Why you want a supplier that does not care how you engage talent

"A supplier that can only do one thing will always push you toward that one thing. Whether it is right for you or not."

If you run a contingent workforce program, let's be clear about what you are actually supplying to the company. You are supplying flexibility. Your job is to give your hiring managers and functional leaders an enormous amount of flexibility, so they can ramp up and down and hit their growth and cost targets fast. That is the whole reason this industry exists.

So the goal is to maximize the flexibility you provide, and that comes down to two things.

First, reach

Reach is the unique number of people available to you. You maximize it by making as many countries and as many contract types available as possible. And here is the part that should worry you: every time you restrict the countries you can hire in, and every time you restrict the engagement models you allow, you are artificially shrinking your own talent pool. Your competitor is not doing that. So they can put a much better selection in front of their hiring managers, and get better results, in the same market you are both fishing in. You want your people in the best position possible, not a narrower one you imposed on yourself.

Second, cost, which is where the supplier choice bites

You also cannot send everyone to the most expensive option, because budget is something your hiring managers care about too. So you want to optimize across contract types: independent contractors, agent of record, employer of record, staff augmentation, and others.

And this is the real reason you want a provider that can do all of them, rather than one that does a single thing. A provider that only does staff aug is incentivized to push you into staff aug. Every engagement, they steer you there, because it is the only thing they can do and the only way they benefit. That is not bad faith, it is just an incentive. But a provider that is engagement-agnostic, that can do independent contractors, agent of record, employer of record, and staff aug, has no reason to push you anywhere. If you want to lean into independent contractors this year and employer of record next year, it makes no difference to them. So for the first time, you are getting advice instead of an incentive.

This is why the strongest programs consolidate around tech-enabled suppliers that can compliantly engage every worker type, in one place. That is exactly what we built Lifted, an Upwork Company, to be: a tech-enabled contingent workforce supplier that sources and compliantly engages any type of contingent talent across 180+ countries, so the engagement model is never chosen for you by what your supplier happens to sell.

So look at your supplier list and ask a blunt question. Which of them can only do one thing, and are they steering you toward it? When they recommend a model, are you getting their best judgment, or their incentive?

If this is useful, subscribe. I write about what actually separates good contingent workforce suppliers from the rest.