This article was originally published on Affirmity.com.
It’s critical that your organization’s approach to diversity, equity, and inclusion leaves nobody behind. However, it’s not uncommon for DE&I programs to overlook the contingent workforce, due to the historical complexity of accounting for contracted workers. In this article, Irene Koulianos, Senior Channel Account Manager at VectorVMS, catches up with Affirmity’s Vice President of Sales, Kim Hendon, and Senior Solutions Consultant, Roy Zambonino. Read on to learn how organizations can be more inclusive of contingent workers and ways to source more diverse candidates for your programs.
Note: this article is the second part of our two-part series on total talent DE&I. While it can be read as a standalone article, there’s additional context in part 1, which can be accessed via the link directly below.
DON’T MISS OUR EARLIER DISCUSSION ON THIS TOPIC | ‘[Q&A] Total Talent DE&I: The Move Toward a Holistic Approach to Workforce Diversity’
Q: How should organizations gather contractor diversity data?
Irene Koulianos: In many ways, companies with workers in California are really paving the way in the U.S. for how this is done, as it’s required from them. However, one interesting thing is, when you’re a contractor, you sign up to work with a vendor of choice and you fill out an application form as you would for a full-time role. In the U.S., there’s an optional EEOC form asking about your race, ethnicity, veteran status, and disability status—the exact data we’re after! Vendors who are the employer of record for contingent workers have been gathering that data all along, just like any other organization would. They’ve just not really been tasked with doing anything with it up until now.
I think there’s been a reassessment of that in general since 2020. Organizations are wondering, “Why aren’t we tracking this, and looking at this in the contingent labor world?” As a result, some organizations have been working with their MSPs or directly with their vendors to gather this data.
However, getting hold of this crucial information is easier said than done. It probably makes vendors and MSPs a little bit uncomfortable at first—it’s a new ask for them. Furthermore, you need to be strategic about providing this form in order to actually get the information you need. You must create an understanding and a comfort level when you’re seeking that data, because if you’re a minority person applying for a job, and you’re given this optional EEOC form, you may wonder whether filing it in will impact you somehow.
As a result, organizations need to work with vendors and MSPs to help increase responses. For example, you could provide a short video explaining why you’re collecting the data. Timing is also important—you could consider asking later in the process, rather than making it one of the first things an applicant gets from you. If you’re working with your vendors directly and telling them what your strategic goals are, what you’re looking to accomplish, and helping to gather that data, you’re likely to see greater success.
VectorVMS saw this need and we’ve been working with legal teams, industry experts, analysts, and our clients to develop a candidate diversity module for our vendor management system (VMS) that gathers this data in much the same way that a company would for full-time workers. It’s all anonymized, and the forms are customizable. It can be gathered at the time of candidates being submitted, so you understand exactly what your vendors are submitting to you. You can also gather that data at the time of hire.
Regardless of whether you have access to such a feature set, you should start building up that data. Sit down with your vendors and your MSPs, and have those strategic conversations in order to help bring that data in.
Right now, I think that MSPs and vendors are comfortable with supplier diversity. They know how to track and funnel spend toward diversity-owned businesses in the hope of getting diverse candidates, but this method is not always successful at improving hiring metrics. If your hiring team, your interview team, and your decision-makers don’t understand your diversity goals, all that work is going to amount to little. Organizations are depending a lot on their vendors and MSPs—but your technology could help you gather and anonymize data and improve your insight into the total talent picture.
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Q: How can a vendor management system help to surface this data to assist with initiatives?
Roy Zambonino: Talking to Irene, I didn’t realize the extent to which HR was involved in contract labor. I always thought it was a procurement function within the organization. I’m finding out that, no, it’s really more of an HR function. And this just makes it more surprising that organizations have traditionally never considered their contractor workforce.
It’s exciting because it potentially gives organizations access to a whole new pool of candidates, including veterans, retirees, caregivers, and parents returning to the workforce—all groups that maybe just want to work on a contract basis rather than full-time. These people could potentially then be feeder pools into full-time positions.
One of the things we always talk about in our reporting is giving leaders visibility, and this is a key component that we’ve been missing. A lot of companies often find there’s limited opportunity to bring in diverse people because there’s no turnover, and the contractor workforce represents a way around that, so leaders need visibility and ideally a platform like VectorVMS with that capability.
