As assistant director of contingent shared services at Northwestern Mutual, Nancy Maren five years ago turned a manual, decentralized program into an efficient, internally run program.

Then two years ago, she led the implementation of an IC compliance partnership, which in turn has led to her team dipping its toes in direct sourcing. The company recently launched a link to its career site where people can apply for contingent roles in addition to perm roles. “It’s exciting. It’s a lot of building blocks and I’m looking forward to seeing the actual ROI from it,” she says.

Probably one her team’s biggest achievements came under the shadow of Covid-19, when in April they onboarded a record number of people. To achieve that took a lot of cross-functional partnerships, she says. “[the IT department] becomes your best friend, right?” Not having been heavily remote prior to the Pandemic, “this has definitely been a different way of working for us, for sure.”

A new initiative Maren is excited about is what she calls the “candidate concierge.” A member of her team is now dedicated to the onboarding process for contingents. “This year we put on our experience hat and said, ‘how can we give our contingents a better experience?’”

With about 20 years’ experience in the industry, Maren started out on the supply side.