The management of your contingent worker program and its vendor base is critical. With labor shortages, it is important that your MSP has the right teams in place with specific contingent worker background experience especially in light industrial. Yet our experience shows that most MSPs have team members more experienced in professional and technical recruiting who are without the granular detailed experience within manufacturing and light industrial plant locations. Our teams audit MSP program to provide a comprehensive list of areas for improvement. This includes audits in the following areas are reviewed including:

• Third-party customer services surveys of your team's satisfaction with the program including any areas of improvement not currently being addressed by your provider.

• Quality management processes to ensure they are in place and reflect the actual processes required to provide the highest quality service delivery at all locations.

• Assigned talent levels including job descriptions and skill levels and their time allocation to your account to confirm promised commitments of dedicated versus designated staff.

• Supplier diversity audits to review Tier 2 diversity goals versus your provider's established database to ensure growth and a fair distribution of orders within the program.

• Forensic invoicing audits for mistakes and ensure corrections and reviews for contract compliance.

• Risk management audits for safety, co-employment, 1099 compliance, workers compensation and more.

• And more as customized for client-specific needs...

Many companies select their contingent workforce suppliers based on the training and development that they state are required for their corporate employees and contingent workers while on assignment. For corporate training, this may mean project management certification and retraining, professional development, recruiting certifications and more. For contingent workers, this can include general health and safety training, client company overview and specific location training, general HR training such as diversity/incluson, HIPPA, Technology, Ethics, Code of Condact and more. Also, during the RFx process, teams are proposed with particular credentials and may often be "swapped out later" for someone less qualified. Our teams of experts auditors will:

• If needed, evaluate the stated certifications and education of the assigned team if provided in an RFx response or contractually.

• Review the supplier's corporate training record keeping and future training plans, for corporate account assigned employees, to ensure that there is a schedule of professional development classes assigned.

• Review the supplier's record keeping for contingent worker training including all signed agreements.

• Review the methods of training including webinars or via online Learning Management Systems or Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) platforms.

• Classes attendance records will be audited and a compliance report generated

Pennies add up and so do accounting mistakes you are trusting your contingent staffing provider to uncover. If your program is large, it may be more than your internal staff to monitor. Here are some of the steps we take in our forensic reviews:

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• Examine historical contingent labor supplier contracts and invoices.

• Line item by line item review of past invoices as compared with contract terms, assignment and contingent worker assignment data.

• Report identify and documenting supplier payment recovery opportunities that you can take to your supplier(s) to request credits or refunds on overpayments.

• Conduct follow quarterly audits for suppliers with invoicing issues to ensure payments were collected and to confirm supplier instituted quality management process that ensure increased invoicing accuracy.

• Engage company's accounts receivable teams as needed for audit support.

• And more as customized for client-specific needs...

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Our teams have written thousands of RFx (RFI, RFP and RFQs) that have been awarded contracts with companies to provide workforce management solutions and contingent staffing. So we know the reality behind what is written including:

• Virtual branch locations provided by global third-party office space providers.

• Various types of  'boilerplate' content that ticks off key buzz words but shows lack of experience.

• Supplier questions asked that show inexperience.

• Subsupplier networks that are just names gathered from government websites and not actual suppliers.

• Subsupplier employees are included to show a larger employee base.

• Quality management system certifications that are not fully implemented or used.

• Language that hints at a switch out of account management and implementation project teams.

• Reference are carefully prep'd

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Our consultants will:

• Be a part of the selection committee to help support the vetting of supplier proposals to provide expert advisement based on the above and more.

• Complete reference checks to ensure proper vetting of 'coached' references to ensure the selection committee makes a decision based on the best available factual information.

• Audit supplier locations provided  and subsuppliers to ensure they actually exist.

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We help you manage successfully manage implementation of contingent worker programs using an easy to use technology tool along with our consulting support.

