Mitigating Risk: How OneBeacon’s MSP Solution Protects Your Contingent Workforce In 3 Key Ways

Companies increasingly utilize agile workers—contractors, consultants and freelancers—to adapt to the fast-paced business environment. While this strategy offers flexibility, it can present significant risks, such as compliance and co-employment issues. Partnering with a Managed Services Provider (MSP) like OneBeacon can help mitigate these risks. With decades of expertise, OneBeacon ensures compliance, reduces legal exposure, controls costs and optimizes performance in managing your contingent workforce.

The Risk Landscape: What Could Go Wrong?

Contingent labor offers flexibility but presents several critical risks that, if not managed effectively, can lead to financial, legal and operational challenges. These risks include:

1. Compliance and Regulatory Risks

Managing compliance for contingent labor can be a complex and ever-changing challenge. Failing to correctly classify workers, track their hours, or comply with local employment laws can expose your company to substantial fines, lawsuits and reputational damage. Misclassification risks—where contingent workers are incorrectly categorized as independent contractors rather than employees—can also lead to tax penalties, back pay and other legal complications. In addition to these compliance issues, proper onboarding and offboarding of contingent workers are critical to ensure smooth integration and separation while maintaining legal and regulatory adherence.

How OneBeacon Can Help 

OneBeacon’s workforce management experts stay current with the latest labor laws and regulations across country, state and municipal levels, ensuring compliance at every touchpoint. Through our comprehensive MSP solution, we standardize onboarding and offboarding processes to maintain consistency and adherence to legal requirements, safeguarding your organization from potential liabilities. Our team also conducts regular supplier audits to ensure that all partners align with compliance standards, mitigating risks related to worker misclassification, wage disputes and other compliance concerns. Furthermore, we proactively address co-employment risks, going beyond staying current with labor laws by implementing strategies to protect your organization from costly legal exposure. With OneBeacon, your contingent workforce is correctly classified, compliant and managed to reduce risk across all areas of labor compliance.

2. Cost Inefficiencies

Without effective workforce management, companies risk overspending on contingent labor by relying on staffing suppliers who may offer inflated talent markups. This leads to higher costs and diverts internal resources from core responsibilities, as teams spend valuable time managing contingent labor rather than focusing on strategic objectives. By partnering with OneBeacon, our dedicated team manages your contingent workforce, allowing your internal team to concentrate on driving business growth. In addition to streamlining operations, our expertise in negotiating competitive rates with suppliers results in significant cost savings, ensuring you pay only what’s necessary for your contingent workforce while reducing internal workload.

How OneBeacon Can Help

OneBeacon effectively manages your contingent labor supply chain by establishing bill rate management practices, including not-to-exceed rate cards, to ensure that staffing suppliers provide competitive and transparent pricing. By closely monitoring supplier relationships and enforcing compliance, OneBeacon ensures that suppliers adhere to agreed-upon rates and contractual terms. Additionally, OneBeacon leverages industry-leading Vendor Management System (VMS) platforms for real-time reporting on key data points such as labor spend, supplier performance and compliance. This centralized reporting allows you to make data-driven decisions, optimize resource allocation, and prevent overspending, ultimately improving cost efficiencies across your contingent workforce.

3. Co-Employment and Other Risks

Co-employment risks arise when staffing vendors and client companies are considered the employers of the same worker. This scenario can expose businesses to legal liabilities related to worker rights, benefits, and workplace conditions. Mismanaging co-employment relationships may lead to costly lawsuits, regulatory fines and significant reputational damage.

In addition to co-employment, other workforce risks include worker misclassification, non-compliance with local labor laws, and failure to properly manage workplace safety and conditions. These risks can lead to significant legal complications, tax penalties and financial losses, highlighting the importance of managing contingent labor effectively to mitigate potential exposures.

How OneBeacon Can Help 

OneBeacon helps mitigate a wide range of workforce risks by managing the entire lifecycle of your contingent labor, from onboarding to performance reviews and offboarding. Our dedicated team works closely with hiring managers to ensure proper classification of workers and full compliance with labor laws, reducing risks such as misclassification, co-employment and non-compliance with local regulations. We establish clear contractual agreements and well-defined distinctions between non-employee and full-time staff to protect against co-employment issues. Additionally, OneBeacon’s proactive approach to bill rate management, supplier compliance and worker safety ensures that all aspects of contingent labor are effectively monitored and managed, minimizing legal, financial and reputational risks across your workforce.

Conclusion: Take Control of Your Contingent Workforce Risks with OneBeacon

Managing a contingent workforce brings unique challenges, but with OneBeacon’s MSP solution, you gain the expertise and tools necessary to mitigate these risks effectively. From ensuring compliance, reducing co-employment exposure, optimizing cost management and improving workforce productivity, OneBeacon helps you confidently manage your contingent labor.

Don't leave your workforce management to chance. Contact OneBeacon today at [email protected] to learn how our MSP services can help you navigate the complexities of contingent labor, protect your business and position your company for long-term success.