6

Educating Your Organization About Contingent Workers

YOUR COMPANY, ELASTICITY, HAS COME TO A CROSSROADS on the path to introducing contingent workers. You’ve completed all the steps necessary to put this process in place, but your staff isn’t quite ready to begin implementation. As the leadership team plans what the next phase should be, they realize that they need to make sure that the organization is ready for these contingent workers to show up in the workplace. Your staff begins to wonder what impact these workers will have on managers, supervisors, and especially permanent employees. They begin to think about how the organization’s culture might change as a result, whether this would be for the better, and how they might shape this change. They conclude that being open and candid about what’s happening is the best approach, and they should try to educate the entire workforce about the rationale for introducing contingent workers and how that is expected to affect them.

Your staff is right. Everyone in your organization needs to understand how their roles may change as the result of introducing contingent workers to the workplace. You need to keep the lines of communication open concerning these roles and responsibilities for everyone. Educating your managers and supervisors about what is expected of them is important and can help prevent problems such as overstepping their authority with respect to contingent workers. It can also alleviate their concerns about their future and continued importance to the organization as contingent workers become a larger part of your overall workforce. Addressing this last concern can be one of the most important steps you can take to help make this initiative successful. Without the support of this group, you may find that your contingent worker program will not succeed as expected. If managers and supervisors would rather this initiative go away so that they can feel more secure in their roles, their lack of commitment and skepticism very well may eventually result in your contingent worker program failing to meet its objectives.

The Changing Role of the Supervisor

The introduction of contingent workers can have a significant impact on a supervisor’s role. For some, it could mean a loss of employment. Others may be offered employment with the staffing agency, which might make good business sense because they are already familiar with the job.

The introduction of contingent workers likely will not eliminate your need for supervisors. Other permanent employees will remain, after all. For these supervisors, it may seem that all the rules of supervision are being tossed out the window as they perform their new roles and responsibilities. Suddenly there is a group of workers performing tasks in their departments or areas of responsibility over which they may have little or no control or direct oversight. This is a major change for them and one that higher management should recognize and appreciate. Too often organizations simply thrust supervisors into this newfangled work arrangement without providing them with the direction and support they need to accept and succeed in this new role. They need to be assured that they will continue to play a critical role in the organization’s operation, albeit a different one than they performed before the introduction of contingent workers. They need specific guidance and direction concerning their new responsibilities.

Showing supervisors what they should and should not do in this changing role is only part of the education they need. They also need to understand what their new role and contributions will be in the future. This is especially true if your organization begins to introduce large numbers of staffing agency–supervised workers into the workplace. Supervisors’ concerns will grow, perhaps not without reason.

Your organization needs to be proactive in educating this group and others who may feel similarly affected by the introduction of these contingent workers. Think about how they can best support this initiative and how their skills and experience can be most helpful. For example, if a staffing agency is going to assume primary responsibility for the hiring, training, and supervision of their contingent workers, they are going to need guidance to accomplish this successfully. They are going to need written instructions, technical advice, direction, and so forth from those in your organization most familiar and knowledgeable about your operations. It would be unrealistic to expect an outsider to your organization to be able to provide these services within your organization without considerable help. Your supervisors are likely the most qualified to provide this support. Getting them involved in making this introduction of contingent workers successful will give them a personal stake in the process.

In the following discussion, our assumption is that unless your organization has made a conscious decision to actively supervise contingent workers, your goal is to minimize the likelihood of joint employment. Of course, electing to operate in a manner to minimize that likelihood will greatly affect the role of your supervisors and managers with respect to this portion of your workforce.

First, let’s examine some strategies for getting these supervisors on the same page with the contingent worker program. Then, we’ll look at some of the ways that supervisors’ and managers’ roles may change.

Getting Supervisors on Board

How can you get supervisors on board with these changes? One way is to include them in the process from the beginning, so that they fully understand what is happening, how it will work, and why the change is being made. It is easier to get on board when the train is still in the station than when it is moving along at full steam.

Supervisors must also be reassured that the contingent employees will be fully capable of getting the work done within a reasonable period of time, so they won’t be a cause of major aggravation and work-related problems.

Additionally, we believe it is important to identify new and different responsibilities for this group, so that they can see that freeing them from the burden of supervising one group of workers has opened them up to play a potentially even more significant role in the organization’s future. They should be able to find ways to take advantage of these reduced responsibilities over the workers in their area and find other value-added responsibilities, such as focusing on quality improvement or spending more time on improving the skills and performance of the workers they still supervise. You can help them focus less on supervising day-to-day tasks and more on how the operation can become more efficient and successful tomorrow. Learning to have a more strategic focus can be the best way that they can secure their future in the organization.

