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The Benefits and Challenges of Hiring Contingent Workers

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The Contingent Workforce: Insights and Information

Organizations often refer to contingent workers by different titles: independent contractors (ICs), contract workers, consultants, temps, remote employees, freelancers, agency workers, or gig workers. These outsourced, nonpermanent employees are usually engaged to fill short-term openings, address seasonal shifts in staffing needs, tackle special short-term or long-term projects, or offer expertise and consultancy.

Employers offer contingent workers temporary contracts until the project is complete; after that, neither employer nor contingent employee has any obligation to continue their business relationship — although both sides may find the relationship is beneficial enough to make permanent.

Contingent workers can bring highly specialized, niche skills to the workplace, offering management an opportunity to complete more complex work beyond the scope of their other staff members. This nuance can be a turning point for businesses focused on growth, expansion, and development of product lines and services.

Benefits and challenges of hiring contingent workers

Contingent staffing offers an alternative work arrangement and increased flexibility for both workers and companies, along with many other benefits — and, of course, a few challenges.

Advantages of hiring contingent workers include:

  • An external, flexible workforce of contingent workers provides a solid boost to companies needing to ramp up or minimize their employee base quickly. Economic shifts, special projects, and seasonality of work all affect the bottom-line staffing numbers. The ability to hire gig workers or project workers eases the stress on managers and hired staff as well, as regular employees appreciate the added job security of knowing they are less likely to be downsized when production needs are met or projects are completed.
  • Cost savings. The ability to hire talent on an as-needed basis is notably cost-effective. When business fluctuations occur, managers can reduce labor costs by hiring to meet the needs of the moment, without having to invest in the lengthy onboarding, orientation, and administrating associated with hiring regular employees. Contingent workers generally need only short-term, job-specific training and administration.
  • Sourcing, recruiting, and hiring employees are time-consuming tasks, and sometimes your company needs critical talent immediately. The availability of contingent workers means hiring managers can work much more quickly and effectively to fill those openings.
  • Unique skills. Contingent workers may have skill sets unique to their fields or critical to the success of particular projects. Hiring regular employees for specific, unique skills takes time and is often more expensive than finding a short-term consultant or gig worker.

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Of course, no benefit is without a challenge, and savvy business managers are prepared for the challenges that hiring contingent workers may entail:

  • Management. Because temporary workers don’t go through the same onboarding, orientation, and training regular employees do, they may need extra management as they begin their journey with your company.
  • As contingent work is so flexible in nature, managers may feel uncomfortable with the model at first. Trusting an “outsider” to do a great job requires good communication and follow-up skills from team leaders and managers.
  • The IRS and Department of Labor require employers to use concrete guidelines to classify all workers as employees or nonemployee contractors. Failing to adhere to these guidelines by misclassifying contingent workers may lead to costly legal penalties. It’s crucial that employers mitigate their legal risk by ensuring all workers are correctly classified. A legal consultant or experienced recruiting partner can best assess your company’s risks and offer guidance.
  • Companies may become reliant on the unique skills certain gig workers bring to bear and find themselves reluctant to move workers to other projects. Finding the right balance between in-house and external talent is often a challenge.
  • Integration and teamwork. Employees tend to integrate and develop relationships with coworkers more quickly than contingent workers who may not be involved with the company for long. This may lead to more cohesion and teamwork between regular employees and less with contingent staff.

Outsourcing contingent workforce management: Is it worthwhile?

Your organization has a lot to focus on — staff management, growth, new products and services, talent acquisition, and more. Hiring contingent workers is one area where businesses can confidently outsource, but only to a trusted recruiting partner . Consider the advantages your company stands to gain from outsourcing contingent workforce management :

  • When you work with an established staffing partner to secure contingent workers, the right partner will provide all the necessary resources, from internal training to helping teams keep abreast of industry trends and current technologies.
  • Recruiting and staffing. Your staffing partner should handle the logistics of hiring contingent workers: recruiting, interviewing, hiring, background checks/drug testing, onboarding, and ongoing development and mentorship.
  • Risk mitigation. Your staffing partner should be experts in the legal requirements for contingent workforces, including labor laws, state employee registrations, Workers’ Compensation Insurance management, and benefits administration.
  • Compensation negotiations. Specialized gig workers are often in high demand. Your contingent workforce management partner should be up to date on compensation expectations and able to negotiate on behalf of your organization to ensure you get the best talent, at the right price, for your specific needs.
  • Performance management. Successful staffing partners handle performance expectations, management, and any concerns related to your outsourced workers.
Is your organization ready to take the next step by hiring contingent workers? Bring contingent workforce management into focus with maslowmedia.com .

