With Growth of Contract Workers, New Tools for Performance Reviews Needed

Culturally, we are experiencing a great transition in the makeup of workforces. Companies of all sizes now employ larger numbers of temporary contract workers as we enter what many are calling the “gig economy.” This has increased the need for customized reporting tools designed to evaluate the performance of these nonpermanent, but still integral, employees. According to research from Oxford Economics, 80 percent of companies will employ significant numbers of consultants, part-timers and contract workers in the next three years. While traditional performance reviews conducted by HR may be sufficient for permanent employees on the payroll, there remain serious gaps in many companies’ employee review solutions. “If you’re going to be successful in HR, you have to look at the entire workforce,” SuccessFactors president Mike Ettling said to Fortune Magazine. “The traditional boundaries of a company are no longer defined by the salaried employees.” For employers and HR solution providers, it is about evaluating all the resources in as extensively a way as possible. Human resources software company SAP has debuted an application called Fieldglass, which allows managers to view data about the skill sets and performance histories of non-employee workers much as they would with internal team members. “We need to have a better sense of what people resources we have,” says Marc Farrugia, vice president of human resources for real estate management company Sun Communities. As the gig economy heats up, the HR industry on the whole will likely need additional tools for evaluating employees — coming from within and and without.