To start a shift in focus, try this exercise. Ask a group of supervisors what their responsibilities are to keep their function operating today. It is likely you will hear such things as assigning jobs to workers, keeping supplies or materials available, and making sure work is being completed on schedule. These could be referred to as “today” responsibilities.

Next, ask these supervisors what things they need to do to make operation better in the future. This could be called “tomorrow” responsibilities. You can expect to hear such things as planning, communicating, optimizing, reducing waste, and improving service. Ask these supervisors on which list they would like to focus their time and responsibilities and which would add the most value to the organization. It is likely that they would rather spend their time on the tomorrow list. This is where they will find the greatest satisfaction and job security, and it should be the organization’s goal to help this group learn to focus on these new responsibilities.

Selecting and Hiring Employment Candidates

In many organizations, supervisors and managers are included in the selection processes of candidates who potentially may work for them and have input into the final hiring decisions. Having participated in the process and been given the opportunity to provide their input gives them a greater sense of ownership in the result. Their experience and knowledge of what it takes for a candidate to be successful on the job is extremely valuable.

However, as mentioned, in most cases involving contingent workers who are to be employed and supervised solely by a staffing agency, they should not have any direct role in the workers’ selection. They may be asked to provide input on the skills, abilities, and characteristics that will make the contingent workers successful in performing their duties, but the actual selection process by design will be the sole responsibility of the staffing agency, because these candidates will become its employees. This is something that supervisors and managers need to understand, as well as the rationale for this demarcation of responsibilities.

Enforcing Policies and Discipline

Your supervisors’ and managers’ responsibility for establishing and enforcing work rules, regulations, and policies will change with respect to contingent workers. If they are interacting with these workers, they need to understand exactly what the staffing agency’s policies and discipline rules are. The staffing agency’s policies should be consistent with that of your organization, to minimize any confusion. And it would be a good practice to make these policies available to all supervisors and managers with direct authority over areas or functions manned by the contingent workers.

Any policy violations on the part of contingent workers should be immediately reported to the responsible supervisor and HR person for the staffing agency. Your supervisors and managers need to understand that any subsequent adverse employment actions, such as removal from the premises or termination, must be the staffing agency’s responsibility: They cannot fire someone who doesn’t work for their organization. Also, your agreement with the agency should specify that summary actions such as removal from the premises will not be initiated by your supervisors or managers except in certain specific circumstances, such as cases of:

•  a direct threat

•  at-risk behaviors

•  gross misconduct situations like incidents of violence, major safety, or health violations

•  other behaviors that directly interfere with or threaten the safety of others or the facility’s operation.

You should provide your supervisors with specific instructions on how to handle these types of situations and make sure that they have all the contact information needed to notify both the staffing agency and your organization’s officials of such incidents.

Delivering Performance Feedback and Evaluations

The responsibility for providing performance feedback and evaluations to contingent workers differs depending on who supervises them. If your supervisors and managers are directly supervising these workers, they will be responsible for providing this feedback using the staffing agency’s forms and sharing this feedback with the agency. However, if the staffing agency directly supervises these workers, this feedback should be its sole responsibility. As in any customer-vendor relationship, you as the customer are entitled to provide feedback on the performance of the vendor’s workers. For example, it would be important for the agency to know if one of its employees was having correctable performance problems that it may not be aware of, early enough that they could be fixed before more severe consequences for poor performance become necessary. Sharing this problem with the agency so that it can help try to correct it can be beneficial, rather than just allowing the problem to continue unchecked.

Providing Job Training

The responsibility for job-related training usually depends on which entity is responsible for direct supervision. Generally, if your supervisors are going to directly supervise contingent workers, your company will also provide job training to these workers. However, if the staffing agency supervises these workers, then the responsibility for this training is theirs, although your company may provide direction and input into the training criteria and design. In some circumstances, even where the agency will provide supervision it may be more efficient and effective to have your personnel do the training, especially in such things as safety rules and procedures. If this is the arrangement, it should be negotiated with the agency and clearly defined in the written agreement with the agency. Your supervisors and managers should clearly understand their roles under any scenario. This is another opportunity for your supervisors to add value to their positions by designing and implementing training programs for contingent workers based on their knowledge of the operations. Job training for contingent workers will be reviewed in greater detail in chapter 8.

