Most engagement strategies weren’t built for today’s workforce.

They were built for people who:

• Plan to stay long-term
• Want to grow their career inside one company
• Care deeply about culture and identity

That works for permanent employees, but across sectors like technology, transformation, infrastructure and professional services, contingent workers (contractors, project-based hires, gig talent) now play a critical role in delivery.

And yet, engagement models haven’t evolved to reflect that shift.

Engagement isn’t one-size-fits-all

For permanent employees, engagement is often tied to:

• Career pathways
• Development opportunities
• Organisational culture
• Long-term incentives

For contingent workers, the equation is different.

As Sarah Blanchard, Head of Talent Advisory here at Solve, puts it:

“The psychological contract that a contingent worker has with an organisation is vastly different.”

They aren’t optimising for long-term progression within one company, they are optimising for clarity, efficiency and quality of experience over a defined period.

So, it means engagement looks different.

What engagement actually means for contingent talent

In practice, contingent workers tend to prioritise a small number of factors:

1. Speed and clarity of onboarding

How quickly can they start contributing?

Is the scope clearly defined from day one?

2. Defined outcomes and decision-making

Is it clear what success looks like?

Who owns decisions? How does work move?

3. Access and inclusion

Do they have the tools, information and stakeholder access required to deliver?

Are they treated as part of the team, or kept at the edges?

4. Operational reliability

Are contracts clear?

Are invoices paid on time?

Are processes predictable?

5. Future opportunity

Is there a pathway to extend or return?

Sarah explains:

“For a contingent worker, engagement might simply mean clear scope, respectful inclusion and being paid on time.”

This is a fundamentally different engagement model and one that most organisations don’t explicitly design for.

Where engagement breaks down

Because engagement strategies are built around permanent employees, contingent workers often experience friction in predictable ways.

Slow onboarding

Delays in access, unclear setup processes, or missing information create immediate inefficiency.

Ambiguous scope

Projects evolve without clear ownership or defined outcomes, forcing contractors to navigate uncertainty.

Exclusion from communication

Not being included in key meetings, updates or decisions limits effectiveness.

Process inconsistency

Different stakeholders, unclear approval pathways and fragmented systems slow delivery.

Meeting overload

Time spent in unnecessary meetings reduces the ability to actually deliver outcomes.

These issues may seem minor but for contingent workers operating on defined timelines, they directly impact both performance and experience.

The reputational risk organisations underestimate

Australia and New Zealand’s contingent talent markets are tightly connected and reputation travels quickly.

If contractors experience:

• Inefficient onboarding
• Unclear expectations
• Payment delays
• Unnecessary friction

It affects:

• Willingness to return
• Quality of future applicants
• Overall perception of the organisation in the market

And unlike permanent employees, contingent workers have fewer switching costs. They can simply choose not to come back.

Engagement isn’t about tenure, it’s about experience

A common misconception is that engagement requires time and that shorter tenure reduces the need to invest in engagement.

In reality, the opposite is true.

When tenure is short by design, the quality of experience arguably matters more.

There’s less time to recover from:

• Poor onboarding
• Unclear direction
• Inefficient processes

And every point of friction has a proportionally larger impact, which means engagement for contingent workers is less about long-term initiatives and more about getting the fundamentals right immediately.

Why most organisations don’t measure this

Despite the scale of contingent workforces, most organisations:

• Don’t run engagement surveys for contractors
• Don’t gather structured feedback on contractor experience
• Don’t differentiate between permanent and contingent engagement

Sarah raises the question:

“Many organisations do engagement surveys for permanent workers. Are they also doing that for their contingent workers?”

Without examining this portion of your workforce, gaps remain invisible, and without visibility, employee experience doesn’t improve.

Design for the workforce you actually have

This isn’t about extending permanent engagement models to contingent workers, but about designing a different model entirely.

One that recognises different motivations, expectations and length of time at your organisation.

At a structural level, this means focusing on:

Clarity

Clear scope, defined outcomes, and well-understood decision rights from the outset.

Efficiency

Minimising unnecessary process, meetings and delays.

Access

Ensuring contingent workers can operate effectively from day one.

Consistency

Reliable systems for onboarding, communication and payment.

Continuity

Creating pathways for high-performing contractors to return.

Simply: Would you choose to come back?

One of the most useful ways to assess contingent engagement is straightforward:

Would this person choose to work with you again?

That decision is rarely based on brand or culture alone.

It’s based on:

• How easy it was to deliver
• How clearly work was defined
• How effectively the organisation operated

In other words? How the work was designed.

Engagement needs to evolve with the workforce

Workforces have changed and operating models have evolved, but engagement strategies, in many cases, have not kept pace.

Treating engagement as a single, uniform concept no longer reflects reality.

It needs to be segmented, intentional, and aligned to how different parts of the workforce actually engage with work.

Because ultimately, whether they’re permanent or contingent, engagement is about whether the environment enables people to do their best work, without unnecessary friction.