In 2014, 53 million Americans were independent workers according to a study by Freelancers Union. This number compromises the 34 percent of the US workforce, and as pointed out by Martin Conrad at enterpreneur.com, the “Gig Economy” enhances these numbers in 2016. Moreover, concepts like “on demand labor” and “flex economy” increase the importance of this situation.

With this trend of using independent freelancers comes the difficulty of managing their onboarding, compliance, and time capture, not to mention the added obstacle of having to handle payroll with different inputs than a traditional in-house employee.

staff member

For years companies have relied on spreadsheets to manage their freelance roster, and email to communicate with them. With the increase of these contracts, that is no longer tenable. Managers need to spend more time ensuring the product or service quality provided is matching the client expectations, and less time struggling with the technology that was supposed to help.

With more than a third of the US workforce being freelancers, it is crucial that enterprises find a way to harmonize the way they manage their workforce, both external or internal. Their management system should be built in such a way that candidates are automatically identified by their competencies, experience, qualifications and even proximity to their workplaces, both for employees and contractors. And what is more important, this information has to be available in the system of record when building a roster or reviewing HR reports; and of course all these need to be appropriately integrated with payroll or invoices, to avoid mistakes and save time.

Modern companies better leverage their resources when their managing software adapts to all sorts of personnel needs, either employees or contractors. Software should ease the job, and very often, the traditional methods–spreadsheets + emailing + printed rosters + endless phone calls + late hours at the office–give managers headaches, instead of help.

So isn’t it time you think more about the tools and processes used to manage your workforce?