Requiring Contingent Worker Attendance at Meetings

If your agency is not providing the supervision, supervisors and managers may invite contingent workers to attend regular operations meetings in which they’ll cover information critical to their job performance. It is important that contingent workers are provided the same information about the business as their permanent counterparts so they understand the significance of their roles and how they can better contribute to the organization’s success. However, if the staffing agency supervises these workers, it is preferable that the agency conduct these types of informational meetings.

Offering Recognition and Appreciation

In situations where your objective is avoiding a joint employer arrangement, it is important not to treat contingent workers as your employees. Contingent workers should not be presented with items or clothing with the organization’s name or logo. Nor should your organization provide contingent workers with discounts on products or services that may be offered to permanent employees unless this has been negotiated with the agency and is reflected in the contract with the agency. It is OK, however, to include contingent workers in certain employee recognition events, such as for their contributions in reaching certain milestone achievements, breaking sales records, helping the organization receive a prestigious quality award from a customer, or achieving operational excellence levels. An example of this permissible recognition might be providing a meal for everyone who contributed to reaching the accomplishment or milestone event, including contingent workers. This a good opportunity to show appreciation for contingent workers’ contribution to reaching shared goals with the permanent workforce, thus boosting teamwork between contingent workers and permanent employees.

Handing Out Paychecks

In workplaces paying workers with paper checks, supervisors or managers may distribute the paychecks. However, distributing paychecks to contingent workers should be the staffing agency’s responsibility. Supervisors should provide staffing agency representatives the opportunity to come into the workplace to distribute paychecks to their employees. Any questions contingent workers may have concerning their pay or paychecks should be directed to the staffing agency representatives.

Regularly reviewing these procedures with supervisors, managers, and other members of your management team will allow everyone to understand their new roles as they pertain to having contingent workers in their organization. Also, the regulations and laws governing these roles are constantly changing, and keeping people updated is critical. The more everyone understands their new roles and the reasons behind them, the more comfortable they will become with these changes. They will also be more confident that they are following the rules and regulations concerning contingent workers in their workplace and be more effective in their leadership roles.

Managing Contingent Workers From a Distance

With the increasing acceptance of working from home and a variety of other alternative remote work arrangements for both permanent and contingent workers, supervision no longer necessarily involves the ability to physically observe performance and give face-to-face feedback. This change in supervisors’ roles will require educating them about these new responsibilities.

There are countless examples in addition to the work from home scenario where such a supervisor-subordinate relationship might exist. For instance, an organization may hire contingent workers at small retail locations, such as at a mall, plaza, airport, kiosk, or snack bar, without a direct supervisor being constantly present. Instead, a supervisor may be responsible for many locations and can only be present at each location occasionally. Or contingent workers may provide services directly to customers’ homes covering a larger service area, or health services at many different care facilities on a routine basis. All these situations require different leadership skills for supervisors. In such situations, supervisors will not always have the luxury of being able to physically interact with contingent workers on a daily or even regular basis. This presents special challenges to your contingent worker initiative, but success still is possible with a different mindset and approach to supervision of these workers.

Self-Management

When contingent workers are physically closer to the work, they may get a perspective on a problem that supervisors can’t from a distance. A supervisor needs to be able trust contingent workers more when it is not possible to be physically present to directly supervise the work. This might require a change from the way they have always managed. Managing remote contingent workers may present a challenge more difficult than dealing with remotely working permanent employees, whom they know better and who have already earned a level of trust. However, in these circumstances they really have no other choice than to be supportive of those at remote locations. If these workers are not meeting expectations, supervisors need to find ways to help them, to be advocates rather than critics. Supervisors need to help remote workers understand what is expected of them and help them become capable of performing their jobs more independently.

Setting up systems to foster this level of self-management is the key. Remote supervisors need to become more strategic in finding ways of managing that will ensure the work gets done correctly and on time. This may involve creating schedules and deadlines ahead of time, providing detailed procedural instructions to workers, defining accountabilities more clearly, and establishing follow-up communication on a regular basis. Just because they might not be there physically doesn’t mean that they are no longer accountable for the results of those they supervise. Leadership is more than just telling others what to do. It involves helping others accept more responsibility, including contingent workers.

It’s also important to remember that it is not fair to expect someone to assume responsibilities that they haven’t been trained to perform. This is especially true in smaller remote locations. Contingent workers working remotely need adequate training and resources. One of the most critical responsibilities of any remote supervisor is to ensure that all workers understand their responsibilities and are able to perform them.

