Contingent Workforce Program Relaunch: The 4-Step Fix

How to Relaunch a Contingent Workforce Program That Stopped Working

BY KASEY HADJIS, President, Workwell North America

A contingent workforce program relaunch is one of the most common projects we get called into, but one of the least talked about in the industry.

That silence is worth noting. Most organizations that are relaunching a program are not starting from zero. They already have vendors, contracts, and sometimes years of program history. Admitting that the program stopped working requires someone to say out loud that the original decision was flawed, or that the program simply outgrew its design. Neither conversation is easy, which is why relaunch projects tend to be delayed much longer than they should be.

At ProcureCon this year, this theme came up repeatedly across different session formats. Organizations at Stage 3 of the contingent workforce maturity model are overwhelmingly programs that could use a generation 2 model, not generation one programs. The business changed, the workforce model changed, and the program did not. Hiring managers are working around it. Site leaders are frustrated. And the data that should be driving workforce decisions is either incomplete or not being looked at.

This post walks through the relaunch process we have used with our own clients: four steps that take a program from broken to performing without creating more disruption than necessary.

Why Contingent Workforce Programs Stop Working

Before getting into the relaunch process, it is worth understanding why programs fail in the first place. In most cases, the original design was not wrong. It was just built for a different version of the business.

A program designed for 200 contingent workers in three locations does not automatically scale to 800 workers across twelve locations and four countries. A supplier panel built around one staffing agency does not serve a business that now needs niche technology skills, engineering professionals, and SOW vendors. A governance structure designed for one procurement leader does not survive an organizational restructure that adds three new stakeholder functions.

The structural limitations of legacy MSP programs are well documented. A March 2026 analysis from Beroe found that fragmented talent channels, expanding SOW engagements, rising regulatory scrutiny, and growing expectations for visibility have exposed structural limitations in legacy operating models, contributing to declining enterprise confidence in traditional MSP approaches.

Buyer satisfaction with workforce technology has followed a similar trajectory. SIA’s 2025 Workforce Solutions Buyer Survey reported a Net Promoter Score of negative 28 for the VMS industry overall. That number reflects programs running on platforms and processes that have not kept pace with what organizations actually need.

The common thread across all of these situations: the program is still running, but the business is working around it. That is the clearest signal that a relaunch is overdue.

The Four Signs a Relaunch Is Overdue

Not every underperforming program needs a full relaunch. Sometimes a rate card refresh or a supplier addition is enough. However, four specific conditions typically mean the program itself needs to be redesigned, not just adjusted.

Hiring managers are consistently bypassing the program

When site leaders call suppliers directly, when SOW is being used as a workaround for hard-to-fill roles, or when HR is managing worker engagements outside the system, the program has lost the trust of the people it is supposed to serve. That trust does not come back from a policy memo.

The VMS does not reflect reality

If the system of record does not have accurate data on the current contingent workforce population, the program cannot be managed from it. Decisions made on incomplete data compound over time.

Stakeholder alignment has broken down

In many relaunch situations, HR, Procurement, and Finance have each developed their own workarounds because the program was not serving all three. Rebuilding the governance structure is as much of the work as rebuilding the operational model.

The program was built for a different scope

Geographic expansion, new worker categories, or significant headcount growth can all push a program past its design limits. When the scope of what the business needs has materially outpaced what the program was built for, the gap is structural.

The Contingent Workforce Program Relaunch Process: Four Steps

The relaunch process we use with clients follows four sequential steps. Skipping any one of them tends to reproduce the problems of the original program in the new design.

Step 1: Audit

The audit step answers one question: what is actually happening in the program right now, and how far is it from where it needs to be?

A thorough audit covers four areas. First, the workforce population: who are all the external workers currently engaged, across every supplier, engagement model, and geography? In most relaunch situations, the answer to this question is incomplete, and the gap between what the VMS shows and what is actually in the workforce is significant.

Second, the supplier landscape: which suppliers are currently active, what are their actual performance metrics, and which relationships were built by hiring managers outside the program?

Third, the stakeholder experience: what do site leaders, HR, Finance, and Legal actually think of the program? Their honest answers are typically more diagnostic than any vendor report.

Finally, the compliance picture: which worker categories are inside formal governance and which are not? IC and SOW populations are often the largest compliance gaps in a relaunch situation.

The audit output is a clear-eyed assessment of the current state. It is not a vendor evaluation yet. It is the foundation that the redesign needs to be built on.

Step 2: Redesign

The redesign step builds the new program from the audit findings. In a generation 1 program, this is a design-from-scratch exercise. In a relaunch, it is a targeted redesign: keeping what worked and replacing what did not.

Specifically, the redesign covers the operating model (who owns the program, what the decision rights are across functions, and how the shared scorecard works), the supplier strategy (which suppliers the program will go to market with and how performance will be managed), the technology configuration (whether the current VMS serves the new scope or whether a different platform is needed), and the governance structure (how new worker categories, geographies, and stakeholder functions will be incorporated).

The redesign should also produce a formal program charter: a document that defines scope, ownership, metrics, and decision rights that all stakeholder functions have reviewed and agreed to. The programs that get relaunched again in two years are usually the ones that skipped the charter.

Step 3: Unwind

The unwind step is where most relaunch projects go wrong. Organizations try to run the new program and the old program at the same time, transition everything at once, or skip the unwind entirely and just add new structure on top of broken infrastructure.

None of those approaches work.

A structured unwind means making deliberate decisions about what carries forward and what does not. Some supplier relationships belong in the new program. Others were built for a scope that no longer exists. Some contracts need to be renegotiated before the relaunch. Others need to be exited cleanly.

The unwind step also includes stakeholder communication. Site leaders and hiring managers who have been working around the old program need to understand what is changing and why, before the new program goes live. The organizations that do this well treat the unwind as a change management exercise, not just a procurement exercise.

Step 4: Relaunch

The relaunch step is implementation. With the audit complete, the redesign documented, and the unwind executed, implementation is the most straightforward part of the process.

That said, a few principles are worth holding through the relaunch phase. Go live in phases rather than all at once, starting with the highest-volume or highest-friction category and expanding from there. Set a 90-day baseline measurement window before any performance comparisons are made to the old program. And treat the first QBR, at around six months, as a calibration point rather than a performance review.

A well-executed relaunch at Stage 3 of the maturity model creates the foundation for Stage 4 and Stage 5 progress. The organizations that invest in getting the infrastructure right at this stage tend to move through subsequent stages significantly faster.

What Workwell Brings to a Program Relaunch

Workwell North America has been through this process with large, complex programs. One of the most significant relaunch projects in our history involved a client whose program had grown well past its original design scope, with fragmented supplier relationships, incomplete workforce data, and a governance structure that had not been revisited in several years.

The work was not glamorous. Audit findings surfaced gaps nobody wanted to see. The unwind required difficult conversations with suppliers and internal stakeholders. The redesign took longer than the original implementation timeline.

What came out the other side was a program that actually reflected the business: complete workforce visibility, a supplier panel built for current needs, and a governance structure that HR, Procurement, and Finance all had a hand in designing.

That outcome is not unique to that client. It is what a structured relaunch process produces when the work is done in the right order.

If you are not sure whether your program needs a relaunch or just an adjustment, the MSP performance diagnostic in this series is a good place to start. And if you want to understand where your program sits on the maturity curve before deciding on next steps, the Contingent Workforce Program Maturity Assessment takes five minutes and gives you a clear picture of where the highest-value work is.