Enhancing Agility in the Banking Sector with Contingent Staffing Solutions

Conventional recruitment methods are often put into question when companies undergo massive financial crises due to market uncertainties, and mass layoffs take the front seat. In the changing business environment, organizations today have become more reliant on contingent workforce. 

A recent report published by Research and Markets shows that the global contingent workforce management market is set to exceed $465.2 trillion by the end of 2031. Facilitated by the COVID-19 pandemic, candidates are now increasingly focusing on flexible work arrangements and remote work. Remote work norms not only provide the desired flexibility to workers but have also proved to be highly advantageous for businesses. 

In view of the ever-evolving market conditions and the rising prevalence of flexible work arrangements, banking agility is directly related to how well banks can utilize contingent staffing solutions and strategize 

contingent workforce management. Thus, companies in the financial space are looking at ways to engage a contingent workforce in businesses to elevate banking agility.

Before learning about the ways in which contingent staffing helps banks remain agile and competitive, let’s get an overview of contingent staffing solutions.

An overview of contingent staffing solutions

Contingent staffing provides a flexible workforce strategy that can easily adjust to dynamic business needs. It is a hiring practice that involves sourcing temporary or contractual workers to complement a company’s existing workforce to fill skill gaps during seasonal peaks or for particular projects. The contingent labor pool comprises independent contractors, freelancers, or consultants hired by an organization to meet their situational demands but not directly included in the organization’s payroll.

The need for specialized skills often fluctuates within the financial space, pushing the banking sector to employ a contingent workforce. Now, let’s explore how contingent staffing can be beneficial to enhance banking agility and performance.

Ways in which contingent staffing can enhance banking agility

Creating a balance between financial and operational resilience

With economic uncertainty considerations, financial institutions, especially banks, stand in a position where they ought to create and maintain the right balance between financial and operational resilience. Under volatile market conditions, budgets are often limited while demands soar. In such circumstances, banks need to implement a cost-effective solution by hiring contractual employees instead of full-time ones.

For time-based projects where specialized skills are required, banks can bring in external workers instead of deploying a full-fledged workforce, which might help in reducing hiring and training costs. Contractual workers with project-specific skills and abilities can help meet the project timeline and ensure that businesses remain usual in operations.

Getting flexibility and scalability 

Whether it is a short-term requirement for a project or a seasonal surge in workload, contingent workforce management can help maintain banking agility by enabling banks to alter their workforce based on fluctuating business demands. In other words, contingent workers can be hired when required and released when the project ends or the workload decreases. This assists financial institutions to remain responsive and competitive even during economic downturns.

Coping with the aging workforce challenges

A major cause of concern across modern-day industries, particularly banks, is the aging workforce. The appetite for early retirement is quite strong in the financial services sector, which could mean gaps in the desired skills and competencies to fill vacant positions in this sector over the upcoming years.* To avoid such skill gaps and ensure business operations are in place, banks can hire contingent workers on a contractual basis and get the jobs done with ease and efficiency.

Equipping the workforce with skills in demand

Apart from skill gaps resulting from an aging workforce, financial organizations often need specific skills for specific projects that may be absent in their in-house workforce. Keeping this in mind, banks need to strategically plan and create their workforce model, altering the composition of permanent and temporary employees. 

Be it a specific skill set, experience with niche projects, or industry knowledge, contingent staff can introduce knowledgeable insights and capabilities to the table, assisting in elevating banking agility by responding to complicated business challenges and bringing innovation more efficiently.

Boosting the overall talent pool with diversity and inclusivity

The deployment of contingent staffing can assist banks in not only involving individuals with versatile skills and expertise in their business operations but also building a diverse and inclusive talent pool. By creating and nourishing relationships with contingent workers, organizations can hire and engage them again in the future. As such, the time needed to find a new talent will be reduced.

Reducing onboarding and training costs and time

One of the best strategies for hiring contingent workers is to partner with a professional contingent staffing agency specializing in banking and financial staffing services. Specialized staffing agencies already possess a broad contingent talent pool with pre-screened candidates, and thus, they can easily assist banks in getting the desired talent for specific job roles. 

Direct hiring takes a lot of time and effort, which might bring challenges to financial institutions if the requirements are urgent. Staffing agencies help organizations streamline the hiring and onboarding process, reducing overall recruitment costs as well as time. Moreover, contingent workers often possess the required skills and competencies to immediately start taking up tasks and complete them with full commitment. This helps banks cut off training time and costs, enabling them to prioritize project goals or more essential operational tasks.

Bottom line

Hence, it can be concluded that contingent staffing solutions can help enhance banking agility by hitting the right balance between financial and operational resilience, offering flexibility and scalability during economic downturns, mitigating challenges arising from an aging workforce, giving access to necessary skills and competencies, building a diverse and inclusive workforce, and reducing onboarding and training costs and time.

Still wondering about how contingent staffing can elevate banking agility? Contact us and get answers to all your queries today!

If you have already decided to employ a contingent workforce model for your business, then become our customer and share your project details and staffing needs with us. We will help you find the right talent.