Food Processing Company Slashes Costs, Boosts Compliance with Contingent Workforce Tech Overhaul

Situation 

A leading food processing company was struggling to successfully utilize its contingent labor program across all divisions of the business. The challenges spread across 67 of the organization’s locations in 23 states, where the existing business model enabled them to operate independently.

This decentralization resulted in varied spending between locations, increased compliance risk and an unequal distribution of contingent opportunities across the program. Just ten suppliers held 84% of the program spend, which drove diversity spend below 5%.

The client had also recently announced an initiative to move several satellite offices into the company headquarters, requiring contingent workers to either relocate or work remotely when possible.

On top of this, the client was experiencing reporting limitations within their existing vendor management system (VMS), challenges with an oversaturated supply base and difficulty identifying workers for unique healthcare assignments related to worker safety during the COVID-19 pandemic.

To solve these issues, the organization approached PeopleScout to create a centralized contingent hiring solution.

Solution 

PeopleScout deployed several centralized technology process improvements across all client locations. This included implementing a more robust and enhanced VMS to improve the experience for hiring managers, suppliers and project managers. The new VMS also offered better reporting and visibility into the program spend, supplier performance, requisition management, time-to-fill and more. PeopleScout also provided the client with data for competitive benchmarking. 

PeopleScout initially experienced resistance to the new process from both managers and suppliers but overcame that obstacle by highlighting benefits like cost savings, competitive rates, expedited payment terms and more.  

As the company relocated workers, PeopleScout proactively reached out to offices where contingent workers were assigned to determine if staff could work remotely and provided strategies to assist in retention and filling vacancies. 

PeopleScout also provided Talent Advisory consulting services, including onsite meetings to review the value of MSP programs and total talent management solutions, and to discuss DE&I trends and goals with the client’s DE&I taskforce.

Results 

PeopleScout’s program led to a cost savings of $500k in annual billing and reduced payroll spend by 19% while increasing diversity spend to $2.7 million. Additionally, in interviewing 333 workers, project managers maintained an overall compliance audit score of 100%. Partnerships have been established with knowledgeable suppliers to provide sourcing support for the challenging healthcare roles. 

“I am so very grateful for all that you have done and are doing for our location. You have made this very easy on this end. I truly can’t thank you enough.” 

Client Hiring Manager