The post The Benefits and Challenges of Hiring Contingent Workers appeared first on Maslow Media.

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Analog to Ethernet: NAB Highlights the Future of AV & Broadcast Tech

CMMA Blog

Vegas never seems to disappoint me when it comes to NAB . It may not be as flashy as some displays from South-by-Southwest but NAB is the pulse of where the AV, broadcast, and the film industry sits but also where it is going. I overheard a conversation behind me on the plane of a passenger asking their seatmate what NAB actually was

“Is it a technical conference or is it about the creative aspects of film and broadcasting?”

“Both, kind of.”

What is NAB?

To a broadcast muggle that may not be hip to our industry, I would say NAB is very technical in nature but it is the creativity that we have with this gear that makes the masterpieces people binge-watch in their free time or watch casually over a cup of coffee. I was there representing clients who mostly use this technology in corporate and NGO settings but I was standing next to the NBC broadcast team for the Olympics at one booth and the NFL Films team at another.

Discussions on the main stage varied from the post-production team presentation of HBO’s “The Last of Us” to an XR/VR panel on how the technology is used to enhance educational settings and experiences. Our goal as an industry always remains the same: how do we tell better stories? And that doesn’t sound technical to us. Stories of course are as old as language itself. What we use to tell our stories? Very technical. Another feature of NAB is all the side stages and pavilions to offer further breakdowns in our industry’s tech, business practices, and culture, including frank discussions on the progress of Diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. A panel discussion hosted by Gals and Gear highlighted the triumphs of how far we’ve come but still how far we need to go to get away from industry practices known as cronyism or shadow hiring. The old “I know a guy” (And it’s usually is a guy) mantra is still alive and it’s up to all of us to continue to work towards these DEI goals.

 

Let’s Talk Tech: Highlights from NAB

There’s lots of tech to get through so we’ll start here.

Last year the bells of the ball were the large remote production video wall sets powered by Unreal Engine or Unity servers. This technological advancement allowed immersive experiences for actors and allowed for any environment to be easily customizable to the whims of a creative team. No need to travel to 6 different locations for a shoot, you could load the digital volumes into the graphics engine, and manipulate lighting and backgrounds in ways that Location managers only could pray for good weather or for that tree in the shot to be merely 3 feet more to the left.

But that was last year. Those sets were still on display of course but no large changes to the tech were show-stopping for this broadcast tech junkie.

From a ten thousand-foot view, I can summarize this year’s NAB display as a representation of two different bodies of vendors: those who transmit signal to a destination and those who have developed products that receive or build upon an IP/cloud workflow.

If you have been involved in the tech talk of the industry in the last 6 or so years you’ve heard of SMPTE2110, IP workflows, and the cloud. NAB 2023 has confirmed what has been on the horizon for years: the time of analog first gear is over. It’s time to turn that serial port into an ethernet one.

 

It’s Time to Unite your AV and IT Teams

If your AV or broadcast teams are separate from your IT teams it is time to start the conversation and get them talking. IP transport of audio and video signals over ethernet is a reality that all vendors are in on. If your IT teams are nervous, they do not need to turn far for assistance, the presence of IT gear manufacturers and cloud platforms have been a mainstay at the show: Cisco, Avixa, Netgear, AWS, Microsoft Azure, etc.

Why is this so important? SPMTE2110, that’s why.

To most people, that just looks like a cat walked across my keyboard. In simplest terms, SMTE2110 allows teams to move video feeds from one place to another using only an ethernet (internet) or fiber cable. Why do I say this is important now? Blackmagic Design , an industry underdog or disruptor (Depending on who you are talking to) released its first converter for IP and 2110. The price point? Only $595.

SMPTE was only seen as affordable and thus doable, for larger organizations and industry juggernauts much like how remote production stages are seen as engines of large studios that produce major motion pictures (ie. Disney, HBO, etc.). This announcement spells a foreshadowing of what to be on the lookout for in the coming years. This technology is no longer inaccessible to your budget. Even network switch manufacturers like Netgear are due to release their next hardware models that will be compatible with SPMTE.

