Why contingent labor belongs in the same conversation as your core workforce management
Learn why contingent workforce management belongs in your WFM strategy and what to evaluate when managing employees and flexible labor together.
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Workforce management (WFM) has never been just about scheduling or timekeeping. Organizations use WFM to help them forecast demand, navigate complex workforce rules, and put the right people in the right place at the right time.
But even that broad definition often draws a boundary around one population:
The workforce you employ.
And that boundary increasingly looks out of step with how organizations actually staff the work.
2026 Dayforce research found that 68% of surveyed frontline organizations consider contingent labor part of their core staffing model.¹
Separate global Dayforce research found that 40% of executives surveyed identified managing a contingent workforce as one of their biggest workforce planning challenges, making it the most commonly cited challenge among all the options surveyed.²
So why is contingent workforce management still so often treated as separate from core WFM?
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Because the technology market has historically organized around worker type, even though the business is trying to solve a single labor demand.
One labor demand. Different sources of labor.
Imagine your business needs another 500 labor hours next week.
Your WFM system can help forecast that demand, optimize schedules, offer available shifts to employees, and identify how much capacity exists within the workforce you employ. But what happens if that still leaves 150 hours uncovered?
The business problem hasn't changed. You still need labor. What often changes is the system used to solve it.
The remaining demand may move to a staffing agency, a vendor management system (VMS), procurement, a local manager, or another process entirely. The decision can become fragmented because different worker populations are managed through different systems and processes. That division makes administrative sense. Employees and contingent workers have different costs, rules, credentials, contracts, and experiences. But it can obscure something more fundamental:
The business is still making one capacity decision. It's deciding where the labor required to meet demand should come from.
When those decisions happen separately, an organization can become very good at optimizing one source of labor without necessarily optimizing the full pool of labor available to it.
That distinction matters when contingent labor is no longer an occasional backup. If it's part of how you routinely meet demand, then the question is no longer only how well you manage the workforce you employ. It's how well you manage the workforce you actually rely on.
At Dayforce Discover, we announced Dayforce Contingent Workforce Management, the next evolution of Dayforce Flex Work. It helps organizations manage staffing agencies, temporary workers, and contingent spend alongside employees in Dayforce, as part of one workforce strategy.
Core WFM is the foundation, not the boundary
None of this makes the capabilities organizations traditionally expect from WFM any less important.
Demand forecasting matters. Intelligent scheduling matters. Giving employees the ability to easily pick up or swap shifts on their mobile devices matters. So do time and attendance, absence management, compliance support, and the other capabilities required to manage a complex workforce.
Organizations should expect their WFM technology to do these things well, and Dayforce is built to deliver on that expectation across the core capabilities of WFM.
Dayforce was recently named a Leader in the inaugural 2026 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Workforce Management Technology and positioned highest overall for Ability to Execute.³
But strong core WFM should be the foundation of the conversation, not its boundary.
Imagine your machine learning-enhanced demand forecast identifies a labor gap. Your scheduling technology helps optimize the workforce you have. Available shifts are opened to eligible employees. Workers can pick up or swap shifts themselves.
And you still don't have enough people.
At that point, many organizations effectively leave the WFM process and enter a different one. A manager may turn to an agency. Procurement may become involved. A VMS may be used. A local team may rely on its own preferred suppliers or processes. Those options may solve the immediate staffing problem. But when they sit outside the broader workforce decision, it becomes harder to answer a more important question:
Did we choose the best available source of labor to meet this demand?
That's where the traditional boundary around WFM starts to matter. If contingent labor is routinely used to close forecasted labor gaps, then sourcing and managing that labor is part of the same operational decision WFM is already helping the organization make.
What changes when contingent workforce management becomes part of the WFM strategy?
Bringing contingent workforce management into the broader WFM conversation doesn't mean treating employees and contingent workers as interchangeable. They aren't. Employment relationships, compliance requirements, costs, worker experiences, and management processes can differ significantly. The change is in how the organization thinks about capacity.
Instead of optimizing the employed workforce first and turning to contingent labor later, workforce leaders can evaluate more of the available labor supply as part of a broader staffing strategy.
That can mean weighing overtime against flexible talent, considering supplier performance when filling labor gaps, reconnecting with previously successful workers, or building talent pools that can be redeployed as demand changes.
