As you spend the last weeks of 2017 looking at all the strategic priorities that require a learning solution to support the people component of the strategy, you quickly ask yourself “How am I going to get what needs to be done in the first quarter, let alone the rest of the year with my team utilized at 90% now?”  The reality that many learning organizations face is downward pressure to reduce permanent staff or doing more with less in the face of corporate-wide hiring freezes.

This is a great example of a use case for managed services.  Why over-extend your internal resources with unmanageable and unrealistic workloads, which they might deliver with lower quality given other time demands?  Wouldn’t it be better to work with a crack team of learning professionals, who can ramp quickly, and focus on the upcoming high-impact business-critical project?  We believe so.

Qualified talent and learning staff can be deployed to meet the strategic needs of your organization.  This is especially helpful in the case of unplanned or unexpected business-critical projects, which arise during the year.

Risks of Scattershot Resource Contracting

In some organizations, learning and HR departments turn to temp agencies to hire contractors, haphazardly and without a strategic approach.  The reality is these temp agencies are usually generalists with no background in learning.  They charge a handsome placement fee as a percentage of the hourly wage for resource but deliver little to no value for that fee.  This can have the following deleterious effects:

• Low-quality deliverables
• High turnover of contract resources
• High administrative costs of selecting and contracting new resources
• Co-employment risk of long-term contractors
  • Companies can be at major risk if their contractors are doing identical work as internal employees, but not receiving the same benefits, etc.

“Treating contractors as employees may pose risks for the organization. When planning the annual company picnic, keep the party to the family.”  William Bierce, Esq.

 How is Talent Resourcing Managed Services Different?

When done properly, a managed services solution for resourcing results in:

• Speed of staffing projects with high-quality talent, typically 5 business days on average
• Management of resources by learning thought leaders to oversee and manage the solution, not just a generalist recruiter throwing resumes over the transom to you for vetting, review, and selection
• Reduction in co-employment risk by contracting for a specific set of learning services, not just temporary labor
• Reduction of forced staff churn on a set timeline of calendar cycle which results in loss of cultural, business and contextual knowledge required to deliver quality learning solutions
• Experienced teams that know your industry and have previous experience in delivering the specific solutions your business requires
• Set service levels to accurately measure the return you are receiving on your investment.

 In Summary