I think this is going to be crucial for organizations that create affirmative action plans because the majority of businesses won’t have had this contractor information available in the analysis of selection activity. The data could potentially have implications for things like your impact ratio analysis reporting for hires. When you’re doing that type of reporting, you’re comparing applicants to hire. When you’re looking at promotions, you’re considering how people move within your organization from one position to another. It seems obvious that contractors are a big part of both.
By considering contractors, you could potentially see different numbers regarding the achievement or failure of your goals, giving you a more accurate picture of what’s actually happening. In reality, you may be doing really well because you’re utilizing that contractor workforce and, for example, moving them into full-time positions.
Kim Hendon: Being able to gather this type of information will also help companies look at their vendor network and tap into that to determine which staffing suppliers can help them reach those goals and benchmarks. It’ll help them understand where they need to put more effort in, where they need to provide more training, and where bias exists to be removed.
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Q: Are there other methods organizations can use when struggling to source diverse candidates?
IK: There are a number of things that, even before you have an ounce of data, can help to drive change. The truth is that if you don’t currently have a way of measuring diversity or diversity data, while the sooner you start the better, you still won’t have the results you need until that data has had time to accumulate.
One big area is direct sourcing. Direct sourcing is one of those terms that can have a lot of different definitions, but there are platforms that will allow you to actually bring in contingent workers under your brand, using a payroll vendor as the vendor or employer of record. This gives you the ability to meet candidates where they are, whether that’s TikTok, a diversity job board, an internship group, or a fraternity or sorority group at a college. It allows you to expand your outreach and bring in candidates and match them to jobs using more than just their resume, generating a matching score and potentially removing unconscious bias from the process.
You’ll want to establish true partnerships with your vendors and MSPs that allow you to have the right conversations. I think sometimes we’re like, “Oh, it’s a contingent worker. We have to have them in three days. And that’s when we need to hire them.” Well, imagine putting a little bit more thought and effort into that. Maybe it takes two weeks instead of one week, but you actually get more diverse candidates that way.
However, organizations also need to make sure that their hiring teams are diverse. If you have a hiring team that hires people who look like them and are like them, it’s difficult to build diverse teams. If people are going into a space where it feels like they’re the only person that looks like them or is like them, then it may not feel so comfortable to work there.
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Q: Is there anything else organizations can do to increase the diverse candidate pool?
RZ: First and foremost, gaining access into that contractor workforce is key. I think that’s going to be a game-changer. We always emphasize the importance of having realistic benchmarks and I’m not sure you can have those without looking at your contractor and full-time workforces together.
One of the things that I’ve been seeing is that more and more companies want to engage their contractor workforce in programs that have traditionally been reserved for the full-time workforce, such as participation in Employee Resource Groups (ERGs). Affirmity has worked to implement our ERG platform with some organizations, and that surfaces some really interesting metrics around how ERGs promote diversity and attract diverse candidates within the organization.
Because contractors are employed by third parties, they can be left out of such systems, but the technology is there to allow contractors to participate. From my perspective, if we have those contractors already engaged with us and they’re happy to work for us, I’d want to keep them. I’d want to find ways where we can move them into the organization, either as contractors if that’s what they prefer, or move them into critical full-time positions.
That’s going more into the inclusion side of DE&I. It’s expensive to go out and search for a new employee—if we already have a viable pool of employees to pull from, that’s a huge win. I think organizations haven’t done this before because there hasn’t been any visibility into what is there.
So, leveraging technology around ERGs and mentorship programs to make sure that those contractors feel like they’re part of the organization is going to be huge. Then we can move them into the organization and more importantly, be able to report on it.
Boost the impact of your DE&I initiatives with a VMS that evolves alongside industry demands. Contact us or schedule a demo to discover how VectorVMS can help you achieve a true total talent approach.
Meet the Expert
Taylor Ramchandani – VP of Strategy
Taylor Ramchandani is responsible for the management and strategic planning of the VectorVMS vendor management system. Taylor is committed to client satisfaction and to ensuring VectorVMS technology meets the current and future needs of clients and managed service providers (MSPs). She uses market research and in-depth industry experience to create products and services that make extended workforce management efficient and intuitive. Taylor oversees product development, marketing, and business partnerships for VectorVMS and is responsible for driving innovation for contingent workforce management. Connect with her on LinkedIn.
