubtedly have their fair share of opinions. Providing a survey proactively proves you are invested in improving the program and that user input drives program success and enhancements.

Surveys can help you discover pain points, challenges and (hopefully) successes achieved by the VMS and the program thus far. It’s not unusual to conduct these sorts of surveys annually, but conducting them on a quarterly basis would be ideal in terms of keeping the “feedback loop” open with hiring managers. These surveys can serve as progress reports that can help re-shape a failing program or bolster a successful one.

We’ve included some tips for creating a survey that can help improve hiring manager satisfaction and maximize results:

• Know the Scope: To evaluate survey responses, you’ll want an understanding of the type of user in the program. Ask hiring managers to provide the number of contingent workers currently on assignment under their management and where they’re located. You’ll also want to know how long the hiring manager has been with the company– a user who has only used the application once will have much different answers than one who has used it for years.

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Fieldglass has been selected as a finalist in two categories for the 2013 Illinois Technology Association (ITA) CityLIGHTS Awards. Fieldglass has been named a finalist for the Lighthouse Award while Jai Shekhawat is a finalist for the CEO of the Year award for the second consecutive year. We’re proud to be finalists again in these categories but now we need your help to bring home the awards on May 9.

You can vote on the ITA voting page here using a valid corporate email address. Winners are chosen based on a composite score – 50 percent judges’ votes and 50 percent community voting – so you have a good chance of giving Fieldglass and Jai the win.

If Fieldglass wins the Lighthouse Award, we’ll be in good company. Previous winners include Chicago technology staples Groupon, GrubHub.com and Redbox. According to the ITA, the Lighthouse award is “presented to the growth-stage company, which through innovation in products, services or business approach, has grown to become a serious competitor in the marketplace.” Fieldglass joins fellow finalists Centro, Corptax, kCura and Silkroad.

Along with Jai, Hank Adams of Sportvision, Jeff Hyman of Retrofit, Michael Small of Gogo and Douglass Waggoner of Echo Global Logistics have been nominated in the CEO of the Year category. Each year the award is “presented to the company CEO who has led successful company growth through leadership, ability to attract and retain talented resources, financial accomplishments and strategy for continued company growth.”

We’re excited to be finalists for these awards but even more excited that your vote is so important in the final tally. Voting is now open and ends on April 22 at 5 pm. You can only vote once but we encourage you to share this news and ITA’s voting site with fellow Fieldglass fans.

VOTE NOW!

(Today’s guest post is by Matt Kreh, Fieldglass Professional Services. Matt is a blogger in a new series called “Bridging the Gap” where we’ll explore the various relationships within a contingent workforce program.)

In my earlier blog post, I talked about collaboration between the hiring manager and the PMO and stressed the importance of creating a “feedback loop” so users have a way to share their experiences with the program on a consistent basis. In the same way it’s imperative to a program’s success for everyday users to communicate with the PMO, it’s equally imperative to have the same sort of open dialogue with suppliers.

As the PMO, take a step back and evaluate the relationship between you and the suppliers, who are usually bucketed into one of four groups:

• Under the Radar – This category can actually be one of two scenarios: either there is very little communication between the PMO and the supplier, or there is not a lot of activity coming from the supplier at all. In other words, the supplier doesn’t submit many candidates or makes up a small portion of overall program spend. (more…)

Program sponsors seeking allies for a contingent workforce program can face an uphill battle. In particular, it’s difficult to convince hiring managers to adopt not only new processes, but a technology they’re not convinced will make their lives easier. Because consumer applications do a good job of tailoring the experience to each user, people expect the same experience in business applications such as a VMS.

The hurdle for program sponsors is convincing hiring managers that a VMS solution can actually help them bring on a worker or SOW-based project more easily and quickly. One way to get over that hurdle is to make a good first impression, as SIA recently noted in a recent blog post. The post explained, “The engagement process needs to be easy, fluid, but most of all, it needs to work.”

Implementing a VMS that provides a guided experience the second users log in can further aid the engagement process. Presenting them with a familiar user interface (UI) and providing direction on next steps can ease the transition from manual to automated processes and, ultimately, greater program adoption.

Our new eBook, How Program Sponsors Can Achieve Adoption: Guiding the Hiring Manager Experience, walks through some of the typical questions hiring managers have about using VMS technology. (more…)

(Today’s guest post is by Andrew Thiermann, Fieldglass Professional Services. Andrew is our second blogger in a new series called “Bridging the Gap” where we’ll explore the various relationships within a contingent workforce program.)

Over the last seven years with Fieldglass, I have helped dozens of customers expand their contingent workforce programs in terms of size, scope and complexity. Solid programs naturally grow and evolve over time. More often than not, we help companies implement the Fieldglass VMS within one business unit, and additional geographies and business units get rolled out from there.

In order to design a deployment strategy that is best for your particular business, your contingent workforce program goals should be aligned with corporate goals. This will help secure the C-level support that is critical for change management. Stated another way, a program manager should understand the overarching company goals and create objectives for the program around those goals.

HP provides us with a classic example as described in this Wall Street Journal article. CEO Meg Whitman asked John Hinshaw, HP’s senior technology executive, to help cut $3.5 billion in costs by the end of next year. In a massive cloud strategy that includes replacing client-side applications such as Peoplesoft, HP is “switching his [their] service procurement process from a home-built system to software from Fieldglass Inc…This application will be rolling out across HP in the next several months.”

When I think about the companies I’ve helped with VMS deployments, I realize the expansion process can be very different based on the leadership style. No one way is better than another, but it is important to get the model right from the beginning and ensure the program offers constant communication to the C-suite in order to drive the most impact. And, because I really like examples, let me offer up two more that describe very different VMS deployment approaches. You might find yourself identifying with one or the other, or somewhere in between. (more…)