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Background
News Corp has around 120 contractors across a broad range of mostly white-collar roles, including project managers, app developers, advertisers and journalists. Before engaging CXC, News Corp’s primary concern was around contractor compliance, lack of visibility, and cost control.
Challenge
News Corp had little understanding of how many contractors were in the business, what rate they were on and whether they were being onboarded, managed and disengaged compliantly.
Additionally, their payroll system wasn’t designed to facilitate contractors in the same way as their permanent staff. This meant that many contractors were not paying payroll tax, leading to significant risks for the business.
News Corp went to market to seek a better way of managing contractors.
Our Solution
CXC, Hudson RPO and News Corp implemented a contractor recruitment and payrolling solution for all digital and technology workers.
Through a combination of in-person sessions, intranet updates and other internal communications, CXC and Hudson RPO conducted Hiring Manager, HR and contractor information sessions to ensure they were aware of changes to the model and understood the new process.
With all sourcing activity being conducted by Hudson RPO, CXC’s workforce management model engaged contractors as soon as they accepted a verbal offer. This model included:
- Engagement and payment of contractors
- Timesheet and expenses management
- Invoice processing
- Accountability for payroll compliance
- Contractor care during the worker’s assignment
- Onboarding and offboarding
- Early terminations and performance management
- An onsite presence, ensuring we had a close relationship with hiring managers and key decision makers
Results
Through our partnership, CXC, Hudson RPO and News Corp have made substantial improvements to the management of contractor workers. The immediate benefits to News Corp included:
- Cost savings of $500,000 in the first year, by assisting News Corp’s ability to standardise agency margins and increase their direct sourcing to 95%
- Visibility on contractor numbers, location and cost, tracking spend over the last quarter, as well as how many new starters
- Improvement in contractor compliance of taxation and industrial relations obligations
- Improved process efficiency, through providing a single point of contact for all directly sourced contract workers and a centralised invoicing and payment process, including agency margin distribution management
- Full insurance coverage, professional indemnity, public liability and workers’ compensation cover for contractors
- Cloud-based timesheet and expenses accessible through an authenticated portal
Our solution for News Corp has continually evolved over the course of our partnership. We now are responsible for all News Corp contractors that are brought on no matter what division, with the exception of editorial.
Our model has allowed News Corp to focus on the important stuff, while having confidence that their contractors are being managed compliantly, efficiently and cost-effectively.
“The benefits of the CXC contractor management model far outweigh alternative in-house solutions. CXC worked proactively with the business to educate News Corp managers on best practices, as well as providing legislative updates and analysis of workforce trends. With candidates being shared internally when their contract is up, talent acquisition is almost self-sustaining, leading to massive savings in time and cost. I’m basically in a situation where I can focus on more strategic projects with News Corp, and I have complete faith CXC getting the fundamentals of contractor management right.” – Ben Girdler, former Head of Talent Acquisition, News Corp