Open Communication

Effective communication is extremely important in the remote work environment. There shouldn’t be “silent expectations”—that is, responsibilities that aren’t clearly communicated to these workers but are still expected. Supervisors need to understand what communications and information they must share. They need to not only establish effective communications with these workers, but help them become better communicators as well. Everyone needs to both speak up and listen to one another; it needs to be clear who is directly responsible for getting things done. There should be a continuous communications improvement process established, in which these roles and responsibilities are discussed and analyzed to constantly find better ways to define and execute them. When a communication failure does occur, a “postmortem” of the problem should be conducted and corrective measures put in place.

The numerous ways of communicating available can help ensure that supervisors are keeping in touch with remote locations so they can stay connected as much as possible. Real-time sales, production, service verifications, and customer satisfaction surveys can all be instantaneously sent to supervisors not physically present in the workplace. Frequent conference calls, videoconferencing, online production, or sales and service reporting all help a remote manager stay in touch with how contingent workers are performing their jobs without direct supervision and can allow supervisors to keep tabs on how well the work is proceeding or to troubleshoot problems that might be brewing. Also, a remote supervisor can monitor employee attendance, reporting times, and break periods, even if it is one employed by a staffing agency. Providing contingent workers with the ability to call, text, or even tweet at their supervisor with questions or problems can keep a remote supervisor in constant communication with these locations.

Remember, though, all the electronic communications in the world may not be as effective as good old face-to-face interaction in permitting a supervisor to maintain a good relationship with workers and effectively assess their work. To paraphrase an old adage, one visit is as good as a thousand texts.

Decision Making

Clearly defined lines of responsibility lead to less finger pointing due to misunderstandings about responsibilities. People feel better about their jobs if they know what is expected of them and feel good about achieving or progressing toward desired results. It is important for everyone to understand that at least at first, things will fall through the cracks. When this happens, supervisors need to accept it as part of this process and take steps to prevent these same problems from occurring again in the future.

One of the problems remote supervisors must face is that sometimes they are forced to make important decisions without having as much data as they were used to having in the past. They must do this often based on the input of others who are closest to the work. They also may not have all the answers as they did previously, because they’ve stepped away from some of the details and depend on others to know such things. This can be a very difficult transition. Supervisors need to teach others to make, and trust that others will make, good decisions. They need to give contingent workers the chance to become capable of accepting greater decision-making responsibilities. Often, past mistakes can be the best teacher in these circumstances.

All of this doesn’t change a supervisor’s responsibilities. They are still accountable for their goals, even if they must accomplish them from a distance. However, the organization’s leadership must become comfortable with this change as well. For example, in one organization, a manager was asked a specific operational question by his boss that he couldn’t answer as he could in the past, before he began managing contingent workers at that location remotely. He said that he didn’t know and that he had to check with someone who worked there to get that kind of detail.

The boss was furious. “I pay you to know these things. You had better find out if you expect to stay in your position for very long!” he threatened him.

What do you think the supervisor did as a result? Of course, he went and found out the answer to the question and got back to his boss. And he made sure that he could answer any future operational questions on the spot that his boss might ask as well. How do you think this changed the way he managed and communicated with the employees at that remote location? Do you believe it made this manager more efficient and effective? Probably not. For this to work, the organization must also support these changes.

Managing contingent workers remotely requires a change in culture on all levels of the organization, not just those directly involved in the changes. Looking at our example of Elasticity, organizational leadership understood that cultural change must start at the top. Employees at every level take their cues from their bosses concerning what the organization values. If these leaders demonstrate that the introduction and subsequent implementation of a contingent worker program is important to the company’s success and at least some changes in the way people are managed should be expected and accepted, then this cultural change is more likely to occur. This includes the reportability and accountability of managers throughout the organization.

Impact on Permanent Workforce

We’ve made the point before, but it is worth making again here: Introducing contingent workers into your workplace can have a significant impact on your permanent workforce. They may also become concerned about their job security or future advancement opportunities. They may begin to wonder whether hiring contingent workers is merely the first step of a plan to completely outsource their jobs. Sometimes, especially in organizations that have attempted to show workers that they are highly valued for their skills, abilities, and experience, permanent workers may even believe that their own value to the organization is being denigrated by the introduction of workers hired under less rigorous standards and at less pay to perform work they perform or once performed.

