Lorraine Scannell’s commitment to the stakeholders of Eli Lilly is evident in her pursuit of an easy-to-use self-serve contingent workforce model that enables the company to fulfil its mission of delivering medicine to patients more efficiently. As the company’s senior manager, global HR solutions, she and her team of six in Cork, Ireland, transformed the company’s contingent worker onboarding process and customer service worldwide to a centrally managed system from a disjointed and complex system managed at the local levels.

The program, which comprises around 30,000 contingents across 88 countries, is a one-stop shop for all contingent worker needs. It relies on a VMS that serves as single global system of record for all contingent worker onboarding activities. The objectives: to gain visibility into the third-party suppliers and the contingents they were providing — including who has systems and unescorted badge access — and to provide each country affiliate with contingent worker data to enable them to comply with local employment law and adhere to Lilly’s Contingent Worker Rules and Standards.

“With an overengineered VMS system and 88 complex local processes to detangle, it was difficult to determine what was critical to the process and what processes we could remove,” Scannell explains. “Our priority was to remain user friendly, compliant and create a global process that provides data to local affiliate’s to enable them to govern their contingent workforce as per local employment law.’’

It went live in July 2020 after 11 months of preparation, including a hands-on organizational change management program that worked directly with affiliates. Scannell and her team continue to provide comprehensive support and training to all stakeholders to ensure they feel set up for success when engaging in the program.

“It was an incredible achievement to successfully deliver new system design, a transformed process, a change management plan, creation of self-serve material, UAT testing and facilitate supplier training for thousands of suppliers — all in eight languages!” Scannell relates. “To deliver such scale with a team of six sitting alone at home coupled with the very early extreme uncertainty of Covid is a testament to the extraordinary Pauline Beriot, Sonia Estevez Molina, Hazel Murphy, Ciara Stavrianos and Aoife Jackson.’’