Contingent workers are valuable contributors in any organization: they bring a unique set of skills that can be difficult to find within your company.
One of the most important principles of managing these workers is recognizing top performers on your team. Here are three reasons that it is crucial to recognize the best contingent team members in your office:
Identifying Potential Management Options
Contingent workers, by their very definition, are temporary employees who are contracted as they are needed. However, this does not mean that a contingent employee might not be available to lead a team of workers on a particular project. If there is an ongoing need for their services, you may even want to offer them a permanent consulting role or invite them to become a part of the organization, if the circumstances are right and they have expressed a desire to do so. Recognizing top-performing contingent workers also gives you a better idea of what it takes to properly manage them: the ones doing a good job are being managed successfully.
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Encouraging Facility Improvement Through Recognition
Recognizing when contingent workers do a great job is imperative to making sure that they continue to be motivated and engaged with their work. On the Monster Thinking Blog, Kevin Sheridan writes that contingent workers can sometimes have trouble seeing the impact of their work, so they should be recognized for their valuable contributions on a regular basis. This recognition will lead to facility improvement when the rest of your team sees top performers getting recognized and appreciated, giving them incentive to do their best work. Recognition does not always have to come in the form of a financial bonus: you might give your best contingent employees a good parking spot or a gift certificate for a popular restaurant to recognize their stellar work.
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Creating A Contingent Employee Training Program That Works
Contingent workers have their own unique necessities for training and company integration. When you are able to recognize the best contingent employees at your organization, you can study their behaviors and approaches to the work they do, which will help you determine what works and what doesn’t work when it comes to educating and equipping your contingent workforce. You might even schedule an interview to ask them questions about how they work. The information that you glean from identifying the work habits of your best contingent workers will be invaluable in how you bring on future contingent employees at your business.
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Remember that before you can go about actually identifying your top contingent employees, you need to have a clear sense of how you are going to measure their performance. Come up with a consistent system for performance measurement that places every contingent worker on a level playing field and gives each one the chance to be recognized for doing good work. This will make evaluating your team easier and make it more likely that your business gets quality performance from contingent team members.
Ed Frauenheim at Workforce writes that contingent workers must receive feedback and relevant evaluations. Properly identifying your top contingent employees is a vital element of giving them feedback that helps them work more efficiently. Not only does recognizing quality contingent employees help them improve their abilities and motivation, it also helps your organization get a better handle on the best way to approach the contingent workforce.