Thus, it is important to communicate to your permanent employees how they will or will not be affected by the introduction of contingent workers. This is similar to what you need to communicate to your supervisors and managers. Creating and maintaining these open lines of communication with permanent employees can help alleviate many of their concerns or misconceptions about contingent workers suddenly appearing in their workplace.

Sharing updates on your strategy for utilizing contingent workers should be part of your overall business updates to all employees. Everyone should understand the goals and objectives of this strategy. Communication need not be lengthy, technical, overly detailed, or formal, but it should touch on the following points:

Business Rationale for Utilizing Contingent Workers

The organization should share the business rationale and goals it expects the contingent worker program to achieve, along with data to support these goals. For instance, say that competitors are gaining market share due to the lower pricing they can offer customers. This can be a real threat to the future viability of the organization. Most companies can’t match these lower costs without reducing the labor or benefits costs of their permanent employees. One of the ways to keep pace without adversely affecting the wages and benefits of permanent workers is to begin to hire lower-cost contingent workers for some of the work. Explaining this situation in terms that everyone can appreciate will help employees better understand and accept the need for utilizing contingent workers. Doing so early on, before the rumor mill stirs everyone up, is always best.

Sharing the actual financial goals your organization hopes to achieve by using contingent workers will also make a more convincing presentation to your employees and help them understand how contingent workers will help protect their wages and benefits. You could show how the organization can achieve a competitive cost of labor by utilizing contingent workers to cover such things as employee attrition or increases in staffing demands, or performing nonskilled or noncore tasks. This is called the blended rate, reflecting the labor costs of permanent employees and contingent workers. This blended rate can be projected to show how the organization can reach its total labor cost goals in the future. Progress toward reaching these goals could be the subject for future all-employee business updates of this nature. Blended rates will be covered in more detail in chapter 9.

Commitments to Current Permanent Workers

For good employee relations, it is important to maintain workers’ trust. This requires preserving credibility—that is, employees must remain confident that you will not lie to them, whether the news is good or bad.

It can be very important to current permanent workers to understand the extent that contingent workers will be utilized in the organization. Of course, anything you say will be taken as a commitment, and commitments shouldn’t be made if there is any serious doubt that they can be honored in the future. Making promises you cannot or don’t intend to keep usually backfires.

One of the greatest fears that employees may have with the introduction of contingent workers is that they will all eventually be replaced by these workers, as described in an earlier example. In most circumstances, this is not the intent of their employer. Sharing your plans for limiting the percentage of contingent workers compared with the total workforce will help alleviate these fears.

For instance, the organization could set a specific percentage that it plans not to exceed, such as 10, 20, or even 40 percent of the total working population in the organization, as shown in the examples in chapter 3. You can also share any other limitations that the organization may impose on its use of contingent workers. Your organization may have identified specific jobs that contingent workers are permitted to fill or other restrictions, such as those included in your organization’s contingent worker guidelines.

But beware: If you use terms such as currently or as of now to modify the limitations, workers will zero in on them and may assume rightly or wrongly that you are playing games. Don’t underestimate the intelligence of your workers or their ability to read between the lines. Poor or insincere messaging can boomerang on you. In short, you need to choose your communications wisely, with the mindset of maintaining your organization’s credibility and trustworthiness with its workers.

Good News for Permanent Employees

The good news for your permanent workforce should be that the organization is trying to protect their wages, benefits, and job security by using contingent workers. Your business updates should be designed to reassure your employees that this program is in both their best interest and the organization’s.

Practical Applications

•  Include the subject of contingent workers on the agenda of business update meetings held for employees in your organization and provide regular updates on this program.

•  Conduct informational meetings, training, and one-on-one discussions with your managers and supervisors concerning their changing roles resulting from the introduction of contingent workers into their workplace.

•  Involve supervisors in developing training programs provided to staffing agencies responsible for training their workers to perform jobs in your organization.

•  Provide training to managers and supervisors managing contingent workers remotely about how they can use communications technology to help them manage others from a distance more effectively.

•  Talk to employees on all levels of the organization about their concerns over the use of contingent workers in the organization and address any fears expressed about their job security.

Questions to Consider

•  Are there certain managers or supervisors whose ability to adapt to having contingent workers in their areas of responsibility is subject to question?

•  What can you do to better prepare these individuals for this change?

•  How candid and transparent do you think your organization would be willing to be in your communications concerning contingent workers? What do you think would be the cost versus benefits of such transparency?