How MSPs Support Better EDI Outcomes and Inclusive Contingent Hiring
You’ve invested in your EDI strategy. But despite the best intentions, embedding EDI into every part of your organisation can be hard, especially when you’re working with a large contingent workforce. If your inclusive contingent hiring strategy is missing from the picture, you’re only seeing part of the story.
For many organisations, EDI efforts focus heavily on permanent staff, where internal teams often have more control, systems, and processes. But contractors, temps, and consultants? Often, they’re left out. With the contingent workforce now representing a significant share of the total workforce, this leaves a gap.
Nearly 20% of the UK workforce are in contingent roles. Yet, most organisations don’t consistently capture diversity data across those populations, leaving a major blind spot in their EDI strategy. 65 percent of companies plan to increase contingent labour use, making it more important to close this gap.
A strategic Managed Service Programme (MSP) can help you close that gap by:
- Bringing your whole workforce into view
- Building EDI into every stage of the hiring process
- Turning Insight into Action
- Helping you deliver on strategic initiatives
- Making inclusion part of the day-to-day experience
The business case for inclusive contingent hiring
Organisations with inclusive contingent hiring practices see measurable improvements in workforce agility, innovation, and performance. A diverse supplier base can also support ESG goals and unlock new opportunities, particularly when bidding for public sector or large corporate contracts that increasingly require evidence of inclusive workforce practices. With contingent workers making up such a large share of the talent mix, overlooking them puts your reputation, resilience, and results at risk.
Bring your whole workforce into view
Contingent workers are often left out of EDI strategies entirely with no visibility over who’s being hired, how inclusive the process is, or what outcomes look like. You can’t improve what you can’t see.
An MSP creates one joined-up picture of your entire workforce, providing you with info on who’s applying, who’s progressing, who’s converting, and who isn’t. This is done by:
- Setting up demographic data capture from the outset
- Normalising the conversation around why and how that data is collected
- Tracking shortlist diversity, interview progression, and offer conversion rates across suppliers
- Introducing EDI dashboards so you can see where action is needed
That means you can make more informed decisions, spot trends and drop-offs, and understand where your process may be unintentionally biased, just as you would with permanent roles. Most clients don’t ask their suppliers for this data but we do. An MSP Provider becomes the connector between you, your supply chain, and your EDI ambitions.
With a consolidated view of your contingent workforce, your leadership team can confidently report on inclusive contingent hiring progress across the board.
“Our MSP platform made recruitment, contract extensions, and even rate reviews seamless. It’s helped manage the transition of over 700 contract workers and the knowledge of the Rullion team has been invaluable in the recruitment and maintenance of further workers. Simple, effective, and exceeding expectations.” — Recruitment Manager, Leading UK Energy Supplier
Build EDI into every stage of the hiring process
In fragmented supply chains, when contingent hiring is split across multiple suppliers, each with their own processes and standards, it means one may remove identifying data from CVs while another doesn't, and none of it ladders up to meaningful data. This makes it easy for inconsistencies to creep in, especially when it comes to inclusion.
Your MSP partner brings consistency and accountability across the entire supply chain. From how jobs are written to how candidates are shortlisted, interviewed, and selected, we ensure inclusive practices are baked in from the start and not bolted on later.
That includes:
- Reviewing job descriptions to remove bias or exclusionary language
- Using inclusive advert templates and gender decoders
- Providing anonymous CV screening where appropriate
- Setting clear diversity expectations for suppliers
- Guiding hiring managers through inclusive briefing and interview practices
- Launching focused campaigns to reach underrepresented talent, such as early careers or women in STEM
We hold suppliers to account with diversity-focused performance metrics, helping you track progress and improve where it matters most
Turn Insight into Action
Collecting the data is one thing. Knowing what to do with it is another. Too often, diversity data is collected but not connected to hiring decisions making it impossible to act on. An MSP closes that loop by building feedback into every stage of the hiring journey.
Your MSP can work with you to identify where inequalities exist in your contingent recruitment process and, more importantly, why. Are certain demographics dropping off at the shortlist stage? Are some interview processes unintentionally exclusive? Your MSP won’t just surface the issues; they’ll bring proven ideas, tested across similar organisations, on how to fix them.
Help you deliver on strategic initiatives
Beyond recruitment, an MSP provider can also act as a delivery partner for wider EDI programmes.
You’ll often find the desire is often there, but internal teams don’t always have the capacity to turn ambition into delivery.
Providers can help you operationalise your EDI strategy by:
- Designing and delivering inclusive graduate or apprenticeship programmes
- Developing routes for social mobility, disability inclusion or veteran employment
- Supporting supplier diversity goals
- Embedding EDI into quarterly reporting, KPIs and workforce planning
We work with your internal HR, TA, and DE&I teams to bring these ideas to life without overloading your day-to-day operations.
For example, we supported one of our energy clients in increasing their percentage of female contingent engineers from 12% to 19% through targeted outreach, inclusive job design, and local STEM engagement.
Make inclusion part of the day-to-day experience
Hiring diverse talent is only part of the work. Inclusion happens once people are through the door. MSPs help ensure your contingent workforce has a fair and equitable experience throughout their time with you.
That could mean:
- Building visibility of contractor experience and access to opportunities
- Encouraging participation in ERGs (Employee Resource Groups)
- Giving contingent workers access to L&D, mental health resources, and well-being initiatives
- Identifying inequities in how feedback, recognition or progression is handled
It’s about creating a sense of belonging, not just filling roles. Your MSP can help bring this to your attention and support you in embedding those practices across your organisation.
A Trusted Partner for Long-Term Progress
With the right partner, you don’t need to split your strategy across permanent and contingent teams. We help you bring everything under one umbrella. One view, one standard, one direction of travel with real traction. So if you're serious about EDI, don’t leave your contingent workforce behind.
Whether you’re just starting out on your ED&I journey or looking to build on strong foundations in inclusive contingent hiring, we can help.
Get in touch to explore how a tailored MSP solution could help you meet your ED&I goals.