Now, fostering conversations between IT and AV is a whole other discussion article that can get complicated depending on your business, but having these teams start talking is essential. Most IT professionals have little knowledge of how audio and video packets transport around a network and most AV professionals have a limited knowledge of IT security and infrastructure. It’s an uneven playing field for both parties but a team that can acknowledge their individual shortcomings and rise above them will be able to make some incredible productions.

I think I might know what you’re thinking: I’m not doing a SMPTE system upgrade, but I still need a scalable solution that is a bit more affordable and does not include more hardware. Well, my friend, that is what the cloud is for.

 

Scalable Solutions in the Cloud

There were many vendors offering compatibility with their hardware to be run in the Cloud, typically skewed to AWS but many say they are cloud agnostic to a degree: Ross Video, Evertz, Vizrt, Panasonic to name a few. But also browser-native applications that are hosted in the cloud like Ross Video’s cloud production suite or the Switch’s Mimic product.

The cloud, whether you are using AWS, Azure, or GCP, has been around for a while but the “lift and shift” away from hardware purchases is what makes these workflows and products very attractive. Only use what you need when you need it.

Within this cloud production work graphics have been a pain point for many but this year’s NAB demonstrated what is front of mind to solve this: HTML5 graphic integration into products.

Another cat on my keyboard? No. In a nutshell, HTML5 graphics enable the production of graphics from any browser with no coding or broadcast graphics knowledge. With HTML5 graphics, everything happens seamlessly in the cloud and can be controlled by one person. When you are working in the cloud, it is easier to create multiple versions of the same broadcast. For example, a broadcaster with a global base can send multiple broadcast signals, re-versioned for local consumption in other countries complete with graphics in the local language. What once would take multiple teams or workflows can now be streamlined cleanly.

 

What’s next in AV Broadcast Technology?

Wow, with all this human efficiency what could possibly next? AI of course! Web3 was replaced as the reigning hot topic in most spheres now and that is certainly true here. At a stop at the ATSC 3.0 booth, they had an avatar of an ASL interpreter translating an emergency broadcast signal. A combination of the two spheres of the aforementioned tech. It was exciting to see how much AI has pushed accessibility more front of mind for people. This little ASL avatar is only the beginning of building upon closed caption technology before it. Captions are getting faster, smarter, and being translated into more languages for the global audiences remote and virtual audiences have drawn. For our Virtual Services team at TeamPeople this is exciting news as we can continue to integrate greater accessibility options into our livestreaming products

All of these innovations don’t photograph as well as a fancy LED wall or camera but they are transforming the industry. With how much has advanced this year from last year I only have this to say: I can’t wait to see what stories we can tell next.

 

If you need help starting the conversation between your AV, broadcast, and IT teams, we can help. Sarah Doyle and our team of technical experts are well-versed in providing custom solutions for complex workflows. We’d love to hear about the challenges your team is facing and the pain points we can solve with these technical advances in audiovisual technology. Get in touch with us!

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👻 s Among Us (How to Prevent Payroll Fraud)

CMMA Blog

Payroll fraud is incredibly common. White collar crimes can be slippery because they aren’t always as obvious as someone swiping a stack of bills from the cash register. Some perpetrators likely don’t even think of themselves as thieves. They’re just “redirecting” funds they feel should be theirs anyway, “manipulating their payroll records ” to show they had extra vacation time, or clocking in when they’re not actually on duty . Those last two, by the way, were done by police officers and a firefighter, respectively.

What is Payroll Fraud? What Are The Stakes?

Payroll fraud is a misappropriation of funds that can happen a variety of ways. It could happen in the form of paying “ghost” employees or vendors. Such entities look legitimate but exist solely as a front. They may be workers who’ve quit, been fired, or died but are still receiving paychecks. They could be vendors that seemingly provide a service, but are in fact, nonexistent.

Another form of payroll fraud is when a worker clocks in when they’re not working or has someone clock in for them when they’re running late. Any form of falsifying hours falls under the umbrella of payroll fraud. Businesses lose billions in reported cases and small businesses are especially vulnerable. The duration of the schemes varies, but some businesses only find out after a worker has been fleecing it for years.

Resources to Prevent And Detect Payroll Fraud

Depending on a company’s setup, payroll fraud can sometimes be remarkably easy to pull off. Businesses with small payroll departments are most vulnerable, but it happens at the big companies and even feel-good nonprofits , too.

