24 Apr Winning the talent pricing game: Smarter contract rate tracking with Flextrack
In the increasingly fluctuating and often competitive extended workforce market, Striking a balance between attracting the best workers, talent pricing, and managing budgets is somewhat of an art. For organizations looking to the future, retaining skilled workers is considered a primary concern. This requires competitive but sustainable compensation strategy.
According to the Harvard Business Review, the cost of losing an employee ranges from six to nine months’ worth of that person’s compensation, and as high as twice the annual salary of technical positions. The same principle applies to contingent talent; turnover and disruption come at a cost, especially when skilled contractors are lost due to problems that are simple to solve.
Organizations that rely on the flexibility and expertise of their contingent workers should be even more attuned to the needs of their talent, especially as expectations and markets fluctuate. In the contingent workforce space, where job flexibility and mobility are high, retaining talent means staying on top of their shifting priorities. For example, while some experts say that career satisfaction may be on the rise, others speculate that economics may play a part in pushing as much as %93 of workers to potentially seek new opportunities. One thing is certain – the roles of jobs and skills are rapidly evolving in the contingent workforce. Employees with specialized skills are more likely to look for flexibility, benefits, and most importantly, negotiate for better, and expect more competitive salaries.
This growing workforce sector is already used to more flexibility and tends to operate on a broader net of opportunity, often unbound by geography, time zones, and the bureaucracy that FTE’s often face.
Why does real-time rate benchmarking matter?
Traditional VMS platforms often fail to deliver up-to-date compensation insights because they struggle with outdated rate cards, manual data entry, and limited visibility into market trends. Without accurate benchmarking, businesses risk overpaying for talent or losing top candidates to more competitive offers.
Breaking down the 6 Benefits of smart contingent workforce talent rate benchmarking
- Controlling costs without sacrificing talent quality – Paying market-competitive rates ensures businesses stay within budget while attracting top-tier talent.
- Eliminating rogue spend & rate inconsistencies – A structured approach prevents hiring managers from overpaying or approving rates that don’t align with organizational goals.
- Empowering smarter negotiations – With real-time insights, procurement teams can negotiate from a position of strength, ensuring fair rates without unnecessary cost inflation.
- Improving market responsiveness – Dynamic rate benchmarking lets organizations and teams quickly adapt to labor market changes, which not only prevents reactive hiring and workforce management, but it also lets teams stay ahead of industry trends and plan accordingly.
- Heightened employee retention and satisfaction – Fair and transparent pay structures during the hiring process or tenure builds trust, opens lines of communication, improves productivity and reduces turnover.
- Stronger compliance and risk management – Automated rate tracking powered by advanced analytics helps prevent pay disparities, ensuring compliance with labor laws across borders as well as adherence to internal organization policies.
3 ways you can meet the expectations of today’s contingent workforce
1. Transparency
All employees expect clear visibility into pay structures, contract terms, and market rates. With increasing trends and regulations towards pay transparency, contingent workers are no different.
How Flextrack does it: Built as a platform on Salesforce, Flextrack utilizes your data to become your single source of truth for rates, giving procurement teams and hiring managers the insights they need to negotiate salaries based on market aligned data to prevent issues like budget creep. Flextrack provides real-time intelligence and role-based visibility. Being built on Salesforce also ensures that compensation data is centralized, accessible, and constantly updated, eliminating confusion and misalignment.
2. Competitive rates
Attracting and retaining top talent has been a key goal of most organizational leaders, it’s the constant upkeep with fluctuating market trends that makes or breaks teams and sets them up for long-term success.
How Flextrack does it: Flextrack’s dynamic benchmarking capabilities compare internal rates with real-time external market data, ensuring that rates stay competitive without overspending. By leveraging AI-driven insights and advanced analytics for faster, easier information, organizations can confidently set rates that balance costs with other appealing incentives such as work-life flexibility and other individual perks.
3. Salary reviews
Even in the contingent workforce space, salary reviews are crucial for maintaining the satisfaction of the workforce and keeping retention high as low pay is one of the most quoted reasons for contingent employees quitting. This is especially true for organizations that experience quick shifts in markets and skills needed to complete certain jobs.
How Flextrack does it: Automated rate tracking and advanced analytics capabilities let teams assess pay structures, identify discrepancies, and quickly adjust rates to match industry trends and worker performance. This allows for leaders to assess individuals and ensure they are being compensated fairly and remain engaged in their roles.
The advantage of a Platform as a Service Solution built on Salesforce
Control costs without sacrificing the quality of your talent
A VMS that’s built on an infinitely extensible platform that has access to the latest updates, AI, and analytics technology ensures you pay competitive rates without overextending your budget. With AI-driven insights and real-time rate tracking, you can attract top contingent talent and maintain cost efficiency.
Access dynamic benchmarking for every contingent workforce role and region
With real-time external market data integrated into the PaaS, you can proactively plan the workforce strategy not just around worker pay, but skills and location and stay within industry standards. Salesforce-powered advanced analytics ensure the attraction of talent at rates that work for you and maintain budget predictability even with fluctuating market trends.
Improve negotiations through transparency
Leverage centralized rate intelligence based on secure data to gain clear visibility into extended workforce pricing. By equipping hiring managers with data-backed insights, the technology helps drive stronger supplier negotiations and ensures fair, competitive pay structures.
Eliminate rogue spend and rate inconsistencies
Automated rate governance, role-based access control , and policy enforcement prevent unauthorized spend, ensuring that contingent workforce costs stay within approved parameters. These built-in controls help teams maintain financial discipline while still securing the right talent at the right price.
