According to a Staffing Industry Analysts (SIA) report, the total number of full-time-equivalent (FTE) contingent workers in the U.S. reached 33 million in 2021. The use of contingent labor in healthcare has seen rapid growth as the workforce shrinks and labor demand increases. With this ongoing expansion, many organizations face significant challenges in capturing insights from these integral staffing pools as they solve the staffing crunch. 
Healthcare providers often lack full visibility into their contingent workforce population, due to siloed systems, heavy reliance on Managed Service Provider Staffing programs, and disconnected approaches. This is compounded by filling the gaps for different populations of workers through contingent labor from traveling nurses to IT specialists, and food service staff.
All of these can lead to a variety of issues including poor patient outcomes, increased costs, regulatory fines, and more. For instance, organizations may overlook valuable skills, certifications, and diversity considerations present among their contingent workers. Furthermore, without a unified view of their extended workforce, planning for future staffing needs and budgeting becomes challenging.
These can be addressed if you are a Workday client (or considering Workday) and have not yet integrated your contingent worker population. Below are a few helpful features and initial outcomes to help support your business case.
Building the Base: The Contingent Worker Profile
Workday allows organizations to capture detailed profiles of contingent workers, including skills, certifications, previous experience, and other typical demographic attributes. This information provides managers with visibility into potential candidates for open positions and contingent workers can easily apply through Workday Recruiting.
- Skills-based Hiring: Many organizations are looking to embrace skills-based hiring and internal mobility, yet often overlook the contingent work pool. These workers bring valuable skills that can be tracked in your tenant or through Workday’s Skills Cloud, aiding in both current and future talent sourcing. This data can also be used for talent leaders to identify training and development needs.
- Tracking Projected Spend: Contract rates can also be tracked and annualized, providing a detailed view through standard and custom dashboards. These dashboards enable comparisons of total projected spend across various dimensions, making it easy to spot potential issues and concerns.
- Talent Pools: Talent pools can be established for Talent, Candidate, or Succession Planning purposes. Contingent workers can be added to static or dynamic pools to help identify assignment certification, education, or skills-based needs. Leveraging your contingent worker pool can significantly reduce reliance on Managed Service Providers (MSPs) and other hiring costs.
Integration with MSPs & Disparate Solutions
Integrating with MSPs and disparate platforms can pose the most complex challenges in your project. It is crucial to carefully consider which data is captured in the system of record and which data is enhanced within Workday. If your contingent workers are sourced from various Vendor Management Systems (VMS) the integration design should be able to handle effective-dated logic and corrections, consider other internal systems (Authentication, Active-Directory, etc.), and be scheduled as frequently as possible. Start with a pilot population before scaling up to allow for a soother deployment and mitigate risks.
Reporting and Visibility
Centralizing contingent worker and employee data in Workday empowers healthcare executives with comprehensive visibility to source necessary talent in a cost-effective manner. This centralized approach allows for real-time insights across multiple dimensions to measure areas such as projected worker spend by department/cost center and aggregates skills gaps and opportunity areas. Lastly, critical metrics around DEI initiatives that can support enhancing the patient experience can be measured much more effectively. Internal audit, legal, and finance teams can also benefit from a holistic view of the workforce.
Security
While on the industry side, I saw countless examples where contingent contracts have ended but remained active in the source VMS. Centralizing contingent worker data in Workday addressed these issues by implementing alerts, improving compliance, and reducing risks for offboarding, security access, and invoicing issues. Managers found it easier to detect and rectify discrepancies within Workday, compared to traditional VMS systems.
By leveraging Workday’s core Human Capital Management (HCM) functionalities, healthcare leaders can leverage these benefits by building up their own in-house “skills-based” talent pools and hiring capabilities. This strategic approach reduces reliance on MSPs and optimizes candidate sourcing, lowering operational costs.
Additionally, Workday has expanded its extended workforce solutions through the acquisition of VNDLY, a leading Vendor Management System, that provides improved collaboration with suppliers/vendors, invoicing, and Statement of Work management.
The Groove is Your Partner to Guide You
Through our Workday Project Readiness, deployment, and AMS services, The Groove is your partner to expertly guide you through any contingent worker project. At The Groove, our leadership team has over 15+ years' experience in helping organizations unlock their full Workday value with a dynamic, comprehensive Application Management Services model spanning over 1,000+ Workday clients. Let us help you explore possibilities and guide you to achieve your objectives with a human-centered approach, a collaborative spirit, and a robust support system. Contact The Groove to discuss your needs.