As usual, the best approach is prevention. Preventive measures discourage a would-be fraudster from trying something unsavory in the first place. They also make it easier for companies to catch perpetrators early on. Any resources a company puts toward preventative measures pales in comparison to the potential cost of lax procedures.

  1. Hire with discretion. Use the Social Security Administration website,  E-verify  or the IRS website  to confirm candidates’ identities. Continue the process by conducting a background check before hiring anyone as well as at regular intervals even after they’re on the team. Institute a process and apply the same level of scrutiny to every employee at every level.
  2. Separate duties. This applies especially to smaller businesses where one person fills multiple roles. If the same person makes entries, writes checks, and audits the books, they have too much power and can cause problems. Separating duties when possible and having a system of checks and balances (pun intended) in place goes a long way toward preventing fraudulent behaviors.
  3. Conduct audits. Both internal and external audits can identify fraudulent activities and each has benefits. When used in conjunction, these efforts can pay off big time by preventing issues or detecting them early. Quarterly reviews are a healthy standard practice for companies of all sizes.

Something Doesn’t Seem Right. Now what?

So let’s say you’ve taken preventive measures to minimize risks and something still doesn’t add up. If you see any red flags, it’s time to dig.

  1. Watch for ghosts, unusual behavior, and anything out of the ordinary. Twitter made headlines in 2022 attempting to identify if there were ghost employees sucking up payroll. This article identifies other red flags to watch out for. Hint: an employee who never takes a day off may not be as dedicated as you think.
  2. Provide an outlet for other employees to report suspicions. Company leaders can’t have their eyes on everything and it’s often the ones in the trenches that will be first to identify when something is amiss. Organizations with hotlines receive more tips to potential fraud than those without.
  3. Follow the 💰. Corruption always leaves a trail. If more than one employee uses the same bank account, unknown vendors are receiving checks, and unusual expenses are popping up, it’s worth looking into. If something seems like it could be amiss, investigate. If you have the resources to conduct a thorough internal investigation, that’s a good place to start. If not, hire someone to do it for you. And do it quietly so you don’t tip off the fraudster(s) before you have all the information you need.

Can Businesses Conduct Payroll Fraud?

We’ve talked about the workers, but companies can be guilty of a different kind of payroll fraud as well. Businesses that misclassify employees as independent contractors to avoid paying payroll tax and other costs associated with employees are also guilty of payroll fraud. It’s not the focus of this post, but we cover worker classification in depth. Contact us for a free risk assessment if you think your worker classification practices could use a second look.

Bottom Line

Now is a great time to identify vulnerabilities, and determine a course of action. Most payroll fraud, while incredibly frustrating and costly, is highly preventable. If you’d rather offload some of your payroll completely, call 303-526-4900 or email us. We minimize the time, effort, and risk associated with worker classification, payroll, and more.

The post 👻 s Among Us (How to Prevent Payroll Fraud) appeared first on PayReel .

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Getting the Most Out of Interactive Video for E-Commerce

CMMA Blog

Forget “try before you buy.” Today’s consumers are all about watching before they buy. Research from Brightcove shows that 85% of consumers worldwide use video content in some way to inform their online shopping decisions.
The next generation of e-commerce video marketing is here now, too: interactive video . More than eight in 10 shoppers who spend the most money online agree that interactive videos with features such as click-to-purchase links are helpful as they shop online.
The challenge for brands looking to seize this opportunity is that most video platforms don’t offer interactivity directly in the platform. However, Brightcove is one of the few online video platforms (OVPs) that offers interactivity out of the box (OOTB). For a feature designed to improve the customer experience, the benefits of in-platform interactivity are undeniable.
Benefits of OOTB Interactivity
There is, of course, one key benefit to using third-party interactivity: It’s platform agnostic. Most vendors work with a variety of OVPs. While switching video platforms might seem like a hassle, the many benefits of OOTB interactivity (like Brightcove) make it worthwhile.

Seamless integration. Features are designed to work with the rest of the software, reducing the amount of time and effort required to get the system up and running.
Consistent user experience. There is a consistent user experience for interactive elements, reducing confusion and improving customer engagement.
Lower costs. Unlike third-party features that require additional licenses for fees, the cost is included in the software subscription, making the rates more transparent and cost-effective.
Greater security. There are more robust security features in place to protect systems and data. You can take advantage of them without having to implement additional security measures for third-party integrated features.
Easier maintenance. Interactive features are maintained and updated by the OVP, reducing the burden on you to maintain and update it. Plus, feature enhancements aren’t time-consuming or costly for you—they come with the package.

