Many organisations may have an external Flexible Workforce supporting their business, however may not be managing them, which in turn leads to no visibility. This can happen for multiple reasons: 

• They are not employees – why should I care?
• Don’t have the headcount – but need to get the work done!
• Don’t have the Operating expenditure – but have the Capital expenditure
• Need to get the job done quickly – going through internal approvals could slow down the process
• Only delivering a project – why do I need to know who is working on it?
• No program in place to manage

There are many potential risks to businesses who are not managing their Flexible Workforce:

• Deemed employment – There is a very fine line to ensure that a person does not become deemed employed (the rules change country to country)
• 3rd Party Tax and Statutory exposure – Governments will not go after the individual resource, but will go after the Customer
• Worker misclassification – can lead to overpaying suppliers and fines in some legislations
• Fraud – No control on who is on your site and what they potentially touch
• IP leakage – No rules around on and off boarding
• Liability ownership – As soon as you start managing a person (even if project based), you are liable
• Cost – No benchmarking between work types

A Flexible Workforce Program may help mitigate the above, but how do you know when you need to put a program in place? Below are some questions that may help your business to assess the need:

• How much Flexible Workforce do you have within your business?
• Who are they? Have they been screened prior to coming on site?
• Where are they? Who are they working for?
• What are they doing? Are they touching the customer or Critical Organisation systems?
• What are the local legislation, tax and statutory risks exposure? 
• Do you think you have any business exposure?

If in doubt, don’t forget the cost of preventing mistakes is generally much less than the cost of correcting.