The objective is to make better decisions about where labor should come from before a gap becomes an emergency.
Dayforce Contingent Workforce Management gives HR, operations, finance, and frontline managers one place to manage staffing agencies, temporary workers, and contingent spend alongside employees. It centralizes workforce requests, contracted rates, approvals, supplier activity, invoicing, and supplier performance. Teams can also coordinate contingent workers using the Dayforce scheduling, time, reporting, and analytics capabilities they already use.
Rather than treating contingent labor as a separate operational exception, organizations can coordinate it in the same system as their employed workforce.
With a clearer view across employee and contingent labor, workforce leaders can make more informed decisions about where capacity should come from as demand changes. For example, they can:
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Use flexible talent instead of unnecessary overtime.
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Prioritize an agency based on performance or contracted terms.
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Reconnect with alumni, retirees, or seasonal workers who already know the organization.
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Build pools of trusted contingent workers who have performed well before.
The goal is not to treat every worker the same. It is to give workforce leaders greater visibility and control across the different sources of labor they use to meet demand, while maintaining the distinct rules and relationships each population requires.
That perspective can also change what happens after an immediate staffing need is filled.
A contingent worker who performs well today may be a strong candidate for a permanent role tomorrow. Building on Flex Work’s existing temp-to-perm workflow, Dayforce can help organizations identify, track, and convert eligible contingent workers into employees.
That extends the value of a broader workforce strategy beyond filling an immediate shift. The flexible talent that helps meet today’s demand can also become a future source of known, proven workers.
When contingent labor becomes operational capacity
Orlando City SC and Orlando Pride show what this broader approach to WFM can look like in practice.
Professional sports create dramatic fluctuations in workforce demand. A major match can require significantly more people for a few hours. Permanently staffing for every potential peak would be inefficient. Leaving shifts uncovered could affect the match-day experience.
For the clubs, flexible labor can help create capacity when demand requires it.
“We're now seeing [with Dayforce] our shifts being picked up within seconds because they got to see our culture, and they are converting to employees, which is wonderful to see.”
—Monica Figueroa, Senior Director of People and Culture, Orlando City SC and Orlando Pride
After implementing the Dayforce platform, Orlando City SC and Orlando Pride report filling an additional 30% of shifts during peak periods, while boosting retention. Some flexible workers are also converting into permanent employees. In this example, contingent labor is serving as both a source of immediate capacity and a potential source of future talent.
Your WFM evaluation should follow your workforce
For organizations that rarely use contingent labor, this distinction may not matter much. But if contingent workers are part of your core staffing model, that should change the questions you ask when evaluating WFM.
Forecasting, scheduling, time and attendance, absence management, and compliance support remain foundational. But add another question:
What happens when the workforce we employ can't meet the demand we've forecast?
Can your WFM provider help you manage the other sources of labor you depend on? Can it help you manage staffing agencies, contracted rates, worker credentials, compliance requirements, supplier performance, and contingent labor spend? Can it help build pools of previously engaged flexible talent? Can successful contingent workers provide another potential source for your permanent talent pipeline?
Then ask how those capabilities are delivered. Are they built into the workforce technology you already use, or do they depend on separate systems, integrations, and processes?
Dayforce Contingent Workforce Management brings contingent labor into one system, extending Dayforce scheduling, time, reporting, and analytics across employees and temporary workers. It helps organizations manage staffing agencies, contracted rates, approvals, invoicing, and supplier performance as part of a more connected workforce strategy.
Contingent workforce management belongs in the core WFM conversation
The composition of the workforce has changed. Employees remain essential, but for many organizations, contingent workers, staffing agencies, seasonal talent, and other flexible sources of labor are now part of how work gets done.
If workforce management is about helping the business meet demand with the labor it needs, the strategy should reflect the full range of labor sources the organization routinely relies on.
That’s the premise behind Dayforce Contingent Workforce Management: one system for managing contingent labor alongside employees, from workforce requests and supplier coordination through approved time, invoicing, and performance insight.
For organizations that depend on contingent labor, the next WFM evaluation should go further. Don’t only ask how well the technology helps manage the workforce you employ. Ask whether it helps you make better decisions about the workforce you actually rely on.
References
2. Dayforce, Fighting workforce friction to power productivity, 2025.
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