Welcome to this issue of The Contingent Compass. Each week, I send two essays to help you navigate the complex world of the Contingent Workforce. If you need support on your journey, upgrade to a paid subscription where you’ll instantly be able to interact with the community through group chat, live Q&A’s, gain access practical program tools and useful how-to guides.
When I wrote Malcolm in the Middle, I described what it feels like to be a mid-market organization in the contingent labor world: too big to stay scrappy, too small to command the clout of a Fortune 500. Leaders reached out afterward saying, “That’s exactly where we are. Stuck. Invisible. Forced into models that don’t work.”
But here’s the thing: naming the frustration is just the beginning. The bigger question is: why do contingent workforce programs keep failing in the mid-market, and how do you get out of the trap?
What the Trap Looks Like
Take a mid-sized firm with $150M in contingent workforce spend 💰. They get sold an “enterprise-lite” MSP model. On the surface, it looks like a win: proven processes, shrunk down to fit.
Within six months, it’s a different story. The VMS system demands more admins than they can afford. Governance meetings eat up bandwidth. Suppliers that dazzled in the pitch can’t deliver in their secondary markets. Hiring managers start bypassing the program to get the work done faster ⚡.
The program isn’t broken because the company is mid-sized. It’s broken because it was never built for them in the first place.
The Unique Mid-Market Reality
Mid-markets don’t have the luxury of throwing armies of people at process. Procurement teams are small. HR leaders juggle multiple priorities. Budgets are tighter, timelines are shorter, and tolerance for red tape is near zero ⏳.
And yet, the solutions they’re offered are borrowed straight from the Fortune 500. The trap is simple: mid-markets inherit enterprise models that don’t fit, then get blamed when adoption fails.
💡 Reflection time: is your contingent program solving problems, or just creating new layers of admin?
The Hidden Costs of Enterprise-Lite
The numbers don’t lie 📊. Research suggests that mid-market companies adopting scaled-down enterprise MSPs often see adoption rates stall below 40% within two years - compared to 65-70% in enterprise programs. Promised savings plateau, and sometimes costs creep back up.
Why? Because the model doesn’t reflect their reality:
Overbuilt technology that costs six figures to implement but never delivers ROI.
Supplier rosters stacked with global players who don’t hustle for a $300K contract the way they do for a $30M one.
Governance structures designed for 50,000 workers, applied to a workforce of 2,000.
And let’s not forget the human cost. Hiring managers feel slowed down. Contractors feel like afterthoughts in programs built for bigger players. When nobody fights to keep the program alive, that’s not indifference - that’s failure.
The Leadership Blindspot
Here’s the part that doesn’t get said enough: mid-market failures don’t just sit with HR or Procurement. They sit with leadership.
Too often, CEOs and CFOs see contingent workforce strategy as “too small” for their time. But when contingent labor makes up 30–40% of your total workforce cost, that’s not small. That’s EBITDA, agility, and compliance risk sitting in plain sight 🚨.
Ignoring it doesn’t make it go away. It just means the blindspot grows until it becomes expensive.
The Cost of Inaction
What happens if mid-markets keep doing what they’ve always done?
They’ll keep overpaying for talent 💸. They’ll keep bleeding efficiency through bloated supplier models. They’ll keep exposing themselves to compliance and classification risk.
And here’s the kicker: they’ll miss growth opportunities because they can’t get the right people in fast enough 🚀. In a market where speed wins, inaction isn’t neutral - it’s falling behind.
What Mid-Markets Actually Need
The irony? Mid-markets don’t need less than the enterprise. They need different.
Lean governance that provides oversight without suffocating decision-making.
Right-sized tech that simplifies instead of overwhelming.
Supplier partnerships built around agility, where local specialists matter as much as scalable partners.
ROI focus measured in quarters, not years.
This is about designing for reality, not inheriting complexity.
The Underdog Advantage
Here’s where the story flips. Mid-markets aren’t disadvantaged - they’re positioned to win.
While Fortune 500’s are drowning in layers of bureaucracy 🌊, mid-markets can pivot faster, adapt quicker, and deliver ROI sooner. I’ve seen programs in this space strip back unnecessary process and achieve adoption rates over 80% in under a year. Most enterprises would envy that.
The trap is real. But so is the opportunity to leapfrog the giants.
The Future Lens
Contingent labor isn’t shrinking. It’s expanding 📈. By 2030, it could represent over half the workforce in many industries.
That gives mid-markets a choice. Keep accepting enterprise-lite models and stay trapped. Or design programs that are leaner, faster, and more effective - and become the blueprint for the future of workforce strategy.
Breaking Out of the Trap
The trap isn’t destiny. But escaping it requires leadership courage: stop defaulting to cookie-cutter enterprise models, and start demanding strategies designed for your scale.
💡 Final reflection: If your program disappeared tomorrow, would your managers breathe a sigh of relief — or fight to keep it? The answer tells you whether you’re stuck in the trap… or building your underdog advantage.
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If you need support on your journey, upgrade to a paid subscription where you’ll instantly be able to interact with the community through group chat, live Q&A’s, gain access practical program tools and useful how-to guides.