We know the client turnover rates in suppliers due to improperly implemented programs. Most RFx proposals request very detailed evidence of implementation and transition plans along with staff dedicated to the project team. Yet we know the 'behind the scenes' reality that doesn't always meet what was proposed either with their project management qualifications, experience level or the number of people dedicated to the implementation team. We also know that many implementation teams include the proposed account management team for 'knowledge transfer' when in reality they will be swapped out later and responsible for the entire implementation. Audits and monitoring becomes particularly important when large companies have selected smaller suppliers to implement their multiple divisions and locations that are unique and dynamic. Our experts will do the following:

• Become a part of the implementation project team to provide expert oversight to ensure that the implementation is rolled out seamlessly.

  • Monitor the data collection process to ensure all company data is collected and properly inputed.

  • Ensure a communication plan is created and monitor communications to ensure compliance.

  • Ensure an escalation plan is created and all implementation issues follow the assigned protocols.

  • Ensure all company corporate and local team members are involved appropriately

  • Ensure all VMS and ATS technology are set up or reparticioned correctly for optimization which includes automated satisfaction surveys to company end-users.

• Closely monitor the implementation after launch to ensure there is a knowledge transfer to the account management team.

Social Responsibility and Sustainability (S&S) is becoming more important within global business given social and climate changes. It is not often formally embraced in service-based suppliers because they consider themselves "indirect spend" and hard to track especially for privately held firms. Our team of experts have been involved in third-party audits that suppliers pass on paper but not in practice. Of the two, social responsibility is critically important is social responsibilities especially within corporate employees and contingent workers. We have developed a technology tool suppliers complete and our team of auditors will:

• Review  corporate policies for human rights, code of ethics and business practices, social responsibility & sustainability, environmental, employee health and safety policy, financial responsibility, and more.

• Within the social responsibility and sustainable policy, it will be inspected for:

  • Evidence of GHG emissions, energy efficiency and renewables in their sustainability policy.

  • Evidence of Water quality and consumption in their supplier sustainability policy.

  • Evidence of Child labor and young workers in their supplier sustainability policy.

  • Evidence of Freedom of association, incl. collective bargaining in your supplier sustainability policy.

  • Evidence of personal protective equipment, machine safety, chemical handling in the health and safety policy.

• Review the supplier's subsupplier social responsibility & sustainability policies and contract langauge.

• Audit record keeping for I-9 documents, employee signed acknowledgment agreements such as code of ethics, business.

• Audit subsupplier contracts, training materials and course attendance on corporate social responsibility language to ensure acknowlement and compliance including subsupplier compliance audits.

Quality Management System (QMS) certifying companies (like ISO) just certify that companies have 'processes'. They do not really understand the industry or the business to know what is the right or wrong way to provide effective service to a contingent workforce management company. So after they leave, and the supplier is recertified, there is no one auditing if those processes are actually being used and/or used properly in the operational day-to-day management. If you are having problems in your contingent staffing program it may be resolved by ensuring that supplier is using the QMS system you've required that they maintain. Our QMS Auditors will:

• Review and verify that there is a process created for your unique contingent supplier program to address your locations and localized recruiting needs. As companies and programs are custom created today, so should a supplier's processes or any exceptions to their primary process.

• Observe the supplier's team against their stated processes to ensure they are followed properly as they relate to direct and indirect teams supporting a company's contingent worker program.

• Review and monitor the suppliers internal KPIs to ensure they are being tabulated, measured correctly and communicated to the team properly.

• Evaluate supplier feedback loops to make sure they are receiving, monitoring and actively resolving employee and contingent worker concerns or issues about where steps in the process may be broken.

• Evaluate supplier's continuous improvement projects based on internal and external (client) feedback about areas of issue within the program including account management, local sourcing issues, etc.

• Audit if storyboards are used where metrics are accessible for teams and client review at all times.

• Provide a report based on findings but can also consult to help the supplier improve their QMS.