Interactive Video Features
While OOTB interactivity is still uncommon among OVPs, several features have become standard across interactivity offerings. Overlays, quizzes, chapters, polls, external links, and in-video branching are available on most solutions, including Brightcove.
However, Brightcove has the widest interactivity feature set, including several advanced features that many other platforms do not. The standard features are a step in the right direction, but the following advanced features further interactivity’s goal of making video behave more like the web.

Sentiment. A high-performing product video clearly demonstrates interest. But without knowing the customer sentiment, you won’t know if that interest is related to purchases or returns. Embedding a video with sentiment options like thumbs up/thumbs down, star ratings, or emoticons can help you discern the difference.
Video-to-video branching. If streaming services have taught us anything, it’s that consumers like the video experience. With video-to-video branching, online shoppers never have to leave. Instead of returning to a menu, they can continue browsing similar or related products from the comfort of your video player.
Time triggers. One of the most important rules of interactive video is giving the viewer time to react. Opportunities for feedback or browsing different product videos can quickly become opportunities for frustration if the video continues before the viewer can take action. Time triggers allow you to pause the video at certain points, or skip to another part of the video if no action is taken.
Personalization. If your website offers a store login, you can further refine your customers’ viewing experience based on the first-party data they submitted. Like the restaurant server who remembers your name and order, your video player could do the same.
Chat. In stores, getting your questions about a product answered is easy—just ask someone. Overlaying third-party messaging programs onto your video provides a similar, digital experience. Why lose an immediate sale when you answer questions in real time?
Custom content. Embedding custom forms means that RSVPing to a launch party doesn’t have to wait for a follow-up email. Whether you use Google Forms, Mailchimp, Typeform, Calendly, or Eventbrite, feel free to collect form data without asking your customers to click off the video.

Interactive Video Playback
The most advanced interactive features are worthless if your customers can’t play or properly view the video. Thankfully, interactive video has come a long way; most platforms offer web playback on all the major browsers as well as mobile web playback.
Especially with almost half (42%) of e-commerce now happening on mobile , it’s critical to ensure the video experience is seamless on every user’s device. Unlike some interactive solutions that only offer lightboxes, Brightcove provides inline experiences. While lightboxes are notoriously unresponsive on mobile devices, inline provides a much more user-friendly experience.
Most platforms also allow interactive playback in standard landscape orientation, and some, including Brightcove, allow portrait.
Interactive Video Analytics
Interactive video not only provides a better video experience for online shoppers, it gives marketers more granular behavioral data about their customers. Most solutions offer this through platform analytics, CSV export, API access, and the ability to integrate with Google Analytics and Adobe Analytics.
The metrics offered will vary, but you can expect most platforms to include metrics related to activity stream, aggregate performance, conversion, and overlay clicks. However, few offer stop watching/exit metrics like Brightcove. Similar to a video’s engagement rate, these metrics are key to knowing how your audience is responding to your interactive elements.
For example, just as too many interactive elements can be distracting, so can the wrong element at the wrong time. Stop watching metrics can help you test and isolate the optimum time in a video to place a Buy Now button or a related product link.
Thanks to native MAP integrations, Brightcove also offers user-level reporting like click-through rate, navigation rate, and response rate. If this sounds like an absurd amount of data, it is. This is actually one of the biggest issues with interactivity providers: great data but poor insights.
Marketers don’t just need more data; they need the tools to quickly interpret and act upon it. This is why Brightcove also offers Audience Insights, the leading customer data platform (CDP) specifically designed for video. With proprietary metrics as well as fully aggregated user-level data, Brightcove offers more actionable interactive video insights than any other platform on the market.
How to Compete with Interactive Video in E-Commerce
E-commerce brands know that video can make or break a product purchase. But with so much video content, it’s hard to stand out. And even when you do, it’s often hard to figure out why. It’s not enough knowing that a video was viewed or a call-to-action was clicked. Brands must focus on why a viewer took the next step or dropped off.
While other platforms can produce engaging, interactive videos, most aren’t innovative enough to meet the data-driven demands of e-commerce strategies. Brightcove Interactivity offers everything enterprises need to compete in today’s highly personalized, audience-centric market.

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