Michael Culshaw says two things make him a game changer in contingent workforce management: Trust and a willingness to let the people around him try new ideas, knowing not all will be a success. This is especially critical in the CW space, he explains, because it is so new. In general, conventional methods of recruiting, hiring and managing employees don’t fit the needs of either contingent workers or employers, so creativity is required.

Culshaw oversees the strategy for the UK HM Government’s Crown Commercial Service contingent worker management program with responsibility for over 19,000 contingent, statement-of-work and recruit-train-deploy workers across 120 UK government departments with an annual value of over £1.3 billion. To date, the program has saved UK taxpayers over £250 million.

Culshaw and his team are always working to make sure their contingent worker program is using all available means to find talent and ensure that work is done at the highest quality. At the same time, they are leading initiatives that act on the government’s social values and DE&I commitments. One such recent initiative is their recruit-train-deploy program, which emphasizes non-résumé-based recruitment and develops cohorts of workers from underrepresented communities to be trained and managed while on assignment with a goal of converting to an available civil servant job within 18-24 months.